Here are a few of the stories I’ve found interesting over the past few days. That doesn’t include the internet outage from earlier Thursday. It was a big outage, but resolved long before this was written.
US and Allies Accuse China of Responsibility for the Microsoft Exchange Attack
Mea Culpa, as I left this out on Tuesday. The governments of what is known as the Five Eyes Alliance, the US, Canada, the UK, France and Australia, as well as NATO have publicly and formally blamed China for the cyberattack that targeted vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Exchange email server earlier this year.
This is the first time that these entities have formally and publicly accused China of a cyber attack of this scale. While there are no accompanying consequences with the accusation, the group of countries hopes that this will deter China from further cyber attacks, and as a warning that they have been caught.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/micosoft-exchange-hack-china-1.6108265
Twitter Testing Downvoting of Tweets
This one is really interesting to me. Twitter is giving a limited number of users the ability to downvote tweets. But the way that Twitter is implementing it in this test is what I think is most notable. Downvotes on tweets are not public. They are instead used by Twitter as another metric on the quality of a tweet. This could mean that downvoting tweets has less of a chance of turning this type of action into a popularity content where people just vote down a tweet from a person they don’t agree with. If the company is going to roll this out more widely, I hope they keep that.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/21/22587386/twitter-upvote-downvote-test-better-tweets
Tumblr Gets in on the Subscription Service System
Tumblr (yes Tumblr is still around) is testing a new subscription feature with select creators. It would allow creators to put some or all of their posts behind a subscription payment of either $4, $6, or $10 USD per month. Creators can choose to make all of their posts pay to view, or make some content free, while other content behind the pay wall. Entities like Patreon and Substack are showing that there is a market for users to pay creators directly for content, and now Tumblr is trying to get in on the same idea.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/21/22586765/tumblr-subscription-blogs-post-plus
Snapchat Earnings Show Huge Growth
So, I didn’t see this coming. Snap Inc. (the company that makes Snapchat) had its biggest quarter in years, with user growth of 23 percent year over year. That beats the previous high of 22 percent a few years ago. Revenue is up 116 percent as well. Snapchat now boasts 296 million monthly active users. To compare, Twitter is sitting at 206 million.
Those are huge numbers for a company I didn’t think would make it long term, but here we are. I might need to download snapchat again?
https://www.engadget.com/snapchat-earnings-210932638.html
Playdate Gaming Handheld Preview
The Playdate, a small handheld gaming system is going up for preorder on July 29th for $180 USD, and several outlets got hands on with a preview of final hardware of the device, though with incomplete software. The Playdate looks really neat, and I would like to get my hands on one. The hardware is very game boy esque, down to the simple button scheme and black and white screen. It just looks.. fun.
What is not fun, however, is the pre-order system. The company making the Playdate says that pre-orders taken on July 29th will charge the users in full at time of the pre-order, despite the device not shipping until December. Generally pre-orders only charge the full amount of the device or product at the time it ships. This method puts more risk on the consumer. It is very likely, but not assured, that the Playdate will ship. If it doesn’t, users who pre-ordered could be out a lot of money. The company says that users can cancel their pre-order at any time and receive a full refund, but if the company runs out of money before the product ships…. That won’t matter. I was considering pre-ordering the playdate before news of how the pre-order system works, and now I’m going to hold off.
I sill want one though.
Google’s new Wear Platform Gets a Version Number, and Upgrade Details
So the new version of Wear OS that we have been clunkily been calling the new Wear platform up until this point officially has a version name. There was speculation it would be renamed due to the size of the update and the collaboration with Samsung, but the new version of Wear will be called Wear OS 3.0. At least I have something to call it now.
Google also confirmed that very, very, very few existing watches will be upgraded to the new Wear OS 3.0. Only the TicWatch E3 and Pro 3 models, and some unspecified Fossil watches that have yet to release will see updates to Wear OS 3.0. And even those watches will not see updates until 2022. So, if you have an existing Wear OS watch, you’re out of luck. Honestly, I’m surprised any watches are getting an upgrade. I really thought Google would make it a clean cut.
https://www.engadget.com/google-wear-os-3-update-release-date-160045459.html