Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Alexander Koerner)

Google Play has reversed its latest ban on a web browser that keeps getting targeted by vague Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices. Downloader, an Android TV app that combines a browser with a file manager, was restored to Google Play last night.

Downloader, made by app developer Elias Saba, was suspended on Sunday after a DMCA notice submitted by copyright-enforcement firm MarkScan on behalf of Warner Bros. Discovery. It was the second time in six months that Downloader was suspended based on a complaint that the app's web browser is capable of loading websites.

The first suspension in May lasted three weeks, but Google reversed the latest one much more quickly. As we wrote on Monday , the MarkScan DMCA notice didn't even list any copyrighted works that Downloader supposedly infringed upon.

Enlarge / The researchers identified novel materials by using machine learning to first generate candidate structures and then gauge their likely stability. (credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab)

Google DeepMind researchers have discovered 2.2 million crystal structures that open potential progress in fields from renewable energy to advanced computation, and show the power of artificial intelligence to discover novel materials.

The trove of theoretically stable but experimentally unrealized combinations identified using an AI tool known as GNoME is more than 45 times larger than the number of such substances unearthed in the history of science, according to a paper published in Nature on Wednesday.

The researchers plan to make 381,000 of the most promising structures available to fellow scientists to make and test their viability in fields from solar cells to superconductors. The venture underscores how harnessing AI can shortcut years of experimental graft—and potentially deliver improved products and processes.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Earlier this month, one corner of the Internet got a little bit greener, thanks to a first-of-its-kind geothermal operation in the northern Nevada desert. Project Red, developed by a geothermal startup called Fervo, began pushing electrons onto a local grid that includes data centers operated by Google. The search company invested in the project two years ago as part of its efforts to make all of its data centers run on green energy 24/7.

Project Red is small—producing between 2 and 3 megawatts of power, or enough to power a few thousand homes—but it is a crucial demonstration of a new approach to geothermal power that could make it possible to harness the Earth’s natural heat anywhere in the world .

Hot rock is everywhere, with temperatures rising hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit within the first few miles of the surface, but geothermal plants provide just a small fraction of the global electricity supply. That’s largely because they are mostly built where naturally heated water can be easily tapped, like hot springs and geysers. Hot water is pumped to the surface, where it produces steam that powers turbines.

Enlarge (credit: Pool / Pool | Getty Images Europe )

The latest advertiser fallout on X , the platform formerly known as Twitter, could end up costing Elon Musk's company much more than the $11 million in revenue that the company previously estimated could be "at risk" due to backlash over antisemitic content on X.

According to internal X sales team documents reviewed by The New York Times , X may lose "up to $75 million" as more than 100 major brands—including Airbnb, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Uber—have stopped advertising, while "dozens" more are considering pausing ads on the platform.

These sales team documents, The Times reported, "are meant to track the impact of all the advertising lapses" in November. On top of noting which brands have stopped advertising, the documents also flag brands at risk of halting ads. Ultimately, the sales team's goal is listing "how much ad revenue X employees fear the company could lose through the end of the year if advertisers do not return," The Times reported.

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  Those are some strange bumps at the top of the screen. [credit: temperlancer ]

Pixel phones always seem to ship with some bizarre hardware malady, and this year it's that not all the parts fit inside the phone quite right. Some users are reporting "bumpy" screens on their Pixel 8 and 8 Pros. The bumps aren't in the top surface, which is still smooth glass, but in the OLED display under the glass, which can show raised, usually circular bumps. It looks like components inside the phone are pressing up against the back of the OLED display, resulting in visible bumps under the right lighting conditions. Google gave a statement about the issue to 9to5Google and surprisingly says it's nothing to worry about.

Pixel 8 phones have a new display. When the screen is turned off, not in use and in specific lighting conditions, some users may see impressions from components in the device that look like small bumps. There is no functional impact to Pixel 8 performance or durability.

That's certainly an interesting take. All phones come with "new" displays, so what exactly does that first sentence mean? The bumps definitely aren't on every Pixel 8, and even the bumpy displays aren't noticeable in normal usage. The pictures and videos out there all involve people shining flashlights into a turned-off display, so it's not the end of the world. It's just worrying to have the delicate OLED panel be dented by internal components. Is this going to be ok long-term? Does this make the glass or OLED panel more susceptible to breaking after a shock? It's certainly not normal phone construction.

We count eight puncture marks in the back of this Pixel 8 Pro display. Check out the full-res version. (credit: JerryRigEverything )

Match up anyone's pockmark video with a teardown and you'll usually be able to spot the offending item. They are all either screw heads, spring clips designed to ground some component to the display copper, or the corners of some other component. No one item accounts for every pockmark, so everything seems just a little too close to the display on some models. YouTuber JerryRigEverything actually took apart a Pixel 8 Pro that had a bumpy screen. It wasn't noticed in the video, but freeze-frame it and you'll see some pretty alarming indents in the copper sheet on the back of the display that you can try to match up to the other half of the phone. They are almost puncture marks!

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  Google's official Pixel 8 Pro image.

The Google Store has posted a promo page for the Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2 ahead of their October 4 launch, confirming the designs of both devices. Google accidentally leaked a bunch of 3D renders the other day, so now that the cat's out of the bag, Google went ahead and made it official.

We saw live pictures of the Pixel 8 Pro all the way back in May , so there really isn't much to add about the device's design. But still, the video confirms what's coming next month. The biggest change is a switch to a flat screen instead of the distorted curved displays that flagship Android phones have been saddled with. There's also a dubiously useful temperature sensor on the back, which in May was demonstrated as useful for taking a person's body temperature by applying your phone directly to your forehead. The sides are still a shiny mirror finish on the Pro version.

We get a shot of the cheaper Pixel 8, too. This confirms it still has a satin finish instead of the mirror polish and continues to have only two cameras. It's also not getting the temperature sensor.

Enlarge / Google's not looking as good as it used to. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Don't let Chrome's big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven't been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it's built directly into the Chrome browser. It's been in the news previously as " FLoC " and then the " Topics API ," and despite widespread opposition from just about every non-advertiser in the world, Google owns Chrome and is one of the world's biggest advertising companies, so this is being railroaded into the production builds.

Google seemingly knows this won't be popular. Unlike the glitzy front-page Google blog post that the redesign got, the big ad platform launch announcement is tucked away on the privacysandbox.com page. The blog post says the ad platform is hitting "general availability" today, meaning it has rolled out to most Chrome users. This has been a long time coming, with the APIs rolling out about a month ago and a million incremental steps in the beta and dev builds, but now the deed is finally done.

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  Chrome users will see this pop-up, telling them the ad platform has rolled out to them. [credit: Aurich Lawson ]

Users should see a pop-up when they start up Chrome soon, informing them that an "ad privacy" feature has been rolled out to them and enabled. The new pop-up has been hitting users all week. As you can see in the pop-up, all of Google's documentation about this feature feels like it was written on opposite day, with Google calling the browser-based advertising platform "a significant step on the path towards a fundamentally more private web."

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  The new Google Chrome Design.

It's Chrome's 15th birthday, and the browser is getting a big redesign to celebrate, or at least, it's as big of a redesign as you can do on a big, empty window to the Internet. Google's "Material You" design language is finally coming to Chrome stable (after some experiments in the past), and that means lots of rounded corners and pastel colors.

There has long been a "customize Chrome" button on the new tab page, but now when you open it you'll get a selection of Material You color swatches that look like they were ripped right out of Android. There is still a white theme if you want to ignore all that, though the default color now seems to be back to blue instead of gray, just like the early versions of Chrome. As previously promised , the SSL lock icon in the address bar has been replaced by a settings switch. The "Down arrow" tab menu has been moved to the left side of the browser (on Windows, at least). All of the text and icon line work has been tweaked to be thicker, and some things, like the bookmark folders, have totally new icons.

Everything has been rounded over. The top left and right corners of the toolbar are now rounded corners. The menu is rounded. The tab corners are even more rounded than they were before. And the Chrome window in the screenshots isn't even using the native OS UI—it's a totally custom window so that even the corners of the browser window can be rounded over. There isn't a single sharp edge on this thing.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Google is killing off the last vestiges of Google Play Movies & TV, a service that sold premium Hollywood films and TV shows as part of Google's once-cohesive string of Google Play content stores. The company emailed users of Android TV to say that the "Google Play Movies & TV app will no longer be available on your Android TV device from 05 October 2023. You can continue to buy or rent movies directly through the Shop tab on your Android TV."

Play Movies has been going through a slow death as Google shuffles around its media content. The smartphone Play Movies app became " Google TV " in 2022, and that same year, the Play Store app was stripped of movie and TV sales. On third-party smart TVs (this is a different category than today's Android TV announcement) the app was killed in 2021. On Android TV, the new "Shop" tab seems to just be an OS-integrated Google TV content store.

If you think this sounds confusing, you're not alone. Google's support page reflects the ridiculous state of Google's video apps, instructing users that "in Your Library, you can find content that you bought from: Google Play Movies & TV, YouTube, Android TV, Google TV." How any normal person is supposed to understand that pile of Google media brands, and how it works across phones, the web, and various smart TV OSes, is beyond me.