Month: August 2019

CVE-2019-1125 was made public today or also referred to as the “SWAPGS” vulnerability as a new variant of Spectre V1 affecting Windows and Linux with Intel (and according to mixed information, AMD – though the current Linux kernel patches at least seem to only apply to Intel) x86_64 processors.

The SWAPGS vulnerability allows attackers to gain read access to privileged memory and builds off existing Spectre fixes. Red Hat has a great write-up on the technical side of this new vulnerability. There is also the CVE text.

Microsoft has already patched Windows 10 quietly for this vulnerability while Linux kernel patches already landed in Git. Linux distribution vendors are working on relevant kernel updates to push out for existing distribution kernels. No CPU microcode updates are required.

Fortunately it looks quite difficult to be able to exploit the SWAPGS vulnerability in practice but upgrading to a patched kernel is certainly recommended.

And, yes, it does look like it will impact performance… Benchmarks being worked on.

Although the Google Pixel 3 camera is one of the best you can get in a smartphone, it appears there could be a substantial issue plaguing the handset at the moment. According to numerous reports on the internet, the camera gets shaky when capturing photos or video.

You can read the complaints on places such as Reddit and Google’s own product support forums (as spotted by Android Police). The general consensus seems to be that the Google Pixel 3 camera issue is a hardware problem which could be related to either the optical image stabilization (OIS) or autofocus hardware. It does not appear to be a software issue.

The problem also seems to be mostly plaguing the vanilla Pixel 3 and not the Google Pixel 3 XL (or Pixel 3a or 3a XL). However, it might be worth testing those devices out as well just in case.

To test your handset for the problem, prop up your phone using a stand or dock of some kind and open up the camera. If your viewfinder image looks stable in both photo and video capturing mode while the phone is completely motionless, you don’t have the problem!

However, if your viewfinder looks erratic you are one of the unlucky ones.

Unfortunately, if your Google Pixel 3 camera has the problem as shown above, there doesn’t appear to be much you can do about it outside of hardware replacement. As of now, Google has been silent on the issue, so it’s not clear if the company will replace or repair your phone if you can prove this problem is happening on your device.

Let us know in the comments below if you have (or don’t have) this camera issue!

If you’re browsing Google Image search results today, you might notice a new interface element: A sticky side panel that displays any images you click on, providing a closer look at the specific image you want to see, including related images, additional info like ratings, price and in-stock status, ingredients and cooking times, depending on whether you’re searching for products, recipes or something else.

The new sidebar replaces a full-width, in-column interface element, with the advantage that the new interface allows you to continue to browse the image result thumbnails returned on the left. Clicking on any other images will replace the one in the sidebar, but you can easily navigate back and forth with your browser’s built-in navigation features, or you can page through the results in sequence using the right and left arrow keys.

These work already for a lot of existing results and products, but developers who want to ensure their product image results likewise provide this info in a way that means Google’s search engine will pick them up can reference this developer documentation to find out how.

Overall, even though this is not a massive change from what came before, it feels directionally like a big deal: Google has been iterating in a very Pinterest-like direction with image search in general, but this feels functionally like a mature product aimed squarely at comparison shopping, hobbyist cooks, decorators and designers. It’s a very different product from what Images used to be, and that probably affords Google a lot more opportunity in terms of how it monetizes image search in the future.

If you live in the United States and you own a Samsung, chances are that you are enjoying much better download speeds than people using iPhones. That’s one of the findings from independent network analysis firm Opensignal.

According to the company’s latest report — published this month under the title “How the smartphone affects mobile network experience” — Samsung users in the United States “experience download speeds 8.2 Mbps faster than iPhone users” on average. In Norway, if you have a Galaxy you will enjoy a whooping 14 Mbps advantage over iPhone users and 12 Mbps more than Huawei users.

In total, Opensignal found that Samsung had faster download speeds in 35% of the 40 countries analyzed. Apple bested the rest of the manufacturers in 17.5% of the countries, including Taiwan and United Arab Emirates. The remaining 48% countries didn’t have a clear winner although “Huawei users,” the firm says, “were joint-fastest in seven countries.”

Globally, the latest Samsung top flagships experienced faster speeds than Apple and Huawei’s — the average download speeds clock at 26.6 Mbps, 25.1 Mbps, and 24.4 Mbps respectively. But if you go for the mid-range, Opensignal claims that Apple wins that race, while the low-end is dominated by Huawei smartphones.

The company also found differences in latency, which measures the responsiveness of the mobile network and can deliver a smoother experience when playing multiplayer games like Fortnite. High-tier smartphones were 14% faster than mid-tier phones and 18% faster than lower-tier phones.

Opensignal claims that it analyzes the status of mobile networks worldwide based on real user experiences on 18,000 unique smartphone models from hundreds of smartphone manufacturers. The company measures factors like download speed and latency, gathering and analyzing that data to help operators on their network optimization strategies. In the presentation of this research results, the company says that, because the latest flagships have the best network technologies, they are “a leading indicator of what the mobile experience will be in the future.”

The analysis firm says that several things can affect the user experience. The mobile network is one of them but especially it is the technologies inside of each handset, from the number of frequency bands you can connect to, carrier aggregation abilities connecting to more than one radio band at the same time, modulation type and use of multiple simultaneous antennas, and the modem supplier.

With 5G networks now being deployed and Apple not expected to launch a 5G phone until 2020, the company risks falling further behind Samsung over the next year.

Google Assistant has quietly received a major upgrade to its messaging features, giving the AI helper the ability to read messages from third-party apps.

The lack of official announcement for the new feature is odd, especially considering Android users have wanted this functionality for some time. Previously, Google Assistant could only read messages from Android Messages and Google Hangouts aloud—and not very well, either. Now, the sky is the limit: Google Assistant can read your messages from third-party apps such as Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, and even Google’s own finicky apps like Google Voice.

Start by calling up up the Google Assistant with a “Hey, Google,” “Okay, Google,” or by pressing the Google Assistant button/icon on your device if it has one. Then, tell it to “read my messages.”

The assistant will then dictate all unread messages you have, in order, and will even swap between different apps if you have a backlog across multiple messaging services. The only exception is media messages, where Google Assistant simply says that the message contains media but doesn’t open the attached file.

In addition to the reading the messages itself, you can also request to hear who the sender is and which app it was sent from. And once Google Assistant has read the message out loud, it’s removed from your notifications.

To respond to any of your messages, you can use Google Assistant to reply via voice or by typing your response. Once you’ve sent your response, you can continue listening to your lingering unread messages.