News written by Matti Robinson (April, 2019)

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).

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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.

The companies are not only duking it out in the free market, but also in the bureaucracies of European Commission.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Amazon has introduced a new tier to its subscription music streaming service. Prime Music is from now on available also for free, and without a Prime membership.

Obviously there is no such thing as free lunch, and Amazon's new free tier is no different. Just like Spotify, you'll have to bear with some ads playing in between of your precious playlists' songs.

The good news is that there are no limits to how much you can listen. You have unlimited access to Prime Music catalog of artists and albums.

The bad news is that you get access to it only alongside Alexa. So you'll need either Amazon's own smart speaker Echo or some other Alexa-supported device.

There's also a very annoying caveat. See, you cannot play any song you want when you want it. Instead you can tell Alexa to play songs from specific artist or genre and it'll generate a playlist.

The feature is currently limited to Alexa-enable devices in the United States.

You can use following methods to enjoy free music on Alexa-enabled devices:

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A dispute broke out between Google and Amazon approximately two years ago when Amazon released the first smart display, Echo Show. The device combined a display with smart speaker functionality, and they promoted the device with what was perhaps the most obvious use case, YouTube viewing.

Google wasn't happy about it, most likely because even they didn't have a device that could show YouTube's hundreds and thousands of cooking instructions on a smart home device, and they blocked YouTube from Echo Show. This strife grew more bitter and it has meant that viewing YouTube content on Amazon devices and vice versa has been a pain, if possible at all.

Fortunately, especially for us the customers with both Amazon and Google devices and services, the two companies have come to an agreement today about integrating with each others offerings.

YouTube will be making a comeback to Amazon's Fire TV devices and Prime Video will start supporting Google's streaming platform Chromecast. In addition Amazon promised to extend Prime Video's support on Android TVs.

Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, the agreement doesn't bring YouTube to Echo Show, which sparked the conflict to begin with. Perhaps there indeed was something wrong with the YouTube implementation on Echo Show, like previously Google argued.

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Apple and Qualcomm has been called the new Apple and Samsung of patent disputes. The latter two fought over multitude of patents over a time span of a decade, and the former just starter their war of attrition.

One could've easily seen this feud go for years and years, but in a surprising turn of events, it has ended as quickly as it began. Apple and Qualcomm have decided to settle their differences.

Both have dropped all of their litigation against the other, whether it was Apple for calling out Qualcomm's so-called unfair licensing practices or on the other hand Qualcomm claiming Apple has stolen their chip secrets among other things.

The beneficiary of this settlement was Qualcomm, which is going to receive a payment, amount of which wasn't revealed.

It seems like a very odd thing for Apple, but if you've been following Intel's latest news, this settlement comes as no surprise.

Intel, the Apple's chip partner has decided to call it quits with their 5G chip development. This means that Apple needs to quickly move towards a deal with another 5G chip developer.

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Intel has revealed yesterday that it will be folding its 5G smartphone modem business. The chip partner of Apple has had trouble with its 5G modem development, and apparently they've been too hard to overcome.

Delays have plagued Intel's 5G modems, and Apple has reportedly looked elsewhere for a chip provider. Intel is continuing other 5G operations, including both networking and PC side of things.

They are also committed to providing existing 4G products for smartphones, but no 5G modems for smartphones will be unveiled, including the ones planned for release next year and heading to iPhones.

This leaves the door open for others, including Qualcomm who have expressed interest in providing chips to Apple despite a patent dispute looming in the background. In fact, Qualcomm and Apple settled their lawsuits and agreed on a six-year licensing deal.

Retro consoles, or mini consoles, have been immensely popular in the past couple of years. Started by Nintendo in 2016 with the NES Classic, which sold millions, companies like Sony, Sega and Atari have joined in.

Now Capcom, game company behind many retro hit games, has decided to create their own gaming system. It is called Capcom Home Arcade, and isn't quite the console others have made.

In fact, Capcom's device is more of a mini arcade, a plug-and-play arcade controller that you connect straight to your TV. According to Capcom, there is a total of 16 preloaded arcade hits from when some of us were kids (exhaustive list below).

The controller, shaped like a Capcom logo, has two Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT joysticks and eight OBSF buttons for up to two players. Video output is HDMI and charging happens via microUSB. It also supports WiFi for linking to global leaderboards.

Capcom is bringing the console to stores on May 25 in Europe for £199.99/€229.99. North American launch is said to happen shortly after.

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Netflix is fairly sneaky with different kinds of A/B testing, which we probably most of the time don't even notice. The company also can change features on a whim it seems, like it did with ratings.

Now the company is testing a feature to recommend content more efficiently. According to reports, Netflix is bringing top 10 lists to the service.

The Verge reports that Netflix is starting the test in the UK later this quarter. Each genre and category will get their own top 10, and the lists will be updated weekly.

This is one of the first ways we, the customers, get to see which shows and movies are really performing. Netflix hasn't previously shared much statistics at all, except for the odd mention of movies with 80 million viewers.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has expressed that the test will be expanded, or ended, within a few months from the start. One can only hope for the former so we can see which Netflix Original shows take the crowns.

The world's leading messaging platform, WhatsApp, became known for its simple to use interface and secure encrypted message transfer.

Nowadays, however, WhatsApp offers much more features, and some of them might even not be to your liking. For example, by default the sender can see whether the recipient of the message has read it.

This might not always be optimal, and thus we've decided to give you a simple trick that some of our readers might have overlooked.

To avoid your contacts to see whether you've read their message or not you must disable the checkmark feature, called Read receipts. This feature offers three distinct checkmarks, which tell you whether the message has been a) sent, b) received, c) read.

In the same order, the first of these is the single gray checkmark, the second grey double checkmark, and the third is the blue double checkmark.

To disable this feature you'll head to the Settings menu, which is found from the three dot menu on the right top corner. Select Account -> Privacy.

You should find an option called Read receipt with a description saying "If turned off, you won't send of receive Read receipts. Read receipts are always sent for group chats." Turn this off, and you will no longer send or receive these checkmarks except for group chats.

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Facebook has had its own Messenger app for mobile devices for nearly 8 years now, but it was five years ago they made one of the oddest and most criticized moves in the company's history.

In 2014, Facebook removed the Messenger function from its core Facebook app, and after that you had to download a separate app if you wanted to chat with your Facebook friends inside Messenger.

Many probably predicted doom and gloom for Messenger after that, but it has went on to increase its reach to over a billion people. However, it hasn't managed to gain as much traction as another messaging app owned by Facebook, WhatsApp.

Now it seems that Facebook is planning on bringing chat back to Facebook's own app. According to unreleased app feature guru Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook update is bringing Messenger functionality back to the Facebook app.

In pictures posted on Twitter, Wong shows that the Messenger icon in the top right corner of the Facebook app would open a new Chat section of the app instead of the separate Messenger app.

However, Facebook isn't planning. at least not yet, to move Messenger entirely back under its core app, since the Chat feature is fairly limited. There's no file transfer option nor is there voice or video calls.

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Disney has been working on a streaming platform for its wide-ranging content portfolio from children's programming to Marvel franchises and more.

Late last year it finally revealed that it was going to launch their streaming service, Disney+, in 2019. Today Disney has confirmed the launch date and given us some other dearly needed details about the service.

Disney+ will be launched on November 12 and will cost $6.99 a month or if you commit to a year's subscription, you'll get a little cheaper at $69.99. That gives you access to Disney+ content in 4K and HDR on multitude of platforms including game consoles, smart TVs and mobile devices.

The service will obviously offer tons of content for children, but other Disney-owned brands include The Simpsons, National Geographics, Star Wars, and Marvel. New exclusive shows and movies include the likes WandaVision, The Sandlot, Lady and the Tramp, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, High School Musical The Series, and The Phineas and Ferb Movie.

Already previously Disney has shared information about Star Wars spinoffs, including The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and a Rogue One series with Cassian Andor.

Disney also revealed that it will likely be bundled with other services, such as ESPN+ and Hulu.

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Streaming services are killing the traditional TV industry slowly, although not as slowly as cable companies would like, and surely. Services like Sling TV and YouTube TV are gaining traction as people are cutting cables.

Customers are tired of three figure cable costs, and for a good reason. You can get very adequate channel selection from online TV for half the price, or less.

Now YouTube TV has decided to increase the price, though. The reason behind that is the recent addition of new channels. YouTube TV now costs $10 more but has eight new channels.

$49.99/mo now buys you Discover Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, and MotorTrend, in addition to the 70+ other channels.

However, the new price gets awfully close to what cable companies offer you. In 2017, YouTube TV offered 50 channels for $35. Last year the price went up to $39.99 as they added more channels, and now the $10 price hike takes is one notch closer to no-thanks-land.

Spectrum for example offers a 120 channel lineup, including the likes of Discover Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, and Animal Planet, for $44.99/mo. One thing YouTube TV, however, has going for it still is unlimited cloud DVR as well as YouTube Originals.

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Apple's supremacy in the music distribution world ended as downloading music became obsolete to streaming it, and as paying per song or album lost to the subscription model.

The company still has the infrastructure of an undeniably decrepit and inadequate iTunes, which you use to control much more than your tunes. Apparently finally now in Cupertino they've realized that things need to change.

9to5Mac reports that Apple is planning on splitting iTunes into smaller and more specific apps within macOS, and they even have some leaked icons to prove it. The change in expected to happen with the next macOS update, which is due in the summer.

According to the report, iTunes will be split into Music, Podcasts, and TV apps. There's also a new Books app in the works for macOS.

While iTunes is being stripped of most of its functionality, it won't be dead quite yet. Apple is still keeping iTunes for synchronization purposes.

Perhaps this will save iTunes from dying altogether, although a name change to iSync would probably be appropriate.

To end the year, streaming giant Netflix released their first ever interactive movie. For Netflix Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a trial of sorts, which confirmed the concept a success. Others are now following Netflix's lead.

Just yesterday Netflix released their new interactive TV show, You vs. Wild, where the viewer guides survival expert Bear Grylls through survival situations. Now it has been reported, that YouTube is also bringing interactive content to their platform.

YouTube has previously experimented with interactive advertisement but the interactive programming is a completely different beast. They are also planning to use the interactive elements in both unscripted as well as scripted programming.

According to Bloomberg, YouTube is working on several projects under its new interactive programming unit.

At this point there's not much other details but fortunately we might not have to wait long for more information. YouTube is announcing new content in New York in a couple of weeks.

Amazon's Echo is considered the first smart speaker that sparked the interest of Google, Apple, Samsung, and others to pursue this new type of AI enabled home tech.

Alexa has thus become nearly an eponym of voice assistants, and is referred often in both good and bad of what the technology has to potentially offer.

However, the success of Alexa's listening skills is more than super advanced machine learning algorithms and computer AI. In fact, Bloomberg's report tells that Amazon has employees all over the world listening to Alexa conversations to help enhance Alexa.

The employees listen to commands given by Alexa users, and while Amazon would deny that they listen to actual conversations or the content, they do record private conversations with customers to improve their service.

Not only are Alexa commands recorded, but according to Bloomberg's sources they also hear noises that aren't meant for Alexa's eletronic ears at all, including things like singing in the shower, children crying for help.

Some employees have reported hearing noises that they've suspected were part of a sexual assault. Amazon's internal policies however dictate that they shouldn't intervene.

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Apple has strategy with the iPhone has been to have a bigger update biennially and every other year you have an S version update.

This has been called the dichotomy between an evolutionary and a revolutionary update. This year it's once again the time for Apple to revolutionize the iPhone once more.

According to sources, Apple will be introducing a triple camera setup first time ever on an iPhone. Now reports from Japanese website Macotakara suggest that Apple is making the regular iPhone larger, or at least the display on it bigger.

Rumors have it that both iPhone 11 and 11 Max, or whatever they will be called, are going to feature triple cameras in the back and a big OLED panels in the front. The Max version is said to be 6.5 inches just like last year but the regular iPhone's display is going from 5.8 to 6.1 inches.

According to the same "trustworthy source", the iPhones are not going to adopt USB-C charging connector yet, unlike the iPad Pro, but they will charge much faster with the new 18 W charger.

Valve, the developer of online game platform Steam and upcoming game Half-Life 3, has been under investigation by the European Commission for couple years now.

Since early 2017, the regulatory branch of EU has been suspecting that Valve has violated European Union's antitrust laws by providing goods with geo-blocking.

Now the commission has delivered formal letter against the defendants in what's called the Statements of Objections. Alongside Valve are five game developers who are co-defendants in the case.

According to European Commission Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media, and ZeniMax have been selling games, or more specifically Steam activation keys, that are only valid in some EU member states. According to EU rules games should be valid in all EU member states.

The idea behind the country-specific codes was that they would be cheaper in EU countries with lower GDP, mostly in Eastern Europe, while in richer Western European countries games would cost more. This is against the EU rules on digital markets.

Countries in which codes were sold in included Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania.

Now Valve and the developers can defend their case to the commission after which they determine whether they still believe the companies have broken the rules.

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Recent news about Apple's delays in 5G development for iPhones has sparked questions about whether Apple's semiconductor deals are set in stone.

Apple is not expected to ship a 5G enabled iPhone this year perhaps due to their sole chip partner Intel not being able to produce one.

Intel is hoping they'll get their XMM 8160 5G modem ready for Apple in early 2020 but earlier delays in the product line are reportedly eroding Apple's trust in Intel. This opens up question about other manufacturers.

This includes the likes of Samsung, MediaTek, and even Qualcomm, whom Apple have been battling against in the court recently because of several patent disputes.

Court cases don't seem to stop Qualcomm from effectively proposing to supply 5G modems to Apple. The company's president Cristiano Amon has told Axios that Apple "has their number."

Apple is said to be developing their first in-house modem which is expected to be the 5G modem likely heading to 2021 or 2022 iPhones. However, at that point its too late to enter the 5G competition, and to get there earlier they'll need at least one generation of externally designed modems.

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