Tech News Roundup for July 26, 2021
Rogers and Instagram dominated over the last several days, an interesting combination. Rogers trying to win back trust, Instagram (and Meta) trying to do everything it can to eliminate user trust. Again, interesting combination. That, and a couple of other things I’ve found interesting over the past few days.
Rogers Responds To CRTC, Testifies To Government Committee
Much news on the Rogers front. On Friday, the documentation that the CRTC mandated Rogers provide detailing what led to the outage from earlier in July was posted. The public version is heavily redacted, but the company did confirm that the outages were caused by a a maintenance update that went very badly, causing their core network to far exceed capacity and fail, essentially disconnecting Rogers from the wider internet.
The company says it is working with the other wireless carriers to come to an agreement to allow 911 calls to work even when there is an outage. Under a yet to be developed system a Rogers outage would offload 911 calls to Bell, Telus, or Freedom Mobile. Making this work for only 911 calls will likely take some time to develop, but the CRTC is mandating it so it will get done.
Rogers has also committed to separating it’s wireless (i.e. cellular) traffic from its wired home internet traffic. This would ensure that an outage at scale on one network wouldn’t take the other down. This is a significant undertaking, with Rogers estimating the cost at $250 million to implement. It will likely also lead to higher costs to Rogers to maintain, which will likely eventually be passed on to the customer in the form of higher prices. The scale of separating wireless and wired traffic is significant, and will not be complete until 2024.
https://mobilesyrup.com/2022/07/23/rogers-crtc-questions-outage-split-network/
Instagram Forgets What Instagram Is
Meta’s Instagram is having a week. Last week the company announced a test that would turn all videos into Reels, and appears to have rolled out changes to the feed to a wider audience that makes reels even more prominent, puts content from accounts you don’t follow into your main feed, and de-emphasizes photos.
This is becoming a mess. In a bid to chase every last cent Instagram has moved so far away from it’s core function, a photo sharing service, that it is now near unrecognizable. The best part is that Instagram’s CEO says that the change to emphasize video is because it is what more users are doing, and the company is just going where the users are. What wasn’t said is that over the last year Instagram has changed the algorithm to push more video content, and changed the advertising program to emphasize video. Content creators found that the only way to make money on Instagram was to post videos and reels. So Instagram forced it’s users to post more videos, and then feigns ignorance as to why users are posting more videos and reels.
The Facebookification of Instagram is well underway. It was only a matter of time. Chasing the last cent failed Facebook, and it will fail Instagram too.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/26/23279815/instagram-feed-kardashians-criticism-fuck-it-im-out
Meta Raises Price Of 2 Year Old VR Headset
Meta is continuing its bid to piss off the internet this week by announcing a price increase of its VR headset, the artist formerly known as the Oculus Quest 2. The Meta Quest 2 as it is now known was released almost two years ago, and instead of seeing prices fall as is normal, the price is going up by $100 in the USA, from $300 to $400 for the base model. To try to soften the blow slightly Meta will include a copy of Beat Saber, a $30 game, with all new Meta Quest 2 purchases until the end of the year.
Meta says that the price is going up due to increase costs of the components that go into the Quest 2. This is a very bad look for the company to raise prices by as much as 33% on a two year old product.
Google Remembers Tablets Exist, Makes Apps Work Better
Google’s love/hate relationship with tablets is well documented, with the company basically ignoring the formfactor for years. Now it says it is going to refocus on tablets, partly due to the emergence of folding phones turning into small tablets. Google is updating the Google Drive, Docs, and Sheets apps for Android to work better on larger screens, including a better layout, the ability to run two instances side by side, and copy and paste and drag and drop between them. Small steps, but at least some signs that Google is starting to remember that Tablets exist.
https://www.androidpolice.com/google-drive-workspace-big-screen-improvements/
Google Play Store Gets New Logo, Not New Brand
This isn’t a huge story by itself. The Google Play Store brand turned 10 years old a few months ago, and now Google is giving the Android App Store a tweaked logo, with colours that better match Google’s current design language. Again, not a big story.
But what’s interesting here is the state of the Google Play branding. When Google rebranded the Android Market (the original name for Android’s App Store) to the Google Play Store, it also rebranded all of it’s content services to Google Play. There was Google Play Music, Google Play Movies & TV, Google Play Books, Google Play Newsstand and Google Play Games, among others. Most of those services have been retired or de-emphasized. Google Play Moves & TV is now known as Google TV. Google Play Music is now YouTube Music. Google Play Books remains, though it has changed several times over the years, absorbing the content of Google Play Newsstand.
Considering the reduced emphasis on the Google Play brand, it is surprising to see Google continue with the Google Play Store brand for its app store. As part of a suite of services the branding made sense, but by itself, it seems out of place as the name of an app store.
https://www.androidpolice.com/google-play-new-logo/