Daily Tech Headlines – June 25, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – June 25, 2018 | |
| Number | 531 |
| Broadcast Date | JUNE 25, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 3:59 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Apple Airpods might get noise-canceling, Qualcomm Snapdragon 1000 takes on Intel for PCs,Google’s Android security feature could also be used as DRM.
Headlines
- Bloomberg reports sources tell it Apple is working on noise-canceling versions of the Apple Airpods that would also be water resistant. Apple is also supposedly considering biometric sensors like a heart-rate monitor for future airpods. Bloomberg previously reported sources saying a refreshed AirPod would come out by the end of this year with support for hands-free voice control.
- German blog WinFuture.de has a leak that says Qualcomm's PC-oriented Snapdragon 1000 chip will use ARM's Cortex-A76 architecture for faster speed and draw an efficient 12 watts of power for the total SoC. A test platform supposedly includes 16 GB of LPDDR4X RAM, two 128GB SSDs, 802.11ad WiFi and Gigabit LTE. This would put it up against Intel's U-series Skylake processors.
- Google has added some security metadata to Android apps to indicate if they are legitimate. The metadata would allow apps for non-Google stores to be recognized by the Play Store for future updates. It would also help identify false apps that tend to be malware. The metadata could also be used like DRM, letting developers prevent modifications or disable older versions of apps.
- Sphero, which has refocused as an education-oriented company, has acquired Specdrums which makes rings that make music. Specdrum rings associate a tone with a color, so that when you tap the ring against anything it plays a tone based on the color. You can record and share your creations with others. Sphero says it plans to release a new version of Specdrums by 2019.
- Paypal announced Monday it is launching a debit card for Venmo users. Users could pay with the MasterCard in stores drawing on their Venmo balance.
- China's Meituan, an online-to-offlie service booking app for things like tickets and restaurants, has submitted an IPO to the Hong Kong stock exchange. Meituan said it currently has 310 million transacting users and 4.4 million active merchants. Revenue grew from 4 billion RMB in 2015, to 33.9 billion RMB (about $5.2 billion) in 2017. Meituan was valued at $30 billion last year and may be looking at a $60 billion valuation for the IPO.
- Tencent has joined the Linux Foundation as a platinum member, the highest tier. Tencent was already a founding member of the Linux Foundation's deep learning program. Tencent says it will contribute its open source microservices project and AI project to the Foundation. Other platinum members include Cisco, Huawei, Microsoft, AT&T, Samsung and IBM.
- Bike-sharing company oBike ceased operations in its home market of Singapore Monday. oBike said new regulations on bike parking conflicted with its belief in dock-less bike sharing. Bike-sharing companies in Singapore will need to apply for a license by June 7 and show an ability to manage indiscriminate parking of shared bikes.
- OpenAI announced it has developed AI bots that can beat the top 1 percent of amateurs at 5v5 Dota 2 under a few conditions including the disabling of invisibility, summons and the placement of wards. The AI were trained with reinforcement learning, playing 180 years worth of games a day over a period of months. The AI will be tested this year at Dota 2 tournament, The International.
- Windows Central obtained an internal Microsoft presentation detailing plans for mouse and keyboard support for the Xbox One. The presentation mentioned an April API for developers with an autumn announcement for consumers, though those dates may have changed. Any non-bluetooth USB mouse and keyboard would supposedly work.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – June 22, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – June 25, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – June 26, 2018" |