Android N? More like Android Nougat
The next version of Android is dubbed “Nougat,” Google revealed on Snapchat this morning (because of course it did). This was the first time that Google opened up the Android naming process to the public, and Nougat beat out other n-based treat suggestions including Nutter Butter, Nutella, Nerds and Necco Wafers. Of course, offering creative rights to the entire internet ensured there were a few sour apples in that system.
Google made it clear that it wasn’t beholden to the names suggested by the wider world, lest it end up with an operating system dubbed, “Nutty McNutface.”
Introducing #AndroidNougat. Thank you, world, for all your sweet name ideas! #AndroidNReveal pic.twitter.com/7lIfDBwyBE
— Android (@Android) June 30, 2016
Google’s Spanish offices raided in tax investigation
Google is no stranger to tax investigations, but in recent months, European investigators have taken things up a notch. Coming just a month after tax inspectors raided the company’s French HQ, Spanish officials today cast the spotlight on its operations in Madrid as part of an ongoing probe into its tax contributions.
TechCrunch reports that the raids on the search giant’s Madrid HQ and Google Campus are related to “VAT payments and non-residence tax.” Google, however, is adamant it has done nothing wrong and issued the following statement: “We comply with Spanish tax laws just as we do in all countries where we operate. We are co-operating with the authorities in Spain in order to answer all their questions, as always.”
Google’s European tax practices have come under fire because the company reports the majority of its sales in Ireland, allowing it to enjoy a lower tax rate thanks to loopholes in international tax laws. In January, it announced it would pay the UK government £130 million (around $185 million) in back taxes, but French Finance Minister Michel Sapin has already ruled out a similar deal over the €1.6 billion in back taxes (roughly $1.76 billion) the company reportedly owes.
Via: The Guardian
Source: TechCrunch
Google’s undersea cable connecting US and Japan is now live
The $300 million trans-Pacific undersea cable backed by six companies, including Google, that connects Japan and the US is now online. It connects Oregon with the Chiba and Mie prefectures in Japan with 9,000 km (5,600 miles) of wires. However, those aren’t the only places that will benefit from its capacity to deliver speeds that can reach a whopping 60 terabits per second. The “FASTER cable,” as it’s called, has connections across the West Coast that cover Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland and Seattle, among other locations. It can also improve internet connections in Japan’s major cities and even in other Asian metropolises.
According to Google SVP Urs Hölzle, its 60Tbps total capacity is “more than any active subsea cable, and 10 million times faster than your cable modem.” Japanese company NEC Corporation began building FASTER back in 2014. Besides Google, the project was also backed by China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI and Singtel. The big G completely owns one part of FASTER, though, particularly the cables connecting Japan and Taiwan, which have a smaller, but still impressive, capacity of 20 Tbps.
Source: Urs Hölzle (Google+), NEC
Google Keep auto-creates topics for your notes
Google Keep’s new feature will help you find notes old and new even if you never even bothered slapping a label on them. The free app now organizes your notes based on automatically created topics, such as food, places and travel. Even better, you can look for entries simply by clicking on the search bar to bring up topic shortcuts you can access. Google didn’t exactly explain how it works, but Keep likely takes cues from the words you use. If you write down “pack for trip to Paris,” the app will automatically associate that entry with travel. Useful, especially if you’re too lazy to organize your to-do lists and “notes to self” manually. The new feature is now live on Android and iOS, as well as for Keep on the web.
#GoogleKeep organized. Search automagically created topics like books, food and quotes for @Android, iPhones and web pic.twitter.com/wccSbThYpQ
— Google Docs (@googledocs) June 29, 2016
Source: Google Docs (Twitter)
Google Fit gets a colorful redesign and improved goal setting
Google has rolled out a major Fit update with a complete visual redesign, new watch face and features for Android Wear, a new home screen widget, more detailed goal-setting and more. Version 1.57.50 is the company’s biggest update to the app in quite awhile, and appears to be a big part of the Android Wear 2.0 overhaul Google promised at I/O last month. The changes are apparent from when you first open it, as the previous, rather sparse home screen now has images, charts and a lot more color.
On the app’s home page (above), Google has replaced the single activity dial graph with individual cards and dials for each goal, showing what you’ve done and how days you have left to meet it. Scrolling down will reveal a chart of your weight, recent workouts (complete with a map), and more (below). Hitting the floating action “+” button lets you set new goals, log your weight, add an activity and more.
As for the new goals, you can now get a lot more specific than before. It has more activities and more specific metrics, like steps, duration or times per week, day or month. Any goals go to the top of landing page to keep you motivated and let you know if you’re hitting the targets. There’s also a new widget that lets you put your goals on your phone’s home page or lock screen, in case you need a front-and-center reminder to get moving.
To drill down to specific activities, you now go to the “Timeline” screen, by accessing it from the navigation drawer or bottom of the landing page. Those act much like they did before, showing your activities relative to your goals, and letting you see them on a graph over time.
Google Fit also got a design revamp on Android Wear. As before, the first screen you see shows your goals, but with more information and a new white text on black look. Scrolling up shows your activities today, a chart of your heart rate and more. Touching the pink bottom bar lets you pick an activity like walking, running and push-up challenges. From there, you can select one and start your workout, all without touching your phone.
There’s also a new Android Wear watch face that looks more like an old school dial watch (above right) with readouts for calories, miles, time and the number of steps. The app is now rolling out to Android users, and if I was able to get it in Europe, you should be able to download it now in the US.
Source: Google Play
Google Maps for mobile now handles multiple destinations
Believe it or not, the mobile version of Google Maps hasn’t had support for multiple destinations. You could plan that multi-city tour on the desktop, but you’d still have to navigate one stop at a time on your phone. You might not have to the next time around, though: Google is quietly pushing what appears to be a server-side update to Maps for Android that lets you set multiple stops. You can navigate to a tourist trap, a restaurant and your hotel without having to enter fresh directions every time.
There’s no word on iOS support yet. Also, whether or not you’ll get it on Android is arbitrary right now — just having the latest version of Google Maps doesn’t guarantee that you’ll see it. It’ll likely take a few days before the multi-point feature is widely available. So long as you can wait, however, you’ll have just the tool you need to plot that lengthy road trip.
Via: 9to5Google, The Verge
Source: Android Police
Google: Symantec antivirus flaws are ‘as bad as it gets’
Products from Symantec that are supposed to protect users have made them much more open to attack, according to Google. Researcher Tavis Ormandy has spotted numerous vulnerabilities in 25 Norton and Symantec products that are “as bad as it gets,” he says. “Just emailing a file to a victim or sending them a link to an exploit is enough to trigger it — the victim does not need to open the file or interact with it in any way.” Symantec has already published fixes for the exploits, so users would do well to install them immediately.
Google’s Project Zero team searches for “zero-day” code flaws and gives companies 90 days (plus a two week grace period) to fix them. In this case, Ormandy published the blog post shortly after Symantec pushed the fixes, saying the antivirus company did resolve the bugs “quickly.”
However, he excoriated Symantec for the danger of the errors and its incompetence in allowing them. In one case, he found a buffer overflow flaw in the company’s “unpacker,” which searches for hidden trojans and worms. “Because no interaction is necessary to exploit it, this is a wormable vulnerability with potentially devastating consequences,” he says. “An attacker could easily compromise an entire enterprise fleet.” He added that the unpackers have kernel access, which is “maybe not the best idea.”
LightRocket via Getty Images
The researcher built and released his own exploit to help Symantec develop an effective fix. He calls it a “100 percent reliable exploit, effective against the default configuration in Norton Antivirus and Symantec Endpoint [and] exploitable just from email or the web.”
He reserved his harshest criticism for Symantec’s vulnerability management, which it’s supposed to use to check for published flaws and ensure it has the latest open-source updates. “Symantec dropped the ball here. A quick look at the decomposer library shipped by Symantec showed that they were using code derived from open source libraries … but hadn’t updated them in at least 7 years.”
Symantec dropped the ball here. A quick look at the decomposer library shipped by Symantec showed that they were using code derived from open source libraries … but hadn’t updated them in at least 7 years
Symantec isn’t the only antivirus company with issues, as the prolific Ormandy has also flagged Trend Micro, McAfee and others. He even questioned the wisdom of using antivirus software in the first place, calling it “a significant tradeoff in terms of increasing [the] attack surface.”
The bugs affect Norton Antivirus on Mac and Windows, Endpoint and numerous other Symantec products. As mentioned, the fixes have already been patched, and in most cases, you’ll get the updates automatically. As noted in the blog, however, “some of these products cannot be automatically updated, and administrators must take immediate action to protect their networks.”
Via: Tavis Ormandy (Twitter)
Source: Google Project Zero, Symantec
Solve an FMV mystery with ‘Her Story’ on Android
It took a year, but Her Story, Sam Barlow’s mystery game, has been ported to Android. Her Story is a full-motion video game where you’re tasked with piecing together a story through watching short excerpts of interviews. The only mechanic you have at your disposal is a search tool, which lets you bring up clips that contain certain words or phrases. There are hundreds of clips to search through, and by the end of the game you’ll have unravelled a fantastic story.
Her Story won many accolades, including the coveted Aaron Souppouris award for Favorite Video Game of 2015. Less prestigious organizations like the BAFTA Game Awards also recognized the game, handing out three prizes for best debut game, best mobile game, and game innovation. It’s available from Google Play for $2.99, which is a couple of dollars less than its price on iOS.
Source: Sam Barlow (Google Play)
Google is testing internet speeds straight from search
For years Ookla has dominated internet speed test traffic, but Netflix recently unveiled a simpler option. Now, Google may be muscling into the game with its own test that works straight from search. Internet marketer Dr. Pete Meyers spotted an “Internet speed test” appearing directly in search results prompted by the query “check internet speed.” If you click the “run speed test” box (below), Google’s Measurement Lab checks your connection speed and gives more details that can help system administrators.
Looks like Google is testing their own internet speed test (query = “check internet speed”) – not seeing it live — pic.twitter.com/wjsPIlEbFv
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) June 27, 2016
You can try the query yourself, but it doesn’t appear to be live for the majority of users. You’ll likely get a similar result from Google’s Measurement Labs “NDT” tool, however. In my case (top), it showed a slower speed than I get from Netflix or Ookla, possibly because of the location of the testing server. While Google appears to be testing the tool, it may not actually release it, so we’ve reached out for more info.
Google is actually lagging in consumer speed testing, because in addition to Ookla and Netflix, rival Bing already shows speed test results straight from search. In a FAQ page, Google explains that its own test takes about 30 seconds and consumes 9.4 MB of data in the US. The Measurement Lab was first launched in 2009 with the aim of “sustaining the Internet as an open platform for consumer choice and innovation,” according to co-founder and internet pioneer Vin Cerf.
Via: TNW
Source: Dr. Pete Meyers (Twitter)
Google and Qualcomm are making Snapdragon chips Tango ready
Manufacturers can make their devices Tango compatible simply by equipping them with Qualcomm’s new and upcoming Snapdragon 800 and 600 SoCs. According to Ars Technica, the chipmaker has been working with Google for the past year-and-a-half to make its products ready for the tech titan’s augmented reality technology. See, when the big G showed off its Project Tango (as it was called back then) prototype, it had an extra computer vision chip. But the first Tango phone, Lenovo’s Phab2 Pro, doesn’t have one at all.
Phab2 Pro relies on its quad-core Snapdragon 652 processor to run Tango’s AR capabilities. Qualcomm even says that since its processors are optimized for the technology, Tango ends up using less processing power than a normal app and consumes less than two watts. By removing the need for extra hardware besides a depth sensor and a motion tracking camera, the partners are making it easy for phonemakers to adopt the AR tech. Tango, if you’ll recall, can superimpose images over the real world through a device’s camera. One of its applications is helping you visualize what your house would look like before you even start renovating or replacing your furniture.
Source: Ars Technica, VentureBeat
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