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TL;DR: Samsung is better, according to the author.

Some questions remain though, as Google’s Magic Eraser gives multiple options for object removal. Some are quite bad or blotchy, others are nearly seamless. Don’t like any of the options it’s provided, then ask it to try again. The author doesn’t touch on this at all. Did they select the first option everytime? Was this the best of the options they were provided?

👍 Precisely.

Don’t encourage the behaviour. As the saying goes… Give a man a fish and you’ve fed him for a day… Teach a man to fish and you’ve fed him for life.

This a huge step back for transparency with Meta (shocker). Access to this data is important for a variety of reasons, and using the recent EU laws as an excuse is deplorable (again, shocker from Meta).

It’s clear the data companies were left alone for too long to rule the schoolyard. It’s going to take some time to treat them and others what decorum looks like without throwing an absolute hissy fit.

Here’s hoping the EU, which seems to be the only teacher on the playground willing to discipline anyone, will set them straight.

This should be a setting under “Cast Options” in Google Play Services options. At least that’s where that generic notification is on my Pixel.

Won’t affect your “direct” casting, like Spotify, just the generic broadcast, without turning off the per device options.

I’ve turned off the broadcast on every device in my world, because I found it obnoxious.

I’m genuinely confused how this is a thing. How are people rapidly pressing the power button 5 times in rapid succession without being aware of what they’re doing?

Now adding a 3 second press after those 5 presses is solving the problem? Mine as well go back to opening the phone app and dialling the number.

More specifically, it is enabled in the dev builds, but not in the user builds at this time.

Hook, line, and sinker? No. But Pixel Pass was a money thing, this promise is a brand thing.

Most people didn’t know Pixel Pass exists. They drop this promise, and I guarantee you your grandparents will know about it. It’s a brand killer kind of moment.

All I’m saying is the scales tip in favour of them holding this up. We’re on the 8th generation of Pixel phones now. Generations 4&5 we’re rough, but they stuck it through when it would have been easier to walk away.

This is a great move for Google, and goes beyond the minimum of what they needed to do. That’s a huge step forward for them, Pixels, and Android as a whole.

Right from the first Pixel, Google was seeking (for better or worse) to take a bite out of Apple’s pie. They’ve largely been successful in that. Without Google entering the fray, it would only be Samsung left.

They’ve elevated the hardware expectations of Android devices. Pushed the envelope of software integration. Shown that a bloat free experience is preferable and possible for the consumer (even though many here on Lemmy want a Google free device, that is a different discussion).

Now they didn’t merely match other OEMs, but exceeded their updated promises by years.

Android isn’t going anywhere. This is a pillar of their company now, and Pixels are a key part of that strategy. If Google dumped making Pixels, the whole Android ecosystem would be in doubt, because who would make phones if the maker itself doesn’t believe in them? Google, by jumping into the fray, has moved from a platform provider to a pillar of the hardware ecosystem.

So despite all the cynicism, which is justified for all but their core software, this promise has teeth. If they don’t follow through on this, we’re likely seeing the demise of Google as a company, not just the Pixel line.

The gating of a lot of the software features and UWB are really disappointing in the non-pro 8. I’d love a smaller phone, but they really do push you to the big one if you plan on keeping it for any length of time.

Even the pre-order bonuses are only for the larger phone.

Need more places calling them out on this.

Ah. The UWB is only for direct position. It largely uses Bluetooth to be found and broadcast.

What does that have to do with the Pixels? That’s a Bluetooth beacon thing, and it’s being added to all Androids through Play Services, including supporting Air Tags.

As far as hardware, it’ll be interesting to see if they announce anything on October 4th.

The only real disappointment here is the lack of UWB on the regular Pixel line.

The OG Pixel was slightly wedge shaped for this exact reason. They gave up on the design in the Pixel 2.

You’re referencing a different thing. This is the open source version bundled into AOSP, not the Google Play Services version.

Directly from the source:

So, as I suspected, Fast Pair code was deleted from AOSP because it wasn’t being used by anyone.

And because it wasn’t being used, it was just taking up space unnecessarily. Although HalfSheetUX was only a few megabytes in size, Mainline modules are served to many millions of people, a decent portion of whom are on metered connections.

Note: This has no implications for the Fast Pair feature you’re already familiar with. Fast Pair started out as a feature bundled in Play Services and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. This news just means there’s no longer an open source version of Fast Pair.

He followed this up this morning by saying that the reason it was removed was that it was not being used. So keeping the code in there increased the overall package size.

Spread out over billions of devices and small changes make a huge difference. He also stated metered data plans as a primary motivation.

So tinfoil hats off.

Essentially when you turned off the work profile, it would still sync in the background, just pause all notifications. Previously, turning it off would suspend the entire container and there would be no activity at all.

The rational was that when you unpaused the container there wouldn’t be a lag time to getting everything sync’d up.

It has now been reverted back to fully suspending the container.

This is an overall win. The upward pressure is good for everyone, as phones have passed the meteoric rise of speed. Devices have been able to last far longer than their update cycle for a few years now.

They are referring to Chromebooks, which have a published end of life cycle because the OS is built around specific boards and then rebranded around those features to partners.

Very different beast than the Android-based Pixel Tablet.

Problem

The problem arises when multiple Google accounts are signed onto a device.

Whenever, multiple Google (think Gmail) accounts are logged in on a device, the URLs for Google services get “rewritten” with an account identifier.

Similarly, the URLs for these news stories, in some cases, get rewritten with an account identifier:

Fix:

A workaround we have identified is, for Google News/Discover stories that show a 404 page, users can simply return to their news feed screen.

You can then tap on the three-dots next to a story, on the bottom right corner, and select “About this source & topic.”

This will now show you the story as an organic search result on Google Search that can proceed to normally.