Daily Tech Headlines – May 16, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – May 16, 2018 | |
| Number | 503 |
| Broadcast Date | MAY 16, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:13 |
| Hosts | Sarah Lane |
Microsoft to debut lower-cost Surface tablets, Instagram will launch a time spent feature, Whole Foods now offering discounts to Amazon Prime customers.
Headlines
- Sources tell Bloomberg that Microsoft is planning a line of lower-cost Surface tablets as soon as the second half of 2018. The new tablets are said to feature 10-inch screens instead of the12-inch screens used on the Surface Pro, and will include USB-C for the first time. Intel reportedly will supply the main processor and graphics chips.
- Code in Instagram’s Android APK reveals a “Usage Insights” feature that will show users their “time spent” and Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed the upcoming feature in a tweet Tuesday, writing “It’s true . . . We’re building tools that will help the IG community know more about the time they spend on Instagram – any time should be positive and intentional . . . Understanding how time online impacts people is important, and it’s the responsibility of all companies to be honest about this. We want to be part of the solution."
- AT&T’s over-the-top streaming service DirecTV Now is rolling out its cloud DVR feature to iOS and tvOS users after being in testing mode since last year, The “True Cloud DVR” as it's named will offer users 20 hours of free recording, support for fast forward and rewind, and the ability to store shows for up to 30 days. That's less storage than what beta testers had – they could save up to 100 hours of recordings. ATT says later this summer, users can pay $10 per month more to save 100 hours of shows for up to 90 days.
- The new, AI-powered Google News app is live on iOS after being announced at I/O last week, replacing the former "google play newsstand" app. Like the Android version, it uses machine learning to train algorithms like chronological timelines, local news aggregation, and developing stories. A new section called Newsstand ets you subscribe to news organizations who either offer a monthly subscription for web / print access or charge a monthly fee to bypass a paywall. Organizations found in Newsstand all support the Google AMP standard for fast loading and without opening a mobile browser.
- It's the patent war of the century - Apple wants about $1 billion from Samsung in damages from a long-running smartphone patent-infringement dispute where Samsung was already found to have infringed on 3 of Apple’s design patents and 2 utility patents, and in a retrial to determine what Samsung actually owes Apple, Samsung asked jurors to limit the amount to $28 million. The case is presided over by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California.
- A Guardian investigation in conjunction with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation reports that Facebook allows advertisers to target users it thinks are interested in subjects such as sexual preference, Islam, or liberalism, although religion, sexuality and political beliefs explicitly are marked as sensitive information under new data protection laws, and with GDPR going into effect on 25 May, sensitive categories will require special conditions around how they can be collected and processed. Those include “preventive or occupational medicine,” “to protect the vital interests of the data subject,” or “the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes.”
- Whole Foods launched a loyalty program that offers special discounts to Amazon Prime customers, including 10% off hundreds of sale items and rotating weekly specials Those discounts are available now in Florida and will roll out to all other stores starting this summer. Amazon previously announced free two-hour delivery from Whole Foods stores for Prime members.
- Twitter is giving developers more time to adjust to its new API platform "Account Acitivity", after developers said the original APIs originally slated for a June 19, 2018 shutdown would force them to stop their services. The new date for those deprecated APIs is Wednesday, August 16, 2018. You got two months, Favstar.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – May 15, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – May 16, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – May 17, 2018" |