Samsung is finally letting people disable the Bixby button on their Galaxy S8 smartphones, to prevent the unwanted accessing of Samsung's smart virtual assistant.
In a similar vein to barking 'OK Google' at the Google Assistant, now found in a good range of Android handsets, a home page packed with context related information pops up when the Galaxy S8's Bixby button is hit.
But Samsung has now made it possible, via a Bixby update, to toggle whether the Bixby Home screen is displayed when the dedicated button is hit.
The option can be found in the Bixby settings, and while it doesn't completely disable the button or allow it to be used for different functions, it at least prevents accidental booting up of Bixby Home. The option also doesn't shut off Bixby Home which can still be accessed by a left hand swipe of the home screen, and Bixby's voice commands are still powered-up by pressing and holding the button.
Third-party apps and tools have allowed the remapping of the Bixby button, but Samsung has been clamping down on them, clearly wanting to ring fence its virtual assistant to force people to use it. But Bixby has only recently got proper UK support, having originally made its debut in the US and South Korea, meaning for months Galaxy S8 users in the UK and other regions only got limited functionality out of the Bixby button and the virtual assistant itself. So it's no surprise that some people may have been keen to shut the button off or use it to trigger other functions.
While Bixby has been designed to control all manner of Samsung and third-party smart devices, there's an argument to how much the virtual assistant is needed when the Galaxy S8 already comes packing the Google Assistant. a virtual assistant that has the might of Google's cloud infrastructure and machine learning research behind it, and unlike Bixby came fully functional with its UK debut.
Bixby may be more useful in the UK now that it has its full feature suite enabled, so the option to disable some of its functions may seem a little late, but at least Samsung has provided the option to do so rather than force its customers to bend a little to its will.
The Pirate Bay has sailed into hot water with its users after it emerged the torrenting site was mineing crytocurrency by tapping into its users' CPU power.
Through the use of processing power from CPU and graphics accelerators, cryptocurrencies can be generated over time without the need to buy, sell or trade anything in return. To make some extra money, The Pirate Bay has apparently been testing a mining tool to dig up Monero coins.
The Pirate Bay is a familiar user of the untraceable cryptocurrencies, accepting Bitcoin donation to fund its upkeep for the past four years. But is was discovered to have been using a Javascript based mining tool, which uses the peer-to-peer torrenting network to siphon power from its user's processors to conduct the mining, all without their knowledge.
The code for the miner sits in the site's footer courtesy of provider Coinhive, and allows the site's owners to generate Monero coins in exchange for CPU power. The rather sneaky tactic came to light when users of The Pirate Bay noticed a spike in their CPU usage when browsing the torrenting site.
Understandably, The Pirate Bay browsers were not happy with this happening without being told about it, though the mining tool can be easily stopped by disabling Javascript in the user's web browser.
"That really is serious, so hopefully we can get some action on it quickly," said The Pirate Bay forum moderator Sid.
The Pirate Bay released a statement saying that it had indeed been using the mining tool but as a test to see if it can generate revenue for the site's upkeep without resorting to sticking with adverts.
"As you may have noticed we are testing a Monero javascript miner. This is only a test. We really want to get rid of all the ads. But we also need enough money to keep the site running," the site's operators said.
"Let us know what you think in the comments. Do you want ads or do you want to give away a few of your CPU cycles every time you visit the site? Of course the mining can be blocked by a normal ad-blocker."
While some forum posters were annoyed at the way The Pirate Bay implemented the mining tool, others said they thought it was a good idea for funding the site.
"People don't like to be fooled like this. When they find out they immediately think that something else shady is going on – and rightfully so!" said poster dino111111.
But fellow poster natalienaught took a different point of view: "I totally support this, it's so much better than ads (so, so much better)!".
And poster iraber seemed to sit in the middle agreeing with the move but not the way the mining tool was tested: "I actually applaud the move. I mean they should've introduced it in a more transparent manner and all."
Using a cryptocurrency miner may be controversial, but it indicates that such websites are looking for new ways to earn money in a world where traditional website funding models aren't good enough to keep sites ticking along.
