Daily Tech Headlines – June 11, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – June 11, 2018 | |
| Number | 521 |
| Broadcast Date | JUNE 11, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:25 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Microsoft adds five new game studios, Foxconn plant accused of labor abuses in making Amazon products, US retakes title for fastest supercomputer.
Headlines
- At E3, Microsoft announced five new gaming studios will join Microsoft Studios to help boost the number of first-party games available for the Xbox. Microsoft is acquiring Undead Labs, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, and Compulsion Games. Microsoft is also launching The Initiative a newly-founded studio in Santa Monica led by Darrell Gallagher, formerly head of Crystal Dynamics' studio. Microsoft also announced a new Halo game coming called Halo Infinite, and Gears 5 out next year, among others.
- China Labor Watch reported this weekend that a Foxconn factory in Hengyang, China that makes Kindles and Echo Dots for Amazon, violates labor laws with excessive hours and reliance on temps for 40% of the workforce. The max under Chinese law is 10%. The report also claimed there were fire safety issues and verbally abusive managers. Foxconn told Reuters it is investigating the accusations and will take any actions needed to bring operations into compliance. Amazon said it raised concerns about the Hengyang plant as part of an audit in March and has been conducting regular assessments to monitor corrective action.
- The US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory unveiled the new Summit supercomputer Friday rated to perform 200,000 trillion calculations per second, or 200 petaflops. That puts it in front of China's 93-petaflop TaihuLight which has been the world's fastest since 2016. Summit was built with IBM Power9 CPUs and Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs. It will be used for research in fields including energy, health, advanced materials, and artificial intelligence.
- South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinrail said it was attacked over the weekend losing about 30% of the coins traded on the exchange. Yonhap news estimated the value at $37.28 million. Bitcoin fell to a two-month low in response. Coinrail was a small exchange and was not certified under Korea's Information Security Management System which protects personal information.
- Six minutes into EA's E3 press conference, General Manager of DICE Oskar Gabrielson said there would be no loot boxes, no premium pass for Battlefield V. Later in the press conference, Dennis Brannvall, Design Director at DICE acknowleged the rough start of another game Battelfront 2 over microtransactions, which were eventually removed before launch. And IGN reports that at an EA Play Q&A, Mark Darrah, Executive Producer at BioWare on Anthem, said they would make cosemtic items available for purchase but, "No loot boxes, no ability to pay for power.
- Snapchat today announced Clear Chats," which lets you delete any message you've sent to another person on Snapchat, whether in individual or group chat. This includes text chats, stickers, audio and voice notes, and any photo and video snaps sent from Memories. Snap is also launching the second generation Spectacles on Amazon in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada for $150.
- Xiaomi said it booked a Q1 net loss of 7 billion yuan ($1.09 billion). When one-off items are excluded, however, Xiaomi said it made a net profit of 1.04 billion yuan. Smartphone shipments rose 88 percent and revenue rose 34 billion yuan. Xiaomi is preparing for a Hong Kong IPO.
- The Open Internet Guidelines of 2015 are no longer in force in the US as of Monday. Complaints about anti-competitive behavior by ISPs are now expected to be made to the US Federal Trade Commission rather than its Federal Communications Commission. The FTC generally limits its investigations to antitrust matters. Many US states have been enacting their own methods of insuring net neutrality.
- Singapore ride-hailing firm oBike has been accused of taking the $49 deposit required to sign up for the service and applying it to a superVIP subscription for some users without notification. oBike told Tech in Asia that a technical lapse was responsible for the errors and it will cancel the sVIP memberships for affected users.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – June 8, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – June 11, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – June 12, 2018" |