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Tried the earbuds that swap from earbud to open but prove you need to specialize

It takes a lot to surprise an audio freak in 2022. However, I was really excited to find out about the JBL Tune Flex; an affordable, waterproof pair of ANC earbuds that also has two different wearing styles – open or closed.

After getting the kit to try out, I also highlight the translucent casing showcasing the battery, connections, and other great pieces. I had a black and gray pair to try but there’s a gorgeous retro purple color too.

As I said when the transforming JBL product was released, you’ve never seen earbuds like this, and I applaud the ingenuity. Plus, small details like these can be of great value.

Proposition explanation: Unlike the admirable Oladance fully open design which does not come close to the ear cavities or folds, the JBL solution includes attached tips so that the earplugs do not simply rest against a good looking part of the outer ear or auricle (in a way that as Apple EarPods or AirPods (2019) do), to the longer tips that go into the ear canal to form a seal – often necessary for the best wireless earbuds.

JBL has adapted the profiles in the app for open or closed wear thanks to Tune Flex (Photo credit: Future)

Back to JBL Tune Flex (short for “Flexibility” thanks to these two user options) and a new sound setting that can be toggled in the app depending on whether you wear “Open Ear Tips” or “Sealing Ear Tips” – yes, JBL he considered the implications and shaped the sound impressions accordingly. Delicious!

You get eight hours of donut play and 24 hours of play with ANC off, or six with donuts, 18 with casing if it’s on. The case has a sensible lip to prevent it from snapping shut, and you actually get a suitable plastic case for the various tips – more on these later.

Everything looks great so far …

And where the unreleased Nothing clear (stick) earbuds stay shrouded in, um, weird bags, the JBL Tune Flex is now available, with a fully comprehensive spec – surely drop by our best guide to noise-canceling earbuds, no? Okay…

JBL Tune Flex case and case for ear tips, isolated on white

The small plastic case is a useful and elegant touch. (Photo credit: Future)

Analysis: The open ear is insecure, the closed ear is a bit muffled

JBL Tune Flex earbuds with open earbud on left, closed on right earbud

Left: open ear tip. Right: tip with closed ear (Photo credit: Future)

JBL Tune Flex open earpieces come pre-installed and should be removed before changing to closed, sealing the ear canal, even though the tiny open earpieces are almost perfectly aligned with the transducer housing (see above left) – and note that there is good and bad ways to orientate them.

Unfortunately I cannot get any protection with the ear tip open option. I should have noted that Apple’s original AirPods are pretty awful (so much so that I looked into the special ear tips to compensate and even out the sound) but found it a bit worse nonetheless. The buds just wanted to pop out of my ears as soon as I pushed them into the cup-shaped recess in front of the actual ear.

Fitting here is no different to the earbuds without the earbuds that came with the new Nokia 5710 XpressAudio, but again I found the JBL Tune Flex to be a bit more difficult to fit.

So any legitimate discussion about sound is unfair. I just can’t keep the open wearing style in my ears long enough to relax and enjoy the music. I think the problem might be with their weight – they just feel that they are actively trying to get out of my ears.

Switching to a closed-ear style provides a decent fit and seal, using the smallest of the three options available in my case. Switching is simple as well, and again this plastic case with little hooks to keep all tips safe is a classic touch – wish more companies would think about it.

The JBL Tune Flex earbud held in a hand on a white background

The JBL closed ear option is the only one that I was able to put up with. (Photo credit: Future)

Unfortunately, I find the ANC (operated by two microphones) not great, even with good protection and a snug fit – and even at the highest level (you can choose from 1 to 6) I can hear semi-solid planes flying over my London apartment. While not a complete, starred review, Ambient Aware and TalkThru also prove somewhat ineffective during my initial tests.

I’m turning off all ambient sounds, Lady Gaga A love game it lacks a bit of rough detail when it comes to the raw leading edges of the undercoat. Gaga’s insatiable vocals are also a bit, well, muffled. With the upgrade to Cambridge Audio’s Melomania 1 Plus, which can also be purchased for about the same price as JBL, the vocal sounds more three-dimensional and with more detail as the star shifts in its amazing and emotional range.

Halsey Without me sounds a bit crowded and muddy from the bass synthesizers and drums on the JBLs, to the point where I’m losing backing elements (vocals, tall hat), I should be able to recognize it more clearly. Switch to Cambridge Audio’s Melomania 1 Plus and the sound field expands to reveal the space around the various instruments.

I felt a little disappointed while listening – and it hurts to write this song.

On the one hand, JBL offers a product that looks great and is finished to a very high standard. Battery life, flexibility of use, and feature set are also excellent (and in some cases unheard of) in level. I love things on paper. It’s just that for me the proof of pudding is the food and as a sound suggestion these earbuds are a bit too short, however I have tried wearing them.

What have I learned? Just as it is not possible to have a cake and eat it, to have a perfect open ear kit and Closed earbuds in one box is a bit of a lot of hope. It may seem difficult, but I tested the JBL with a competitor for the same price – and found them poor in terms of sound quality, no matter how hard I tried.

The overall design of the best noise canceling earbuds is critical to their performance. It looks like you really need to specialize.

Epson’s striking new projector is bright enough to illuminate your living room

Epson is showcasing its latest products at IFA 2022, including the new 3LCD Ultra Short Throw (UST) projector, which appears to be a significant upgrade over the company’s previous UST model.

The EH-LS800B is available in black or white and is currently available on Epson’s UK website for £ 3,699 (around $ 3,800) with an estimated November delivery date. It has a built-in 2 x 20W audio system by Yamaha and supports Android TV for video streaming.

Epson’s new UST can transmit an 80-inch image when placed as little as 2.3 cm from a wall or screen, and has a maximum image size of 150 inches. The brightness is specified at 4,000 lumens – a particularly high value for a home theater projector. The EH-LS800B uses a laser light source and, according to Epson, is equipped with “4K Enhancement technology that shifts each pixel diagonally to double Full HD resolution.”

There are 3 HDMI inputs including one with eARC. One of these inputs is a “dedicated” HDMI port which bypasses the projector’s video processing circuits to allow a latency of less than 20ms while gaming, according to an Epson representative I spoke to at IFA.

A very cool feature I was able to grab a demonstration of was Epson’s iProjection app. Ultra short throw projectors are notoriously annoying to set up and fit the image to the screen. However, an Epson app facilitates this process by using your smartphone’s camera to capture an image of the projected image during setup, and then working with the projector to correct the alignment. From what I could see, it was simple and quick, and definitely better than aligning the feet of a projector on whatever surface it is on.

Epson’s new UST projector features a powerful Yamaha-designed audio system with special DSP sound modes. (Photo credit: Future)

Ultra short throw projectors: brightness matters as well as sound

Ultra short throw projectors are designed to be placed in residential spaces with relatively high levels of ambient light. Special coated screens can help reduce the impact of room light on UST models, but the higher the luminous flux, the greater the chance of producing an image with good contrast and rich colors.

For the EH-LS800B demonstration I caught at IFA, the projector was placed in an open area with typically bright ceiling lighting at the fair – no attempt was made to optimize the environment for video projection. Yet the Epson projector looked strikingly well despite its challenges. This was partly due to the ambient light-rejection screen used for the demonstration, but the EH-LS800B’s high brightness undoubtedly contributed to its performance.

Audio is another factor with the UST models as they take up the space that a soundbar would normally occupy in a living room entertainment system. Almost all UST projectors have some form of built-in sound, but in many cases the sound is weak and lacks dynamics.

The Formovie UST projector that I recently conducted a hands-on feature test of an audio system designed by Bowers & Wilkins with four speakers and Dolby Atmos support. Both of these things really made a difference when watching movies as the projector provides clear dialogue and actual Atmos altitude effects.

The Epson-designed Yamaha 2-speaker audio system appears to be a bit less ambitious than that of the Formova UST, but during a demonstration that featured a performance at an electronic music festival, the sound from the projector was relatively full and clear. and Yamaha’s audio processing modes – one of the company’s specialties – can be used to create the effect of a stadium, theater or sports arena.

From what I could deduce from my short time with it, the EH-LS800B’s performance combined with low gaming latency, salon-friendly appearance, and an app-based setup could make it a strong contender for one of the best 4K 2022 projectors of the year. We look forward to spending some time with him in the near future.

The ads on Netflix are coming sooner than we thought, and it’s all up to Disney

Netflix’s executives look poised to speed up the launch of an ad-supported level of streaming service to steal the march on Disney Plus rivals, according to new reports.

Variation reports (opens in a new tab) that Netflix executives made the decision to launch the new tier on November 1 in most major streamer markets including the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany.

The move marks a departure from the official position of Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-CEOs, revealed in a profit call last month when the pair confirmed that the new tier would not be introduced until 2023.

But now, according to Variety, to try and overtake Disney, which launches a cheaper, ad-supported tier on December 8, Netflix is pushing to launch it in early November.

Netflix did not confirm the move and told reporter Variety that “… still at the beginning of deciding how to run a cheaper, ad-backed tier, and no decisions have been made.”

However, the new report is consistent with information reported to the Wall Street Journal (opens in a new tab)which reported that Microsoft, which provides a platform for advertising on Netflix, has asked buyers to submit initial bids next week and they are looking for big deals.

How much are we talking?

As an opening volley, Netflix wants potential advertisers to pay $ 65 CPM.

CPM is an acronym for cost per thousand impressions, a marketing term used to describe the cost an advertiser pays for a thousand impressions of an ad. For example, if a website publisher charges $ 2 for each CPM, that means the advertiser must pay $ 2 for every 1000 impressions of their ad.

Google’s average CPM is around $ 2.80, but it looks like Netflix is looking to upgrade to premium, and the $ 65 CPM is much higher than the industry standard for streaming pre-ads, which is under $ 20.

In addition, Netflix asked for a minimum commitment of $ 10 million in annual advertising spend from the agency and to block purchases until the end of September. According to a Variety report, Netflix executives expect it to have 500,000 ad-level customers by the end of 2022.

As reported over the weekend, Netflix appears to be aiming for a monthly fee of $ 7- $ 9 per ad tier, with four ad minutes each hour of series programming and pre-rolled ads for movies.

In the first phase of launch, potential advertisers will be able to buy on top of Netflix’s top 10 most watched TV series, with shows like The Crown and Dead To Me likely to be key targets. The first phase, however, will not allow advertisers to serve ads based on geographic location within the territory, so you will not advertise a restaurant that is open in Kansas City but not in Seattle. They also won’t be able to show ads based on age, gender, way of viewing, or time of day, though you suspect all of this will come over time.

Analysis: Why is Netflix trying to beat Disney?

When it comes to showing ads on Netflix, things happened very quickly.

In early March, the company’s chief financial officer, Spencer Neumann, continued to be very conservative about this perspective and went so far as to say “can never say never” when asked about the idea of introducing Netflix advertising, he went so far as an explanation that the movement was “not something in [the brand’s] plans right now. “

Then, on April 20, while talking about earnings, Netflix chief Reed Hastings revealed that the streaming service was then “fairly open” to the possibility of an ad-level existence.

The ad-backed level was then confirmed in July at the company’s next earnings call, but it was clearly notable that it wasn’t on the cards until 2023.

We are now in September and the computation and development that usually takes years has been sped up with ads running on the platform by November 1st.

There is no question why Netflix does this. It needs more revenue, a renewed increase in subscribers, and management believes this is the right thing to do.

Why it needs to stay ahead of Disney is less clear. Apparently, there’s only so much cash out of advertising and lucrative holiday campaigns, and the more deals he can close ahead of time, the better.

How quantum computing can change cybersecurity

Quantum computing still sounds like the realm of science fiction. The promise is that quantum computing can compute more than a hundred million times faster than the fastest supercomputer today. This will have extremely positive implications for solving big problems in science.

However, it has a darker side effect: encryption that would take thousands of years to crack with conventional computers could be removed in minutes, or even seconds. The consequence is that adversaries are now able to collect and store data that they can attack with a quantum computer for years to come. Some commercial and personal data will remain sensitive in the long term. Therefore, it is worth securing your data for the future to withstand quantum attacks.

How quantum computing works

The increased efficiency of quantum computing compared to the existing Von Neumann machines is such a huge leap that one can easily be forgiven for not believing them to be real. But speed is a byproduct of quantum computers, which is clearly different. Traditional computer chips are still based on the computing concept developed by John Von Neumann and published in 1945. In this system, each operation is performed sequentially by reading from an input device, logic processing, and then outputting back to memory.

Even massively parallel supercomputers work in this way. If they perform thousands of operations at the same time, each of them is still performed sequentially by the processor core. GPUs are simpler than processors, but also contain sequential units, albeit with much more parallelism with much more units. Traditional computation also works with bits that have two states – usually represented as 0 and 1. The input will be one state and after the operation the output will be the same or a different state. As problems become more and more complex, with more computational possibilities, breaking them down into individual sequential computations can mean that they go well beyond the capabilities of current architectures.

That’s not how quantum computers work. Rather than containing multiple individual computational cores to perform successive operations on a single bit in parallel, a quantum computer analyzes the probability of an object’s state before measuring it. Known as qubits, these states are undefined properties of an object prior to detection, such as photon polarization or electron spin. Since these quantum states do not have a clear position before the measurement, they mix many different possible positions simultaneously, not just two.

However, although undefined until measured, these mixed states can be “entangled” with the states of other objects in a mathematically related manner. By applying the mathematics of this entanglement to an algorithm, complex problems can be solved essentially in one operation. On the one hand, this can be used for very difficult scientific research, such as predicting the interaction of many particles in a chemical reaction or creating security codes that are much more difficult to break than the present ones. Conversely, they can also be used to break existing codes that would not be possible to crack with current computer technology, as they can pass through many possible solutions simultaneously.

In retrospect, a conventional computer would take around 300 trillion years – 22,000 times the age of the universe – to break the ubiquitous 2048-bit RSA encryption. But a 4099 qubit quantum computer would take as little as 10 seconds, using the Shor algorithm, which was designed to find the integer prime factors used in encryption keys. It is clear that there is a threat to many forms of cryptography. For example, the ubiquitous SSL and TLS protocols used to encrypt Internet connections use 2048-bit RSA keys and are therefore prone to breach by a quantum computer.

How fast are quantum computers today?

The good news is that we haven’t been at this stage yet. While 4099 qubits doesn’t sound like much with 64-core processors now performing over 3 billion operations per second per core, it’s still more than the most powerful quantum computer available today. The IBM Eagle, unveiled in late 2021, is only 127 qubits. Google’s Sycamore is only 53 qubits, Jiuzhang from the University of Science and Technology in China is 76 cubits, and most quantum processors (QPUs) are less than 50 qubits. There are D-Wave “quantum annealing” processors with a maximum of 5760 qubits, but they require a limited set of possible outcomes and cannot run the Shor algorithm required to break the encryption.

However, development is moving forward. Xanadu plans to launch a 216 qubit QPU called Borealis in 2022 and IBM aims to reach 433 qubits in 2022 with Osprey and then 1,121 qubits with Condor in 2023. So while traditional encryption remains for now safe, it won’t happen for much longer. For example, IBM’s roadmap aims to get 4,158 qubits by 2025, making it likely that breaking the 2048-bit RSA in real-time will be possible before 2030, the last year NIST initially he believed he would still be safe. You may not be able to go out and buy a desktop computer with quantum computing by 2030 – the first commercially available D-Wave quantum computer cost $ 15 million when it was shipped in 2017. Prices will drop, but it will likely only be large companies and countries that have QPUs for many years. However, not all of these countries care about our best interests, so the danger is looming.

Strengthening cybersecurity before quantum computing

Fortunately, there is time to prepare for the threat; for example by means of post-quantum cryptography based security products. These products can protect sensitive data today and secure it in the future against attacks from quantum computers.

Current encryption algorithms use either integer factorization, discrete logarithms, or discrete elliptic-curve logarithms, all of which Shor’s algorithm can overcome using a quantum computer. Post-quantum cryptography is moving to alternative approaches that are not amenable to quantum computing. Research is still in its infancy, based on the six basic methods, but products using this technology are already emerging. One example is QST-VPN (opens in a new tab), based on the OpenVPN library, but with post-quantum secure algorithms to protect user data. The server software is delivered via the AWS cloud, with clients for Windows, macOS, and a wide variety of Linux distributions, and offers businesses the ability to increase security right now, not after the quantum horse is gone.

Quantum computing has great potential to revolutionize the speed of computing. Like any new technological development, it has both good and bad implications. But now that we know what cybersecurity awaits – in the not-too-distant future – we can at least prepare ourselves for the beneficial potential of quantum computing to prevail over more nefarious possibilities.

Why OnePlus 10T is the company’s most important phone for sale in the US

The insanely powerful OnePlus 10T will be able to use AT&T’s fastest 5G networks; first for OnePlus phones. In our OnePlus 10T review, we found the phone to be quite a powerful and efficient device, so having this performance passing on network speeds on more networks is a real plus.

The new OnePlus 10T will run on all three major 5G networks in the US, as well as Bell and Telus in Canada. OnePlus mentions support for 5G networks with a lower and medium frequency, but not the more limited (albeit super fast) range of mmWave 5G.

OnePlus 10T is now available for pre-order from OnePlus (opens in a new tab), Amazon (opens in a new tab)and BestBuy online (opens in a new tab) for $ 649 / CAD 849. In the weird pre-order scheme, you can get an upgraded device with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of memory for the same price as the 8 GB / 128 GB version if you order before September 28, but only if you pre-order from Amazon or BestBuy.

Until September 8, OnePlus is offering the same deal on its own site, but after September 8, you’ll have to pay the full price of $ 749 / CAD 999 for the updated device. OnePlus will still throw in either a protective case or an 80W car charger, however.

OnePlus will start selling OnePlus 10T on September 29 and will start normal sales on the same day. OnePlus 10T is a mid-range upgrade to OnePlus 10 Pro, this lowers some of the camera’s capabilities, but also lowers the price to a friendlier mid-range level. You can read our full breakdown of the differences between OnePlus 10T vs OnePlus 10 Pro for more information.

Analysis: Signs of OnePlus Maturation

If you want to sell phones in the US market, the mobile operators are the key, the door, and the whole home. The more support a company offers for different networks, the more buyers can trust that they have been tested and proven for reliability. OnePlus couldn’t sell a phone advertised on the AT&T network without testing and approval. For a company that was a newcomer just a few years ago, this is a great sign and step.

This matters because we don’t want to recommend the phone to buyers if we don’t trust the company that makes it. OnePlus has had a fairly good track record, but is still a new brand in the company of giants. It may have enormous parental support, but its presence in the US market is still limited.

The more work we see from OnePlus to gain the trust of US carriers, the more we can believe OnePlus is maturing as a company, and this makes it easier to recommend the brand. It could also mean we’re seeing more of the best OnePlus phones, most of which only appear in markets outside of the US

Hundreds of iOS apps can leak AWS credentials

Hundreds of mobile apps have been detected leaking Amazon Web Services (AWS) credentials.

Recent Symantec analysis (opens in a new tab) 1,859 publicly available applications were identified, 98% of which are iOS applications that contain encrypted AWS credentials that could put your data at risk.

The company found that over three-quarters (77%) of applications contained valid AWS access tokens for accessing private AWS cloud services, and nearly half (47%) contained valid AWS tokens, which also provided full access to many, often millions , private files via Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

AWS password leaks

According to security researcher Kevin Watkins, some of the causes of the vulnerabilities include the unknown use of vulnerable external software libraries and SDKs, outsourcing of application development, and collaboration between teams, which can create many opportunities for information loss and ineffective communication.

The analysis highlights three real examples of affected companies. The first unnamed B2B company to provide an intranet and messaging platform provided its customers with a mobile SDK that exposed the keys of the company’s cloud infrastructure by revealing things like financial data and private data.

The second example cites a series of iOS banking apps that outsourced the digital ID and authentication component of their respective apps. Personal information about affected users of this SDK has been disclosed, including names and dates of birth. In addition, more than 300,000 biometric digital fingerprints leaked from five banking applications.

Finally, a hospitality company that teamed up with another company to release its technology platform revealed business and customer data from a library that was used by 16 different apps.

The results of the research have been made available to interested companies, but it is not yet known whether the problems have been resolved with immediate effect.

By Hissing computer (opens in a new tab)

The EU wants smartphones and tablets to last longer – here’s why you should care

The EU wants smartphones and tablets sold within its borders to work for at least five years – and that could be great news for everyone, whether you live in Europe or not.

Over the past few years, the EU has been constantly working on the right to repair legislation – which is designed to make it easier for ordinary people to repair old technology. The goal is that if outdated gadgets (such as the iPhone 12 or Samsung Galaxy S21) can be easily repaired and maybe even upgraded, it will reduce the amount of e-waste.

Instead of throwing your phone or tablet away just because one or two components are on the front (and paying for a new iPhone 13 or Samsung Galaxy S22), you can simply replace the parts and keep what you currently have.

The overall goal of the EU with these rules is to bring about circular economy by 2050 (opens in a new tab). In a circular economy, instead of harvesting resources to produce products that eventually turn into waste that is thrown away, this waste would instead be reused as resources for the next generation of products.

Now you can repair your old smartphone instead of letting e-waste build up (Image credit: Peter Dazeley: Getty Images)

His latest move is release draft application (opens in a new tab) which, if implemented, would force manufacturers to supply essential components to professional repairers for up to five years after the introduction of a new phone or tablet in the EU. This includes replacement cameras, batteries, charging ports, speakers, and other important parts. It will also stop manufacturers from publishing updates that negatively impact the device’s battery life over the same period.

Hopefully the best phones and tablets will remain great gadgets for even longer – which would help save money as well as protect the environment. This is the definition of winning.

But what about me? I don’t live in the EU …

But while it’s okay, we know what you are thinking. Why should you worry about this if you live outside the EU?

Well, the EU is made up of 27 countries and is responsible for one-sixth of the world’s economy. As a result, its legislative decisions can have a big impact on everyone else.

For example, many believe that due to new regulations requiring all electronic devices sold in the EU to have at least one USB-C charging port by Fall 2024 (September, October, November), we’ll likely see an Apple Lightning Charger at last. withdraw all over the world. Apple probably can’t afford to disregard the EU without introducing its products there, and it would complicate production too much if Apple decided to roll out an EU-exclusive USB-C iPhone and a lightning-port iPhone elsewhere.

Instead, it will likely fold up and eventually apply a more versatile charging method with an iPhone 14 or iPhone 15.

Photo of the person carrying out the self-service repair

A few years ago, Apple offering self-repair services was a ridiculous idea, but now it’s happening (Image Credit: Apple)

Speaking of Apple, many believe that the EU and France (EU member) are the reasons they launched the self-service repair. Self-service repair allows you to regularly pick up spare parts for your iPhone 12 and iPhone 13, as well as other Apple gadgets.

Despite pushing itself away from self-repair over the years, Apple changed its stance in November 2021 following changes to French law in 2021 and discussions in the EU parliament over how to repair gadgets.

At the moment, the new five-year repair proposal is just a sketch. But if the EU decides to introduce it, we won’t be surprised if manufacturers like Samsung, Apple, Google and others start offering spare parts to countries like the US, UK and Australia. Among other things, because professional garages outside the EU can simply start importing parts.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens, but if you’re looking for other ways to reduce your environmental impact today, you can start small and have a look at the best eco-friendly phone cases.

More people in the US are now using iPhone than Android

More than half of the US population now uses an iOS smartphone, not an Android – for the first time, Apple has overtaken Google since the launch of the iPhone in 2007.

Apple has always been strong in its home market and has a good share of the premium smartphone segment worldwide, but the greater variety of Android devices and price points has made it the dominant operating system.

Android first overtook iOS in the early years of the modern smartphone in 2010, and Apple never regained its superiority.

Smartphone sales in China

However, according to new data published by Counterpoint research (opens in a new tab)IPhone “active installed base” is now larger than Android.

This differs from shipments that reflect the newer trends on a quarterly basis, and this is an area where Apple is already doing well, meaning it is closing the gap.

For the industry, this means that Apple has a much larger market for selling its services, such as video, games. At a time when the smartphone market is saturating, these subscriptions are a growing source of recurring service revenue and tie consumers to the Apple ecosystem.

Third-party app developers are also included, meaning Apple will earn more commission and users will receive more optimized software.

The company could further increase its lead in the coming weeks with the latest flagship iPhone 14, set to hit the shelves ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season.

This PDF reader app has a million downloads on the Play Store – but it’s just adware

Experts warn that one of the most popular PDF reading apps on the Google Play Store is actually just a delivery tool for potentially harmful adware.

An investigation by Malwarebytes found that an application with the ingenious name “PDF Reader – Document Viewer” did nothing of the sort, but instead flooded users’ devices with annoying full-screen ads even when not in use.

The company warns that the app already has over a million downloads and that Google has yet to remove it, meaning even more victims could soon become addicted.

Pain-DF Reader

In a blog post (opens in a new tab) In describing the scam, Malwarebytes notes what the app looks like to deceive users by not showing ads immediately after being installed.

Instead, it waits for several hours, making it difficult to tell which app caused the problem. However, when activated, the app fills the user’s home screen with full-page ads, blocking them from accessing the device unless they click the ad.

Video ads are also displayed that effectively prevent the user from accessing the device, and the ads start to run more frequently the longer the app remains unchecked.

Malwarebytes notes that a few red flags appeared on the first page listing Google Play apps that may have informed users that this is not a legitimate service. This includes a content rating of “Mature 17+” – quite unusual for an Android PDF reader, and the developer name of “Fairy Games” – again, not something you usually associate with such a service.

“If you have many applications installed on a mobile device, it is very difficult to track them down,” noted Malwarebytes. “Another reason for not blindly trusting you are safe when installing exclusively from Google Play. Even though the Play Store is by far the safest place to install Android apps, it can also cause bugs from time to time. Having an anti-malware scanner, or in this case anti-adware, is a good idea. Stay safe there! “

Microsoft’s latest attempt to ditch Google Chrome for Edge is sure to fail

Microsoft has released a new update to the Edge web browser that includes a new sidebar that allows you to reply to email, use parts of Office, and more.

After confirming that it is in development in advance, the new sidebar is another attempt by the company to distract you from other browsers like Google Chrome, Opera, and more.

As Microsoft explains in blog post (opens in a new tab) for some reason, you can access many features like Office files, Outlook email, play games and use useful tools like clock, calculator and dictionary.

(Image credit: TechRadar)

You can run it by going to the three dots in the top left corner and it will appear “Show sidebar‘option at the bottom or by pressing Ctrl + Shift + /. You cannot resize, but you have six options to choose from.

The “Discover” feature is welcome because it brings you fun facts, from recipes to movie trivia, as you browse the web. There is also a calculator and other functions instead of reaching for the taskbar.

However, the Office tab leaves much to be desired as clicking on any application launches the website for those in question. The same is true for games, which leads us to wonder what the point of this sidebar is.

Spyware toolbar in the web browser

(Image credit: TechRadar)

It almost alludes to the pop-up bars of older web browsers where you can install a search bar below the address bar. Or if you were to install an application there would be an option to install the toolbar.

The above is an example of how you can install a few, most of which aren’t terribly useful. The sidebar reminds me of this as it’s essentially a link group and some handy tools but not much else.

Microsoft can do better here, rather than trying (and not trying) to play catch-up on other web browsers.