With the bulk of the CES product announcements done, a single update today with one CES related item, as well as some other important news bits that have occurred over the last several days.
ASUS Refines Dual Screen Laptops for 2021
ASUS has been experimenting with the laptop form factor a bit in the last 18 months, introducing two laptops that have two screens. The ZenBook Duo and ZenBook Pro Duo both have regular laptop displays, but both included a smaller secondary display on the keyboard deck of the laptop, pushing the kebyoard toward the front of the device. These were innovative products, but had some flaws. ASUS is back with two new models for 2021 that aim to fix those issues and make the products even better. These look fantastic, and I’d love to try one. The original model of the higher end Pro Duo was around $3000 in Canada, making this a specialized computer, but if the costs can come down, and the capabilities increase, these could turn into productivity powerhouses.
Amazon Shuts Down Parler by Removing it from AWS
After Goole and Apple both removed Parler from their app stores, Amazon, who hosted Parler on its Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform, informed the service that as of 12:01 AM Pacific time Monday morning, it would no longer host Parler. This has removed Parler from the internet, and as of this writing Parler is still offline. The company first stated that it had “many companies” competing for its service, but later on admitted it was having trouble finding vendors. Parler has since sued Amazon, stating Amazon did not have the right to remove it from its service.
Parler Has Most of its Data Scraped and Preserved Before Going Offline
Parler clearly wasn’t developed by the best and brightest of the technology world, as we now see that because of a few factors, security researchers were successfully able to copy and archive over 70 TeraBytes of data from the service.
This occurred because of a few reasons. Parler was using a company called Twillo for its authentication services. However, the company was not paying for Twillo, and was using a free trial that it was continuing to renew, which was against Twillo’s terms of service. Twillo turned off Parler’s access to its authentication service, and Parler did not have a backup to this. This meant that anyone who could find out the location of Parler’s data could just…. Create a copy of it. One security researcher created a script that was successfully able to copy what looks like that vast majority of, if not all of the data stored in Parler.
It gets even worse for Parler. Some of the data that has been obtained is very detailed. Parler apparently did not strip metadata off of media, meaning most photos and videos uploaded to the service had location information, date, and time of upload. This could be huge for law enforcement, not just in terms of the researcher able to grab this data. The US FBI could obtain a warrant and get access to the data via Amazon, and it will likely contain all of this data. Parler also required users to upload a copy of their driver’s license in order to become a verified user, and it appears that Parler kept those copies as well.
There is a huge treasure trove of data, and it will likely result in significant fallout.
Disney brings back the LucasFilms Games Brand
After Disney purchased LucasArts from George Lucas, it retired many of the brands that the company used and folded them into either the main LucasArts brand or into the Disney brand itself. Well, one of those brands is now coming back. LucasFilms Games, the brand formerly used for video games developed under license, is being brought back. All future Star Wars games will be under the LucasFilms Games brand. It was speculated that this was happening because Disney would be licensing the ability to develop Star Wars games to companies other than EA, which has had a long standing exclusive agreement to develop Star Wars games.
That speculation came to fruition when the following day when Ubisoft announced it was working on a new open world Star Wars video game based on the game engine the company has used for its popular “The Division” games.
Standard Range Tesla Model Y
In the quest to bring the cost of electric vehicles down, Tesla has made the standard range Model Y available for purchase. The Standard Range trim is similar to the Long Range model, with two key differences. The first is obviously range, at 393km compared to 525km for the long range model. The other significant change is the Standard Range Model Y has a Rear Wheel Drive, instead of the All Wheel Drive on the Long Range.
If you are a driver who plans to drive a vehicle almost primarily within a city or on short trips, the Standard Range Model Y could be a very good option.
The Standard Range Model Y starts at $56,290, compared to the Long Range which starts at $69,990.
https://www.tesla.com/en_ca/modely
WhatsApp Scrambles to Clarify Data Sharing Policies
The Facebook owned WhatsApp service is facing backlash after the service announced that it would be starting to share some data with its parent company beginning February 8th. Until now, WhatsApp has operated independently from Facebook, with its data being kept separate. Now, some data will be shared to Facebook allowing the parent company to use that data in order to target ads, both inside and outside of Facebook properties. This is a controversial issue, and has caused a huge uproar. WhatsApp has clarified that the actual message contents will not be shared to Facebook, but some personal information like Name, Age, Date of Birth, Friend Lists and contacts, etc will be shared.
WhatsApp has also made this change mandatory. Users must agree to the policy change via a prompt in the app before February 8th. Users who do not agree will not be able to use WhatsApp beginning February 8th if they do not.
Roku is Buying Rights to Quibi’s Shows for Pennies on the Dollar
Quibi had a dubious business model to begin with, trying to pitch the idea of a mobile only video service that was not available on large screens at all. The idea was to create original, short form shows in both fiction and non fiction that could be watched on mobile devices while people were on the go. Analysts were already questioning the viability of that model before the pandemic hit, and people were forced to stay home just as Quibi was launching.
Quibi failed spectacularly, the service going offline barely 6 months after launch. As Quibi attempts to liquidate assets, Smart TV platform Roku has announced that it had bought the rights to stream Quibi’s shows via its ad supported Roku Channel found on Roku TV’s and set top boxes.
What is significant is that the reports are that Roku paid about $100 Million US for these rights. Quibi had raised about $1.75 Billion US total. So while Quibi has yet to sell its actual technology platform, something it is currently unable to do because of a pending lawsuit, it is clear that the company will be going out of business losing a huge chunk of the original investment into it.
https://www.engadget.com/roku-buys-quibi-shows-151546993.html?guccounter=1