Daily Tech Headlines – January 23, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – January 23, 2018 | |
| Number | 422 |
| Broadcast Date | JANUARY 23, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 3:53 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Apple announces the HomePod date, Snap moves beyond the app, and Twitter’s COO leaves.
Headlines
- Apple announced its HomePod wireless smart speaker will arrive in stores February 9 for $349, and will be available pre-order starting Friday, January 26 in the US, UK, and Australia. The HomePod was originally supposed to launch in late 2017.
- Twitter's Chief Operating Officer, Anthony Noto has accepted an offer to become CEO of FinTech company Social Finance or SoFi, in March. Noto joined Twitter as CFO from Goldman-Sachs in 2014 and became COO in 2016. SoFi's CEO and co-founder Mike Cagney left the company last autumn amid allegations of sexual harassment.
- Snap is launching the ability to share some public Stories with links that will display them on snapchat.com to all visitors whether they are Snapchat users or not. At launch users can share Official Stories and Our Stories found in the Discover tab with plans to expand beyond that. Users of the redesigned app in Australia and Canada have the feature and it will roll out to Android and iOS over the next few weeks.
- DuckDuckGo is updating its mobile app and browser extension to offer ratings of sites based on their use of encryption and ad tracking as well as summaries of terms of service. It also includes the ability to block ad tracking that has not received a user's permission. The app and extension are available for Firefox, Safari, Chrome, iOS, and Android.
- Netflix reported its Q4 numbers earning 41 cents a share on revenue of $29 billion. Essentially meeting analyst’s expectations. Netflix added 1.98 million subscribers in the US and 6.36 million subscribers internationally and now has a total of 117.6 million subscribers worldwide. 3.4 million people still get Netflix DVDs. Netflix is now worth more than $100B.
- Android 8.1 Oreo now includes a WiFi speed test to let users know which of the available public WiFi Hotspots is the fastest. The test uses the labels Slow, OK, Fast, and Very Fast.
- Google has released its Files Go app which is a storage manager that can share files and helps users delete unneeded or unwanted data from their phone. Using machine learning Files Go can now delete "Good Morning " messages from WhatsApp. In India in particular the habit of sending a good morning message on WhatsApp with an image attached has led to phone storage being filled up.
- Acer's 11.6-inch Spin 11 convertible Chromebook is out. It includes USB-C and a Wacom EMR stylus starting at $349. It arrives in North America in March.
- Montana Governor Steve Bullock signed an executive order Monday requiring ISPs with state contracts to abide by net neutrality rules, starting July 1st. The US FCC voted to adopt rules that prevent states from creating local laws that supersede federal ones for consumers, though those rules have yet to take effect. And it's not clear that it could be used to stop a state from restricting government contracts.
- Intel executive vice president Neil Shenoy advises users to skip its last round of Spectre/Meltdown patches entirely to avoid reboot problems. The issue has been identified for Broadwell and Haswell processors and a new update is on the way for them. Intel says it is actively working on solutions for the rest of its affected processors. Linus Torvalds had called the patches "complete and utter garbage."
Links
| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – January 22, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – January 23, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – January 24, 2018" |