Apple VR Headset Rumors; LG May Drop Smartphones; Amazon Offers COVID Response Help to Biden; Cybersecurity Spending Projected to Increase

The latest rumor about Apple’s AR or VR products indicates that the first virtual reality headset will be bulked up with powerful processors, a high res display, a fan, and an Applesque (read HIGH) price. Cnet.com reports that it will likely be noticeably more expensive than mot of the headsets on the market now, which generally range from $300 to $900. A prototype includes external cameras, apparently. Apple is expected to roll out their VR headset by 2022. 

After years of being an afterthought to smartphone heavyweights Apple and Samsung, LG is thinking about exiting the smartphone market this year. According to theverge.com, LG has dropped about $4.5 billion the last 5 years. The company is also considering selling off its smartphone division as opposed to just closing it down. Even some innovative products like the Wing smartphone have failed to move the needle in market share or profitability for LG. 

With virtually no national plan from the previous administration, the new Biden administration is quickly trying to build out its COVID response from the ground up. For production of vaccines and PPEs, President Biden signed an executive order today to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production. That leaves the distribution and actual act of getting the vaccine into arms part. Now, engadget.com says Amazon has offered help from the online and logistics giant. Amazon notes that its Whole Foods division has already partnered with a 3rd party firm to vaccinate its 800,000 strong workforce once vaccine is available. 

According to a study by Canalys, worldwide cybersecurity spending will increase by 10% this year. Venturebeat.com reports that the continued move to cloud computing has spurred the boost in spending, in addition to some very high profile hacks of supposedly secure software and platforms. The figure is put at $60.2 billion for security products and services in 2021. That investment includes beefing up areas such as “endpoint security, network security, web and email security, data security, vulnerability and security analytics, and identity access management,” according to the report. Spending could fall short of that by over 6% though, if the pandemic keeps many businesses closed for extended periods.

Netflix Passes Another Milestone; Malwarebytes Admits Hacking By solarWinds Hackers; Israeli Battery Charges as Fast As You Can Gas Up; Facebook Keeps Trump Ban

Netflix has now surpassed 200 million subscribers worldwide. Engadget.com reports that Netflix has pointed out that its original TV shows accounted for 9 of the top 10 most Googled series in 2020. Netflix is rolling out its shuffle play feature (which some users have had for several months now.) The feature picks shows for you. In a big deal for investors, Netflix says the  will no longer need to raise external financing for day to day operations. 

Malwarebytes has revealed that it was hacked by the same bad guys who pierced SolarWinds last year. According to zdnet.com, Malwarebytes says the hackers only got access to a limited subset of internal company emails. The company said it has made further adjustments to secure its systems, but claims its products were never affected and that they remain safe. 

A company in Israel has developed a battery for electric cars that can be recharged  to a good level in 5 minutes, about the time it takes to gas up a car! Bgr.com says the company, StoreDot, has now produced its first 1,000 EV battery packs. They are utilizing batteries made by Eve Energy in China. The packs can get you 100 miles of range in 5 minutes. While the batteries are still lithium ion, they substitute nanoparticles of germanium instead of graphite. Future runs will use silicon nanoparticles, to be more cost effective. They will cost the same as present lithium ion batteries. StoreDot expects them to be in cars by 2025.

Facebook now says there is no plan to lift the indefinite suspension of Donald Trump’s Facebook account, even since he’s no longer in the White House. According to NBC, the ban will say in effect due to his incitement of the rioters who attacked the US Capitol. It still could be lifted at some point…it’s not a permanent ban like Twitter and Snapchat have on Trump accounts.

Microsoft Drops $2 Billion in Cruise; Snapdragon 870 Announced; Foxconn-$270 Million for Vietnam Plant, Smartwatches May Detect Signs of COVID-19 Early

GM’s Cruise self-driving car spin-off has just picked up another $2 billion in funding…from Microsoft. Redmond will be an investor and partner, according to techcrunch.com. GM itself and Honda have also pumped more funding into the company as it gets closer to commercializing its tech. As part of the deal, Cruise will leverage Azure, Microsoft’s cloud and edge computing platform, to commercialize its autonomous vehicle solutions at scale. Microsoft also becomes GM’s preferred cloud provider. GM plans to launch some 30 electric vehicles globally by 2025. 

Qualcomm has announced the new Snapdragon 870, which will power many higher line smartphones. Theverge.com reports that the 870 will actually not be the top of the line processor…that is the Snapdragon 888. The 870 will be dropped into phones selling for $800 or less, while the 888 powers top line phones like the Samsung Galaxy S21 series. The 870 should be showing up soon in handsets from Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, and Xiaomi towards the end of the first quarter of this year.

Foxconn has acquired a license to build a plant in Vietnam, and plans a $270 million dollar factory there to build MacBooks and iPads. Reuters.com says that the finished factory should be able to crank out around 8 million laptops and tablets a year. Foxconn has already poured $1.5 billion into Vietnam for production centers, and plans to invest $700 million more in the country as they move away from so much dependence on manufacturing in China. They also have plants now in India, South America, and Mexico.

Researchers at Mt. Sinai have found that the Apple Watch can pick up small changes in a user’s heartbeat that may indicate coronavirus a full week before they feel sick. According to engadget.com, the watches pick up changes in heart rate variability metrics (using a special app). The Watch already measures heart rate variability right out of the box, but the app traces it in a way that can match the accuracy of the nasal swab. Researchers at Stanford found that trackers from Garmin and Fitbit can do the same, finding the virus 81% of the time up to 9-1/2 days before any symptoms. A company called NeuTigers formed out of research from Princeton is using software to do this, and is now developing an app that will work on Fitbit, Apple, Samsung, and Withings smartwatches…they claim with 90% accuracy. 

Samsung Rolls Out Latest Phones at Unpacked; Health & Tech Firms Partner on Digital Vaccination Records; NHTSA Calls for Recall on Tesla Touchscreens; Parler CEO Says App May Not Return

As expected, Samsung showed off it’s latest and greatest phones at Unpacked today. Theverge.com reports that the Galaxy S21 will sell for $799 and the S21 Plus for $999. The S21 Ultra will be a wallet-melting $1199! The displays are virtually identical to last year’s phones, but the rounded edges have been eliminated. RAM in the two less expensive phones has been cut from 12 gigs to 8 gigs. The back panel of the lower end S21 is polycarbonate plastic, not glass, and it doesn’t have the ultrawideband radio the Plus and Ultra have that help integrate better with Samsung’s new Galaxy SmartTag. Aping Apple, Samsung will no longer ship with a charging brick and headphones (also citing environmental reasons…neither they nor Apple will admit to the nice cost savings they reap.) All 3 phones are available for preorder now, and launch on January 29th.

There is a new cross-industry initiative to set up digital vaccination records to enable employers to verify that people have and COVID-19 vaccinations before returning to the workplace. According to techcrunch.com, The so-called ‘Vaccination Credential Initiative’ includes a range of big-name companies from both the healthcare and the tech industry, including Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and Epic, as well as the Mayo Clinic, Safe Health, Change Healthcare and the CARIN Alliance. Paper vaccination credentials have actually been around since the 1700’s. I can recall having a little card from my doctor’s office showing all the vaccinations I had had for school. The system could be used for travel as well as workplace returns. 

The Feds are calling for an analysis that could lead to a recall of Teslas over touchscreens. The NHTSA says there is an apparent defect in Model S and Model X touchscreens that could end up bricking some 158,000 cars. Arstechnica.com says the issue is in the Media Control Unit. Buried within the MCU is an 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip, which can only be written to a finite number of times. Once this number of read/write cycles is reached—something that takes between three and four years depending on how much the car is driven—the touchscreen dies. The Feds say Tesla has attempted to patch the systems, but that isn’t working, and they have asked for a recall. 

In an interview with Reuters, John Matze, CEO of Parler, said the platform may not ever get back online. After being dropped from the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, then getting the boot from Amazon Web Services last Sunday, other vendors have also cut ties with the platform. Prior to going down, Parler had claimed to have over 12 million users. The platform was looking for another hosting service, and according to Matze, there had been no changes to investors in Parler as of yesterday. Hedge fund investor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer and conservative commentator Dan Bongino are investors of the service.

Ring Bows End-to-End Video Encryption; Samsung Unveils New Exynos Processor; Apple Announces Projects Re Its Racial Equality & Justice Pledge; Weber Picks Up Smart Oven June

On the heels of a class action suit, Ring has introduced end-to-end video encryption. According to venturebeat.com, in 2019, a data leak exposed the personal information of over 3,000 Ring users, including log-in emails, passwords, time zones, and the names people give to specific Ring cameras. Following the breach, Ring began requiring two-step verification for user sign-ins and launched a compromised password check feature that cross-references login credentials against a list of known compromised passwords. Ring notes that end-to-end encryption disables certain features, including AI-dependent features that decrypt videos for processing work like motion verification and people-only mode.

Samsung Unpacked is tomorrow, but today they rolled out a new processor, the Exynos 2100 processor. Cnet.com reports that the company says The new 5-nanometer chip features an eight-core CPU including an Arm Cortex X1 core, clocked at up to 2.9GHz, to go with three Cortex A78 cores and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores. Samsung says the new CPU should deliver a “more than 30% enhancement in multicore performance” than its predecessor. There is also an Arm Mali-G78 GPU to improve graphics by “more than 40%” as well as improved performance when handling intensive tasks like artificial intelligence. It is widely believed that the new processor will power the new Galaxy S21 in international versions. Again, the S21 should bow tomorrow.

Last summer, Apple committed $100 million to a Racial Equity and Justice Initiative (REJI). Techcrunch.com now says the company has announced some of the contributions…including $25 million to the Propel Center, an innovation hub for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. They are also investing $10 million in Harlem Capital, and $25 million in Siebert Williams Shank’s Clear Vision Impact Fund. Finally, Apple is making a contribution to The King Center.

Weber, which had partnered with the makers of the June smart oven, has now acquired June. According to engadget.com, the Weber Connect grill and June ovens and future devices will run on the JuneOS. Weber said the acquisition will help expedite its ‘connected innovation programs.’ June will now gain access to Weber’s infrastructure, resources, and expertise…scaling the tech to a whole new level. 

Amazon Removing QAnon Items from Storefront; Twitter Removing 70,000 QAnon Accounts; Free Decrypter Defangs Darkside; Intel 12th Gen Chips Aim to Challenge ARM & Apple M1 Chips

Amazon is pulling products related to QAnon from their storefront, including self-published books that support conspiracy theories, clothes, posters, stickers, and more. According to engadget.com, products that “promote, incite, or glorify hate or violence toward any person or group” are not permitted on the platform, the company said in a statement. If a merchant tries to get around the ban, they will be removed from the Amazon storefront platform. 

Twitter has deleted over 70,000 accounts since last Friday that had been sharing QAnon conspiracy theories and other fake information. Cnet.com reports that the crackdown is part of a push to remove content that promotes violence in the aftermath of last week’s attack on the Capitol building. On Tuesday, Twitter said it has also taken other actions in the wake of the violence on Capitol Hill, including escalating enforcement against tweets that share election misinformation and blocking some phrases from surfacing in trends and searchers.

A free tool is out from security firm Bitdefender to help victims of Darkside ransomware recover their encrypted files for free, without paying the ransom demand. Zdnet.com says the tool is a free download from Bitdefender’s site, along with instructions for use. It is thought the Darkside group will reprogram their malware, but at least this will slow them down and make it more expensive for them to try to hack into systems and lock them down.

Intel has teased its upcoming chips, the hybrid Alder Lake chipsets will mirror what Arm does, with a mix of high efficiency and high performance cores, according to theverge.com. Intel says the chips will be for desktop and mobile, much like Apple is doing with the underlying tech for its M1 chips. The Alder Lake family should bow in the second part of 2021.

Twitter Down After Trump Dump; Apple-Hyundai Deal-March?; Lenovo Smart Glasses; Ford & Nissan Cut Production-Chip Shortage

Twitter stock dropped over 10% as of this morning after the permanent ban of Donald Trump from the platform last week. According to yahoo.com, the stock initially dropped 12.3% at the market open. The tech company suspended Trump’s account on Friday in a move to prevent him from using the platform to incite further unrest among his supporters following the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol last week, according to Twitter. At the time of this writing, San Francisco police have a substantial presence at Twitter headquarters, and barricades up. Twitter says most staff is still working from home anyway. 

More on the Apple-Hyundai possible deal. 9to5mac.com reports that Korea IT News is claiming that Apple and Hyundai are shooting for making a deal to build autonomous cars by this March. Production could apparently begin as soon as 2024 in the US. The cars would likely be built at the Kia plant in Georgia, or the companies may “jointly invest in a new factory in the United States.”

Lenovo has unveiled ThinkReality A3 smart glasses for CES 2021. Engadget.com says the the specs are powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon XR XR! SoC systems. They can show up to 5 virtual reality 1080p displays and rock an 8MP camera that can provide 1080p video. The headset still needs to be connected to either a PC or a Motorola smartphone running a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series processor or better. No pricing as yet, but Lenovo says it will be available in select markets worldwide starting mid-2021.

For years, cars have been loaded with computer chips. Now, a shortage is actually affecting auto production. According to engadget.com, both Ford and Nissan are cutting production due to semiconductor shortages. Ford is hitting pause at an SUV factory in Louisville, KY this week. Nissan is cutting production at its Oppama factory in Japan. Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, and Toyota are also talking about production issues. So far, General Motors hasn’t had to cut production, but they say they are keeping an eye on chip-related issues. 

Facebook Freshens Pages; Google Plans New Line of Nest Cams; EV Maker Rivian Snags More Cash; Amazon Buys Jets

Facebook has freshened Pages, which is used by celebrities, businesses, politicians and other public figures to interact with their fans and customers. The cleaner design will lose the total number of likes, and make the profile picture more prominent. It also will be easier for the owners to switch from their public page and personal page. A new feature will allow people to host a Q&A on their page. 

Nest Cam models are showing up out of stock, and we previously reported that the FCC has a filing for a new device, thought to be a new Nest Hub. Now, Google has revealed it is planning a “new lineup of security cameras for 2021.” With the partnership they made last Summer with ADT, expect them to offer a new security solution where professional techs will “sell and install devices like Nest Cameras and Nest Hub Max.” We could see the new Google Smart Display and the new cams in the next couple months. 

Electric pickup startup Rivian is about to nail down new financing that will bring its valuation up to $25 billion. Bloomberg notes that Ford (which is an earlier investor in Rivian) is only valued at $33 billion! It seems like a crazy valuation for a company that has yet to release a product, but bear in mind that Amazon has an order of 100,000 electric vans from the company. 

Amazon has been bulking up on logistics for years, even leasing a fleet of jets in 2016 and a hub for them. Now, according to theverge.com, they have bought 11 used Boeing 767-300 jets from Delta and WestJet. This will bring their air fleet up to 85 planes by 2022. Amazon already delivers over half the packages in the US, and is seeking to free themselves of the need to use FedEx and UPS…doing it all themselves. Amazon does say it will continue to rely on third-party carriers to operate the new aircraft. 

Microsoft Looks to Unify Mail Apps with ‘One Outlook’; Dell Laptops Auto Webcam Shutter; Apple to ‘Phase 2’ of AR Glasses Prototype; FCC-New Google Device…Nest Hub?

Microsoft appears poised to replace its numerous versions of mail with ‘One Outlook.’ Zdnet.com reports that the new single version of Outlook will replace Windows 10 Mail and Calendar apps, as well as its legacy Win 32 Outlook client with a single Outlook client for both Windows and Mac. Right now, it’s a project code named ‘Project Monarch.’ It is apparently designed to be better for larger screen experiences. According to Windows Central, we could see a preview of ‘One Outlook’ by late 2021, but it won’t replace the built-in Mail and calendar apps in Windows 10 until some time in 2022.

In a better answer for laptop cams with all the web meetings going on during the pandemic, Dell’s latest Latitude business laptops are featuring a webcam shutter to physically block your cam when it’s not in use. According to theverge.com, this will be fully automated…a nice upgrade from the shutters you have to slide manually, or the infamous post it notes that everyone from you and I to Zuckerberg have been using to cover the damned things when not in use! There are also ‘mute’ keys to manually mute the mic or cam as needed. The 14 inch 9420 will be $1949. No pricing for the 15.6 inch 95s0 yet. Release is ‘this Spring.

 Dell is also rolling out new monitors this month, including 3 that will be the first ones certified for Microsoft Teams. They feature a Teams button that will quickly launch the app to make and receive video calls. Hands free commands are also supported via Cortana and the built-in microphone. Prices range from $519.99 for a 24 inch model up to $1149 for a curved 34 inch model. Those drop on February 16th. 

Apple is readying to hit the ‘2nd phase of development’ for their augmented reality glasses prototype. Macrumors.com says this comes from a paywalled preview in a DigiTimes story. It is thought that Apple may release an AR headset this year…in fact, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo mentioned this in a piece a few days ago, saying Apple suppliers are gearing up for an unspecified Apple AR device this year. The latest thinking is that we could see an AR headset this year, and possibly the finished version of Apple AR glasses in 2022.

A new Filing with the FCC points to a new device, called an ‘Interactive Device’, as meaning a new Nest Hub Smart Display is on the way. According to 9to5google.com, Google has used ‘Interactive’ in describing smart displays and speakers up to now. The device has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Zigbee. Zigbee is a big tell, as that is used by a number of smart home devices. The Nest Hub Max is over a year old, and the Home/Nest Hub is more than 2 years old, so it’s a good bet that this is a replacement with display to one of those. 

Alphabet-Google Workers Look to Unionizing; Samsung Unpacked Date Announced; Backdoor in Zyxel Firewalls & VPNs; Freshened Tesla Model X Spotted

Over 200 Google and Alphabet employees have announced plans to form a union. Techcrunch.com reports that the union is the CWA, Communication Workers of America, and it’s part of the union’s campaign to organize digital employees. The Alphabet Workers Union seeks to be open to both employees and contractors. The bulk of the employees are based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kickstarter and Glitch unionized last year. We are also hearing of moves to unionize at Apple. 

The next Samsung event will be January 14th at 7am Pacific, and the company will be showing off the latest and greatest Galaxy flagship phones….likely to be the S21. S21 Plus, and S21 Ultra. Theverge.com notes there have already been massive leaks about the phones, but there are always a few things that haven’t been leaked out. Samsung teased with ‘Welcome to the Everyday Epic.’ We’ll have details here after the presentation on the 14th.

In a troubling discovery, a backdoor account has been found in more than 100,000 Zyxel firewalls and VPN gateways. Zdnet.com says there’s a hard-coded, admin-level backdoor account that grants attackers root access using either the SSH interface or the web admin panel. The backdoor was found by a team of Dutch security researchers from Eye Control. It doesn’t get much worse than this! If you use anything from Zyxel, update your system asap! Patches are already available for a number of their devices. 

A Tesla Model S with some styling changes was spotted in Palo Alto over the weekend. Mashable.com reports that EV YouTube channel  https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKilowatts/featured posted video and have a running description of the vehicle. It has more aggressive headlights and rear styling, among other things. This comes on the heels of Tesla announcing that they delivered 499,550 vehicles in 2020, just barely under the 500,000 they had been shooting for. Final numbers may be as much as .5% more, which would put them over the top. 2020 was an exceptional year for the EV maker….shares were up 743%!