Daily Tech Headlines – August 23, 2016
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| Daily Tech Headlines – August 23, 2016 | |
| Number | 54 |
| Broadcast Date | AUGUST 23, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 7:24 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Amazon’s $5 music service, Level 5 autonomous cars by 2019, More Microsoft pre-loaded software on Android.
Headlines
- Peter Kafka at Recode reports that his sources say Amazon is working on a 2 tier subscription music streaming service. The first tier has been previously reported and would be a typical unlimited music streaming service for $10 a month. The second tier would be $4-5 a month but only playable on Amazon Echo devices. Sources say that Amazon wants to launch both services in September, but has yet to finalize deals with the major music labels.
- Bloomberg reports numbers reported by Sensor Tower, SurveyMonkey, and Apptopia show Pokémon Go has declined from 45 million daily users in July to around 30 million in August. The data was presented by Axiom Capital Management to assuage investor concern that Pokémon Go might detract from user attention on other mobile products.
- Delphi auto parts company and MobileEye, former maker of sensors for Tesla announced a plan to have a production-ready autonomous car system ready for OEMs by 2019. The systems would allow car manufacturers a "turn-key" solution to level 4 and level 5 autonomous systems which can operate without drivers. MobileEye will contribute work on its EyeQ 4/5 SoC and Delphi will contribute IP for predictive algorithms and software for processing sensor info.
- Lenovo announced Monday it will start pre-loading Microsoft Office, Skype, and OneDrive onto its devices. The deal is part of a patent cross-license agreement. Lenovo did not say which specific devices will include the pre-bundled software, but that Lenovo expected to ship millions of pre-loaded devices in the coming years. Chris Duckett at ZDNet notes that Microsoft now has deals with at least 75 Android OEMs to pre-load software.
- TechCrunch reports on Origin, a product from Shaper that makes machining prototypes simple. Origin is a CNC device, meaning it cuts away material to create the final product. Its innovation is it can work on almost any flat workspace by using a camera to look for ShaperTape you put down for a reference. It can then visualize cuts in augmented reality displayed on a touchscreen on the back. Operators then just follow the virtual lines, get within a few inches and the machine automates precision cuts. Origin is up for pre-sale now for $1,500 and will eventually retail for $2,099.
- Microsoft devices engineer Nick Baker presented the specs for Hololens Holographic Processing Unit at the Hit Chips conference this week. It has a TSMC-fabricated 28nm coprocessor with24 Tensilica DSP cores, 65 million logic gates, 8MB of SRAM, and an additional 1GB of low-power DDR3 RAM. The HPU can handle about a trillion calculations per second. And all that draws less than 10W. It communicates with a 14nm Atom x86 Cherry Trail SoC with 1 GB of RAM that runs Windows 10.
- Mashable reports some Australians are noticing autoplay on all types of video, some with sound, in their Facebook news feed. Sound only plays if the volume on the device is up of course and can be set to always off. A Facebook spokesperson told Mashable, "We're running a small test in News Feed where people can choose whether they want to watch videos with sound on from the start." It's one of several tests Facebook is running to improve video.
- Android Nougat is out of beta and available for Google's Nexus devices, the Pixel C tablet and the General Mobile 4G Android One phone. It should roll out over the next couple of weeks. The LG V20 will be the first phone sold with Nougat preinstalled when it arrives in early September. Nougat lets you take action right from a notification, bundles notifications from the same app and added a new look and customization options to the Quick Settings dropdown widget. Of course the big attention getter is the ability to see two apps side by side just like in Windows 1.0. There's also a Data Saver mode that lets notifications through but not large downloads. Starting with Nougat, updates for some new devices can download in the background and alert you when they're ready to install.
- Politico reports The Internet Association wrote comments to the US Department of Homeland Security arguing a against proposal to ask foreign visitors arriving on visa waivers to disclose usernames social media accounts. The Association which counts Google, Facebook and Twitter as members argued it would have a chilling effect on speech online. The US Customs and Border Protection agency is taking comments on the proposed rule which was published in June.
- Sony will increase the cost of Playstation Plus, up $10 to $60 a year starting September 22, the first price increase since the service launched in 2010. The service enables online gameplay and offers free monthly game downloads. Month-to-month subscription prices remain $9.99.
- Comcast completed its acquisition of Dreamworks Animation on Monday, in a deal valued at $3.8 billion. Comcast paid $41 per share in the deal. Dreamworks will be rolled into NBCUniversal's Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, which already includes Universal Pictures and Fandango. The deal does not include the live-action focused Dreamworks Pictures.
- Microsoft announced that Office for MacOS has now been updated with 64-bit support. The update comes along with the usual "performance and stability" improvements. Microsoft notes that any Office add-ins that haven't been updated by developers will not work with the 64-bit version, so upgrade with a modicum of caution.
- Drug store chain Walgreens announced it has integrated its loyalty rewards program into Android Pay. This is the first Android Pay integration with a retail partner, and will be effective in Walgreens' 8,200 locations. While integrated into the app, users will still have to authorize the loyalty rewards and payment transactions separately.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – August 22, 2016" |
Daily Tech Headlines – August 23, 2016 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – August 24, 2016" |