Month: May 2019

Having launched their Corsair One small form-factor PCs, as well as Bulldog PCs for the living room, Corsair is now entering the market of mainstream gaming machines with its Vengeance series of computers. The new systems are Micro-ATX PCs designed for gamers looking for performance and style, but not necessarily looking to build a machine themselves.

The Corsair Vengeance family of PCs currently includes two models — the Vengeance 5180 and the Vengeance 5185 — which use a Micro-ATX version the company’s Crystal Series 280X RGB case. The 680X offers two chambers, three tempered glass windows, and supports multiple RGB LEDs. The latter are clearly intended to be a defining feature of the new line of systems, so Corsair had equipped its Vengeance systems with 125 individually addressable RGB LEDs throughout these PCs, and which can be controlled using the company’s iCue software.

The more affordable Vengeance 5180 is based on Intel’s Core i7-8700, which is paired with MSI’s B360 motherboard, 16 GB of DDR4 memory, a 480 GB SSD, and a 2 TB hard drive. The more advanced Vengeance 5185 is powered by Intel’s Core i7-9700K and is accompanied by MSI’s Z390 motherboard, 16 GB of DDR4, a 480 GB SSD, and a 2 TB HDD. Both machines include MSI’s GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, so performance of the two systems should be rather close in today’s largely GPU-bound games.

Just like other gaming PCs from Corsair, the Vengeance family uses off-the-shelf components, yet comes in a custom chassis. And, since it is cheaper to build a Micro-ATX (both in terms of components and labor), Corsair’s Vengeance PCs are less costly than the company’s Corsair One SFF machines.

Corsair’s Vengeance PCs are available now directly from the company in the US. The Vengeance 5180 costs $2,399, whereas the more powerful Vengeance 5185 runs for $2,499.

Chrome OS has come a long way since its humble beginnings. Gone are the days of it being widely labeled as a “glorified web browser.” In addition to Progressive Web Apps, modern Chromebooks now support Android apps and Linux apps natively. With each app ecosystem, of course, comes notifications and those can pile up quickly in the recently redesigned Chrome OS menu.

Only last Fall did it become possible to clear all notifications with one tap, and it takes some doing to find the button. In the stable, beta and dev channels you have to swipe up on the bottom-most notification to even see the “Clear All” button. It does not appear without that extra action. Thankfully, this will no longer be the case in Chrome OS 76, currently available in the Canary channel, as the button has been moved to the top.

If you’re okay with living on the cutting edge and its accompanying risks, and you don’t want to wait for the change to find its way to the stable channel, you can switch to the Canary channel to try it out right now. A word of caution, though: it’s not for the faint of heart as you’ll be using the least stable of the four main Chrome OS builds.

While this might seem like an insignificant change on the surface, for those of you who are “Instagram influencers” (or other popular social media users), busy professionals, and power users will no doubt appreciate the simplified method to clear away those scores of notifications you’d rather get to later. Hopefully, the change makes its way through the dev, beta, and stable channels sooner than later.

Google Chrome v76 is getting a new security feature to fight popup spam.

Google engineers are planning to change how the Escape key works in the Chrome browser, and it’s all being done as part of a security-focused change meant to make it harder for shady sites to open popups.

The feature is expected to ship with Chrome version 76, scheduled for release at the end of July 2019.

The general idea is that starting with Chrome 76, pressing the Escape key on your keyboard will not “activate” a page and prevent it from running JavaScript code — like it did until now.

“Browsers prevent calls to abusable APIs (like popup, fullscreen, vibrate, etc.) unless the user activates the page through direct interactions,” Google said earlier this month.

“Not all interactions trigger user activation. For example, clicking on a link or typing in a textbox does, but swiping fingers on a screen or hovering with the mouse cursor doesn’t.”

Google will now classify pressing the Escape key in the same category as the above-mentioned actions.

“Since users never intend to interact with the page through the ESC key, it should not trigger user activation,” Google said.

ABUSED IN THE WILD

According to Google, there is at least one malware campaign that is abusing Escape key-generated popups to spam users.

This demo page shows how current versions of Chrome will open a new page/popup for the example.com domain. But when opening the same page in Chrome Canary (v76), the browser will block the new page/popup using Chrome’s built-in ad-blocker tool.

Firefox already includes a similar feature.

In the previous months, Google has rolled out similar security-minded features to protect Chrome users from spammers and malicious advertisers.

For example, in Chrome v73, Google added a security feature that would prevent malicious code loaded in iframes from initiating a download on a user’s device.

The company also fixed an “evil cursor” bug abused by tech support scammers and banned extensions using obfuscated code from the Chrome Web Store.

Would you buy any product that limited your access to Google’s services?

The dust-up between the U.S. and Huawei has pushed the idea of how dependent on Google a phone manufacturer can be. Huawei is one of the biggest companies in the world, and having access to Google’s services is what drove its smartphone market share into the sky — now nearing 20% globally, above Apple. Watching consumer reaction as that access is revoked gives a feeling that any future growth has ground to a complete stop and Huawei is in a heap of trouble as far as Western markets are concerned.

I’m not here to ponder the legitimacy of the U.S. claims or play armchair quarterback and decide if the restrictions are valid or not. National security is one of those things where anyone who can voice an opinion isn’t really qualified to do so. You may like the decision or hate it, but like me, you can’t do anything about it. The restrictions are in place, Google has to abide by them (as do Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and others) because it is a U.S. based company. Huawei and Google may try to remind us that not everything is horrible, but it really is. For now, at least.

Google is Android; Android is Google

This all shines a light on how much value Android has without Google. Should this most recent ban last forever, Huawei will have no problem building phones that run the latest version of Android and keep them updated with security patches and new platform versions. This is because of the open-source nature of the operating system itself and if a handful of dedicated enthusiasts can do it, so can a giant mega-global corporation the size of Huawei. But building phones that nobody will buy isn’t all that useful; you wouldn’t want to use a phone that could only include what’s open when it comes to Android.

Imagine if you picked up your phone and all of Google’s apps and services stopped working. Would you want to use a web browser (but not Chrome) to access your Gmail or check Google Maps? Have you ever tried to access your Google Drive storage on a mobile web browser? Even making a phone call probably depends on access to your contacts through a Google service. Forget access to Google Play for a moment — as much of a blow as that is, it can be circumvented easily enough as we’ve seen from Amazon — your Android phone is tethered to Google in so many ways that it can become almost worthless without it.

A vehicle for services

This all started long before Android. We can look back as far as the first iPhone and see it. Apple is a tech fairy tale come true. At one time the company was about to go the way of the Dodo, but now it’s the most valuable company in the world, the number two (or three) smartphone maker globally, and manufacturer of the best selling mobile device ever built. And you could say the iPhone owes much of its success because of how easy it was (and still is) to access your Google services like YouTube and Gmail. I certainly wouldn’t disagree, and a lot of other people would say the same. This holds true for more than just phones, too. When it comes to the PC market that doesn’t include mobile devices, would you buy a new laptop if it limited your access to Google’s services? A laptop that couldn’t install Chrome or visit the Google Maps website? 10 years ago, maybe, but today the answer is a resounding “no.”

It’s easy to see how much dominance Google holds over the mobile computing ecosystem as a whole, but companies that make Android phones are particularly screwed if access is cut off or made more difficult. We’re partially to blame because we use and rely on Google’s services. Companies like Samsung and Huawei are partially to blame because they can’t, for myriad reasons, offer a compelling second choice.

But mostly, Google is to blame because it likes to be successful and push its services into Android. Android without Google’s services and infrastructure can be successful — every Android phone sold in China, roughly 25% of which are made by Huawei, has none of them — but people in the West would never enjoy being weaned to WeChat as a service provider. We only buy Android phones because of the value Google adds through services. If every Android OEM was cut off today, most everyone here would buy a Pixel or an iPhone as soon as they could afford it.

A slippery slope

This is a problem for all of the companies involved in making and selling Android phones. It’s why we see Samsung invest time into the Galaxy Apps store and Bixby, or why LG builds webOS televisions with ThinQ, and why Huawei spent so much money on its own AI system and Chinese-specific ecosystem for mobile devices. The company that has the most to lose, though, is also the company that holds all of the cards: Google. It’s already under antitrust investigation(s) concerning Android, and when we see something like the decimation of Huawei’s hopes of continuing to sell phones outside of China because Google has to pull its services from the company those investigations become more and more interesting.

If you were to ask for my opinion on all this, I would reach for a cold beverage and say it’s yet another stunt from Washington that will blow over once it’s purpose has been served, Huawei will soon regain access to everything Google, and we’ll all forget about it when the next bit of tech drama arises. (How much lasting damage there is to Huawei in the end will depend on the length of time that passes.) We’ll also be a little savvier when it comes to how Google uses Android to further its business interests and how quickly it could cripple a partner if it were to revoke access to the Android we all love. And who knows, it might even play out that way.

Rolling out to phones via an app update.

Over the last few months, Google’s been steadily adding an official dark mode to more and more of its apps. Following the likes of Google Messages, News, Contacts, and others, Google’s now announced dark modes for Calendar and Keep.

In the next few days, you should receive an update for both the Google Calendar and Google Keep Android apps that will add the new dark mode functionality. To enable dark mode in Calendar, you’ll go to Settings -> General -> Theme. If you’re using Keep, the process is Settings -> Enable Dark Mode.

Dark mode for Google Calendar will work on devices running Android Nougat or higher, whereas Keep’s dark mode works for Android Lolipop and above.

If you don’t see an update for either app in the Play Store right away, don’t worry. Google started pushing out Calendar’s dark mode update on May 16 and Keep’s began making its way to users on May 20. In both cases, Google says it can take up to 15 days for the updates to reach everyone.