Daily Tech Headlines – October 18, 2016
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| Daily Tech Headlines – October 18, 2016 | |
| Number | 95 |
| Broadcast Date | OCTOBER 18, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 8:01 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Apple hires AI prof, 1Gbps phone data comes to Australia and 5Gbps coming in 2018. Singapore’s autonomous car has its first fender bender.
Headlines
- Carnegie Mellon professor Russ Salukhutdinov tweeted Monday that he has joined Apple as director of AI research. He will stay on as a professor at Carnegie Mellon. He posted a link to a jobs page at Apple seeking scientists with “experience in Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Optimization, and/or Data Mining.” Salakhutdinov has published extensively on neural networks.
- At the 4G/5G Summit in Hong Kong on Tuesday Australian carrier Telstra announced its commercial 1Gbps-capable 4G network in partnership with Ericsson, Qualcomm, and Netgear. Telstra hopes to launch the network over the next few months. The gigabit service will be available in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, with 1 gigabit down and 150 megabits up and require Netgear's Mobile Router MR1100m.
- At the same summit, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon X50 5G modem capable of 5Gbps. Qualcomm expects to launch the hardware for 5G manufacturing trials in 2018. 5G's spectrum has not been set yet but the X50 will operate with about 800Mhz bandwidth on the 28GHz millimeter wave spectrum. That fits with frequencies being tried by Samsung, Nokia, and Verizon. Millimeter wave frequencies have trouble penetrating solid objects so the modem uses multi-element antenna arrays to reach non-line-of-sight signals.
- One of NuTonomy's self-driving taxis in Singapore had its first accident. According to Singapore's Land Transit Authority, "The test vehicle was changing lanes when it collided with a lorry at a low speed. There were no injuries." It is the first report of an accident involving a self-driving car in Singapore. Nutonomy launched its pilot program in August.
- Reports are still trickling out about expected new MacBook Pros. The most recent rumor comes from Japanese Mac site Otakara which says its sources from the supply chain back up claims that the new MacBook pros will only have USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 ports. No Apple announcements have yet been made.
- Google.com/flights launched a new feature that will show you when prices are expected to increase for certain flights. That way you can decided if you need to pull the trigger or whether you have a little time to wait before booking. A notification bar will also recommend alternate airports or dates that could save you money. The updates should roll out in the coming weeks. This puts the search engine service in closer competition with mobile app Hopper.
- Netflix announced it earned $0.12 per share in Q3 with revenue of $2.29 billion. Analysts had expected earnings per share of $0.06 and revenue of $2.28 billion. The company also exceeded their own expectations for subscriber growth by 56%, adding 3.6 million new subscribers worldwide (370,000 of those in the US). In its earnings letter, Netflix confirmed it does not have immediate plans to expand the service into China but instead will license content to existing streaming platforms in the country for the immediate future.
- Facebook's Messenger app has two new features now. Conversation Topics will offer suggestions for what to talk about with friends by listing events in the person's timeline. TechCrunch notes Chris Messina found the feature on Messenger's iOS app and it appears to be only available to a small group as a test. More widely available is the ShopBot bot on Messenger from eBay. The idea is to help narrow down items when a simple search doesn't work, though it feels more like a tree of choices than a conversation at this point. You can also submit a picture to find similar listings.
- Gaming hardware maker Razer acquired video and audio quality assurance company THX. Razer plans to operate THX as an independent company, under the leadership of existing CEO Ty Ahmad-Taylor, with a focus on development. Razer also wants to use THX's extensive audiovisual intellectual property in content and product development, particularly for virtual reality acoustics. THX was started by George Lucas in conjunction with Return of the Jedi and is most famous for its theater sound. But TechCrunch notes it has branched out to other venues for example, its THX Live for performances is being used by Beyoncé on the Formation tour.
- The teasing is done, and Rock Star Games has finally revealed that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be the third game in the series arriving Fall 2017 for Xbox One and PS4. A trailer arrives at 11 AM Eastern Thursday October 20.
- Fashion watch brand Fossil acquired the Misfit wearables company almost one year ago and has announced its first Misfit watch since the acquisition. The Phase combines a watch with an activity tracker. It has an aluminum and stainless steel case with either silicone or leather bands and in the Fossil tradition, no touchscreen, just an analog watch face. The design is simpler than parent company Fossil's typical hybrid smartwatches. It delivers notifications in a small colored window near 6 o'clock or with vibrations. It has a six month battery life. Two side buttons provide controls. The Misfit Phase watches are available now starting at $175 for silicone bands and $195 for leather bands.
- Nvidia announced budget Pascal architecture video cards the GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti starting at $109 and $139 respectively. The Ti version has 4GB of DDR5, while the less expensive 1050 has 2. The 1050 Ti will be available on October 25th, while the 1050 will be out "on or before" November 8th.
- Samsung is setting up exchange booths at airports for Note 7s. The first booth was set up at Seoul's Incheon airport, most familiar to Apple fans as the place their iPhone was stalled during shipping recently. New booths are opening in airports in Australia and elsewhere where you can trade in your Note 7 for another Samsung phone.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – October 17, 2016" |
Daily Tech Headlines – October 18, 2016 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – October 19, 2016" |