Daily Tech Headlines – February 7, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – February 7, 2018 | |
| Number | 433 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 7, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:38 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Snapchat has good earnings, Pornhub bans AI-based Fake videos, and Alphabet hires a new ISP head.
Headlines
- Snapchat's Daily Active Users rose to 187 million last quarter up 18 percent on the year, beating expectations of 184.2 million. Revenue rose 72 percent to $285.7 million, beating analysts’ expectations of $253.2 million. The company lost 28 cents a share more than the 20 cents a share the year earlier.
- Deepfake videos, where AI is used to put a person's head on another person's body have been banned by Pornhub. The company forbids any nonconsensual content.
- Microsoft has released an iPad version of its Cortana voice assistant app for iOS. The app takes advantage of the bigger screens on tablets and launches 20 percent faster.
- ESPN Plus will launch next month for $5 a month. Disney CEO Bob Iger said the Internet service will have thousands of hours of live programming. However, it will not draw programming from any of the existing ESPN cable channels. ESPN Plus will be available as an add-on to the existing ESPN app.
- A letter from Apple to US lawmakers sent February 2 and made public Tuesday said Apple made changes to battery management in January 2017, but did not update consumer notes until February 2017, because it wanted to confirm that the update indeed reduced crashes. Apple also said “iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X models include hardware updates that allow a more advanced performance management system that more precisely allows iOS to anticipate and avoid an unexpected shutdown.”
- Netgear said Tuesday it plans to sell less than a 20% stake in its Arlo unit to the public. Arlo makes internet-connected cameras. After the IPO, Netgear will distribute the remaining 80% of Arlo stock to existing Netgear shareholders. Arlo’s revenue doubled last year to $378 million.
- HP announced updates to its corporate laptop models with a new range of 800-series EliteBooks, ZBook workstations, 4K monitors, and docks. The laptops borrow the streamlined look of the consumer versions with corporate features like buttons for Skype calling and Sure View privacy screens.The EliteBook 830, 840, and 850 G5 will all become available some time this month, with starting prices of $1,049, $1,029, and $1,039, respectively. Zbook workstations will be available this month starting at $1,099 for the 14u and $1,109 for the 15u. And all new laptops work with HP's Thunderbolt Dock G2 with Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C connections. The top of the dock can add an audio module to become a speaker. There's no price but it's expected to go on sale in May.
- Alphabet has hired former Time Warner Cable COO Dinesh Jain to lead Access, the company that runs Google Fiber and Webpass. Access's former CEO Greg McCray left last year. The company's Fiber rollouts have been paused and Webpass left the Boston market last month.
- Intel announced the Xeon D-2100 processor for devices that need Edge computing, in other words data processing that used to be done on the cloud but is needed on the device itself, a requirement for autonomous cars and Internet of Things sensors. Unlike regular processors, the Xeon D-2100 has compute, networking and storage on a low power chip, including up to 18 ‘Skylake-server’ generation Intel Xeon processor cores integrated with up to 100 Gbps of built-in cryptography, decryption and encryption acceleration.
- A study from Cardiogram used data collected from user's Apple Watches to detect diabetes. Cardiogram previously has used its DeepHeart machine learning network to detect atrial fibrillation, hypertension and sleep apnea. Cardiogram recently became available for Android Wear as well.
- Amazon will integrate fashion recommendations from Vogue and GQ into the Amazon Echo Look starting February 19. The Echo Look has a camera but no screen, so the recommendations will show up in the Echo app.
- China's Didi is partnering with 12 automakers including Ford's local partner BYD to create an electric car car-sharing system. Members could use electric cars on demand through an app-based service.
Links
| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – February 6, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – February 7, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – February 8, 2018" |