Nvidia driver updates can cause blue screens on older CPUs
Nvidia has End of support For CPUs that do not support POPCNT, which means its display drivers are not compatible with chips that do not support the instructions. POPCNT, or Population Count, was first introduced in the SSE4.2 architecture, introduced in 2008 for the Intel Core Nehalem and AMD K10 Barcelona processors. Microsoft recently discontinued support for CPUs that do not support SSE4.2
Users who install the latest Nvidia drivers on a CPU that does not support SSE4.2 may experience the issue blue screen of death (BSOD) for some users. For reference, Nvidia says that version 555 release drivers and beyond do not support older CPUs, so if you have an older PC you should use version 554 of the display driver to prevent the computer from crashing. It is strange that NVIDIA has not blocked the installation of drivers on older systems that are unsupported.
Firefox update brings improvements to Reader View and tab previews
Firefox has been updated Version 129.0Which improves Reader View to a great extent. This feature removes distractions on a web page, making it easier to read. And now, you can customize text and layout options such as text size, font, character spacing, word spacing, and alignment of text. Users can use the Theme menu to access two new options: Contrast and Gray. It can be further enhanced with custom colors for text, background, links, etc.
Tab Previews are rolling out to Firefox users. The feature shows a thumbnail of a web page when you hover over a tab, including the page title, domain, and a snapshot. This allows users to check out the contents of a tab without clicking on it.
Google has lost an antitrust case against the US Justice Department.
Google has been found guilty of abusing its power to create and maintain a monopoly in the search engine market. The Mountain Valley company was hauled into district court in a massive suit by the US Justice Department. Antitrust case Last year, many big names including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple executive Eddy Cue and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg gave their testimony about their experiences in the search engine market.
Apple had partnered with Google in a deal reportedly worth $18 billion that would see Google as the default search engine in Siri and Apple’s Safari browser on iPhones, iPads and Macs. Microsoft had also tried to negotiate a similar deal but failed to do so. Other search engines such as Neeva, co-founded by former Google executive Sridhar Ramaswamy, have been unable to attract users. Ramaswamy accused Google of stagnating the ecosystem with its deals with OEMs.
US District Court Judge, Amit Mehta Government Google has obtained an illegal search engine monopoly by paying Samsung, Apple and other OEMs to make Google the default search engine on their devices and browsers. This severely affected other search engines and was considered anti-competitive behavior. Google will appeal the decision, but it is not yet clear if so. The Justice Department may force Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. to split its products into multiple companies and keep them separate.
Firefox Nightly added support for vertical tabs
Mozilla is making new testing easier for users Vertical Tabs in Firefox. This feature was introduced in the browser’s Nightly channel in June, but activating the option wasn’t particularly convenient. Users had to go through some advanced preferences in the configuration page. However, the latest version of Firefox Nightly makes this task much simpler. You can now enable vertical tabs in Firefox directly from the browser’s Settings page.
Vertical tabs in Firefox support drag and drop, which lets you rearrange tabs, and it also gets a full right-click context menu. You can set the sidebar to hide automatically. By default, the sidebar only displays the tab’s favicon, but you can click on it to see the page title.
It is worth noting that the feature is still in a very early stage, and thus offers only basic options compared to other browsers like Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi. Mozilla is expected to bring vertical tabs to Firefox in the stable channel in the coming year.
Apple Intellivision will be available in Europe, but there’s a problem
When Apple revealed iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 18, one of the biggest announcements was an AI feature in the operating systems called, Apple IntelligenceIt is deeply integrated into the OS, supports almost all Apple apps, and even extends its capabilities to third-party apps. But, users in Europe were upset when Apple said it would not bring the new AI feature to the European market due to the Digital Market Act. The Cupertino company was concerned that Apple Intelligence might not be compliant with the requirements of the law.
But, it seems that not all users may be affected by this. Apple will allow users in the EU to use Apple Intelligence, but only on Macs. Why is that? Because macOS is not affected by DMA, only iOS and iPadOS are affected. So, macOS users will be able to use Apple Intelligence, but the problem is that you need to set your device language to US English. Apple Intelligence is only supported on Macs with the Apple M1 Silicon chip or later. The feature will not be available on iOS, macOS, and iPadOS in China.
Google Chrome gets three artificial intelligence features
Google Chrome on desktop has been updated to add support for: 3 AI Features Which are designed to help improve the browsing experience. The search giant is improving the popular Google Lens mode, so that users can search what they see on a web page. Click the Google Lens icon, which looks like a viewfinder, and click on an object on a web page. This brings up relevant search results with visual matches. You can further narrow the search by adding details like color or brand. Users can also interact with the AI and ask follow-up questions about the search topic. This is essentially similar to how Circle to Search works on Pixel 8 phones.
The next AI feature in Chrome helps you shop online, it brings together price comparisons from multiple tabs in one place. Google calls it Tab Compare, which provides a comparison overview generated by its AI, listing important information like price, product summary, and item specifications.
The third feature will let you find pages in your browsing history with Google AI by typing about the topic in the address bar. For example, you can ask it “What ice cream shop did I visit last week?”, and Chrome will list the tabs in your history that relate to your query. This makes it easier to find tabs you opened but didn’t bookmark, and it doesn’t save information from incognito tabs.
