Tech

android-15-gets-satellite-messaging,-starts-foldable-cover-app-support

Android 15 gets satellite messaging, starts foldable cover app support

andorid 15, Google, smartphone, Tech / /

Only four more betas to go! —

Google still isn’t letting Play Store apps use RCS, though.

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The Android 15 logo. This is

Enlarge / The Android 15 logo. This is “Android V,” if you can’t tell from the logo.

Google

Android 15 continues its march toward release with the Android 15 Developer Preview 2. Android 15 won’t be out until around October, but the first preview shipped a month ago. It’s time for another one!

Android’s satellite messaging support has been in the works for about a year now, and it sounds like Android 15 is going to launch the feature for apps. The new OS is including notifications and better status bar indicators for when you’re connected to space. A “NonTerrestrialNetwork” API will let apps know when they’re limited to barely there satellite connectivity. Google says Android 15 will let third-party SMS and MMS applications tap into the satellite connectivity APIs, but enhanced messaging with RCS support will be limited to “preloaded” applications only. It seems incredible that Google doesn’t have public APIs for third-party RCS apps, but here’s your confirmation that Android 15 will continue locking out Play Store apps from RCS.

  • Android 15’s new satellite messaging UI.

    Google

  • The new PDF reader.

    Google

Android’s PDF support can be all over the place depending on what device you have, so Android 15 is including making some big improvements to the built-in PDF render. First it’s going to end up as a module so it can be updated via the Play Store. Google says this Android 15 version is getting “advanced features such as rendering password-protected files, annotations, form editing, searching, and selection with copy.”

Flip phone-style foldables are upending the Android app ecosystem with tiny little screens that are too small to work with normal Android apps, and Google is trying to do something about them with Android 15. Today devices like the Motorola Razr and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, with ~3-inch-square front screens, are mostly limited to the packed-in apps.

For now it looks like Google is only standardizing the opt-in flag, with a “cover screen support” property. Google says: “These screens are too small to be considered as compatible targets for Android apps to run on, but your app can opt-in to supporting them, making your app available in more places.” As for how exactly a developer is supposed to support a bunch of proprietary, ultra-tiny screens, it sounds like Google isn’t ready to help with that yet. At some point, Android needs framework, IDE, and Play Store app listing support for cover screens.

The second developer preview is available today for the Pixel 6, 7, 8, Fold, and Pixel Tablet. There’s no beta program yet, so you’ll need to grab a cable and flash it yourself if you’re on the stable Android version. As always, these early releases are just low-level developer-facing additions (we skipped a lot of font and SQL changes). The exciting new features—if there are any—should be announced on May 14 at Google I/O.

Android 15 gets satellite messaging, starts foldable cover app support Read More »

amd-promises-big-upscaling-improvements-and-a-future-proof-api-in-fsr-3.1

AMD promises big upscaling improvements and a future-proof API in FSR 3.1

AMD, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, dlss, fsr, fsr 3.1, gaming, GPU, intel, NVIDIA, Radeon, Tech / /

upscale upscaling —

API should help more games get future FSR improvements without a game update.

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AMD promises big upscaling improvements and a future-proof API in FSR 3.1

AMD

Last summer, AMD debuted the latest version of its FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology. While version 2.x focused mostly on making lower-resolution images look better at higher resolutions, version 3.0 focused on AMD’s “Fluid Motion Frames,” which attempt to boost FPS by generating interpolated frames to insert between the ones that your GPU is actually rendering.

Today, the company is announcing FSR 3.1, which among other improvements decouples the upscaling improvements in FSR 3.x from the Fluid Motion Frames feature. FSR 3.1 will be available “later this year” in games whose developers choose to implement it.

Fluid Motion Frames and Nvidia’s equivalent DLSS Frame Generation usually work best when a game is already running at a high frame rate, and even then can be more prone to mistakes and odd visual artifacts than regular FSR or DLSS upscaling. FSR 3.0 was an all-or-nothing proposition, but version 3.1 should let you pick and choose what features you want to enable.

It also means you can use FSR 3.0 frame generation with other upscalers like DLSS, especially useful for 20- and 30-series Nvidia GeForce GPUs that support DLSS upscaling but not DLSS Frame Generation.

“When using FSR 3 Frame Generation with any upscaling quality mode OR with the new ‘Native AA’ mode, it is highly recommended to be always running at a minimum of ~60 FPS before Frame Generation is applied for an optimal high-quality gaming experience and to mitigate any latency introduced by the technology,” wrote AMD’s Alexander Blake-Davies in the post announcing FSR 3.1.

Generally, FSR’s upscaling image quality falls a little short of Nvidia’s DLSS, but FSR 2 closed that gap a bit, and FSR 3.1 goes further. AMD highlights two specific improvements: one for “temporal stability,” which will help reduce the flickering and shimmering effect that FSR sometimes introduces, and one for ghosting reduction, which will reduce unintentional blurring effects for fast-moving objects.

The biggest issue with these new FSR improvements is that they need to be implemented on a game-to-game basis. FSR 3.0 was announced in August 2023, and AMD now trumpets that there are 40 “available and upcoming” games that support the technology, of which just 19 are currently available. There are a lot of big-name AAA titles in the list, but that’s still not many compared to the sum total of all PC games or even the 183 titles that currently support FSR 2.x.

AMD wants to help solve this problem in FSR 3.1 by introducing a stable FSR API for developers, which AMD says “makes it easier for developers to debug and allows forward compatibility with updated versions of FSR.” This may eventually lead to more games getting future FSR improvements for “free,” without the developer’s effort.

AMD didn’t mention any hardware requirements for FSR 3.1, though presumably, the company will still support a reasonably wide range of recent GPUs from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. FSR 3.0 is formally supported on Radeon RX 5000, 6000, and 7000 cards, Nvidia’s RTX 20-series and newer, and Intel Arc GPUs. It will also bring FSR 3.x features to games that use the Vulkan API, not just DirectX 12, and the Xbox Game Development Kit (GDK) so it can be used in console titles as well as PC games.

AMD promises big upscaling improvements and a future-proof API in FSR 3.1 Read More »

microsoft-debuts-major-surface-overhauls-that-regular-people-can’t-buy

Microsoft debuts major Surface overhauls that regular people can’t buy

copilot, microsoft, Microsoft Surface, Surface, surface laptop, surface pro, Tech, Windows 11 / /

business time —

Not the first business-exclusive Surfaces, but they’re the most significant.

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  • Microsoft

  • Yes, both devices launch with Microsoft’s new Copilot key.

    Microsoft

  • The Surface Pro 10. Looks familiar.

    Microsoft

  • An NFC reader supports physical security keys.

    Microsoft

  • The 13.5- and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6.

    Microsoft

  • The 15-inch Laptop 6 can be configured with a security card reader, another business thing.

    Microsoft

Microsoft is debuting major updates to two of its Surface PCs today: both the Surface Pro 10 and the 13.5- and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 are major internal upgrades to Microsoft’s mainstream Surface devices. Both were last updated nearly a year and a half ago, and they’re both getting new Intel chips with significantly faster integrated GPUs, upgraded webcams, the Copilot key, and better battery life (according to Microsoft’s spec sheets).

The catch is that both of these Surfaces are being sold exclusively to businesses and commercial customers; as of this writing, regular people will not be able to buy one directly from Microsoft, and they won’t show up in most retail stores.

These aren’t the first Surface products released exclusively for businesses. Microsoft introduced a new business-exclusive Surface Go 3 tablet last fall, and a Surface Pro 7+ variant for businesses in early 2021. It is, however, the first time Microsoft has introduced new versions of its flagship tablet and laptop without also making them available to consumers. You can find some of these business-only PCs for sale at some third-party retailers, but usually with extended shipping times and higher prices than consumer systems.

Though this seems like a step back from the consumer PC market, Microsoft is still reportedly planning new consumer Surfaces. The Verge reports that Microsoft is planning a new Surface with Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X chip, to debut in May. It’s that device, rather than today’s traditional Intel-based Surface Pro 10, that will apparently take over as the flagship consumer Surface PC.

“We absolutely remain committed to consumer devices,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. “Building great devices that people love to use aligns closely with our company mission to empower individuals as well as organizations. We are excited to be bringing devices to market that deliver great AI experiences to our customers. This commercial announcement is only the first part of this effort.”

This would be a big departure for Microsoft, which for a few years now has offered the Intel-based Surface tablets as its primary convertible tablets and the Arm-based Surface Pro X and Surface Pro 9 with 5G as separate niche variants. Older Qualcomm chips’ mediocre performance and lingering software and hardware compatibility issues with the Arm version of Windows have held those devices back, though Snapdragon X at least promises to solve the performance issues. If Microsoft plans to go all-in on Arm for its flagship consumer Surface device, it at least makes a little sense to retain the Intel-based Surface for businesses that will be more sensitive to those performance and compatibility problems.

What’s new in the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6?

As for the hardware itself, for people who might be getting them at work or people who go out of their way to find one: The biggest upgrade is that both Surface devices have been updated with Intel Core Ultra CPUs based on the Meteor Lake architecture. While the processor performance improvements in these chips are a bit underwhelming, their Arc-integrated GPUs are significantly faster than the old Iris Xe GPUs. And the chips also include a neural processing unit (NPU) that can accelerate some AI and machine-learning workloads; Microsoft currently uses them mostly for fancy webcam effects, but more software will likely take advantage of them as they become more widely available.

Those new chips (and small battery capacity increases) have also bumped all of Microsoft’s battery life estimates up a bit. The Surface Pro 10 is said to be good for 19 hours of “typical device usage,” up from 15.5 hours from the Intel version of the Surface Pro 9. The 13.5 and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 gets 18.5 and 19 hours of battery life, respectively, up from 18 and 17 hours for the Surface Laptop 5.

The downside is that the Surface Laptops are a bit heavier than the Laptop 5: 3.06 pounds and 3.7 pounds, compared to 2.86 and 3.44 pounds for the 13.5- and 15-inch models.

Both models also get new webcam hardware to go with those NPU-accelerated video effects. The Surface Pro goes from a 1080p webcam to a 1440p webcam, and the Surface Laptop goes from 720p to 1080p. The Surface Pro 10’s camera also features an “ultrawide field of view.” Both cameras support Windows Hello biometric logins using a scan of your face, and the Surface Pro 10 also has an NFC reader for use with hardware security keys. As business machines, both devices also have dedicated hardware TPM modules to support drive encryption and other features, instead of the firmware TPMs that the Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 used. Neither supports Microsoft’s Pluton technology.

A new Type Cover with a brighter backlight and bolder legends was made for users with low vision or those who want to reduce eyestrain.

Enlarge / A new Type Cover with a brighter backlight and bolder legends was made for users with low vision or those who want to reduce eyestrain.

Microsoft

Neither device gets a big screen update, though there are small improvements. Microsoft says the Surface Pro 10’s 13-inch, 2880×1920 touchscreen is 33 percent brighter than before, with a maximum brightness of 600 nits. The screen has a slightly better contrast ratio than before and an anti-reflective coating; it also still supports a 120 Hz refresh rate. The Surface Laptop 6 doesn’t get a brightness bump but does have better contrast and an anti-reflective coating. Both devices are still using regular IPS LCD panels rather than OLED or something fancier.

And finally, some odds and ends. The 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 picks up a second Thunderbolt port and optional support for a smart card reader. The Surface Pro now has a “bold keyset” keyboard option, with an easier-to-read font and brighter backlight for users with low vision. These keyboards should also work with some older Surface devices, if you can find them.

The systems will be available to pre-order “in select markets” on March 21, and they’ll begin shipping on April 9. Microsoft didn’t share any specifics about pricing, though as business machines, we’d generally expect them to cost a little more than equivalent consumer PCs.

Listing image by Microsoft

Microsoft debuts major Surface overhauls that regular people can’t buy Read More »

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Google reshapes Fitbit in its image as users allege “planned obsolescence”

AI, fitbit, generative ai, Google, Tech, wearables / /

Google Fitbit, emphasis on Google —

Generative AI may not be enough to appease frustrated customers.

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Product render of Fitbit Charge 5 in Lunar White and Soft Gold.

Enlarge / Google Fitbit’s Charge 5.

Fitbit

Google closed its Fitbit acquisition in 2021. Since then, the tech behemoth has pushed numerous changes to the wearable brand, including upcoming updates announced this week. While Google reshapes its fitness tracker business, though, some long-time users are regretting their Fitbit purchases and questioning if Google’s practices will force them to purchase their next fitness tracker elsewhere.

Generative AI coming to Fitbit (of course)

As is becoming common practice with consumer tech announcements, Google’s latest announcements about Fitbit seemed to be trying to convince users of the wonders of generative AI and how that will change their gadgets for the better. In a blog post yesterday, Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Google’s chief health officer, announced that Fitbit Premium subscribers would be able to test experimental AI features later this year (Google hasn’t specified when).

“You will be able to ask questions in a natural way and create charts just for you to help you understand your own data better. For example, you could dig deeper into how many active zone minutes… you get and the correlation with how restorative your sleep is,” she wrote.

DeSalvo’s post included an example of a user asking a chatbot if there was a connection between their sleep and activity and said that the experimental AI features will only be available to “a limited number of Android users who are enrolled in the Fitbit Labs program in the Fitbit mobile app.”

Google shared this image as an example of what future Fitbit generative AI features could look like.

Google shared this image as an example of what future Fitbit generative AI features could look like.

Fitbit is also working with the Google Research team and “health and wellness experts, doctors, and certified coaches” to develop a large language model (LLM) for upcoming Fitbit mobile app features that pull data from Fitbit and Pixel devices, DeSalvo said. The announcement follows Google’s decision to stop selling Fitbits in places where it doesn’t sell Pixels, taking the trackers off shelves in a reported 29 countries.

In a blog post yesterday, Yossi Matias, VP of engineering and research at Google, said the company wants to use the LLM to add personalized coaching features, such as the ability to look for sleep irregularities and suggest actions “on how you might change the intensity of your workout.”

Google’s Fitbit is building the LLM on Gemini models that are tweaked on de-identified data from unspecified “research case studies,” Matias said, adding: “For example, we’re testing performance using sleep medicine certification exam-like practice tests.”

Gemini, which Google released in December, has been criticized for generating historically inaccurate images. After users complained about different races and ethnicities being inaccurately portrayed in prompts for things like Nazi members and medieval British kings, Google pulled the feature last month and said it would release a fix “soon.”In a press briefing, Florence Thng, director and product lead at Fitbit, suggested that such problems wouldn’t befall Fitbit’s LLM since it’s being tested by users before an official rollout, CNET reported.

Other recent changes to Fitbit include a name tweak from Fitbit by Google, to Google Fitbit, as spotted by 9to5Google this week.

A screenshot from Fitbit's homepage.

Enlarge / A screenshot from Fitbit’s homepage.

Combined with other changes that Google has brought to Fitbit over the past two years—including axing most social features, the ability to sync with computers, its browser-based SDK for developing apps, and pushing users to log in with Google accounts ahead of Google shuttering all Fitbit accounts in 2025—Fitbit, like many acquired firms, is giving long-time customers a different experience than it did before it was bought.

Disheartened customers

Meanwhile, customers, especially Charge 5 users, are questioning whether their next fitness tracker will come from Fitbit Google Fitbit.

For example, in January, we reported that users were claiming that their Charge 5 suddenly started draining battery rapidly after installing a firmware update that Fitbit released in December. As of this writing, one thread discussing the problem on Fitbit’s support forum has 33 pages of comments. Google told BBC in January that it didn’t know what the problem was but knew that it wasn’t tied to firmware. Google hasn’t followed up with further explanation since. The company hasn’t responded to multiple requests from Ars Technica for comment. In the meantime, users continue experiencing problems and have reported so on Fitbit’s forum. Per user comments, the most Google has done is offer discounts or, if the device was within its warranty period, a replacement.

“This is called planned obsolescence. I’ll be upgrading to a watch style tracker from a different company. I wish Fitbit hadn’t sold out to Google,” a forum user going by Sean77024 wrote on Fitbit’s support forum yesterday.

Others, like 2MeFamilyFlyer, have also accused Fitbit of planning Charge 5 obsolescence. 2MeFamilyFlyer said they’re seeking a Fitbit alternative.

The ongoing problems with the Charge 5, which was succeeded by the Charge 6 on October 12, has some, like reneeshawgo on Fitbit’s forum and PC World Senior Editor Alaina Yee saying that Fitbit devices aren’t meant to last long. In January, Yee wrote: “You should see Fitbits as a 1-year purchase in the US and two years in regions with better warranty protections.”

For many, a year or two wouldn’t be sufficient, even if the Fitbit came with trendy AI features.

Google reshapes Fitbit in its image as users allege “planned obsolescence” Read More »

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Pixel 8a rumors list 120 Hz display, DisplayPort compatibility

Google Pixel, Tech / /

Check back in May —

A better screen, better SoC, and maybe a higher price.

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OnLeak's Pixel 8a render.

Enlarge / OnLeak’s Pixel 8a render.

Google’s next mid-range phone, the Pixel 8a, is rapidly approaching release. The presumed launch date has always been Google I/O, and that’s officially set for May 14. Although the Pixel 8a recently hit the Federal Communications Commission, the box has leaked, and renders have been out since October, we haven’t really talked specs.

The ever-reliable Kamila Wojciechowska has a new article for Android Authority detailing some specs for the upcoming device. Apparently, there are some big upgrades planned. The Pixel 7a took a big jump to a 90 Hz display, and the Pixel 8a is encroaching even more into flagship territory with a 120 Hz display. Wojciechowska’s source says the Pixel 8a display will be a 6.1-inch, 120 Hz, 2400×1080 OLED panel with an improved 1,400 nits brightness. The display’s 120 Hz screen will not only make the phone more competitive here; it will also be a big deal for the Pixel line’s recent expansion into India, where 120 Hz is the norm at this price range.

The report says to expect the same camera loadout as the Pixel 7a, along with the newer Google Tensor G3 chip, just like the other Pixel 8 phones. Google doesn’t mention it on the spec sheet, but Wojciechowska says internally there is a small difference: It’s the same silicon on the A-series, but Google goes with a cheaper, hotter silicon packaging method. So expect some thermal differences.

One major surprise in the report is that the Pixel 8a will support DisplayPort via the USB-C port, which would let you plug your phone into a monitor and power the display. This has long been a possibility on Android phones, and some third parties like Samsung have taken advantage of the display-out to allow phones to power a PC-like interface. Google has always specifically gone out of its way to disable display-out on Pixel phones, though, even if it’s built into the hardware. Presumably, this has been to prop up Google’s wireless “Google Cast” ecosystem, but something has been changing lately. DisplayPort alternate mode was actually recently enabled for the Pixel 8 on one of the new Android betas. Now, it’s apparently going to be enabled on the Pixel 8a out of the box. It’s unclear why or whether Google has any software mode that will make the feature more useful. For now, it’s just a simple display mirroring mode.

Another nice improvement is the potential for more country availability. Today, the Pixel 7a is sold in 21 countries (the official list is here). Wojciechowska’s Pixel 8a leak includes “electronic warranty labels” for 31 countries, which suggests—but doesn’t guarantee—wider distribution. The new countries are Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

One downside to the Pixel 8a release might be a higher price. WinFuture’s Roland Quandt reported that the 8a price in Europe is going up from the Pixel 7a’s 499 euros to 550 euros. If the US price goes up a similar $50, the Pixel 8a would cost $549. When the Pixel 7a came out, Google kept the Pixel 6a around and dropped the price to $349; hopefully, we’ll get a similar Pixel 7a cost reduction, too.

Pixel 8a rumors list 120 Hz display, DisplayPort compatibility Read More »

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Formula 1 chief appalled to find team using Excel to manage 20,000 car parts

Biz & IT, Cars, Excel, Microsoft Excel, Tech / /

Dark matter strikes again —

Williams team leader may only be shocked because he hasn’t worked IT.

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A pit stop during the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix in early March evokes how the team's manager was feeling when looking at the Excel sheet that managed the car's build components.

Enlarge / A pit stop during the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix in early March evokes how the team’s manager was feeling when looking at the Excel sheet that managed the car’s build components.

ALI HAIDER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

There’s a new boss at a storied 47-year-old Formula 1 team, and he’s eager to shake things up. He’s been saying that the team is far behind its competition in technology and coordination. And Excel is a big part of it.

Starting in early 2023, Williams team principal James Vowles and chief technical officer Pat Fry started reworking the F1 team’s systems for designing and building its car. It would be painful, but the pain would keep the team from falling even further behind. As they started figuring out new processes and systems, they encountered what they considered a core issue: Microsoft Excel.

The Williams car build workbook, with roughly 20,000 individual parts, was “a joke,” Vowles recently told The Race. “Impossible to navigate and impossible to update.” This colossal Excel file lacked information on how much each of those parts cost and the time it took to produce them, along with whether the parts were already on order. Prioritizing one car section over another, from manufacture through inspection, was impossible, Vowles suggested.

“When you start tracking now hundreds of thousands of components through your organization moving around, an Excel spreadsheet is useless,” Vowles told The Race. Because of the multiple states each part could be in—ordered, backordered, inspected, returned—humans are often left to work out the details. “And once you start putting that level of complexity in, which is where modern Formula 1 is, the Excel spreadsheet falls over, and humans fall over. And that’s exactly where we are.”

The consequences of this row/column chaos, and the resulting hiccups, were many. Williams missed early pre-season testing in 2019. Workers sometimes had to physically search the team’s factory for parts. The wrong parts got priority, other parts came late, and some piled up. And yet transitioning to a modern tracking system was “viciously expensive,” Fry told The Race, and making up for the painful process required “humans pushing themselves to the absolute limits and breaking.”

Williams' driver Alexander Albon drives during the qualifying session of the Saudi Arabian Formula One Grand Prix at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Jeddah on March 8, 2024.

Williams’ driver Alexander Albon drives during the qualifying session of the Saudi Arabian Formula One Grand Prix at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Jeddah on March 8, 2024.

Joseph Eid/AFP via Getty Images

The devil you know strikes again

The idea that a modern Formula 1 team, building some of the most fantastically advanced and efficient machines on Earth, would be using Excel to build those machines might strike you as odd. F1 cars cost an estimated $12–$16 million each, with resource cap of about $145 million. But none of this really matters, and it actually makes sense, if you’ve ever worked IT at nearly any decent-sized organization.

Then again, it’s not even uncommon in Formula 1. When Sebastian Anthony embedded with the Renault team, he reported back for Ars in 2017 that Renault Sport Formula One’s Excel design and build spreadsheet was 77,000 lines long—more than three times as large as the Williams setup that spurred an internal revolution in 2023.

Every F1 team has its own software setup, Anthony wrote, but they have to integrate with a lot of other systems: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and wind tunnel results, rapid prototyping and manufacturing, and inventory. This leaves F1 teams “susceptible to the plague of legacy software,” Anthony wrote, though he noted that Renault had moved on to a more dynamic cloud-based system that year. (Renault was also “a big Microsoft shop” in other areas, like email and file sharing, at the time.)

One year prior to Anthony’s excavation, Adam Banks wrote for Ars about the benefits of adopting cloud-based tools for enterprise resource planning (ERP). You adopt a cloud-based business management software to go “Beyond Excel.” “If PowerPoint is the universal language businesses use to talk to one another, their internal monologue is Excel,” Banks wrote. The issue is that all the systems and processes a business touches are complex and generate all kinds of data, but Excel is totally cool with taking in all of it. Or at least 1,048,576 rows of it.

Banks cited Tim Worstall’s 2013 contention that Excel could be “the most dangerous software on the planet.” Back then, international investment bankers were found manually copying and pasting Excel between Excel sheets to do their work, and it raised alarm.

But spreadsheets continue to show up where they ought not. Spreadsheet errors in recent years have led to police doxxing, false trainee test failures, an accidental $10 million crypto transfer, and bank shares sold at sorely undervalued prices. Spreadsheets are sometimes called the “dark matter” of large organizations, being ever-present and far too relied upon despite 90 percent of larger sheets being likely to have a major error.

So, Excel sheets catch a lot of blame, even if they’re just a symptom of a larger issue. Still, it’s good to see one no longer connected to the safety of a human heading into a turn at more than 200 miles per hour.

Formula 1 chief appalled to find team using Excel to manage 20,000 car parts Read More »

youtube-will-require-disclosure-of-ai-manipulated-videos-from-creators

YouTube will require disclosure of AI-manipulated videos from creators

Google, Tech, youtube / /

You could also just ban manipulations altogether? —

YouTube wants “realistic” likenesses or audio fabrications to be labeled.

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YouTube will require disclosure of AI-manipulated videos from creators

Future Publishing | Getty Images

YouTube is rolling out a new requirement for content creators: You must disclose when you’re using AI-generated content in your videos. The disclosure appears in the video upload UI and will be used to power an “altered content” warning on videos.

Google previewed the “misleading AI content” policy in November, but the questionnaire is now going live. Google is mostly concerned about altered depictions of real people or events, which sounds like more election-season concerns about how AI can mislead people. Just last week, Google disabled election questions for its “Gemini” chatbot.

As always, the exact rules on YouTube are up for interpretation. Google says it’s “requiring creators to disclose to viewers when realistic content—content a viewer could easily mistake for a real person, place, or event—is made with altered or synthetic media, including generative AI,” but doesn’t require creators to disclose manipulated content that is “clearly unrealistic, animated, includes special effects, or has used generative AI for production assistance.”

Google gives examples of when a disclosure is necessary, and the new video upload questionnaire walks content creators through these requirements:

  • Using the likeness of a realistic person: Digitally altering content to replace the face of one individual with another’s or synthetically generating a person’s voice to narrate a video.
  • Altering footage of real events or places: Such as making it appear as if a real building caught fire, or altering a real cityscape to make it appear different from reality.
  • Generating realistic scenes: Showing a realistic depiction of fictional major events, like a tornado moving toward a real town.

  • Google’s video upload questionnaire.

    YouTube

  • Take note of the super-tiny message at the bottom, denoting “altered or synthetic content.”

    YouTube

  • You can expand the description for slightly more info.

    YouTube

Google says the labels will start rolling out “across all YouTube surfaces and formats in the weeks ahead, beginning with the YouTube app on your phone, and soon on your desktop and TV.” The company says it’s also working on a process for people who are the subject of an AI-manipulated video to request its removal, but it doesn’t have details on that yet.

YouTube will require disclosure of AI-manipulated videos from creators Read More »

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Office 2024 will be the next standalone release, as the Office brand lives on

Excel, microsoft, Microsoft office, office, Powerpoint, Tech, Word / /

return to office —

Consumer prices stay the same; MS promises at least one more standalone release.

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Office 2024 will be the next standalone release, as the Office brand lives on

Microsoft

Last week, Microsoft announced that it would soon begin offering previews of Microsoft Office 2024, the next standalone perpetually licensed version of the Office suite. Like Office 2021 before it, Office 2024 will be part of Microsoft’s Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC), which is intended for IT administrators and users who value stability and predictability over constant iteration.

But Microsoft is being clearer than ever that it would really like people to move to using Microsoft 365 subscriptions, referring to Office 2024 as “a specialty product that Microsoft has committed to maintaining for use in exceptional circumstances.” The company will be increasing prices for businesses by “up to 10 percent” compared to Office 2021, a price hike that Microsoft says will “support continued innovation in this niche space.” Pricing for the consumer version of Office 2024 should stay the same as it is for Office 2021.

Office 2024 will receive support and security updates for five years from its release date, which will be “later this year,” along with a new LTSC release of Windows 11. The company has also committed to releasing at least one more standalone version of Office in the future. If you bought Office 2021 and you’re still happy with it, you’ll still get support (including security updates) until October of 2026. Support for Office 2019 ended in October 2023.

Highlights of the Office 2024 release include “new meeting creation options and search enhancements in Outlook, dozens of new Excel features and functions including Dynamic Charts and Arrays; and improved performance, security, and accessibility,” according to Microsoft. One missing feature of note will be Microsoft Publisher, which will be discontinued in October 2026.

Like other standalone Office releases, Office 2024’s feature set will be frozen in time without the continuous changes present in the Microsoft 365 versions of the same apps. And while the perpetually licensed versions of Office can interact with Microsoft services like OneDrive, the company says that other features like the Copilot AI assistant won’t be available in Office 2024 because it is a “disconnected product.” It’s also missing real-time collaboration features available in Microsoft 365.

Is it a rebrand if you keep using the old brand name in parentheses?

Enlarge / Is it a rebrand if you keep using the old brand name in parentheses?

Microsoft

Among other things, the continued existence of the standalone Office product shows that the “Office” brand name will still be with us for a while, despite Microsoft’s formal decision to retire it back in late 2022. “Office” remains useful as a noun that refers to all of these apps collectively—and separately from the Microsoft 365 subscription product. Even in places where the Office name has been removed, Microsoft seems reticent to do away with it entirely; the Microsoft 365 app that comes built into Windows has the new name and the new logo but also includes “Office” in parentheses as if to say “yes, we know what name most people use to talk about this software.”

Office 2024 will be the next standalone release, as the Office brand lives on Read More »

google’s-phone-app-no-longer-searches-google-maps

Google’s phone app no longer searches Google Maps

Google, Tech / /

AI is the future though —

Google’s search-infused phone app was touted as a major feature a few years ago.

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The Google Phone's Play Store listing still touts Nearby Places as a major feature.

Enlarge / The Google Phone’s Play Store listing still touts Nearby Places as a major feature.

Google

9to5Google reports that Google has killed off the Google Phone app’s “nearby places” feature. Google announced the impending death of the feature in February, saying: “We’ve found only a very small number of people use this feature, and the vast majority of users go to Google Search or Maps when seeking business-related phone numbers.” Now it’s really dead.

The “Nearby Places” feature in the Google Phone app seemed like a useful and common-sense feature. It connected the power of Google Maps to the phone app, allowing the phone search bar to not only look through your contacts but also businesses listed in Google Maps. When you want to call the local pizza place, just type in the name, rather than some arcane string of numbers, and hit “dial.”

The feature has been around on Pixel phones since at least the Pixel 2 and has been generally available to anyone who downloaded the “Phone by Google” app in the Play Store for the past few years. It was a perfect “Google” feature, combining the company’s OS, breadth of online data, and search into a useful function. Google has made its AI-infused phone app a primary selling point of Pixel phones over the years, so stripping it of features is weird.

Google claims that the feature is being killed because it was used by a “very small number of people,” but it also might be shutting it down because it hasn’t worked reliably for a while now. It looks like Google broke the Nearby Places search around August 2023. Here’s a bug report from around that time with 100 comments, and there are several Reddit and Google forum posts out there. Even new phones were shipping with the feature disabled. One reason for Google’s apparent disinterest in the feature is that the phone app’s Nearby Places searches took traffic away from Google Maps. Maps shows ads in the search results, and the phone app didn’t.

Google’s phone app no longer searches Google Maps Read More »

usb-hubs,-printers,-java,-and-more-seemingly-broken-by-macos-14.4-update

USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

Apple, Apple M1, Apple M2, Apple M3, Apple silicon, Apple Silicon Mac, macOS, macOS 14, macos sonoma, Tech / /

pobody’s nerfect —

Issues seem to be related to security fixes made in Apple’s latest OS.

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USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

A couple of weeks ago, Apple released macOS Sonoma 14.4 with the usual list of bug fixes, security patches, and a couple of minor new features. Since then, users and companies have been complaining of a long list of incompatibilities, mostly concerning broken external accessories like USB hubs and printers but also extending to software like Java.

MacRumors has a good rundown of the list of issues, which has been steadily getting longer as people have run into more problems. It started with reports of malfunctioning USB hubs, sourced from users on Reddit, the Apple Support Communities forums, and elsewhere—USB hubs built into various displays stopped functioning for Mac users after the 14.4 update.

Other issues surfaced in the days after people started reporting problems with their USB hubs, including some instances of broken printer drivers, unexpected app crashes for some Java users, and problems launching apps that rely on the PACE anti-piracy software (and iLok hardware dongles) to authenticate.

At least some of the problems seem localized to Apple Silicon Macs. In fact, iLok recommends running digital audio software in Rosetta mode as a temporary stopgap while Apple works on a fix. According to iLok, Apple has acknowledged this particular bug and is working on an update, but “[has] not indicated a timeline.”

The USB hub issue may be related to the USB security prompts that Apple introduced in macOS 13 Ventura, asking users to confirm whether they wanted to connect to USB-C accessories that they were connecting to their Mac for the first time. Some users have been able to get their USB hubs working again after the 14.4 update by making macOS request permission to connect to the accessory every time the accessory is plugged in; the default behavior is supposed to recognize USB devices that you’ve already connected to once.

Scanning Apple’s release notes or security update disclosures for the update doesn’t reveal any smoking guns, but many of the security bugs were addressed with “improved checks” and “improved access permissions,” and it’s certainly possible that some legitimate accessories and software were broken by one or more of these changes. The Oracle blog post about the Java problems refers to memory access issues that seem to be causing the crashes, though that may or may not explain the problems people are having with external accessories. The blog post also indicates that these bugs weren’t present in the public developer betas of macOS 14.4.

My desktop M2 Mac Studio setup, which is connected to a 4K Gigabyte M28U with a built-in USB hub, hasn’t exhibited any unusual behavior since the update, so it’s also possible that these issues aren’t affecting every user of every Mac. If you haven’t updated yet, it may be worth waiting until Apple releases fixes for some or all of these issues, even if you don’t think you’ll be affected.

USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update Read More »

qualcomm’s-“snapdragon-8s-gen-3”-cuts-down-the-company’s-flagship-soc

Qualcomm’s “Snapdragon 8s Gen 3” cuts down the company’s flagship SoC

qualcomm snapdragon, Tech / /

The name just keeps getting longer —

The “s” moniker doesn’t make it better than the old 8 Gen 3 chip.

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The promo image for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip.

Enlarge / The promo image for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm’s newest smartphone SoC is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. Years of iPhone “S” upgrades might lead you to assume this was a mid-cycle refresh to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is a “specially curated” version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That means it’s a slightly slower, cheaper chip than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is still Qualcomm’s best smartphone chip.

The older, better Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has a core layout of one 3.3 GHz “Prime” Arm Cortex X4 core, five “medium” A720 cores (three at 3.2 GHz, two at 2.0 GHz), and two “small” 2.3 GHz A520 cores for background processing. This new “S” chip swaps a medium core for a small one, for a 1+4+3 configuration instead of 1+5+2. Everything is clocked lower, too: 3 GHz for the Prime core, 2.8 GHz for all the medium cores, and 2 GHz for the small cores.

The modem is downgraded to an X70 instead of the X75 in the 8 Gen 3 chip. That theoretically means a lower max download speed (5Gbps instead of 10) but since you would actually need to be granted those speeds by your carrier, It’s not clear anyone would ever notice this. It also sounds like the X70 is more power-hungry, since it only has “Qualcomm 5G PowerSave Gen 3” instead of “Qualcomm 5G PowerSave Gen 4” on the flagship chip. We don’t think Qualcomm has ever given a technical explanation of what this means, though. The SoC is still 4nm, just like the 8 Gen 3. Video maxes out at 4K now instead of 8K.

Qualcomm says “Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 will be adopted by major OEMs including Honor, iQOO, realme, Redmi and Xiaomi, with commercial devices expected to be announced in the coming months.” That should tell you where this chip is headed: the “budget flagship” phones that are popular with Chinese OEMs.

Qualcomm’s “Snapdragon 8s Gen 3” cuts down the company’s flagship SoC Read More »

google-says-chrome’s-new-real-time-url-scanner-won’t-invade-your-privacy

Google says Chrome’s new real-time URL scanner won’t invade your privacy

Google, google chrome, Tech / /

We don’t need another way to track you —

Google says URL hashes and a third-party relay server will keep it out of your history.

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Google's safe browsing warning is not subtle.

Enlarge / Google’s safe browsing warning is not subtle.

Google

Google Chrome’s “Safe Browsing” feature—the thing that pops up a giant red screen when you try to visit a malicious website—is getting real-time updates for all users. Google announced the change on the Google Security Blog. Real-time protection naturally means sending URL data to some far-off server, but Google says it will use “privacy-preserving URL protection” so it won’t get a list of your entire browsing history. (Not that Chrome doesn’t already have features that log your history or track you.)

Safe Browsing basically boils down to checking your current website against a list of known bad sites. Google’s old implementation happened locally, which had the benefit of not sending your entire browsing history to Google, but that meant downloading the list of bad sites at 30- to 60-minute intervals. There are a few problems with local downloads. First, Google says the majority of bad sites exist for “less than 10 minutes,” so a 30-minute update time isn’t going to catch them. Second, the list of all bad websites on the entire Internet is going to be very large and constantly growing, and Google already says that “not all devices have the resources necessary to maintain this growing list.”

If you really want to shut down malicious sites, what you want is real-time checking against a remote server. There are a lot of bad ways you could do this. One way would be to just send every URL to the remote server, and you’d basically double Internet website traffic for all of Chrome’s 5 billion users. To cut down on those server requests, Chrome is instead going to download a list of known good sites, and that will cover the vast majority of web traffic. Only the small, unheard-of sites will be subject to a server check, and even then, Chrome will keep a cache of your recent small site checks, so you’ll only check against the server the first time.

When you’re not on the known-safe-site list or recent cache, info about your web URL will be headed to some remote server, but Google says it won’t be able to see your web history. Google does all of its URL checking against hashes, rather than the plain-text URL. Previously, Google offered an opt-in “enhanced protection” mode for safe browsing, which offered more up-to-date malicious site blocking in exchange for “sharing more security-related data” with Google, but the company thinks this new real-time mode is privacy-preserving enough to roll out to everyone by default. The “Enhanced” mode is still sticking around since that allows for “deep scans for suspicious files and extra protection from suspicious Chrome extensions.”

Google's diagram of how the whole process works.

Enlarge / Google’s diagram of how the whole process works.

Google

Interestingly, the privacy scheme involves a relay server that will be run by a third party. Google says, “In order to preserve user privacy, we have partnered with Fastly, an edge cloud platform that provides content delivery, edge compute, security, and observability services, to operate an Oblivious HTTP (OHTTP) privacy server between Chrome and Safe Browsing.”

For now, Google’s remote checks, when they happen, will mean some latency while your safety check completes, but Google says it’s “in the process of introducing an asynchronous mechanism, which will allow the site to load while the real-time check is in progress. This will improve the user experience, as the real-time check won’t block page load.”

The feature should be live in the latest Chrome release for desktop, Android, and iOS. If you don’t want it, you can turn it off in the “Privacy and security” section of the Chrome settings.

Listing image by Getty Images

Google says Chrome’s new real-time URL scanner won’t invade your privacy Read More »