Tech

after-32-years,-one-of-the-’net’s-oldest-software-archives-is-shutting-down

After 32 years, one of the ’Net’s oldest software archives is shutting down

Ancient server dept. —

Hobbes OS/2 Archive: “As of April 15th, 2024, this site will no longer exist.”

Box art for IBM OS/2 Warp version 3, an OS released in 1995 that competed with Windows.

Enlarge / Box art for IBM OS/2 Warp version 3, an OS released in 1995 that competed with Windows.

IBM

In a move that marks the end of an era, New Mexico State University (NMSU) recently announced the impending closure of its Hobbes OS/2 Archive on April 15, 2024. For over three decades, the archive has been a key resource for users of the IBM OS/2 operating system and its successors, which once competed fiercely with Microsoft Windows.

In a statement made to The Register, a representative of NMSU wrote, “We have made the difficult decision to no longer host these files on hobbes.nmsu.edu. Although I am unable to go into specifics, we had to evaluate our priorities and had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service.”

Hobbes is hosted by the Department of Information & Communication Technologies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In the official announcement, the site reads, “After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. As of April 15th, 2024, this site will no longer exist.”

OS/2 version 1.2, released in late 1989.

OS/2 version 1.2, released in late 1989.

os2museum.com

We reached out to New Mexico State University to inquire about the history of the Hobbes archive but did not receive a response. The earliest record we’ve found of the Hobbes archive online is this 1992 Walnut Creek CD-ROM collection that gathered up the contents of the archive for offline distribution. At around 32 years old, minimum, that makes Hobbes one of the oldest software archives on the Internet, akin to the University of Michigan’s archives and ibiblio at UNC.

Archivists such as Jason Scott of the Internet Archive have stepped up to say that the files hosted on Hobbes are safe and already mirrored elsewhere. “Nobody should worry about Hobbes, I’ve got Hobbes handled,” wrote Scott on Mastodon in early January. OS/2 World.com also published a statement about making a mirror. But it’s still notable whenever such an old and important piece of Internet history bites the dust.

Like many archives, Hobbes started as an FTP site. “The primary distribution of files on the Internet were via FTP servers,” Scott tells Ars Technica. “And as FTP servers went down, they would also be mirrored as subdirectories in other FTP servers. Companies like CDROM.COM / Walnut Creek became ways to just get a CD-ROM of the items, but they would often make the data available at http://ftp.cdrom.com to download.”

The Hobbes site is a priceless digital time capsule. You can still find the Top 50 Downloads page, which includes sound and image editors, and OS/2 builds of the Thunderbird email client. The archive contains thousands of OS/2 games, applications, utilities, software development tools, documentation, and server software dating back to the launch of OS/2 in 1987. There’s a certain charm in running across OS/2 wallpapers from 1990, and even the archive’s Update Policy is a historical gem—last updated on March 12, 1999.

The legacy of OS/2

The final major IBM release of OS/2, Warp version 4.0, as seen running in an emulator.

Enlarge / The final major IBM release of OS/2, Warp version 4.0, as seen running in an emulator.

OS/2 began as a joint venture between IBM and Microsoft, undertaken as a planned replacement for IBM PC DOS (also called “MS-DOS” in the form sold by Microsoft for PC clones). Despite advanced capabilities like 32-bit processing and multitasking, OS/2 later competed with and struggled to gain traction against Windows. The partnership between IBM and Microsoft dissolved after the success of Windows 3.0, leading to divergent paths in OS strategies for the two companies.

Through iterations like the Warp series, OS/2 established a key presence in niche markets that required high stability, such as ATMs and the New York subway system. Today, its legacy continues in specialized applications and in newer versions (like eComStation) maintained by third-party vendors—despite being overshadowed in the broader market by Linux and Windows.

A footprint like that is worth preserving, and a loss of one of OS/2’s primary archives, even if mirrored elsewhere, is a cultural blow. Apparently, Hobbes has reportedly almost disappeared before but received a stay of execution. In the comments section for an article on The Register, someone named “TrevorH” wrote, “This is not the first time that Hobbes has announced it’s going away. Last time it was rescued after a lot of complaints and a number of students or faculty came forward to continue to maintain it.”

As the final shutdown approaches in April, the legacy of Hobbes is a reminder of the importance of preserving the digital heritage of software for future generations—so that decades from now, historians can look back and see how things got to where they are today.

After 32 years, one of the ’Net’s oldest software archives is shutting down Read More »

ryzen-8000g-review:-an-integrated-gpu-that-can-beat-a-graphics-card,-for-a-price

Ryzen 8000G review: An integrated GPU that can beat a graphics card, for a price

The most interesting thing about AMD's Ryzen 7 8700G CPU is the Radeon 780M GPU that's attached to it.

Enlarge / The most interesting thing about AMD’s Ryzen 7 8700G CPU is the Radeon 780M GPU that’s attached to it.

Andrew Cunningham

Put me on the short list of people who can get excited about the humble, much-derided integrated GPU.

Yes, most of them are afterthoughts, designed for office desktops and laptops that will spend most of their lives rendering 2D images to a single monitor. But when integrated graphics push forward, it can open up possibilities for people who want to play games but can only afford a cheap desktop (or who have to make do with whatever their parents will pay for, which was the big limiter on my PC gaming experience as a kid).

That, plus an unrelated but accordant interest in building small mini-ITX-based desktops, has kept me interested in AMD’s G-series Ryzen desktop chips (which it sometimes calls “APUs,” to distinguish them from the Ryzen CPUs). And the Ryzen 8000G chips are a big upgrade from the 5000G series that immediately preceded them (this makes sense, because as we all know the number 8 immediately follows the number 5).

We’re jumping up an entire processor socket, one CPU architecture, three GPU architectures, and up to a new generation of much faster memory; especially for graphics, it’s a pretty dramatic leap. It’s an integrated GPU that can credibly beat the lowest tier of currently available graphics cards, replacing a $100–$200 part with something a lot more energy-efficient.

As with so many current-gen Ryzen chips, still-elevated pricing for the socket AM5 platform and the DDR5 memory it requires limit the 8000G series’ appeal, at least for now.

From laptop to desktop

AMD's first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors are what the company used to call

Enlarge / AMD’s first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors are what the company used to call “APUs,” a combination of a fast integrated GPU and a reasonably capable CPU.

AMD

The 8000G chips use the same Zen 4 CPU architecture as the Ryzen 7000 desktop chips, but the way the rest of the chip is put together is pretty different. Like past APUs, these are actually laptop silicon (in this case, the Ryzen 7040/8040 series, codenamed Phoenix and Phoenix 2) repackaged for a desktop processor socket.

Generally, the real-world impact of this is pretty mild; in most ways, the 8700G and 8600G will perform a lot like any other Zen 4 CPU with the same number of cores (our benchmarks mostly bear this out). But to the extent that there is a difference, the Phoenix silicon will consistently perform just a little worse, because it has half as much L3 cache. AMD’s Ryzen X3D chips revolve around the performance benefits of tons of cache, so you can see why having less would be detrimental.

The other missing feature from the Ryzen 7000 desktop chips is PCI Express 5.0 support—Ryzen 8000G tops out at PCIe 4.0. This might, maybe, one day in the distant future, eventually lead to some kind of user-observable performance difference. Some recent GPUs use an 8-lane PCIe 4.0 interface instead of the typical 16 lanes, which limits performance slightly. But PCIe 5.0 SSDs remain rare (and PCIe 4.0 peripherals remain extremely fast), so it probably shouldn’t top your list of concerns.

The Ryzen 5 8500G is a lot different from the 8700G and 8600G, since some of the CPU cores in the Phoenix 2 chips are based on Zen 4c rather than Zen 4. These cores have all the same capabilities as regular Zen 4 ones—unlike Intel’s E-cores—but they’re optimized to take up less space rather than hit high clock speeds. They were initially made for servers, where cramming lots of cores into a small amount of space is more important than having a smaller number of faster cores, but AMD is also using them to make some of its low-end consumer chips physically smaller and presumably cheaper to produce. AMD didn’t send us a Ryzen 8500G for review, so we can’t see exactly how Phoenix 2 stacks up in a desktop.

The 8700G and 8600G chips are also the only ones that come with AMD’s “Ryzen AI” feature, the brand AMD is using to refer to processors with a neural processing unit (NPU) included. Sort of like GPUs or video encoding/decoding blocks, these are additional bits built into the chip that handle things that CPUs can’t do very efficiently—in this case, machine learning and AI workloads.

Most PCs still don’t have NPUs, and as such they are only barely used in current versions of Windows (Windows 11 offers some webcam effects that will take advantage of NPU acceleration, but for now that’s mostly it). But expect this to change as they become more common and as more AI-accelerated text, image, and video creating and editing capabilities are built into modern operating systems.

The last major difference is the GPU. Ryzen 7000 includes a pair of RDNA2 compute units that perform more or less like Intel’s desktop integrated graphics: good enough to render your desktop on a monitor or two, but not much else. The Ryzen 8000G chips include up to 12 RDNA3 CUs, which—as we’ve already seen in laptops and portable gaming systems like the Asus ROG Ally that use the same silicon—is enough to run most games, if just barely in some cases.

That gives AMD’s desktop APUs a unique niche. You can use them in cases where you can’t afford a dedicated GPU—for a time during the big graphics card shortage in 2020 and 2021, a Ryzen 5700G was actually one of the only ways to build a budget gaming PC. Or you can use them in cases where a dedicated GPU won’t fit, like super-small mini ITX-based desktops.

The main argument that AMD makes is the affordability one, comparing the price of a Ryzen 8700G to the price of an Intel Core i5-13400F and a GeForce GTX 1650 GPU (this card is nearly five years old, but it remains Nvidia’s newest and best GPU available for less than $200).

Let’s check on performance first, and then we’ll revisit pricing.

Ryzen 8000G review: An integrated GPU that can beat a graphics card, for a price Read More »

wear-os’s-most-consistent-oem-quits:-fossil-stops-making-smartwatches

Wear OS’s most consistent OEM quits: Fossil stops making smartwatches

The Samsung impactor is still visible from space —

Despite years of loyalty, Google dropped Fossil like a rock once Samsung came back.

The Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch.

Enlarge / The Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch.

Fossil

Fossil was the only brand keeping Google’s Wear OS alive for years, but now the fashion brand is quitting the smartwatch market. Just before the weekend, the company confirmed to The Verge: “We have made the strategic decision to exit the smartwatch business.” The company says existing smartwatches will continue to get software updates “for the next few years” while it refocuses on traditional watches and jewelry.

Wear OS is out of the dark ages now, but for years Fossil was the OS’s only lifeline. Back in the days when Qualcomm was strangling the OS with lackluster SoC updates, Fossil was the only company that kept the dream alive. Fossil jumped into the Android Wear/Wear OS market in 2015 and has been the only steady source of Android smartwatch hardware since then. All the big companies like Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei, Motorola, and Asus made watches for only a year or two and quit.

In 2021, despite years of loyalty, Google dropped Fossil like a rock when Samsung offered to come back to the Wear OS ecosystem. Google lured Samsung away from its in-house Tizen OS with preferential treatment, including exclusive rights to the new “Wear OS 3” release and exclusive apps. That year, 2021, featured head-to-head August Wear OS releases of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 and Fossil’s Gen 6 smartwatch. Samsung’s watch had a faster, Samsung-made SoC, ran Wear OS 3, and cost $250, while Fossil was stuck with Wear OS 2, a slower Qualcomm chip, and a $300 price tag. Fossil would barely be able to compete with Samsung if the playing field were level; but add to that Samsung’s exclusive chips and Google’s preferential treatment, and Fossil’s watches never stood a chance. The Gen 6 will be the company’s last smartwatch release.

Those years of releases for Fossil never resulted in huge sales. The IDC’s VP of Data & Analytics, Francisco Jeronimo, revealed that Fossil peaked at 6.7 percent smartwatch market share in 2015 and only sold 19 million units, or 2.2 percent of the total market from 2015-2023. During that eight-year run, Jeronimo says Apple shipped 248 million watches.

Wear OS’s most consistent OEM quits: Fossil stops making smartwatches Read More »

i-abandoned-openlitespeed-and-went-back-to-good-ol’-nginx

I abandoned OpenLiteSpeed and went back to good ol’ Nginx

Adventures in server babysitting —

One weather site’s sudden struggles, and musings on why change isn’t always good.

Ish is on fire, yo.

Enlarge / Ish is on fire, yo.

Since 2017, in what spare time I have (ha!), I help my colleague Eric Berger host his Houston-area weather forecasting site, Space City Weather. It’s an interesting hosting challenge—on a typical day, SCW does maybe 20,000–30,000 page views to 10,000–15,000 unique visitors, which is a relatively easy load to handle with minimal work. But when severe weather events happen—especially in the summer, when hurricanes lurk in the Gulf of Mexico—the site’s traffic can spike to more than a million page views in 12 hours. That level of traffic requires a bit more prep to handle.

Space City Weather!” data-height=”2008″ data-width=”2560″ href=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Screenshot-2024-01-24-at-9.02.05%E2%80%AFAM.jpg”>Hey, it's <a href=Space City Weather!” height=”235″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Screenshot-2024-01-24-at-9.02.05%E2%80%AFAM.jpg” width=”300″>

Lee Hutchinson

For a very long time, I ran SCW on a backend stack made up of HAProxy for SSL termination, Varnish Cache for on-box caching, and Nginx for the actual web server application—all fronted by Cloudflare to absorb the majority of the load. (I wrote about this setup at length on Ars a few years ago for folks who want some more in-depth details.) This stack was fully battle-tested and ready to devour whatever traffic we threw at it, but it was also annoyingly complex, with multiple cache layers to contend with, and that complexity made troubleshooting issues more difficult than I would have liked.

So during some winter downtime two years ago, I took the opportunity to jettison some complexity and reduce the hosting stack down to a single monolithic web server application: OpenLiteSpeed.

Out with the old, in with the new

I didn’t know too much about OpenLiteSpeed (“OLS” to its friends) other than that it’s mentioned a bunch in discussions about WordPress hosting—and since SCW runs WordPress, I started to get interested. OLS seemed to get a lot of praise for its integrated caching, especially when WordPress was involved; it was purported to be quite quick compared to Nginx; and, frankly, after five-ish years of admining the same stack, I was interested in changing things up. OpenLiteSpeed it was!

check my blog. Yeah, I still have a blog. I’m old.” data-height=”1442″ data-width=”2318″ href=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Screen-Shot-2022-06-09-at-6.37.47-AM-1.jpg”>The OLS admin console, showing vhosts. This is from my personal web server rather than the Space City Weather server, but it looks the same. If you want some deeper details on the OLS config I was using, <a href=check my blog. Yeah, I still have a blog. I’m old.” height=”398″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Screen-Shot-2022-06-09-at-6.37.47-AM-1.jpg” width=”640″>

Enlarge / The OLS admin console, showing vhosts. This is from my personal web server rather than the Space City Weather server, but it looks the same. If you want some deeper details on the OLS config I was using, check my blog. Yeah, I still have a blog. I’m old.

Lee Hutchinson

The first significant adjustment to deal with was that OLS is primarily configured through an actual GUI, with all the annoying potential issues that brings with it (another port to secure, another password to manage, another public point of entry into the backend, more PHP resources dedicated just to the admin interface). But the GUI was fast, and it mostly exposed the settings that needed exposing. Translating the existing Nginx WordPress configuration into OLS-speak was a good acclimation exercise, and I eventually settled on Cloudflare tunnels as an acceptable method for keeping the admin console hidden away and notionally secure.

Just a taste of the options that await within the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin.

Enlarge / Just a taste of the options that await within the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin.

Lee Hutchinson

The other major adjustment was the OLS LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress, which is the primary tool one uses to configure how WordPress itself interacts with OLS and its built-in cache. It’s a massive plugin with pages and pages of configurable options, many of which are concerned with driving utilization of the Quic.Cloud CDN service (which is operated by LiteSpeed Technology, the company that created OpenLiteSpeed and its for-pay sibling, LiteSpeed).

Getting the most out of WordPress on OLS meant spending some time in the plugin, figuring out which of the options would help and which would hurt. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are plenty of ways in there to get oneself into stupid amounts of trouble by being too aggressive with caching.) Fortunately, Space City Weather provides a great testing ground for web servers, being a nicely active site with a very cache-friendly workload, and so I hammered out a starting configuration with which I was reasonably happy and, while speaking the ancient holy words of ritual, flipped the cutover switch. HAProxy, Varnish, and Nginx went silent, and OLS took up the load.

I abandoned OpenLiteSpeed and went back to good ol’ Nginx Read More »

the-year-of-windows-on-arm?-google-launches-official-chrome-builds.

The year of Windows on Arm? Google launches official Chrome builds.

Armed and ready —

Chrome for Windows-on-Arm should hit stable in time for Qualcomm’s big launch.

The Chrome nightly download page with an important section highlighted.

Enlarge / The Chrome nightly download page with an important section highlighted.

Ron Amadeo

Chrome is landing on a new platform: Windows on Arm. We don’t have an official announcement yet, but X user Pedro Justo was the first to spot that the Chrome Canary page now quietly hosts binaries for “Windows 11 Arm.”

Chrome has run on Windows for a long time, but that’s the x86 version. It also supports various Arm OSes, like Android, Chrome OS, and Mac OS. There’s also Chromium, the open source codebase on Chrome, which has run on Windows Arm for a while now, thanks mostly to Microsoft’s Edge browser being a Chromium derivative. The official “Google Chrome” has never been supported on Windows on Arm until now, though.

Windows may be a huge platform, but “Windows on Arm” is not. Apple’s switch to the Arm architecture has been a battery life revelation for laptops, and in the wake of that, interest in Windows on Arm has picked up. A big inflection point will be the release of laptops with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC in mid-2024. Assuming Qualcomm’s pre-launch hype pans out, this will be the first Arm on Windows chip to be in the same class as Apple Silicon. Previously, Windows on Arm could only run Chrome as an x86 app via a slow translation layer, so getting the world’s most popular browser to a native quality level in time for launch will be a big deal for Qualcomm.

The “Canary” channel is Chrome’s nightly builds channel, so fresh Arm builds should be arriving at a rapid pace. Usually, Canary features take about two months to hit the stable channels, which would be plenty of time for the new Snapdragon chip. It’s hard to know if Google will stick to that timeline, as this is a whole new architecture/OS combo. But again, most of the work has been ongoing for years now. The next steps would be rolling out Windows Arm dev and beta channels soon.

Listing image by Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson

The year of Windows on Arm? Google launches official Chrome builds. Read More »

apple-announces-sweeping-eu-app-store-policy-changes—including-sideloading

Apple announces sweeping EU App Store policy changes—including sideloading

iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max lined up on a table

Enlarge / The iPhone 15 lineup.

To comply with European Union regulations, Apple has introduced sweeping changes that make iOS and Apple’s other operating systems more open. The changes are far-reaching and touch many parts of the user experience on the iPhone. They’ll be coming as part of iOS 17.4 in March.

Apple will introduce “new APIs and tools that enable developers to offer their iOS apps for download from alternative app marketplaces,” as well as a new framework and set of APIs that allow third parties to set up and manage those stores—essentially new forms of apps that can download other apps without going through the App Store. That includes the ability to manage updates for other developers’ apps that are distributed through the marketplaces.

The company will also offer APIs and a new framework for third-party web browsers to use browser engines other than Safari’s WebKit. Until now, browsers like Chrome and Firefox were still built on top of Apple’s tech. They essentially were mobile Safari, but with bookmarks and other features tied to alternative desktop browsers.

The changes also extend to NFC technology and contactless payments. Previously, only Apple Pay could fully access those features on the iPhone. Now, Apple will introduce new APIs that will let developers of banking and wallet apps gain more comparable access.

Developers will have new options for using alternative payment service providers within apps and for directing users to complete payments on external websites via link-outs. They’ll be able to use their apps to tell users about promotions and deals that are offered outside of those apps. (Apple warns that it will not be able to provide refunds or support for customers who purchased something outside its own payment system.)

Apple says it will give users in the European Union the ability to pick default App Stores or default contactless payment apps, just like they already can for email clients or web browsers. EU users will be prompted to pick a default browser when they first open Safari in iOS 17.4 or later, too.

Developers can “submit additional requests for interoperability with iPhone and iOS hardware and software features” via a new form.

All of the above changes impact only the EU; Apple won’t bring them to the United States or other regions at this time. There is one notable change that extends beyond Europe, though: Apple says that “developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog.” That opens the door for services like Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass or Nvidia’s GeForce Now.

Apple notes that “each experience made available in an app on the App Store will be required to adhere to all App Store Review Guidelines,” which could still pose some barriers for game streamers.

Apple announces sweeping EU App Store policy changes—including sideloading Read More »

the-pixel-8-pro-can-now-read-body-temps,-if-you-swipe-it-across-your-face

The Pixel 8 Pro can now read body temps, if you swipe it across your face

Google, you know they make smartwatches, right? —

The phone needs a four-second forehead scan to read your temperature.

  • Step 1: get the phone as close to your face as possible.

    Google

  • Step two: Over a period of four seconds, move the phone from the center of your forehead to your temple.

    Google

  • Do all that correctly and you’ll get a body temperature reading.

    Google

Most Pixel 8 Pro owners have probably forgotten that there’s an infrared temperature sensor on the back of the phone next to the LED camera flash. But it’s still there, and almost four months after launch, it’s getting a new feature: body temperature measurement. The four-month hold-up is because body temperature sensors are regulated as medical devices, so Google needed FDA approval to enable the feature. The company has a blog post detailing the feature, which says: “In clinical trials, our software algorithm was able to calculate body temperature in the range of 96.9°F–104°F (36.1°C–40°C) to within ±0.3°C when compared with an FDA-cleared temporal artery thermometer. In layman’s terms, this means the Pixel body temperature feature is about as accurate as other temporal artery thermometers.” The feature only works in the US.

Like everything about the Pixel 8 Pro’s temperature sensor, the basic feature idea sounds fine (if not several years late), but the execution leaves much to be desired. Google has a support page detailing how to use the body temperature sensor, and you’ll need to slowly swipe the phone across your entire face over four seconds to get a reading. The sensor needs to be extremely close to your face to work; Google says it wants the phone “as close as possible to the skin without touching.” If you wear glasses, you’ll need to take them off, because the phone needs to be so close to your face it will hit them. If you manage all that, you’ll get a body temperature reading that you can save to your Fitbit profile.

We found the temperature sensor to be the biggest negative mark in our Pixel 8 Pro review. I’m not entirely sure a well-executed temperature sensor would be a useful feature on a phone, but the Pixel 8’s temperature sensor is just such a hassle to use. Besides forehead measuring, it can also check the temperature of objects, but it only has a range of two inches. There’s also no camera feed or any targeting system to be sure of what you’re measuring—you get a blank screen with a “measure” button, you press it, and a number appears. Temperature sensing also stops the instant it reads any single temperature—it’s not continuous. All the user experience problems made the temperature sensor instantly forgettable. The body temperature addition isn’t helping and feels like a feature that would be better suited for a smartwatch.

The feature is rolling out as part of the January 2024 Pixel update (this isn’t the Google Play update that’s bricking phone storage. That’s a different update!). It also includes the “Circle to Search” feature that was announced during the Galaxy S24 launch, and AI-powered “Magic compose” for the Google Messages app. Google says the features will roll out “over the next few weeks.”

The Pixel 8 Pro can now read body temps, if you swipe it across your face Read More »

pixel-phones-are-broken-again-with-critical-storage-permission-bug

Pixel phones are broken again with critical storage permission bug

Did Google lay off all their bug testers? —

Users say they can’t access their device storage after January 2024 update.

Pixel phones are broken again with critical storage permission bug

It’s almost hard to believe this is happening again, but Pixel users are reporting that an OS update has locked them out of their phones’ internal storage, causing app crashes, non-functional phones, and a real possibility of data loss. Over in the Google Pixel subreddit, user “Liv-Lyf” compiled a dozen posts that complain of an “internal storage access issue” and blame the January 2024 Google Play system update.

In October, Pixel phones faced a nightmare storage bug that caused bootlooping, inaccessible devices, and data loss. The recent post says, “The symptoms are all the same” as that October bug, with “internal storage not getting mounted, camera crashes, Files app shows no files, screenshots not getting saved, internal storage shows up empty in ADB Shell, etc.” When asked for a comment, Google told Ars, “We’re aware of this issue and are looking into it,” and a Google rep posted effectively the same statement in the comments.

In the October bug, users were locked out of their system storage due to a strange permissions issue. Having a phone try to run without any user access to your own storage is a mess. It breaks the camera and screenshots because you can’t write media. File Managers read “0 bytes” for every file and folder. Nothing works over USB, and some phones, understandably, just fail to boot. The issue in October arrived as part of the initial Android 14 release and only affected devices that had multiple users set up.

Picking through the posts, it’s unclear if there’s a certain type of user that should be more wary of the January 2024 Google Play update. Some users say they haven’t enabled the multiple-user functionality, but several mention having a work profile enabled. Work Profiles aren’t quite “multiple users,” but the system leverages a lot of multi-user features to let users have duplicate “personal” and “work” copies of the same apps. Many users don’t say if they have a work profile or not.

The “January 2024 Google Play system update” isn’t the usual OTA system update but is a Project Mainline or APEX module. These take core system components and wrap them up into easily distributable packaging where they can be delivered via the Play Store, much like an app, but with way more permissions (only Google can make Play system updates). Google posts release notes for Play system updates, and there’s nothing in the January 2024 update that jumps out as the potential cause of a storage access problem. You can check your current version on a Pixel phone by going to Settings, Security & Privacy, then “System & updates.” At the bottom, you’ll see a month and year for your “Google Play system update” level. DO NOT tap on this section because that will bring up the update screen.

Google’s “we’re looking into it” statement doesn’t give users much guidance on how they should deal with this in the meantime. A good first step, at any time, is to ensure you have backups of all your important phone data. Obviously, avoiding the January 2024 Google Play system update is recommended for now, but I don’t think there’s a way for users to do that. Google Play system updates don’t offer users any controls, so you’re mostly hoping an automatic update doesn’t brick your phone. The good news is that the Google Play system often fails to check for updates. They get installed on reboot, so try not to power cycle your phone. Disabling a work profile and any other multi-user features sounds like a good idea if you can manage that. There are instructions here.

Pixel phones are broken again with critical storage permission bug Read More »

netflix,-hungry-for-more-growth,-signals-more-price-hikes

Netflix, hungry for more growth, signals more price hikes

“pay a little extra” —

Basic ad-free plan being ripped from subscribers in Canada, UK first.

Jason Bateman and Laura Linney in Ozark

Enlarge / Jason Bateman and Laura Linney in the Netflix original series Ozark.

Netflix subscribers can expect more price hikes as the company looks to grow revenue in 2024. In its Q4 2023 letter to shareholders, Netflix also revealed plans to eliminate the cheapest ad-free plan available to users.

In the January 23 letter (PDF), Netflix said:

As we invest in and improve Netflix, we’ll occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra to reflect those improvements, which in turn helps drive the positive flywheel of additional investment to further improve and grow our service.

The statement will be unsavory for frugal streamers who have recently endured price hikes from Netflix and other streaming services. In January 2022, Netflix increased the price of its Basic no-ads tier from $8.99 per month to $9.99/month. In October 2023, that same plan went up to $11.99/month. Meanwhile, Netflix’s Premium ad-free plan increased from $17.99/month to $19.99/month in January 2022 and then to $22.99/month in October.

Netflix has attributed its price hikes to added features, like 4K streaming and gaming. But subscription fees remain the biggest source of revenue for Netflix, giving it obvious reason to leave a door open for even more price hikes in the near future.

Netflix has also used price hikes to encourage users to subscribe to its ad tier, where it has made more average revenue per user. Netflix with ads has cost $6.99/month since launching in November 2022 and has seen feature improvements, like moving from 720p resolution streams to 1080p.

Killing off the cheapest ad-free plan

In another attempt to push subscribers into watching ads on Netflix, the streaming company stopped offering new subscribers the aforementioned $11.99/month, ad-free Basic plan. It included 720p resolution, downloadable content, and support for one device. The change spiked the cheapest price for ad-free Netflix 55.06 percent to $15.49/month.

Netflix customers who were already subscribed to the ad-less Basic plan have been allowed to keep using it. But it seems like that grace period will soon end.

Netflix’s letter reads:

The ads plan now accounts for 40 percent of all Netflix sign-ups in our ads markets and we’re looking to retire our Basic plan in some of our ads countries, starting with Canada and the UK in Q2 and taking it from there.

Netflix originally cut the Basic plan in Canada before following suit in the US and UK. Combined with the fact that most of Netflix’s North American users are from the US, it’s expected that Netflix will cut the Basic plan in the US, too.

Netflix’s letter said ad membership grew when it stopped offering the Basic ad-free plan to new subscribers. Ad tier membership grew almost 70 percent quarter over quarter in Q4 2023. The tier has over 23 million subscribers, per Bloomberg.

During an earnings call on Tuesday, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters noted Netflix’s 2024 priorities as including “pricing optimization” to help improve operating margins and grow revenue and its ad business.

Netflix’s ad business: years of work ahead

Netflix said this week that it has 260.28 million subscribers globally (for comparison, Disney+ has 66.1 million subscribers, Hulu 48.5 million, and Amazon Prime Video is estimated to have about 180.1 million). That’s after adding 13.1 million subscribers in Q4 2023, Netflix’s biggest Q4 yet.

But despite currently besting competitors in subscriber count and cash flow, Netflix faces similar challenges when it comes to wooing advertisers that may be unaccustomed to working with streaming services (which previously had limited advertising opportunities). While Netflix has seen revenue grow from other efforts, like password crackdowns and price hikes, it plans to focus heavily on scaling its ad business over the coming years.

“I’d say we got years of work ahead of us to take the ads business to the point where it’s a material impactor to our general business,” Peters said.

Netflix is already trying to strong-arm customers onto its ad plan. The streaming bundle plan that T-Mobile offers will no longer include ad-free Netflix. Anyone who had ad-less Netflix through a T-Mobile bundle is getting downgraded. Peters said this week that under the previous bundle, “it was hard to make the economics work for everyone.”

Ultimately, the amount of ad dollars up for grabs, including from the declining linear TV networks, is too tasty for streaming services to pass up.

On Tuesday, Netflix announced a $5 billion, 10-year deal to stream World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE’s) Raw live on Netflix. The company was able to win a deal out from long-time Raw network USA, which is owned by NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service also has the rights to some WWE events. But Netflix’s seizure of Raw illustrates its interest in ad dollars from live sports and its pull and budget compared to aging broadcast and cable networks. Looking ahead, we expect to see Netflix consider additional live events that can appeal to advertisers.

Netflix said this week that it’s not anticipating the same amount of subscriber growth that it enjoyed in 2023 in 2024. But it does expect double-digit revenue growth. That newfound money has to come from somewhere. If Netflix can’t pull it all from new subscribers, it will force it out of existing customers through higher prices and ads.

Netflix, hungry for more growth, signals more price hikes Read More »

oneplus-12-gets-$800-us-release-along-with-the-interesting-$500-oneplus-12r

OnePlus 12 gets $800 US release along with the interesting $500 OnePlus 12R

If only the software was better —

$800 and $500 are some pretty sweet price points.

  • The OnePlus 12.

    OnePlus

  • The design looks just like last year, but there’s this new marble green color.

    OnePlus

  • This weird circle + wraparound camera bump is still here.

    OnePlus

  • The top and bottom. There’s an IR blaster on the top.

    OnePlus

  • The black version.

    OnePlus

  • The sides. That camera bump makes the phone unstable on a table.

    OnePlus

OnePlus previously announced the OnePlus 12 flagship smartphone in December, but now it’s getting a US release and pricing. The phone ships on February 6 in the US and Canada with a $800 price tag. OnePlus is also bringing the rather interesting OnePlus 12R to the US, a 6.8-inch device running last year’s flagship Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, for $500.

$800 is a pretty good price for a flagship phone. Samsung’s 6.8-inch flagship is the $1,300 Galaxy S24. The Pixel 8 Pro is a $1,000, so OnePlus is undercutting the competition quite a bit. As we said, this device was already announced in December, but the highlights are an impressive 5400 mAh battery and super fast charging. The phone has 80 W proprietary wired charging in the US and 100 W internationally, while wireless charging is 50 W. OnePlus says 80 W is still fast enough to go from 1 percent to 100 percent in 30 minutes. OnePlus only promises an IP65 dust and water resistance rating, so it’s not submergible, which is worse than most flagships. Other than that, it’s a lot of normal flagship things: a 6.82-inch, 3168×1440 120 Hz OLED that—unlike Samsung and Google—is still curved, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and too many cameras.

The 24GB of RAM/1TB of storage spec apparently isn’t coming to the US—the $800 model is 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and there’s a single higher tier of 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $900. The white color is also not arriving here. You get black for $800, with the $900 model arriving in black or green.

  • I had to double-check this, but this is OnePlus 12R. It’s nearly identical to the other phone.

    OnePlus

  • There’s still a mute switch on the side there.

    OnePlus

  • The sides.

    OnePlus

  • The top and bottom.

    OnePlus

As for the OnePlus 12R, these “R” models usually don’t come to the US, but this one is headed here on February 13. On the surface, you’re not missing a lot with the lower price. There’s still a 6.78-inch 120Hz OLED display, and while the resolution is 2780×1264 that’s still totally fine 450 ppi. There’s a plenty-fast Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, what must be an industry-leading 5500 mAh battery, an in-screen fingerprint reader, NFC, and 80 W charging. Compare this to a $500 Pixel 7a, which still has a “flagship” class SoC, the Google Tensor G2, but it only has a 6.1-inch, 90 Hz display and a barely there 4385 mAh battery. OnePlus is jumping back into the value phone game.

Now we’re starting to find downgrades: The phone has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS 4.0 storage. The cameras are downgraded, too. The main sensor is a 50 MP Sony IMX890, which is usually a secondary camera on other phones. Then the other two rear cameras sound like junk: an 8 MP wide-angle camera with no autofocus and a 2 MP “macro lens. The front camera is 16 MP and also doesn’t have autofocus. The phone has an IP64 dust and water resistance rating, which means it’s only “splash proof”—I don’t even think you can run it under a sink faucet. (Sometimes, I wash my IP68 phone in the sink like it’s a dirty dish!) There’s also no wireless charging.

Listing image by OnePlus

OnePlus 12 gets $800 US release along with the interesting $500 OnePlus 12R Read More »

openwrt,-now-20-years-old,-is-crafting-its-own-future-proof-reference-hardware

OpenWrt, now 20 years old, is crafting its own future-proof reference hardware

It’s time for a new blue box —

There are, as you might expect, a few disagreements about what’s most important.

Linksys WRT54G

Enlarge / Failing an image of the proposed reference hardware by the OpenWrt group, let us gaze upon where this all started: inside a device that tried to quietly use open source software without crediting or releasing it.

Jim Salter

OpenWrt, the open source firmware that sprang from Linksys’ use of open source code in its iconic WRT54G router and subsequent release of its work, is 20 years old this year. To keep the project going, lead developers have proposed creating a “fully upstream supported hardware design,” one that would prevent the need for handling “binary blobs” in modern router hardware and let DIY router enthusiasts forge their own path.

OpenWRT project members, 13 of which signed off on this hardware, are keeping the “OpenWrt One” simple, while including “some nice features we believe all OpenWrt supported platforms should have,” including “almost unbrickable” low-level firmware, an on-board real-time clock with a battery backup, and USB-PD power. The price should be under $100 and the schematics and code publicly available.

But OpenWrt will not be producing or selling these boards, “for a ton of reasons.” The group is looking to the Banana Pi makers to distribute a fitting device, with every device producing a donation to the Software Freedom Conservancy earmarked for OpenWrt. That money could then be used for hosting expenses, or “maybe an OpenWrt summit.”

OpenWrt tries to answer some questions about its designs. There are two flash chips on the board to allow for both a main loader and a write-protected recovery. There’s no USB 3.0 because all the USB and PCIe buses are shared on the board. And there’s such an emphasis on a battery-backed RTC because “we believe there are many things a Wi-Fi … device should have on-board by default.”

But members of the site have more questions, some of them beyond the scope of what OpenWrt is promising. Some want to see a device that resembles the blue boxes of old, with four or five Ethernet ports built in. Others are asking about a lack of PoE support, or USB 3.0 for network-attached drives. Some are actually wondering why the proposed device includes NVMe storage. And quite a few are asking why the device has 1Gbps and 2.5Gbps ports, given that this means anyone with Internet faster than 1Gbps will be throttled, since the 2.5 port will likely be used for wireless output.

There is no expected release date, though it’s noted that it’s the “first” community-driven reference hardware.

OpenWrt, which has existed in parallel with the DD-WRT project that sprang from the same firmware moment, powers a number of custom-made routers. It and other open source router firmware faced an uncertain future in the mid-2010s, when Federal Communications Commission rules, or at least manufacturers’ interpretation of them, made them seem potentially illegal. Because open firmware often allowed for pushing wireless radios beyond their licensed radio frequency parameters, firms like TP-Link blocked them, while Linksys (at that point owned by Belkin) continued to allow them. In 2020, OpenWrt patched a code-execution exploit due to unencrypted update channels.

OpenWrt, now 20 years old, is crafting its own future-proof reference hardware Read More »

ios-17.3-adds-multiple-features-originally-planned-for-ios-17

iOS 17.3 adds multiple features originally planned for iOS 17

New Features —

macOS 14.3, watchOS 10.3, and tvOS 17.3 were also released.

An iPhone sits on a wood table

Enlarge / The iPhone 15 Pro.

Samuel Axon

Apple yesterday released iOS and iPadOS 17.3 as well as watchOS 10.3, tvOS 17.3, and macOS Sonoma 14.3 for all supported devices.

iOS 17.3 primarily adds collaborative playlists in Apple Music, and what Apple calls “Stolen Device Protection.” Collaborative playlists have been on a bit of a journey; they were promised as part of iOS 17, then added in the beta of iOS 17.2, but removed before that update went live. Now they’re finally reaching all users.

When enabled, Stolen Device Protection requires Face ID or Touch ID authentication “with no passcode fallback” for some sensitive actions on the phone.

And a related feature called Security Delay requires one use of Face ID or Touch ID, then a full hour’s wait, then another biometric authentication before certain particularly important actions can be performed, like changing the device’s passcode.

Other iOS 17.3 additions include support for AirPlay in participating hotels, an improved view for seeing the warranty status of all your devices, a new Unity wallpaper honoring Black History Month, and “crash detection optimizations.”

As is so often the case for these simultaneous operating system updates from Apple, iOS is the most robust. macOS 14.3 also adds the collaborative playlist feature and the AppleCare & Warranty Settings panel, but that’s about it as far as user-facing additions.

watchOS 10.3 adds a new 2024 Black Unity face that is meant to pair with a new watchband by the same name. And tvOS 17.3 simply reintroduces the previously removed iTunes Movie and TV Show Wishlist feature.

iOS 17.3 release notes

Stolen Device Protection

  • Stolen Device Protection increases security of iPhone and Apple ID by requiring Face ID or Touch ID with no passcode fallback to perform certain actions
  • Security Delay requires Face ID or Touch ID, an hour wait, and then an additional successful biometric authentication before sensitive operations like changing device passcode or Apple ID password can be performed

Lock Screen

  • New Unity wallpaper honors Black history and culture in celebration of Black History Month

Music

  • Collaborate on playlists allows you to invite friends to join your playlist and everyone can add, reorder, and remove songs
  • Emoji reactions can be added to any track in a collaborative playlist

This update also includes the following improvements:

  • AirPlay hotel support lets you stream content directly to the TV in your room in select hotels
  • AppleCare & Warranty in Settings shows your coverage for all devices signed in with your Apple ID
  • Crash detection optimizations (all iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 models)

macOS 14.3 Sonoma release notes

  • Collaborate on playlists in Apple Music allows you to invite friends to join your playlist and everyone can add, reorder, and remove songs
  • Emoji reactions can be added to any track in a collaborative playlist in Apple Music
  • AppleCare & Warranty in Settings shows your coverage for all devices signed in with your Apple ID

iOS 17.3 adds multiple features originally planned for iOS 17 Read More »