August 17 Tech news roundup: Google Chrome kills ad blockers, Windows Update is causing PCs to lag, Pixel phones are vulnerable to a hack

The end of ad blockers on Chrome? Here’s a fix

Google will soon update Chrome to use a new system for extensions, and this is rather bad. The change has been introduced as a part of the Manifest V3 API, which will end support for many extensions. It also impacts the ability of ad blocking in the browser, which means that uBlock Origin for Chrome is not going to work. So means users will either have to put up with ads, or use uBlock Origin Lite, which has several limitations.

Chrome recently began displaying a warning that old extensions may soon stop working in the browser. There is a way to continue using uBlock Origin, by enabling support for Manifest V2 extensions by changing a policy option in the browser. However, Google says that it will end support for this policy in a year, i.e. in June 2025. Brave Browser has announced that it will continue supporting uBlock Origin, Vivaldi says it will support Manifest V2 for an additional year, but other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge will be affected by the change. The developers of uBlock Origin have recommended users to switch to Firefox, to continue blocking advertisements on websites efficiently.

Steam user reviews just got a lot more useful thanks to this feature

Valve has made an important update to the user reviews system on Steam. The biggest digital game store now has a new helpfulness system to filter reviews that are considered unhelpful. You may have run into weird jokes, one-word reviews, ASCII art, etc. while checking the user reviews section of a game on steam. This is the problem that Valve aims to address with the latest server-side update to its store.

The new helpfulness system is enabled by default for all users, and will hide all low-effort reviews from the top of the reviews. Instead, it prioritizes reviews that are actually informative. This can also influence the purchase decision of potential buyers. The best part is that the new user reviews system is universal, so it works on mobile devices, the Steam client on PC, and on desktop browsers. Users who don’t like the new helpfulness system can toggle an option under the Display settings of the Reviews section, to get the old system back.

Is your computer lagging? Windows Update could be the culprit

Microsoft released the KB5041585 update for Windows 11 version 22H2 and 23H2 this week to patch some security issues and other bugs in the operating systems. However, the cumulative update itself seems to have introduced some new problems. Several users have reported that their PCs have begun to lag since installing the update. They also said that the CPU usage was high, and apps were laggy.

An issue that has been filed on Microsoft’s support hub indicated that it could be a memory related error. Some users were able to resolve the problem by uninstalling the update on their computer. This could be a useful workaround if your programs are failing to launch. A couple of reports have mentioned that the update failed to install on their computers after multiple tries.

Windows 11 Start Menu is getting a new layout

The Windows 11 Start Menu is getting a redesign, but not the one that you probably expected. The main page is not being modified, however, the All Apps section is being revamped. Currently, all your apps are listed via alphabetical order, so it takes a few tries to scroll down the page to find a particular app. Or, you could click on a specific letter, which opens a dial-like page that lists all the letters, and you can select one to jump to the corresponding section immediately. That is not a particularly quick experience.

Microsoft is testing a new layout for the All Apps page in Windows 11’s Start Menu. Instead of a vertical page, the new style presents the apps in a horizontal mode. The apps are categorized automatically into compact tiles based on their type, such as Entertainment, Productivity, etc. The style looks similar to app folders on iOS’ App Library. The Redmond company is also testing a grid view for the All Apps page to list

Google Pixel phones are vulnerable to an attack

A cybersecurity company has revealed a security vulnerability in Google Pixel smartphones. The firm stated that a loophole exists in an APK that is called Showcase. This app, which is hidden by default, was originally designed for showcasing demonstration devices in Verizon Stores.

Showcase was created by Smith Micro Software, and has existed for over 7 years, since 2017. It is a system-level app, which cannot be removed or uninstalled by average users. The app package communicates with a server related to Amazon Web Services, to obtain its configuration file. This connection is done via an insecure domain, and the report claims that a hacker could possibly intercept the connection, or spoof it to distribute malware on a Pixel phone. This could then be used to gain additional system privileges to spy on the user.

Google has confirmed that the vulnerability is real, but denied that the issue has been exploited, and also suggested that it is unlikely that hackers could use it to attack a device. The search giant plans to release an update to patch the problem. However, this security update may only available for some Pixel phones. The security flaw which was discovered by iVerify affects millions of Pixel phones across the world. It is reported that the upcoming Pixel 9 phones do not contain the Showcase package.

OpenAI releases new version of ChatGPT

The latest version of ChatGPT seems to be impressing users, and that is because it is based on a new GPT-4o model. OpenAI had released the update for its popular chatbot last week, and while it did not announce what changes the new version brought to the chatbot, keen eyed users were quick to spot some improvements. The new language model reportedly supports multistep reasoning techniques. But OpenAI denied that the new model contained such changes, and that users were simply experiencing results based on their prompts with the chatbot.

Despite that, the new model, which is called ChatGPT-4o-latest, managed to outrank its rivals in a popular benchmark test that analyzed the performance of various language models across coding, math, multi-turn interactions, etc.