Daily Tech Headlines – January 18, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – January 18, 2018 | |
| Number | 419 |
| Broadcast Date | JANUARY 18, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:04 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Intel has more Spectre problems, Apple will give you more options when your battery gets old, and Nintendo has cool cardboard attachments for the Switch.
Headlines
- Intel says in the course of investigating problems with its Spectre/Meltdown patches that caused reboots in Broadwell and Haswell chips, it has discovered it can cause reboots in newer Skylake and Kaby Lake chips as well. Engadget says Intel VP Navin Shenoy claims they are close to identifying the root issue and expect to have beta microcode to vendors for validation by next week.
- Amazon announced the top 20 cities under consideration for its second North American headquarters. Amazon will now start working directly with those cities on their proposals. Amazon expects to make its decision by the end of the year and invest $5 billion in the new headquarters with up to 50,000 high-paying jobs added.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook told ABC News that Apple will soon give you a notification when a phone's battery gets to the point that Apple feels slowing performance will prevent unwanted reboots. And Apple will give users the option to turn that feature off.
- Microsoft is promoting Minecraft head Matt Booty to head of Microsoft Studios, overseeing all games. Booty will report to Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's gaming division.
- Google's Project Fi mobile service will now cap data bills at $60. Google only charges customers for data used at $10 per gigabyte per month with a refund for any unused data. Google will change from refunds to charging for data at the end of the month and will not charge for data used beyond 6 GB. At 15 GB users will see slower speeds but can choose to pay $10 a GB again to get normal speed back.
- Starting in July, Google will take page speed into account when determining search ranking on mobile. Google only expects very slow websites to be affected. Desktop searches have used page speed as a signal for some time.
- Singapore investor Temasek, China’s Meituan-Dianping, and Google are investing in Singapore ride-hailing company Go-Jek. At the same time, Uber is partnering with Singapore's taxi operator ComfortDelGro on a new ride-hailing service, called UberFLASH that will connect them to a private vehicle or Taxi, whichever is closest. Rival Grab has previously partnered with smaller taxi operators in Singapore.
- Lifeguards at Lennox Head south of Brisbane Australia were training with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle when a call came in regarding two distressed swimmers caught in a swell. Lifeguard supervisor Jai Sheridan used the UAV to locate the swimmers and drop a pod with a floatation device within two minutes. Both swimmers then used the pod to make their way to shore.
- Nintendo announced a new product called Labo which lets users create pre-made cardboard attachments for the Nintendo Switch that can be used to create remote-controlled robots a small piano and more. Starting April 20 you'll be able to buy two Labo kits. The $70 Variety kit contains an RC car a fishing rod, a house, a motorbike and a piano. An $80 robot kit lets you build an interactive robot suit with a visor, backpack and straps for your hands and feet, which lets you control an in-game robot.
- Nintendo also released US sales numbers for the Nintendo 3DS which most assume would begin to decline because of age and the popularity of the Switch. Instead sales of the 3DS rose 27 percent year over year to 750,000. Nintendo released Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon for the 3DS in November.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – January 17, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – January 18, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – January 19, 2018" |