Google's Chrome is considered to be among the safest browsers for a good reason. Google has spent copious amount of time providing users with the most secure browser they can make, and largely they've succeeded.
However, there are always going to be problems that haven't been taken care of and exploits that could happen at any given time. One of these is, what a software developer Jim Fisher calls the inception bar.
He has figured out a way to fool users with a fake address bar on Chrome for Android. People can usually rely on their address bar showing valid information, but with this exploit Fisher has managed to replace it fairly convincingly with a fake URL bar.
When you scroll down on Chrome for Android, the address bar slowly slides away, normally when you go back up it's waiting for you again at the top. With the exploit Fisher's bar appears at the top and won't be replaced with the actual one even when scrolled up.
There are, fortunately, a few ways to determine that you are indeed seeing a fake bar and not a real one. First, at least with this iteration of the code, it appears in the middle of scrolling down, which should raise some concerns.
If you aren't sure if this is indeed a fake bar still, you can lock and unlock the device to reveal the actual bar, after which the fake bar is shown below (pictured above).
Streaming music pioneer Spotify has grown with a stable and fairly rapid pace for years now, and there seems to be no stopping it. Not even Apple Music, with its massive investments, has even come close to pass Spotify's global leadership.
Alongside the newest fiscal figures from Spotify, the company has revealed that they've surpassed the 100 million paid subscriber milestone. In December Spotify announced that they first went past 200 million total subscribers.
At this point there are more than 117 million users that are using the ad-supported tier.
Last quarter Spotify managed to also first time pull them up to a nice operating profit, but that wasn't meant to last. In the latest quarter they posted a 142 million euros ($158 million) loss. Even though it was backtracking by quite a bit, it still was an improvement to year ago.
While Apple hasn't given us official subscriber numbers for Apple Music in a while, they still have ways to catch up with Spotify globally. In the U.S., however, Apple Music has managed to overpass Spotify, thanks to its extensive investments and continuously running TV ads.
You know the feeling when you're at the office, working with your PC and your phone beeps about some incoming notification and you couldn't be bothered to find and open the phone? No worries, Microsoft has a solution for you!
Latest version of Windows 10, accompanied with the Microsoft's Your Phone app installed on your Android, can now bring all your Android notifications to Windows 10 notification area. This will help, especially with those mobile apps that don't have a web or Windows counterpart at all - SnapChat for example.
The feature relates to Your Phone concept the Microsoft launched last year. At first, installing a Your Phone app and connecting it to your Windows PC would allow one to browse through images and text messages stored in the phone via PC. Since then, the concept has evolved and nowadays, if your phone is in the supported devices list, you can actually mirror your entire phone to your desktop, in its own window.
Now, the latest version of Your Phone now also brings the Android notifications to Windows 10 and ties them into Windows 10's own notification area. The feature is already available to Windows Insider users, but should roll out to all of us in next couple of days. In order to get the notification mirroring, you need to have Android phone with Android 7.0 or newer and Windows 10 with at least version 1803 update available (released in Spring, 2018). More about the Your Phone and its notification mirroring can be found in Microsoft's blog entry. You can download the Your Phone app for Android here.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have come to a settlement in a case of Musk's Twitter use.
Last August, Musk ruffled the feathers of the SEC when he tweeted that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 per share. The tweet pushed Tesla share prices up 13.3 percent, and the SEC accused Musk of violating secutiries laws.
Musk settled the lawsuit, stepping down as chairman of Tesla. He also said he would Tesla lawyers vet written communications with material information about the company.
However, in February, the SEC asked a federal judge to hold Musk in contempt after he tweeted about Tesla's production numbers. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan declined to rule on the contempt motion and directed the SEC and Musk to settle it between themselves.
Musk and his lawyers deny that he had violated the original settlement, arguing that the settlement was too ambiguous for Musk to be held in contempt and that the tweet in question did not contain new information that was material to investors.
Now, the SEC and Musk have reached another settlement. If it is approved by the judge, certain tweets made by Musk will have to be submitted to lawyers to be vetted. This time the settlement is more specific on what kinds of statements will need to be approved by lawyers. Additionally, Tesla's board can seek preapproval about additional topics if they feel it is in the interest of the company's shareholders.
Sony's next generation PlayStation will not launch during the next 12 months, Sony has told the media.
Takashi Mochizuki, a Wall Street Journal reporter, revealed on Twitte that Sony will not ship the next gen PlayStation console any time in the next twelve months. This comes after the first details of the new console's hardware were revealed last week, and kills any speculation that Sony was aiming to put the new console on the market late this year.
It was also revealed that Sony's PS Now service has reached 700,000 users, averaging 40 percent annual growth.
Sony: -No next-gen PlayStation launch over next 12 months -PS Now has been ave. 40% annual growth since launch, now 700,000 users -Much of Y31.1 billion (difference between past fy op vs this fy op outlook) to be invested to develop next PlayStation console
The next generation PS5 has some significant hardware upgrades over the PS4 Pro. Capable of 8K graphics output, it also packs a GPU from the AMD Redeon Navi family that supports ray-tracing. It will also support 3D audio and pack a speedy SSD drive to reduce game loading times significantly.
Women using dating apps are more than familiar with the concept of receiving unsolicited pictures of male genitalia. To the point that one of the biggest dating app developers, a company behind Bumble, Badoo, Chappy and Lumen is developing a technology to block those.
Bumble, the parent company, is developing an AI-based solution that detects such pictures when users send them to other users. If detected, the picture will be blurred and the recipient will be alerted about the image. Recipient will have the ability to show the image, if he/she wants to, but also an ability to report the sender automatically to the company's moderators.
"The safety of our users is without question the number one priority in everything we do and the development of Private Detector is another undeniable example of that commitment," founder of the company said in a statement emailed to Mashable.
Feature, dubbed as "Private Detector", will roll out in June, 2018 to all Bumble's dating apps.
During the past year, the Pc gaming giants have been fighting to dominate the gaming marketplace sector. The war started when Epic Games' got tired of paying an industry-standard 30 percent cut for various platforms, including those of Steam, Google Play and others.
Epic, who has the most cuccessful game of 2018 in its portfolio, Fortnite, has declared an open war against all major app stores and marketplaces. First of all, company has refused to add the Android version of Fortnite to Google Play store and instead, encourages users to download the game from it own servers. By doing this, Epic avoids handing out 30 percent cut of all subsequent in-game purchases to Google.
More importantly, Epic has expanded its own PC gaming store, Epic Store, to host other developers' games, too. And to infuriate gamers - and Valve, who owns Steam . Epic has managed to get several big brand games to be exclusive to its Epic Store. Epic's store takes only 12 pecent cut from developers, which is an extremely lucrative deal for most developers, despite missing out Steam's enormous existing audience.
To put the fight into context: Fortnite has been dubbed as the game with most revenue in a single year, ever. It generated a whopping 2 billion dollar revenue in year 2018. IF Epic would deliver the game only through Steam, Google Play and Apple App Store, it would mean the company would hand out a cool 600 million dollars to marketplaces. Now, other developers with potentially massive hits, understand this and they've been happy to use Epic Store rather than Steam. But the thing that has caused most annoyance among gamers has been the exclusive titles available only through Epic Store.
Google has today announced the new Chrome 74. The updated version of Google's web browser is available for most platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
This time around Chrome update doesn't have any flashy new features, or even much of anything that regular users would easily distinguish. However, there's plenty of improvements even in this version.
One of the new features version 74 does include is the new reduced motion experience, which will remove effects and transitions. This includes things like parallax scrolling and zooming, which have been reported to give motion sickness to some individuals.
You can find the option under Settings and Accessibility.
Other improvements include support for private class fields and CSS transition events.
Google has also addressed issues with the mobile browsers stability and performance, both of which have been improved. Other lighter changes in the mobile Chrome include changing Data Saver Mode to Lite Mode.
You can get the new Chrome from app stores and from google.com/chrome.
Intel has finally revealed their new 9th generation Core processors for laptops. The H-Series includes six 45-watt mobile processors built with 14 nm process.
The top of the line H-Series processor is the new Core i9-9980HK, which has eight cores, 16 threads, support Hyper-Threading, 16 MB L3 cache, and up to 4.9 GHz Turbo Boost with 2.4 GHz base frequency. It also has the Intel Thermal Velocity Boost, included in i9 chips, which adds 100 MHz to Turbo clock.
The K comes from overclockable, of course, and you'll probably be able to push it well past the 5GHz mark. It is also the only K chip in the lineup, although according to Anandtech you might be able to overclock the i7-9850H.
The i9-9980H is fairly identical except for the lower Turbo Boost of 4.7 GHz, base clock of 2.3 GHz, and no overclocking support.
The six-core and 12 thread i7 chips (i7-9850H and i7-9750H) have 12 MB L3 cache and base clock of 2.6 GHz. They will Turbo up to 4.6 and 4.5 GHz respectively.
The cheapest new H-Series chips are i5-9300H and i5-9400H, and you'll only get four cores with 8 threads and more modest 8 MB L3 cache. Clock speeds are 2.4 GHz/4.1 GHz and 2.4 GHz/4.3 GHz respectively.
Google's parent company Alphabet has all kinds of project, many of them formerly part of the infamous Google X, running alongside the hugely profitable subsidiary Google. One of them is drone delivery company known as Wing.
Wing happens to be now the first and only drone company to have received official certification from the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The air carrier certification essentially means that they are certified to start drone deliveries in the US to customers. Pilot program will begin later this year in Virginia before expanding further.
If you live or work in Blacksburg or Christiansburg areas, you or your company might be soon contacted by Wing.
To gain the unprecedented licence, Wing demonstrated to FAA that deliveries made by drones will be less hazardous than those made by car. FAA agreed that the danger posed to pedestrians is lesser than that of traditional delivery methods.
FAA is notoriously hard to convince, which makes it impressive that Wing has managed to get certification. This will likely open doors to other drone companies too.
Previously Wing has been approved to operate in Canberra, Australia.
OnePlus has today officially announced that they'll be revealing their next generation of smartphones in New York next month. On May 14, the company is going to reveal for the first time a series of smartphones.
This OnePlus 7 Series includes of course the regular OnePlus 7 but also a first ever Pro version as well as a 5G variant for the OnePlus 7 Pro.
Unfortunately they didn't want to give us any specs or details of any of these devices. However, a new leak seems to provide us with quite a few interesting facts, especially about the Pro version.
According to a Twitter leaker @Samsung_News_, OnePlus 7 Pro has a new 90 Hz display with improved resolution. The 6.7 inch display increases the resolution from 1080p to 3120x1440p, and is likely to be another OnePlus' trademark Optic AMOLEDs.
Another big difference to its predecessor, the OnePlus 6T, is a new triple camera setup with a 48 MP f/1.6 default camera, 3x zoom camera as well as a 117° wide-angle camera. It's a very similar setup to Android flagships from the likes of Samsung and Huawei.
As expected, OnePlus will stick with Qualcomm and will use their highest end chip, Snadpragon 855. RAM options include 6, 8 and 12 GB but storage options only go to from 128 to 256 GB. Somewhat surprisingly there is no 512 GB option, according to the leaks.
Yesterday Elon Musk revealed his crazy pipe dream or, as Tesla calls it, plan for the upcoming year. According to the company and its head honcho, Tesla vehicles should be able to drive completely autonomously no matter the conditions.
The company is also planning to bring robotaxis to the U.S. as soon as next year.
Much of this optimism is in large part due to the introduction of Tesla's first in-house chip. Previously Tesla has had to rely on semiconductor designers and manufacturer, including Nvidia, to build them a chips for self-driving purposes.
After investing heavily on their own design team, they've managed to replace self-driving chips in newly produced their cars to proprietary tech developed in-house. Tesla says that Model S, Model X, and Model 3 units that are being built now already have the first Tesla chip.
The switch happened for the first two a month ago and for Model 3 around 10 days ago. All of these new versions have the required tech for complete autonomous driving, the rest is just about software.
Samsung Unpacked 2019 event in San Francisco in late February introduced us to a few new Galaxy gadgets. The new Galaxy S10 was definitely impressive, but it was a new type of device, Galaxy Fold, that really caught the eyes of the attendants and viewers around the world.
It won't be a phone for everyone, and the price tag of nearly $2,000 takes care of that, but it was the first foldable phone to be launched by Samsung. An eight-year development marathon was finally over and we could see and feel what the future looks like.
Unfortunately, not everything went according to plan. Shortly, in fact just couple days, after a very selected group of reviewers got their hands on a Galaxy Fold, they started breaking down.
There were a few different issues with the display, it seems, and they affected a surprisingly high percentage of devices that were handed out.
First official statement from Samsung assured that the launch would not be affected, and most of the problems were due to removal of the outer layer of the display which looked like a removable screen protector, which it isn't.
Tesla just hosted its Tesla Autonomy Day today where it addressed its plans for autonomous driving. Company has massive plans for the near future, if everything goes as they hope fot.
Firstly, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk said that the company expects their autopilot to achieve the "Level 5" autonomous driving by end fo the year, meaning that it would be capable of driving without a human driver in nearly all possible scenarios imaginable.
Secondly, company outlined its plans for the year 2020 with its robotaxi service. Tesla recently changed the lease contracts of its new customers by stating that after the lease period is over, Tesla wont allow the lessee to buy the car, but instead, Tesla will own it. Now, according to Musk, company will use these previously leased cars, mostly Model 3 vehicles, as the core of its planned fully autonomous ride hailing service, dubbed as Tesla robotaxi.
Telsa expects, in company slides, to get first regulatory approvals for the fully autonomous ride hailing service by end of the year 2020.
Switching smartphones can be a pain in the behind, especially if you are switching platforms. However, even getting a new Android phone to replace an old one can be stress inducing when you think about what data you might lose in the midst of it all.
We'll try to guide you through most of the type of data you might want to keep and move to your new device, and go step by step how to retain your important data while adopting a new device.
Fortunately, Google does offer quite a good set of tools for backups and even dedicated for switching devices, especially when done between two Android devices, so let's get going.
1) With your old device, head to Settings -> System -> Backup (could also be just Settings -> Backup, or something similar). Enable Back up to Google Drive and make sure all options are enabled if your device has multiple back up options. Note that this requires a Google account.
2) Go to Settings -> Google where you'll find Smart Lock for Passwords. From here you'll find a way to save password to your Google Account. This will allow future passwords to be saved to the cloud and automatically transferred to a new device. However, note that some apps do not support Smart Lock, and thus those passwords are not saved to the cloud. Also, make sure apps aren't in the Never save list if you want the passwords saved from that app.
Google's Chrome is considered to be among the safest browsers for a good reason. Google has spent copious amount of time providing users with the most secure browser they can make, and largely they've succeeded.
Streaming music pioneer Spotify has grown with a stable and fairly rapid pace for years now, and there seems to be no stopping it. Not even Apple Music, with its massive investments, has even come close to pass Spotify's global leadership.
You know the feeling when you're at the office, working with your PC and your phone beeps about some incoming notification and you couldn't be bothered to find and open the phone? No worries, Microsoft has a solution for you!
