The President is in Another Castle
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| The President is in Another Castle | |
| Number | 3473 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 21, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 30:42 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Justin Robert Young |
Apple teams up with Goldman Sachs on a MasterCard credit card that will incorporate Apple Wallet, Microsoft Edge Browser has a secret whitelist for allowing Flash video to play, and HTC announces Vive Focus Plus.
Guest
Quick Hits
- Sources tell Reuters that Lyft will launch the roadshow for its initial public offering the week of March 18, which would make it the first U.S. ride-hailing company to IPO. Uber is expected to follow several weeks after. Lyft also announced its “most affordable” ride option called Shared Saver in Denver, Colorado and San Jose.
- YouTube says it has terminated more than 400 channels, disabled comments on tens of millions of videos and reported illegal content to authorities for violations of its policies. Nestle companies, AT&T, Epic Games and Germany's Dr. August Oetker KG food company have all paused advertisements on YouTube over concerns about appearing alongside videos shared by pedophiles. A source told Ars Technica that Disney has also paused YouTube advertising for the same reason.
- Just for those of you keeping score. Gartner released its Q4 smartphone market numbers. Samsung and Apple declined, but stayed first and second. Huawei and Oppo both rose and made up third and fourth, with Oppo climbing over Xiaomi who dropped to fifth with essentially flat marketshare.
- Finland's Varjo has launched its VR-1 headset which promises more than 60 pixels per degree of resolution, equivalent to the human eye. The device will be sold to companies in industries like engineering and construction for $6,000 per device.
- Reggie Fils-Amie announced he is retiring as president of Nintendo America in order to level up to spending more time with his wife, family and friends. Doug Bowser will take over as president on April 15. Bowser previously led sales and marketing for the Switch and before that was NOT King of the Koopas. That is a different Bowser.
Top Stories
- HTC announced the Vive Focus Plus that includes eye-tracking and a pair of its updated motion controllers the company first announced as developer hardware back in October. The Vive Focus’s original single controller supported three degrees of freedom, and these new controllers support six, so they can be tracked as they move around as well as rotating on the spot. This puts HTC in competition with Oculus' Quest, a standalone headset with two controllers due this spring. The Vive Focus Plus is aimed primarily at business customers, and will be available in 25 countries including the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, and China, though no word on pricing yet.
- Microsoft announced new Augmented Reality apps for Android and iOS. Remote Assist for Android mimics a HoloLens app that lets service engineers show what they see to a remote expert who can then provide guidance. The iOS app Product Visualize lets salespeople show customers products in context, like how big machinery is or whether equipment fits in the space on the factory floor, similar to the HoloLens app Layout. An Android version may follow. Both apps integrate with Microsoft's enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management platform, Dynamics 365.
- Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that Apple and Goldman Sachs are working on a joint MasterCard credit card which would integrate with the Apple Wallet app. It might include features like spending goals, reward tracking, and 2% cashback. Employees are supposedly testing the card with a public launch possibly coming later this year. Apple would get a larger slice of each transaction with a credit card then it gets from Apple Pay transactions.
- Microsoft's Edge browser has a hidden whitelist to let approved domains run Flash, bypassing click-to-play. Prior to February, it included 58 domains including several Microsoft sites, Deezer, Yahoo, QQ and apparently a hairdresser in Spain. In November, Google Project Zero researcher Ivan Fratric discovered a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the whitelist mechanism and noted that the whitelist was not limited to https, allowing for man in the middle attacks. As a result Microsoft delivered a patch, enforcing https and reducing the whitelist to apps.facebook.com and www.facebook.com for widgets larger than 298 x 298. Facebook has said it asked Microsoft to remove its domains from the list. Adobe is sunsetting Flash in 2020 and Microsoft is moving Edge to the Chromium engine which has deprecated Flash already.
- wearTRBL lets you express yourself with a connected T-shirt
- The NBA app-controlled ‘smart jersey’ of the future lets you change your player name and number
- A new t-shirt called wearTRBL has a flexible e-ink display embeddable into the shirt itself. Along with a mobile app and Bluetooth Low Energy, you can store up to 20 images on the display to fit your mood, with a battery that lasts around 4 days. You can also remove the display and add it to another shirt or sweatshirt. The product began as a subsidiary of drone company Parrot and was spun off in July 2018. wearTRBL also wants to create a community and a curated library of pictures that wearers can browse and download it to their T-shirt, get followers and broadcast content to other users.
Thing of the Day
- Amateur Traveler Chris Christensen brings an interesting news bit on cameras on planes.
Mailbag
- While Google Maps and Apple Maps have taken over a majority of my navigation duties, there are still some trips where I wouldn't leave the house without our Garmin. We have taken a couple cross-country RV trips with my in-laws in their 28-foot class C (the ones with the bed over the cab). We ran into quite a few places where my smartphone just shrugged it's shoulders at me and said "no signal," but the Garmin kept navigating away. Google does allow you to download offline maps, but while that's convenient for your normal commute, it's hard to keep up with when traveling.
Also, Garmin makes standalone GPS units designed for recreational and commercial vehicles that allow users to enter their vehicle dimensions. If you've ever had fun watching the videos on 11foot8.com, you'll understand why this can be very important. Even if you see the warning signs and don't run into the low clearance, it can be very difficult to turn a large vehicle, especially when you can't back up because you're towing a car. - Sent by Nick from water-logged Huntington, West Virginia
- While Google Maps and Apple Maps have taken over a majority of my navigation duties, there are still some trips where I wouldn't leave the house without our Garmin. We have taken a couple cross-country RV trips with my in-laws in their 28-foot class C (the ones with the bed over the cab). We ran into quite a few places where my smartphone just shrugged it's shoulders at me and said "no signal," but the Garmin kept navigating away. Google does allow you to download offline maps, but while that's convenient for your normal commute, it's hard to keep up with when traveling.
- As someone from the Kansas City area I have witnessed the continuous rapid growth of Garmin. As a pilot, I want to let people know that they have always been the big dog in aviation and maritime navigation.
- Sent by Steven
- Being able to charge another device means carrying less chargers and/or cables. Makes it easy to charge those new ear pods at the same time as charging your phone. Or when outlets are sparse, charging two phones at once when traveling with others. Maybe this is the more likely use case than draining your phone to charge another device (at least for me)?
- Sent by Mark
YouTube
Links
| Preceded by: "Samsung’s Galaxy Unfolds" |
The President is in Another Castle |
Followed by: "What You Don’t Know About China Tech" |