Daily Tech Headlines – September 20, 2016
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| Daily Tech Headlines – September 20, 2016 | |
| Number | 74 |
| Broadcast Date | SEPTEMBER 20, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 9:12 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Google’s new phones coming? ARM gets into self-driving chips, How to tell a safe Note 7.
Headlines
- Google sent out invitations to an event at 9 AM Pacific October 4th at Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. A teaser video for the event shows the Google search box stretched into a smartphone shaped rectangle, and is consistent with rumors that the company will release new smartphones at the event. The event will be live streamed on YouTube.
- The US Department of Transportation released its Federal Automated Vehicles Policy outlining 15 safety assessment objectives manufacturers must meet. The guidelines cover system validation, data sharing and privacy, behavior after a crash, user interface and more. The policy suggests federal regulators handle safety and equipment recalls while state governments handle licensing, traffic laws and safety inspections.
- Comcast CEO Brian Roberts announced at a Goldman Sachs event that his company will launch a wireless service in mid-2017, combining WiFi hotspots with Verizon cellular. Comcast has access to Verizon as an MVNO under a deal for spectrum struck in 2011.
- Samsung posted a guide for distinguishing Note 7s with safe batteries from ones with the recalled battery inside. Safe Note 7s will have a black square on the box to help you pre-purchase and carry a green battery icon in the status bar, display mode and power-off screen. Samsung received permission from Google to change the color of the battery icon from white to green.
- Opera's latest update to its stable browser release for the desktop includes its free VPN service. Opera subsidiary SurfEasy provides the 256-bit AES encrypted connection with servers in Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore and the US. The feature has been available in the developer version of the browser since April. Opera is in the midst of regulatory approval for a sale of its browser business to a Chinese consortium.
- The RIAA reports music sales in the first half of 2016 rose 8.1% to $3.4 billion. Paid subscriptions drove most of the growth rising 57% to $1.6 billion accounting for half the industry's sales. Paid subscriptions accounted for $1.01 billion of that number. The music industry is on pace to experience two consecutive years of growth for the first time since since 1998-1999.
- Twitter launched new rules about character counts in its posts. Starting Monday images, videos, polls and quote tweets no longer count against your 140 character max. Twitter is also testing an option that omits the username of a person you're replying to from the character count. Only the person who sent the original tweet is exempt though.
- Twitter also fired 20 people from its Bangalore India development hub and announced it would stop global engineering work at the location. The center was opened last year after the purchase of Indian startup Zipdial. Twitter also has offices in Delhi and Mumbai.
- US District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan ruled Monday that Bitcoin qualifies as money and rejected Anthony Murgio's request to dismiss charges of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Murgio argued Bitcoin did not qualify as funds under federal law.
- SanDisk unveiled a prototype 1 Terabyte SDXC card with sadly no details on price or release. This comes two years after SanDisk introduced the 512 GB SD card. which currently sells for around $200-$300.
- ICANN announced it will soon change the cryptographic key pair that secures the Domain Name System and verifies that DNS data is coming from the right place and has not been cache poisoned. Not all systems use DNSSEC but more are. ICANN will change the Root Zone Signing Key for the first time. ICANN says the change is "good cryptographic hygiene" but it will also give them a chance to enlarge it from 1024 to 2048 bits.
- ARM announced its Cortex-R52 processor design Tuesday. The chip is designed for autonomous vehicles and industrial robotics. STMicroelectronics has signed up to produce it for functions in a car's powertrain chassis and advanced driver assistance systems. The chip physically separates safety code from other software. It also supports hardware virtualization.
- Payment services company Stripe announced Instant Payouts, a new service to provide contractors payouts within minutes. The company had a limited rollout in testing with Lyft, Care.com, and goPanache earlier this year, but now any US Marketplace can use the existing Stripe payment API to integrate Instant Payouts. The service works on any contractor Visa or Mastercard debit card, and Stripe stake a 1.5% payout, with a $0.50 minimum per transaction.
- Google launched an update to its Photos service, with new "concept movies" added to its automatically generated video montages. The first concept movie is called "They Grow Up So Fast", which will gather uploaded photos of a particular child into a tear jerking movie showing the inexorable march of time. The company will launch a "Summer of Smiles" concept video on Thursday, and a third "Special Day", gathering photos of weddings, birthdays and other occasions is planned as well. Videos will run from 20-120 seconds, depending on the amount of photos.
- Facebook acquired the company Nascent Objects, which specializes in a modular electronics platform. The company will join Facebook's Building 8, the company's hardware lab. Facebook did not disclose terms of the deal. Nascent Objects founder Baback Elmieh, a former technical program lead for Google's Advanced Technologies and Projects Division, will join Facebook as part of the acquisition.
- Wal-Mart confirmed Monday that it completed the acquisition of online retailer Jet.com for $3 billion in cash and $300 million in stock. Jet.com CEO Marc Lore will continue to oversee the site, as well as Walmart.com, serving as executive vice president at Wal-Mart and president and CEO of Wal-Mart's e-commerce business in the U.S.
- Fujifilm revealed its new Medium format mirrorless camera, the GFX 50S. The camera features a 51.4 megapixel sensor, measuring 43.8×32.9mm, 66% larger than a full-frame DSLR sensor. The new camera system is designed to be thinner and lighter than a traditional medium format camera, and features a detachable electronic view finder to further decrease weight. The system will use new GF lenses, with 6 available at launch (5 primes, 1 zoom). Fujifilm expects the camera body to be available in early 2017, no pricing was announced.
- The European Comission said Tuesday it would give Google more time to respond to charges that it abused its dominant position in mobile operating systems regarding bundling of Google services on Android. Google now has until October 7th. This is the third deadline extension. Google has separate deadlines for other charges. October 13th for favoring its own shipping services in search andOctober 5th for blocking competitors in search advertising.
- Craft marketplace site Etsy acquired Blackbird Technologies, a company focused on AI, search and distributed systems. The company plans to utilize Blackbird's expertise to add natural language processing, image recognition, and better analytics to their existing search. All 10 Blackbird employees will join Etsy's team, and TechCrunch reports they expect the company's existing API business to be shutdown. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
- HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X printers have started to report third-party ink cartridges as missing or defective. The BBC reports that ink vendor 123Inkt did not believe a firmware update had been issued since March making it a timed situation. HP says printers will work from third parties as long as they have an original HP security chip. 123inkt said it has developed compatible chips that are in production and said the problem is not unusual.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – September 19, 2016" |
Daily Tech Headlines – September 20, 2016 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – September 21, 2016" |