Happy Canada Day everyone! Here are a few things that interested me over the last couple days
Read MoreTech News Roundup for June 29, 2020
Today’s update will be very heavy on the politics and policies of technology and tech companies, as current event dictate some of the news.
Read MoreTech News Roundup for June 24, 2020
Today’s roundup includes stories from the past few days, even before WWDC, since the Monday roundup was focused on that event.
Read MoreTech News Roundup for June 22, 2020
Today is Apple’s WWDC Day, normal tech news will resume another day, but here is a quick summary of the big things Apple announced at WWDC, at least to me.
Read MoreTech News Roundup for June 17, 2020
Today’s update includes a couple larger groups of stories that are connected, as well as a few other interesting stories to me.
Read MoreTech News Roundup for June 15, 2020
Weekends usually don’t produce a ton of interesting news, but there have been a few things I’ve found interesting in the last few days.
Canadians Seem to Have a Higher Amount of Trust in the Internet and Cellular Providers
Interesting tidbit here that Canadians seem to have a higher opinion of our main Internet and cellular providers amid the measures they have taken during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Lego Mindstorms Robots
Lego announced new Mindstorms sets for the first time in 7 years. These are lego kits that have moving parts and motors, and include access to basic programming languages. They are designed as an intro to STEM, and are a lot of fun to play around with. A programming course I took in college had us degisn and build a lego robot that could find its way out of a classroom full of desks. I don’t love programming but that remains one of the more fun memories I have of classes I took in college.
Star Wars Squadrons Announced
EA has announced a new Star Wars game coming in October. Star Wars: Squadrons is a star wars fighter game in the vein of the 90’s classics X-Wing and Tie Fighter. I can only hope it’s almost as good. I wait with bated breath for the October 2nd release date.
Xbox Series X? Playstation 5? Bring on the KFConsole
Lastly, a bit of fun. I eagerly await our KFC gaming future. The Chicken Chamber has me interested.
Tech News Roundup for June 12, 2020
A busy couple days as we have pictures of new consoles, a new 5G network, telecoms suing each other, and more!
Sony Shows off Playstation 5 Hardware and Games
Sony held a video stream that was to show off games and game play for the PlayStation 5 for the first time. Many new games were announced, but the surprise star of the show was that Sony finally revealed the design of the actual console itself, as well as an unexpected model without a disc drive.
The. Console features a very unique design that reminds me a lot of some specialized boutique gaming PC’s, with a two tone look and wavy lines. I think I like it. As stated there are two models, one with a 4K Blu-ray drive, and one that omits it entirely. The model with the disc drive is slightly larger than the model without, the disc drive flares out of one side of the console without looking like it doesn’t belong.
Sony did not reveal pricing for the PS5, continuing the game of chicken that is being played with Microsoft, as neither company has revealed the price of their next gen consoles. That remains the biggest, and arguably the most important detail we have yet to see.
Bell Launches 5G Network in 5 Metro Areas.
Bell this week officially turned on their first 5G network, lighting up service in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, and Montreal. The initial service roll out is fairly impressive, as previous network roll outs and expansions have usually been limited to Toronto and maybe Vancouver.
Bell does not make it clear in their release details, but this appears to be an initial roll out of what is called “sub-6” 5G technology. Sub-6 is the slower version of 5G, however it is also the version with range comparable to existing 4G LTE networks. It is likely that the initial 5G roll out will feature speeds only slightly faster than 4G LTE, with speeds improving over time.
Aside from needing one of the three current compatible devices, one very unfortunate part of this rollout is that Bell has announced plans to charge customers an additional $10 per month on top of their existing plans to access the 5G network. As an enticement to get people in the door, the company is waiving that fee until March 31, 2021. To my knowledge, this is the first time that the telecoms have charged a specific fee to access a new network technology. During the transition form 3G to LTE telecoms usually had specific plans that included LTE access, but didn’t charge for access specifically. This appears to continue the trend of Canadian telecoms trying to squeeze every last penny out of their customers, and remains a very bad look for the companies.
Telus Sues Shaw Over “Fibre+” Branding
Less than a month after Shaw launched their Fibire+ Gig plan featuring 1 Gigabit per second download speeds, Telus has filed a lawsuit claiming that Shaw is falsely advertising this as a fibre optic network, when it is in fact just the same type of network, delivered through cable lines as Shaw has traditionally done.
There’s not a ton to talk about here, these companies sue each other over advertising claims in a semi-regular basis, to the point where I find it amusing. Rogers at one point claimed their cellular network was “Canada’s most reliable network” and after a lawsuit from Bell, had to rebrand it to “Canada’s reliable network.” We will see if Shaw is forced to rebrand this product, and how much money will be spent on legal fees between both companies.
Android 4.4 compared to Android 10
Interesting, if long, piece comparing the Android 4.4 release from 2013 to the Android 10 release in 2019. Not a lot to add, just really interesting to see in pictures how different it looks today compared to then. And as an added bonus look at the size difference of those phones! The physical devices themselves sure have changed a lot as well.
Intel Details “Lakefield” Processor Design
This one is admittedly super nerdy, but Intel has revealed some details on a new processor design, codename lakefield. These processors are designed similarly to how smartphone processors, in that it has one “big” processor designed to to the heavy lifting, and 4 “small” processors that are less powerful but more power efficient. Intel has never made a product like this before. This type of processor is designed for thin and light laptops meant for basic productivity, and the low power cores in it should hopefully translate to battery life improvements on laptops that do not need to be super powerful.
Tech News Roundup for June 10, 2020
After a light weekend there has been a lot of very interesting things the last few days, so much so that the Android 11 beta didn’t even make the cut today. Here are a few things that caught my interest in the first part of this week.
The Right Approach to Using Fitness Trackers
I wrote about Fitness tracking, and what I consider the right approach to using them after an article was published recently about how they can be inaccurate in many situations.
Telus Launches 1.5 Gigabit internet plan for some reason
Telus has announced a new internet plan for customers in western Canada called PureFibre 1.5 Gigabit Internet. As that would suggest, the speed on that plan is 1.5 Gigabit download. Interestingly, the upload speed is “only” 940 megabit, which makes this only PureFibre plan Telus offers that does not have symmetrical upload and download speeds.
This is almost certainly a response to Shaw’s recent announcement of a 1 gigabit internet plan from a few weeks ago, and a way for Telus to maintain their ability to claim the fastest home internet plans. I’m all for better internet, but a plan like this is very excessive and unnecessary for most people. Equipment that can actually take advantage of a speed over 1 gigabit is very expensive. Telus didn’t immediately make clear whether or not the advanced Wifi modem they offer even supports that kind of speed, though I would assme it does. However, based on other devices on the market, the modem can get 1.5 gigabit from the internet, but can’t actually send more than 1 gigabit to any individual device. We really are at a point where the technology isn’t capable of supporting the speeds.
I can’t really recommend anyone actually spend the $165/month Telus is charging for this plan. It is too much, and nothing can take advantage of it. It only exists for Telus to say they are faster than Shaw.
Bell will trial using AI to block spam calls
We all hate spam calls, so this is good news. Bell has received approval from the CRTC to conduct a 90 day trial for a system that will use artificial intelligence to monitor telecommunications traffic to “flag anomalies” in an attempt to stamp out spam calls. This is just a trial to see how well this method works, but every little bit helps.
Twitch flooded by copyright claims for old clips
Video streaming service Twitch has received a massive number of copyright takedown notices on older clips on the service. Twitch mostly serves as a livestreaming platform where videos are not stored long term, but users watching the stream can create “clips” of videos, usually 30 second snippets to capture something interesting/good/funny that happened in the video. Those clips do live on in channels. Over the past weekend, the service was flooded with a very large number of takedown notices from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) which is the governing body of the music industry in the US. The RIAA is the association that successfully sued services like Napster out of existence in the early 2000’s when music piracy was at its height. The organization has apparently now turned to Twitch.
There is a much longer conversation about copyright here, and most of this is around US law, which is another thing entirely, but this has become a big issue for Twitch creators overnight. These clips are not created by the Twitch streamer themselves, but rather people watching the video. This has the potential to get very messy very fast.
Reliable sources say Apple will announce a processor shift to ARM at WWDC
There will be a lot more to say about this once there are official details at WWDC in less than 2 weeks, but this is still a big story. Apple is apparently planning to announce the beginning of the transition to Apple designed ARM processors for its Mac computers, with the first products being released in 2021. Currently Mac computers all run Intel processors, like virtually every personal computer in the world. It still isn’t clear what this transition will look like, and whether or not every Mac will eventually run on an ARM processor or whether or not this will be for certain types of devices. I’ll have more to say on this once the details all hit.
The company that makes batteries for Tesla in China has spoiled details on the “Million Mile Battery”
Electric vehicles are the future, and one of the key components on making them cheaper and more sustainable than traditional gas vehicles is battery technology. Boiled down to the simplest terms, the batteries in electic vehicles are just advanced versions of batteries found in devices like phones and laptops, just obviously much larger. That means they are also subject to the battery wear we see on phones and laptops. This means that over time, the total capacity of the battery will decrease, which will reduce range in an electric vehicle. Tesla doesn’t specifically state the longevity of their batteries, but the Telsa Warranty in Canada states that the battery should hold 70% of its capacity after 8 years or 192,000km, whichever comes first. Tesla has invested billions of dollars into researching improvements in battery technology to improve the situation, and the “million mile battery” is something we’ve been hearing about for years. Tesla had been rumoured to hold a Battery Day event this spring to detail advances in the million mile battery, but that was apparently pushed back because of COVID-19. However the company that makes Telsa batteries for the Chinese market has released a lot of details on this million mile battery, stating that this battery could be warrantied for sixteen years or 1.24 million miles (almost exactly 2 million kilometers). This has the potential to mean the battery could last the entire lifetime of the vehicle, instead of potentially needing to be replaced.
Tech News Roundup for June 8, 2020
It was a light weekend, but here are a few things that caught my eye over the last few days
Airbnb reporting an increase in domestic bookings
Some interesting data from Airbnb related to COVID-19. The company is reporting an uptick in “local” bookings, which are defined as bookings within a country. Over half of between May 17th and June 3rd were bookings within roughly 320km of the home address of the person booking the stay. The data also suggests longer local trips compared to shorter international ones. Part of this is theorized to be because of expanded work from home programs allowing people to work from different locations.
It will be interesting to see this trend over the short to medium term as the world continues to deal with COVID-19 while still opening up and allowing more travel
Google Duo Now Allows Anyone to Join a Call With a Link
Google’s video calling service, Google Duo, launched in mid 2016 to little fanfare because of it’s very basic and bare bones feature set. While it’s companion chat product, Allo, died a quick death, Duo gained enough popularity to stick around and the company has continued to develop it. With COVID-19, the pace of development has quickened greatly. One thing that was missing compared to competitors like Skype and Zoom was the ability to send a link that anyone can click on to join a call. Google has fixed that, and now the option exists. This makes Duo a more viable option for group video calls, which most of us are doing a lot more of now.
YouTube Posts Documentation on Monetization
One thing that has been frustrating for many YouTube creators are the often opaque rules around monetization of videos. For creators trying to actually make some kind of income from YouTube, these rules and the lack of transparency around them meant that a video the creator believed was safe to monetize would be flagged and had monetization removed by Google, which affects the channel as a whole. Having a video demonetized too often risks Google demonetizing an entire channel, which would be devastating to creators.
Google has finally published guidelines on what videos can and cannot be monetized, as well as examples of where the line is on whether a video can be monetized or not. This doesn’t solve the problem with the algorithm and discoverability on the platform, which is an even bigger issue than the monetization rules, but hopefully this helps creators know where the line is, and make it easier to stay in Google’s good graces when attempting to monetize.
Twitter Labels Tweets Falsely Linking 5G to COVID-19
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic there have been several conspiracy theories stating that the brand new 5G technology for cell phones is the cause for the virus. It even escalated to the point that several cell towers in the United Kingdom were set on fire. This is despite the fact that there currently is no 5G service in the United Kingdom. There is no link between 5G and COVID-19, but those pushing the false claims and conspiracy theories have used social networks to propgate the false stories. Twitter has begun tagging tweets that link 5G to COVID-19 with a fact check, which is a link that directs users to a page that states there is no link between 5G and COVID-19. This is welcome, and took far too long.
Tech News Roundup for June 5, 2020
Here are a few things that caught my interest over the last couple days.
Supreme Court of Canada resumes hearings… via Zoom
The year of 2020 is weird. Many institutions that have done things a certain way for a long time, sometimes literally centuries, must adapt. The Supreme Court of Canada is no different, and this week began having official hearings virtually via Zoom.
https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/06/03/supreme-court-virtual-hearings-for-the-first-time-ever-via-zoom/
iPhones stolen from Apple stores during the protests and looting in the United States are being tracked.
A good reminder of how many modern electronic devices can work. One of the very unfortunate part of the protests in the US has been the widespread looting of stores in various cities. Apple is now saying that iPhones looted from their stores are all being remotely disabled and tracked. This makes reselling them impossible and could potentially help law enforcement in apprehending those who were looting.
This also serves as a warning on buying used newer model iPhones from the US for the next few months. There is a chance you could be buying one of these devices.
Germany will require gas stations to provide charging for electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles are the future, but the infrastructure to charge them on long duration trips remains a hurdle, though not as big of one as many people realize. But, the EV charging situation can always improve, and as part of a COVID-19 stimulus package Germany will be requiring gas stations within the country to install and provide EV charging. This will greatly help with range anxiety on EV’s with more plentiful options for charging on the go, which should help adoption of those vehicles.
Instagram requires users to obtain permission before embedding posts.
Have you ever seen embedded posts from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc? They’re used all over the place on the internet, basically a fancier way of linking to posts that show it inline. These posts show the post, any text or media, as well as a link to the post and the user’s profile. The Twitter embed directly shows the author of the post. You can see an example of both Twitter and Instagram embeds below.
Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.
Since no one actually reads terms of service, it has been discovered that Instagram actually requires someone who plans to embed an Instagram post elsewhere to obtain explicit permission from the person who originally posted the photo.
This is a very bad precedent for the web. Embeds do not “steal” content. But Instagram is treating it like they do. This has the potential to have serious negative consequences for content creators trying to build and expand an audience.
Instagram needs to fix this. They should either improve their embeds to have better, clearer attribution, or get rid of embeds altogether. But if this is how Instagram wants to continue, it is not sustainable.
Note: The instagram photo is one of mine, so I have given myself permission to use my photo.