#Google Announces 4th Android 11 Developer Preview

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Google Announces 4th Android 11 Developer Preview, Pushes Beta Back to June

Google has been toiling to get Android 11 ready for launch this fall in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. While it still expects to hit that target, the testing phase will take a little longer than expected. Google is launching a fourth Android 11 developer preview today, and the beta is delayed until next month. 

Unlike past Android tests, Google has split Android 11’s preview period into the developer preview and beta. During the developer preview, you can only install the new OS via flashable images from Google’s dev site. That requires a compatible Pixel phone and a computer running the Android Debug Bridge (ADB). When the beta begins, you’ll be able to sign up for OTA updates that install the new OS on your Pixel. Additionally, other OEMs will be able to offer test builds of Android 11. 

So, Developer Preview 4 will go live today with another round of minor tweaks and changes geared mostly toward stabilizing the operating system. You’ll be able to flash the new build on Google devices from the Pixel 2 and 2 XL all the way to the latest Pixel 4 and 4 XL. Google has not discussed any specific changes, and we wouldn’t expect anything major beyond improved stability. 

The time for new features will come next month, which is when Google will launch the Android 11 beta. Previously, Google planned to hold its I/O conference in May, but it scaled that back to an online event in light of the pandemic. Now, it’s scrapped even that and will just have a “Beta Launch Show” on June 3rd. This won’t be the same wide-ranging discussion of Google technology and products you’d get at I/O. Instead, this sounds like an online version of the popular “What’s new in Android” keynote that takes place at each I/O. 

Google’s Dave Burke will host the show, talking about topics like connectivity, security, accessibility, and some things Google is keeping secret until the event. There will also be a live Q and A session following the presentation. There should be one additional Beta release in July, and the next release after that should be final. Google doesn’t have a date for that yet, but it’s still expecting to hit its Q3 2020 timeline. And no, we’re not expecting a fun dessert name this year. It’s just Android 11.

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from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/310207-google-announces-4th-android-11-developer-preview-pushes-beta-back-to-june from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/05/google-announces-4th-android-11.html

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$5B Lawsuit Claims Google Still Tracks Users in Incognito Mode

Google is facing yet another lawsuit that claims the search giant collects too much information on users. But what else is new? Well, this time the proposed class-action lawsuit claims Google has been collecting data on users even when it says it won’t. According to the plaintiffs, Google still monitors people via online tools when they have Incognito Mode enabled in Chrome. They demand at least $5 billion in damages. 

Chrome has become the most popular browser in the world despite Google’s propensity for accumulating data on our online habits. Incognito Mode provides a way to limit what data you leave behind as you poke around the web, but the lawsuit claims it is inadequate and misleading. Google has numerous tools like Google Analytics and Google Ad Manager that can still recognize you online even with Incognito Mode enabled. 

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say Google is violating federal and state wiretapping laws by gathering data from Incognito sessions. However, Google points to the warnings that appear when you start an Incognito session. Incognito Mode doesn’t log any data on your local machine or in your Google account history. However, Incognito Mode doesn’t hide your activity from websites and online trackers. Incognito Mode’s loading screen explains all this, as seen below. 

There are a few unanswered questions about this lawsuit. For one, is Google actually gathering identifiable data about people using Incognito Mode? It’s unclear if attorneys, in this case, have evidence that Google is storing data from Incognito sessions, or if they’re just speculating. Google clearly states in its support documents that data from Incognito browsing is not stored in your Google account unless you log in — you can test this yourself. 

If Google is somehow associating Incognito browsing activity with your account, that would be a potentially huge invasion of privacy. This could allow Google to serve more targeted ads, but many users activate Incognito Mode specifically to avoid having certain activity reflected in the ads they see. You can also remove non-Incognito data from your account, but this supposed Incognito data would be logged in some location you cannot access. 

The lawyers in this case say the proposed class includes millions of people who have activated Incognito Mode since July 1, 2016. They are seeking damages of at least $5,000 per user — that would be $5 billion total if there are exactly a million users in the class. Even if the lawsuit is granted class-action status, it would be years before anyone sees any cash.

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from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/internet/311286-5b-lawsuit-claims-google-still-tracks-users-in-incognito-mode from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/06/5b-lawsuit-claims-google-still-tracks.html

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The OnePlus 8 Pro Doesn’t Have an ‘X-ray’ Camera, but Here’s How It Sees Through Things

There’s a rumor going around that the new OnePlus 8 camera can see through objects in a sort of x-ray effect. It can’t — that’s not what it does — but it does provide some slight visibility through a handful of otherwise-solid objects, thanks to what appears to be a built-in camera defect.

Whether or not you consider this a feature, therefore, may depend a great deal on what kind of problems it causes for your other images (if any). To see the feature in action, activate the “Photochrom” filter and point the camera at the right kind of object. Here’s an Apple TV, as one example:

One of the best examples 🤯#OnePlus8Pro Color Filter Camera can see through some plastic pic.twitter.com/UkaxdyV6yP

— Ben Geskin (@BenGeskin) May 13, 2020

Here’s what’s happening here. Cameras are typically designed to capture light in the same wavelengths that humans can see. There’s no reason they have to be, and there are wavelengths of light that cameras are capable of capturing but simply don’t, because doing so would introduce visual artifacts into the spectrum bands that humans can see. In this case, OnePlus’ camera is picking up infrared light that our eyes can’t normally see. The combination of a slightly opaque (in visible light) surface and the OnePlus 8’s slightly infrared-friendly camera can combine to create output we wouldn’t normally get. The result? An x-ray (or “x-ray” camera).

Your brain is capable of seeing colors you don’t normally process if handed the input to do so. Some years ago, we wrote about the case of a man who had the lenses of his eye replaced with artificial ones. As sometimes happens in these cases, the new artificial lenses allowed him to see deeper into the ultraviolet than is typical for humans. Tests with precise spectrographic measuring equipment confirmed it. When handed deeper UV light than we typically see, your brain is capable of mapping it to visual output, to some modest extent.

Back to the OnePlus 8. In this case, the camera that’s doing the sensing is a low-quality sensor that doesn’t take very good photos. AndroidCentral has dismissed the privacy risk for this reason, given that the “Photochrom” mode apparently degrades image quality further. The overall privacy risk is small, the company claims, though we can understand why folks might be leery given how easily footage finds its way online these days. This also is a problem OnePlus really should have caught in-factory.

It’s an interesting way to see inside some otherwise opaque hardware, but those who want a serious look at such things may be better off just hunting down a screwdriver. Cameras that can see in the infrared are cool, but the usefulness of this model is rather lacking.

Now Read:

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from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/310636-the-oneplus-8-pro-doesnt-have-an-x-ray-camera from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-oneplus-8-pro-doesnt-have-x-ray.html

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Chrome Will Block Resource-Heavy Ads Starting in August

We’ve always known that online ads ate some degree of battery life and that misbehaving ads can have a disproportionate impact on the end-user experience, but a recent Chrome blog post drives home just how big the tail on the problem really is.

According to Google’s research, it’s a tiny fraction of ads that ruin everything for everybody else. 0.3 percent of ads account for 27 percent of all of the network bandwidth and 28 percent of the total CPU usage Google measured.

Google’s tests on resource consumption

Moving forward, the company is going to curtail how much processing power advertisements will be able to access. According to Google, it didn’t set the filters to run with a light touch — the overwhelming majority of existing web ads comply with the standards the company has set. Ads may not transfer more than 4MB of data or use more than 15 seconds of CPU time within any given 30 second period, and may not use more than 60 seconds of CPU time in total.

This feature makes perfect sense for multiple reasons. As written, Chrome’s blog implies it could prevent some kinds of cryptocurrency malware from running, which is an obvious win. Even outside apps that hijack the browser this overtly, ads that consume huge amounts of network bandwidth or slow the machine to the point that it feels like a single-core Atom are scarcely paragons of web design. You tend to hit these pain points much less these days than back when JavaScript-enabled Angelfire pages ruled and walked the Earth, but it’s no less annoying to encounter them now than it was then.

This is another in a series of fairly conspicuous user-friendly changes Google has introduced to Chrome in the recent past. Last year, Google began automatically blocking disruptive ads. Back in November 2018, it took action to demonetize sites that ran “consistently deceptive” ads in an effort to protect users from sites that trap them in an endless series of clickjacking redirects.

Google intends to experiment with these changes and then slipstream them into stable Chrome by the end of August. The goal is to give tool creators and advertisers enough time to prepare for the debut and to tweak their own advertisements to avoid falling under Google’s bar. From the sound of things, very little legitimate web traffic may be impacted, and the web traffic that has to be updated could likely use it in any case.

Now Read:

How Digital Contact Tracing Could Work in the US, and Why It May Never Happen

Google Announces 4th Android 11 Developer Preview, Pushes Beta Back to June

Huawei Releases P30 Pro for the Third Time

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/internet/310613-chrome-will-block-resource-heavy-ads-starting-in-august from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/05/chrome-will-block-resource-heavy-ads.html