Daily Tech Headlines – July 21, 2016
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| Daily Tech Headlines – July 21, 2016 | |
| Number | 31 |
| Broadcast Date | JULY 21, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 7:46 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
Firefox says no to Flash, Tinder just wants to be friends, and VCRs go the way of Betamax.
Headlines
- Federal authorities announced the arrest of Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder and operator of Kickass Torrents. The Ukranian man was arrested in Poland on Wednesday, and charged with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. He is currently awaiting extridition. In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell stated that Vaulin was responsible for distributing over $1 billion in copyrighted material. The torrent site was hosted out of Chicago for 3 and a half years, ending in January 2016, which is why it is being pursed by the US Department of Justice. The DOJ has begun issuing seizure warrants under the MLAT treaty to obtain the various domains for the torrent tracking site.
- The online rental marketplace Airbnb has hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to help create a new anti-discrimination policy for the company. The hire comes after a June announcement that the company would review its entire service to help prevent host discrimination toward guests. In a blog post, CEO Brian Chesky called discrimination Airbnb's greatest challenge, and wants the process to be transparent to create a zero tolerance policy toward it.
- Facebook updated features to its Live video streaming platform. The company is rolling out the ability to stream up to 4 hours of video to People and Page administrator, up from the previous limit of 2. Viewers also get new options, with full screen video now begin supported. iOS users can view full screen video in either landscape or portrait, while Android users are limited to portrait for the time being. Facebook pledged that Android landscape support will arrive later this summer. Viewers can also choose to hide comments and reactions, which are overlaid on video streams by default, by swiping right while watching video. Swiping left will return the comments.
- In a blog post, Benjamin Smedberg of Mozilla announced that starting in August, Firefox will block Flash content "not essential to the user experience", citing this will bring increased security and performance. Mozilla published the list of blocked Flash content on Github, and plans to add to it over time, claiming that this list contains content that can easily be replaced by HTML. Sometime in 2017, Firefox will not run any Flash content by default, requring a click to activate. Mozilla maintained that they are continuing to work with Adobe to offer the best possible Flash experience.
- Microsoft received a formal notice from the French National Data Protection Commission, ordering the company to stop collecting "excessive data", tracking browsing without consent, and to take steps to ensure users confidentiality and security. The Commission based the notice on 7 investigations done since April. The notice specifically called out the default data collection settings on Windows 10, the ability to use a 4-digit unlock pin, lack of consent for Microsoft's ad tracking, the always contentious use of cookies, and transfer of data outside of the EU. Microsoft has 3 months to comply. In a statement, David Heiner, Microsoft's deputy general counsel and vice president, stated the company will work with the Commission "to understand the agency's concerns fully and to work toward solutions that it will find acceptable."
- The dating app Tinder hopes to make forays into more general social networking, with the launch of Tinder Social. The new feature allows the creation of groups of 1-3 friends with a specific focus. Once users utilize the familar "swipe right" on a group they are interested in, they can enter into a group chat to organize details. Tinder Social must be unlocked within the general Tinder app to view and join groups. Brittany Vincent at Engadget notes this isn't the first dating app to transition over into finding friends, citing Bumble's launch of BumbleBuzz earlier in July. The new feature is available in the US, UK, and "select other countries."
- In other Microsoft news, the company announced a new offering in its Office 365 suite, called Bookings. The app integrates self-service appointment setting directly in Office 365, providing a responsive web site for customers to book appointments, with confirmation, reminders, rescheduling, and cancellation all handled within Bookings. The app is currently available to subscribers in the Office 365 Business Premium Plan and also enrolled in the First Release program, with general release scheduled in the coming months. A standalone app is also in development.
- Corning unveiled the 5th generation of its chemically strengthened glass commonly used in Smartphones, named unsurprisingly Gorilla Glass 5. Corning focused on improving drop resistance for this generation, marketed as being able to survive a drop from 1.6 meters 80% of the time. Corning chose the height to reflect its research that most drops occurred when taking photos, or removing a device from a pocket. The company notes that the stated drop resistence is for glass 0.6mm thick, but would procude the glass down to 0.4mm thick to meet OEM demand. No word if Corning will adopt "80% of the time, it works everytime" as a marketing slogan.
- In a blog post, Microsoft subsidiary SwiftKey announced the launch of a new custom keyboard for iOS and Android, dubbed Swiftmoji. They keyboard gives contextual suggestions on emojis, based on both local history and world wide trends. Swiftkey hopes the keyboard will cut down on the time it takes to hunt down specific emojis, and highlight lesser used ones for specific contexts. The keyboard is available today.
- Alphabet subsidiary Google released two new machine learning APIs to open-beta in seperate blog posts on Wednesday. The Google Cloud Natural Language API allows users to reveal the structure and meaning of text, showing an example of this being used for sentiment analysis on a selection of New York Times stories. The API will initially support English Spanish and Japanese. The Cloud Speech API brings speech-to-text conversion in over 80 languages, and makes it available to apps and Internet of Things devices. Google sited that over 5000 companies had signed up for the Cloud Speech alpha.
- IDC released its preliminary figures for the wearable market in the 2nd quarter, showing a year-on-year decline for the first time. In Q2 2016, 3.5 million smartwatches were shipped, down 32% from 5.1 million a year ago. Apple remained the overall leader by a wide margin, but was the only company in the top-5 to decline in shipments. IDC points out that this may be somewhat exaggerated, as the Apple Watch launched in Q2 2015, and the company is still selling essentially the same product.
- And finally, Ars Technica passes along a report from the Japanese newspaper Nikkei that the last manufacturer of VCR's will cease production at the end of the month. Funai Electric has made VCRs since 1983, at its peak selling 15 million units per year, but citing declining sales and difficulty sourcing parts, will end production. The company reported that only 750,000 units were sold worldwide last year.
Links
| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – July 20, 2016" |
Daily Tech Headlines – July 21, 2016 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – July 22, 2016" |