Meta Sued -Exploiting Young People; Amazon Launching Drone Delivery; Google Will Let Ad Rivals on YouTube; Galaxy Z Flip 4-Less Crease
Posted: June 13, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentMeta has been served with eight lawsuits in several states, making the claim that Facebook and Instagram are ‘detrimental to young people’s mental health.’ According to mashable.com, the law firm behind the suits is Beasley Allen. In a statement, the firm continues that Meta ‘purposefully made its platforms psychologically addictive and failed to protect its users.’ They cite the Congressional testimony by Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen. The lawsuits state that prolonged platform use has led to mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, as well as self-harm and attempted suicide. There was no immediate response from Meta.
Amazon is prepping to launch a fleet of delivery drones in a test of Amazon Prime Air Delivery in Lockeford, California. Lockeford is south of Sacramento. Cnet.com reports that Amazon has worked with the FAA and local officials to get permissions to run the drone tests. the drones have a sense-and-avoid system they use to operate safely. The plan is for the drones to drop down into a customer’s back yard and drop the package from a safe height, before returning to their base.
Google is offering to let rivals and intermediaries run ads on YouTube in response to an EU antitrust investigation. Reuters.com says the European Commission opened a probe last year to look into whether the worlds’s largest provider of search and video was giving itself an unfair advantage by restricting rivals’ and advertisers’ access to user data. Google is angling to settle with the EU, but while a good step, it looks like they will have to do more to get some kind of settlement. A similar British agency is also investigating Google’s ad practices.
A good rumor about the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4…while it looks pretty identical outside, the display crease on the inner screen is much smaller and less noticeable. 9to5google.com reports that it is expected to have a newer Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, as well as a bigger 3700 mAh battery. The present 3300 mAh battery has been underwhelming. The handset should still come in at around $999 when it rolls out in August.
Reports-Netflix May Buy Roku; Samsung Folding Phones May Double Storage; Toyota Teases Energy Storage System; Remote Workers Want New Benefits
Posted: June 8, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentRumors flying pushed Roku stock higher, as the word was that there may be a takeover bid from Netflix. According to thestreet.com, Roku stock jumped by 10.9% on the rumor. Netflix was up 4%. Even with Netflix down 65% this year due to losing 200,000 subscribers, the thought is that by picking up Roku, Netflix, it would allow Netflix to target advertising on Roku’s platform to try to get consumers to restart the streaming service. They might even run a 1st season of one of their shows on it to try to hook viewers into signing up to watch the rest.
Samsung may double storage options on the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Flip 4 to 1TB. 9to5google.com reports that doing so would double the present top storage capacity. Samsung is also looking at goosing up the RAM to either 12 gigs or 15 gigs. If this holds true, it would be the 1st increase AND the 1st time Samsung has offered this much storage in a foldable. The Fold 4 still wouldn’t have an SD card slot, but with a terabyte, it wouldn’t really be needed. With the top amount of storage and RAM, it’s likely that the Fold would top $2000. The top option would also push the Flip to about $1500. You would still be able to buy the 128, 256, and 512 gig models for less, of course.
Toyota has fired a shot over the bow of Tesla, with their own version of the Powerwall battery storage system. Thenextweb.com says the battery system would be 8.7kWh with a 5.5 kWh output. It would be available for power outages, or for overnight operation in homes with solar panels that want to operate mainly or entirely off grid. The system can charge from solar panels, from the electric company grid, OR…unlike Tesla’s, from a vehicle’s battery (like the new ford F-150 Lightening EV pickup.) The system can be controlled and checked on from a smartphone app. No pricing yet, but it will first be available in Japan starting in August. If it comes to the US, it will have to be under $7460 in order to compete with Tesla’s Powerwall.
No matter how they try, businesses aren’t going to be able to get everyone to come back to the office. Now, work from home workers are asking for additional or different benefits. According to zdnet.com, Paychex did a survey of over 1,000 WFH professionals. Some of the benefits they are looking for: 31% want a home stipend to reimburse them for use of their space. 30% are asking for reimbursement for internet costs. Other benefits they are looking for are flexible hours, a 4 day work week, and bonuses for beating productivity goals. Employers (43%) and employees (58%) also noticed improvements in workplace diversity since adjusting to remote work: 24% of leaders said they had started hiring employees working in other states since going remote, meaning they are casting a wider net when it came to recruitment. That said, one-third of employers still reported limiting where their employees could live, Paychex found.
USB-C Mandatory for EU Phones; Google Asst Driving Mode; Polestar EV-SUV Coming; Waymo Partners with Uber-Autonomous Trucks
Posted: June 7, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentWe’ve been covering this for a while, with ‘it’s probably coming’ stories. Now, it’s happened. The European Union will require USB-C to be mandatory on all phones sold in the EU by the fall of 2024. Theverge.com reports that this legislation has been in the works for 10 years, but now, even Apple will have to use USB-C on their phones. Apple had already switched over iPads and Macs to USB-C, so they obviously saw this coming. It will be a huge plus to be able to just grab a USB-C cable to charge your phone instead of having to look for (or buy and expensive) proprietary cable for your iPhone. The EU is now looking on trying to enforce standards for wireless charging and fast charging….all welcome rules that will help consumers.
Google had announced back in 2919 that it would be killing off Android Auto in favor of Google Assistant Driving Mode. Well, that time is coming up imminently. According to 9to5google.com, even older versions of Android Auto for Phone Screens will lose access soon. A couple of irritating down sides to the newer app…first, Android Auto showed up as an app on your home screen. For Assistant Driving Mode, the easiest way to get to it is a verbal command: “Hay Google, launch Driving Mode.” After that, you can tap the icon and add it to your home screen. You can then set it to connect to your car’s Bluetooth and it should detect it and run when you are driving. Down side number two? It had been promised months ago that the app would switch to landscape mode when you run it, but right now, that doesn’t work yet…so you have an irritating portrait mode to work with in your car (or on your phone). Perhaps Google should have had this entirely baked before killing off Android Auto!
Polestar will roll out its electric SUV in October. Engadget.com says the Polestar 3 will be partially assembled in the US (although mostly in China.) They are claiming it will have a 372 mile range. The Model has dual motors, and will offer 4WD. The company hasn’t released pricing yet. Polestar is a Swedish brand started back in the mid 90’s by Volvo and Flash/Polestar Racing. The company was bought by Chinese maker Geely in 2010.
They fought bitterly in the past, but now Waymo is partnering with Uber Freight, the ride hail’s truck brokerage on tech to power autonomous big rigs. Theverge.com reports that the “long-term strategic partnership” will enable fleet owners to more quickly deploy trucks equipped with Waymo’s autonomous “driver” for on-demand delivery routes offered by Uber Freight. The goods delivery division of Waymo— Waymo Via, which is focused on goods delivery in both trucking and local delivery formats will collaborate with Uber Freight, which launched in 2017. That service connects truck drivers with shippers, much in the same way the company’s ride-hailing app pairs drivers with those looking for a ride. The two say it will be a ‘deep integration.’ In a statement, the companies predict their integration will lead to “unlocking much-needed capacity for shippers, increasing fuel efficiency, providing carriers with the opportunity to scale their businesses, and ultimately streamlining global supply chains to the benefit of everyone.”
WWDC ’22 Recap
Posted: June 6, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentFor iOS on iPhone—New lock screen features. Font and background selectable, and widgets can be added. Also, notices come up from the bottom, and you can select for live following notices…like ball game scores.
Messages….Recall, and edit after send now available…about time! You can tag Messages as unread to go back and check later. Lots of sharing features you may or may not use.
Dictation— Now will allow you to ‘fluidly move’ from keyboard to voice and vice versa. Dictation will automatically ad punctuation and emoji if desired. If it will just automatically be truly accurate…oh, that’s probably too much to ask!
Touch and hold on item in a pic, and you can copy and paste that item elsewhere. They copied a doggie and pasted him into a document. This is really cool, and I bet lots of people use this.
Wallet— A couple states, Maryland and AZ already accept DL from the app, and another of others are working on it.
A number of companies let you park your keys (like room key to hotel). You can share keys with others now, and they are working on that for Android, too, so you can share with a family member or other who doesn’t have an iPhone.
Apple is enhancing Apple Pay with Apple Pay Later. 4 payments over 6 weeks with no fee and no interest. Kind of an extension of what they have now for buying Apple devices, only available for lots of products and services (non-Apple.) You can track upcoming payments in the Wallet app.
Order tracking can now be sent directly to Wallet, via Shopify and other platforms, so you don’t have to hunt for an email and click through to a website.
Maps— Cycling, Look Around, and increased detail in 3D. Adding Multistop mapping…can add up to 15 stops to your route. You can use Siri to do it verbally while driving too. You will see your transit cards and balances right in Map, and can reload a low transit card without leaving the app. Look Around will let apps like Zillow put in hi-res pics so you can look at homes.
Sports-As noted, added live streaming of scores on you Lock Screen. Apple News is adding My Sports to let you follow your favorite teams in your news feed.
Family Sharing….share favorite subscriptions in Apple to up to 5 people in household. You can build in parental controls for kids. If you limit time on apps or devices, and the kid asks for more, you can ok it or not via Messages.
iCloud Shared Photo Library….a separate library can be shared with up to 5 people. You can share everything or select just specific ones. There will even be a shared library setting in the camera app.
Privacy—Adding new tool that can quickly change settings. Safety Check. If you have shared passwords and locations with a partner, and someone gets violent, you can reset access with an emergency reset so a person feeling threatened can lock that threatening person out.
Watch OS— 4 new faces. Also, more faces will get more rich complications. Improvements in Workout tracking, and in Health, a medication tracker with reminders.
=================
Yes, they are introducing new hardware:
New MacBook Air will be 1st to get the new M2 Apple chip….faster CPU and Graphics and uses less power than the M1 series. It is still thin, but the wedge shape is gone. It’s under a half inch and 2.7 lbs. Silver, Space Grey, Champagne Gold, and Black. It gets MagSafe, like the Pros. Also has the notch, but a 13.6 inch display. As the Pros, it gets the 1080p camera. 3 mics, and 4 speakers. Like the latest Pros, it has function buttons instead of the Touch Bar. It’s fanless! 18 hours video playback. Will support fast charge…up to 50% in a half hour. $1199 and avail next month. $100 less for education.
The 13” MacBook Pro will also get toe M2 chip. It will be 40% faster than the M1 MacBook Pro. Up to 24Gb unified memory. 20 hours video playback on a battery charge. $1299. Avail. next month, and again $100 less for education.
MacOS — Will be called Ventura. The have added Stage Manager, to track your open windows, etc and keep you organized. It puts the open windows you have open over to the side, but the window you are working in will move to the middle and take up most of the screen. Just click on the window on the side, and that one will take the center stage. For desktop files, you can click the desktop, and it will minimize all the open windows. You can drag a file to the one you want, and it will pop it right in. iPadOS also gets Stage Manager!
Spotlight is enriched and improved. You can take actions right from Spotlight. They are adding the features to iOS, too.
Mail—Undo send lets you do that if you act quickly after hitting send. Schedule to send an email at a set time (great-marketers will dig this). Reminders let you remind yourself to come back to an email later. Search will show recently shared documents and files.
Safari- They have added shared tab groups, so friends or family can share back and forth.
Privacy…New Passkeys will let FaceID or TouchID to create. They stay on the device, aren’t in the cloud…but will sync across your Apple devices. Google and Microsoft will also use Fido along with Apple to protect your privacy (as has been reported here recently.) This is intended as an eventual replacement for passwords, as it really minimizes phishing issues.
You can now use your iPhone as a web cam for your Mac. It has added features like studio lighting to make a really cool web cam video. It even uses the ultra wide cam to show you and a view of your desk side by side if you want to share some work you have on your physical desk. Of course, they are selling an attachable stand, LOL! They will have a stand from Belkin later this year, too…which will cost less, of course.
PadOS 16— You can make a Messages group, and then collaborate. If you want to send a document, you can, and anyone can edit the document dynamically. You can also collaborate in FaceTime. It will drop the doc into Safari or another app. They have also added a free form screen, where anyone can write on like a white board, or draw on it. Photos, audio, and etc can be dropped into it, too.
Stage Manager is available now on PadOS, and overlapping windows is a new feature. You can resize windows, too. You can have up to 8 apps and windows at the same time.
All the new OS updates available in public beta next month, and will be released this fall.
Instagram to Push Amber Alerts; Tweetdeck Shutdown-Something New; Salesforce Revenue Up; Two Leading Browsers-2nd May Surprise You
Posted: June 1, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentInstagram is going to start pushing out Amber Alerts to user feeds, to alert them to missing children reports in their area. Engadget.com reports that the feature begins rollout tomorrow, and should be live in 25 countries in the next couple weeks. Parent company Meta warns that you won’t see them often, and that they will not only be rare, but specific to the search area. They will use IP addresses and location data if you have enabled that to ascertain who will get particular alerts. Unlike text notifications, these will show up in user feeds, and will include a photo and description of the child, as well as where they were last seen…and a number to call with tips for law enforcement.
Twitter is shutting down its Mac app for TweetDeck in July. The web based version will live on. According to macrumors.com, Twitter Tweeted that it is “saying goodbye to TweetDeck for the Mac app to focus on making TweetDeck even better and testing our new Preview.” That refers to a redesigned version of TweetDeck which is being tested on an invite-only basis. Twitter picked up TweetDeck back in 2011. A lot of people like the multi-column view of Tweets.
Salesforce revenue was up 24% to $7.4 billion in the last quarter, a great number considering rumblings about inflation. “So far, we’re just not seeing any material impact from the broader economic world that all of you are in,” said Marc Benioff, the Salesforce founder and co-CEO, on a conference call discussing the company’s fiscal first quarter, ended April 30. “Our demand environment remains very strong.” Geekwire.com says that data visualization company Tableau Software, which has been part of Salesforce since 2019, was up 18% in the past quarter. Salesforce did reduce its revenue guidance for the full year slightly…from $32 to $32.1 billion down to between $31.7-$31.8.
The top browser probably won’t surprise anyone, but the #2 one might. Arstechnica.com notes that according to Atlas VPN, the big dog of all browsers is Google Chrome. Chrome has an estimated 3.4 billion users! What’s #2? Nope, not Firefox or Microsoft….it’s Apple’s Safari, with over a billion users. If that makes you scratch your head, this might clear things up…the totals include mobile users, not just desktop ones. With Apple’s massive installed base of iPhones and iPads, that’s where their numbers really add up. It’s still a pretty amazing number, considering that Safari is the only browser not available on Android, OR on Windows! Edge has now passed up Firefox, but only has about 213,000 users. Firefox has a bit over 179,000.
Virtual Shopping; Apple AR Headset; US Back With Top Supercomputer; Microsoft New Identity Management Tools
Posted: May 31, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThere’s plenty hype about the supposed infinite potential of the metaverse and AR/VR technology as tools for future online marketplaces, but there has also been a decline in revenue for several ecommerce companies in recent years. A new report from Productsup has surveyed consumers’ tastes and expectations when it comes to digital hybrid shopping experiences. According to Venturebeat.com, for many companies looking to boost sales in the digital marketplace, the results illustrate an uphill battle:—60% of shoppers have zero interest in buying virtual goods whatsoever. With revenue from the metaverse expected to reach $800 billion in 2024, though, many companies will continue to ramp up their virtual shopping offerings.
Apple is unlikely to announce its rumored mixed reality headset or its new AR/VR operating system at next week’s WWDC with mass production of the device still some ways off, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. In a pair of tweets on Tuesday, Kuo said he expected Apple’s headset to launch in 2023, and that announcing it too early would see Apple’s competitors “immediately kick off copycat projects” and release rival products before Apple’s headset hits the shelves. Macrumors.com reports that Kuo’s thoughts echo the most recent report by Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman in which he played down expectations that Apple would make a “full-blown announcement” of its headset at WWDC. One fresh report from a more sketchy source has Apple starting production in the 2nd half of this year.
It’s a constant cat and mouse game, but the United States is on top of the supercomputing world in the Top500 ranking of the most powerful systems again. Engadget.com says the Frontier system from Oak Ridge National Laboratory running on AMD EPYC CPUs took first place from last year’s champ, Japan’s ARM A64X Fugaku system. It’s still in the integration and testing process at the ORNL in Tennessee, but will eventually be operated by the US Air Force and US Department of Energy. Frontier, powered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Cray EX platform, was the top machine by a wide margin, too. It’s the first (known) true exascale system, hitting a peak 1.1 exaflops on the Linmark benchmark. Fugaku, meanwhile, managed less than half that at 442 petaflops, which was still enough to keep it in first place for the previous two years.
Microsoft has announced the launch of Entra, a new product family of identity and access management solutions. The family includes existing tools like Azure AD alongside two new product categories; Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) and Decentralized Identity. According to Venturebeat.com, for users, the Entra product family is designed to protect access to any app or resource by enabling security teams to discover and manage permissions in multicloud environments so they can secure digital identities from end-to-end. With more providers maturing their approach to identity management and security, Microsoft is aiming to differentiate itself from other vendors by building an end-to-end solution to identity protection across employees, partners, and customers. Entra Permissions Management provides security teams with a solution to detect unused and excessive permissions, so they can more effectively enforce the principle of least privilege and maintain a top-down view of identities across all cloud services including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud platform. Verified ID, is available in early August and will enable users to decide what information they share, when, who they share it with, and provide them with the ability to revoke access when necessary.
Smartphone Sales Soften; DuckDuckGo is Just Semi-Private; Apple WWDC OS Rumors
Posted: May 30, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentA new report from South Korea’s Maeil Business News has Samsung, the world’s leading smartphone maker, ramping production down by 30 million units for 2022. The news comes as sales are further hampered by the conflict in Ukraine. In March, the company followed fellow tech giants Microsoft and Apple by suspending sales in Russia. Apple, too, has been feeling the pain. Recent Bloomberg reports noted that the iPhone maker is throttling plans to manufacture an additional 20 million phones in 2022. Bloomberg reports that smartphone sales in China are down about 30%.
The one browser famous for protecting your privacy apparently has quietly sold you out. DuckDuckGo has touted their browser for years as the one that doesn’t track your every move and sell that information to others. So much for that. According to thenextweb.com, DuckDuckGo still blocks Facebook and Google trackers, but apparently makes an exception for some of Microsoft’s. The supposedly privacy conscious browser has been letting Bing and LinkedIn get your data. They blame it on their search syndication agreement with Microsoft.
Some little nuggets from Mark Gurman ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference next week. Macrumors.com says the analyst sees an enhanced Lock Screen with iOS 16, as well as improved multitasking for iPadOS 16. MacOS 13 will pick up redesigned apps. The iOS Lock Screen will get wallpapers with widget-like capabilities. It won’t get always on, but Apple has apparently built in support for that in future OS editions and phones. The iPad will see major changes in windowing and multitasking….which it can certainly use! For all of the OS versions, the Messages app will get “more social network-like functionality, particularly around audio messages.” Not to be left out, Watch OS 9 will allegedly include “significant improvements to watchOS that affect day-to-day operating and navigation,” alongside refreshes for existing Apple Watch faces and a new Low Power Mode.
Zoom Up 16% Q1; Microsoft Will Support 3rd Party Win 11 Widgets; TikTok Launching Live Creator Subscriptions; Tesla Superchargers in EU Now For All
Posted: May 24, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentZoom hasn’t taken a powder since a lot of people have headed back to the office. The service is up 16% first quarter, according to CNBC, beating all guidance nicely. The company is projecting 9.2% growth in the 2nd quarter. Zoom expects to haul in revenue somewhere between $4.53 and $4.55 billion this year.
Microsoft has announced it will support third party Windows 11 widgets, with those becoming available later this year. Theverge.com reports that the announcement came at the Build developer conference. Right now, Microsoft offers its own widgets, but the selection is pretty miserly. You can use their Outlook or To Do Widgets, but pretty well all the rest are web—powered ones that give you the weather, entertainment news, or regular news feeds. Widgets up to now have been stashed in a dedicated panel up to now, but should be available on the desktop soon.
TikTok is gunning for Twitch, YouTube, and others with a launch this week of TikTok LIVE subscriptions. The subs will allow creators to generate recurring revenue payments from their top fans. TechCrunch.com says the program will launch in beta testing May 26th, and initially will just be available to a select group of creators by invitation only. It has been rumored that this was coming since the 1st of the year. In addition to normal subscriber benefits, subscribers will be able to control the cams on the creators’ livestreams. Badges will also update the longer one is subscribed…giving OG subscribers a hat tip. Prices are rumored to be similar to Twitch’s pricing (which starts at $4.99 a month, with Twitch taking a 30-50% cut. It should be noted that Bloomberg says Twitch may be going to adjust its take.)
Tesla has turned on its Supercharger network in Europe after a test run that started in the Netherlands. According to electrek.co, Tesla crows that it is ‘largest 150 kW+ public fast-charging network’ in the EU. It’s a hard claim to confirm, but it is likely true that Tesla is already offering more fast-chargers with a capacity of 150 kW or more for all EVs than any other charging network operator. Ionity has 417 charging stations deployed in Europe, about twice as many as Tesla Supercharger stations in the pilot program for all EVs, but Ionity is averaging only 4.1 chargers per station for a total of 1738 fast-charger stations. Tesla has only a bit over 200 stations, but averages about 9 chargers per station, which should put them (barely) above Ionity.
DC AG Sues Zuck-Cambridge Analytica; iPhone Front Cam Upgrade Will Cost Apple 3X More; UK Fines Clearview AI; Hyundai Building EV & Batt Plants in Georgia
Posted: May 23, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThe District of Columbia’s Attorney General has sued Mark Zuckerberg. Engadget.com says the AG claims in the action that Zuck had a direct hand in making the decisions that led to the huge data breach involving Cambridge Analytica. AG Ken Racine claims that Zuckerberg “contributed to Facebook’s lax oversight of user data and implementation of misleading privacy agreements.” That, according to the suit, allowed consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to acquire personal data on more than 70 million Americans, including more than 340,000 DC residents. The company allegedly used the data to help sway voters in the 2016 presidential election through political ad targeting. He had already sued Facebook (now Meta) over the issue in 2018…that case is still proceeding.
We had previously reported that the iPhone 14 models will feature a more expensive, ‘high end’ front facing (selfie) cam. Now, we have an idea how much more expensive. According to macrumors.com, the autofocus cam will from LG Innotek of South Korea, in addition to those acquired from Sharp. Apparently the new selfie cam will run Apple 3 times the cost of the ones in prior iPhone models. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the better selfie cams will be in all iPhone 14 models. It will mean a better depth of field effect of Portrait mode for selfies (why didn’t they do that before?) The Autofocus will enhance FaceTime and Zoom calls. For the camera nerds, it will feature a wider f /1.9 aperture. The present cams have fixed focus and a smaller f /2.2 aperture.
The United Kingdom’s data protection watchdog has taken a $10 million bite out of Clearview AI for privacy breaches. Techcrunchl.com reports that the watchdog has also issued an enforcement notice, demanding that the controversial facial recognition firm stop obtaining and using personal data of UK residents that is publicly available on the internet. Clearview has a database of over 20 billion facial images they obtained by scraping data from the internet…a lot of it from social media platforms. They have AI based software that they sell to governments and law enforcement that uses the data to fight crime…but in a number of instances, it has been mis-used against political rivals and the media in some countries. Taking the data is a breach of privacy laws in a number of countries.
Hyundai is building plants in Savannah, Georgia…both for EV production and batteries. The car factory will be their first EV only plant in the US. According to theverge.com, the Korean car maker will drop $5.5 billion of the facilities, but will also get another billion in investment from its suppliers. The car plant is expected to be cranking out EVs by 2025, and they expect to build 300,000 units per year there. The factory will employ 8100.
Twitter Will Enforce Musk Merger; Disney+ Pay Tier Coming; Apple Considers External ePaper Display; Ecobee Bows New Smart Thermostats
Posted: May 18, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentIn a report by CNN on the ongoing Twitter-Elon Musk deal, analyst Dan Ives said there is a “60%+ chance from our view Musk ultimately walks from the deal and pays the breakup fee.” The Twitter board seems pretty intent on holding Musk to the deal. On Tuesday morning, hours after Musk tweeted that “this deal cannot move forward” until his purported spam bot concerns are cleared up, the company filed its proxy statement for Musk’s takeover and said it wants to close the deal “as promptly as practicable.A statement from the board said “The Board and Mr. Musk agreed to a transaction at $54.20 per share. We believe this agreement is in the best interest of all shareholders. We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement.” With the word enforce, it sounds like Twitter may be going to court to make the deal happen, or make Musk pay the billion dollar break up fee. With the damage to Twitter’s stock price, and top execs bailing through this soap opera, how will Twitter continue? It may be needing a ‘white knight,’ to swoop in and take over. Techdirt’s Mike Masonick guesses such a white knight might be Microsoft. Many analysts think Musk is just angling for a lower price, or will walk after coughing up the billion dollar fee.
Everybody’s doing it in streaming it seems, and the House of Mouse is about to join the party. According to theverge.com, when Disney Plus’ ad-supported plan goes live later this year, it will reportedly run ads for four minutes on movies or shows that last an hour or less. Not only that, but Disney will be cutting out ads that may have adult themes, such as anything related to alcohol or politics — AND they won’t accept any ads if they’re from an entertainment competitor either! In line with their family-friendly reputation, Disney plans on removing ads from all shows if it’s used by a kids’ profile as well. So far, there aren’t any details on how much the cheaper option will cost — Disney Plus currently costs $7.99 / month without ads. A best guess is $3.99 or $4.99 a month. Disney says it added 7.9 million new subscribers last quarter, growing its subscriber base to about 44 million people in the US and Canada.
This seems like such an un-Apple -like feature, but it’s being reported by Ming-Chi Kuo, one of the most accurate Apple analysts. Apparently, on the folding device Apple is testing (probably not an iPhone, but more like a folding iPad), “Apple is testing E Ink’s Electronic Paper Display (EPD) for future foldable device’s cover screen & tablet-like applications,” Kuo reported on Twitter earlier today. “The color EPD has the potential to become a mainstream solution for foldable devices’ must-have cover/second screen thanks to its excellent power-saving.” Techcrunch.com notes that one of E Ink’s most well-know and biggest selling points is power saving. It has really only worked for e-readers up to now, but recent generations of E Ink’s electronic paper have added color and sped up the notoriously slow refresh rate and responsiveness. As with all these sort of rumors involving Apple, we note that they test out plenty of things that never make it into a final device.
Ecobee is launching two new smart thermostats, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Enhanced and Smart Thermostat Premium. According to androidcentral.com, both have built-in radar for more accurate motion and occupancy detection. Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium also comes with a built-in air quality monitor and a SmartSensor in the box. The radar allows the thermostats to detect people through walls and behind objects, unlike the ones with infrared tech. They also both feature a virtual assistant built right in — either Alexa or Siri — with a speaker and mic. That new sensor can detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs), estimated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, and relative humidity of the room. It also comes with a SmartSensor in the box so you can place it somewhere else in the house to help the thermostat better balance out heat and air conditioning levels for the whole home. The $199 and $250.
clarkreid 
Recent Comments