News archive (4 / 2018)

Microsoft has revealed that they are releasing the next update for Windows 10 soon. In fact, the update simply called April 2018 update is available starting on Monday, the last day of April.

Obviously the update comes with loads of smaller bugfixes and optimizations but there's also one big, entirely new feature. Microsoft calls the new feature Timeline, and according to the company it "helps you easily find what matters to you across your devices".

You might ask what does this exactly mean? Well, with Timeline, you can go back up to 30 days to find whatever you are looking for. The feature lists the files and other content you've been using in the past month by activity.

It also allows catching up to your work on the go whether you are using and iOS or Android device, as long as you use Microsoft Edge or Office 365.

Other major changes include a mute tab option in Edge browser as well as Focus Assist feature that allows you to silence social media and other notifications while you are trying to be productive.

There's also an improved Dictation feature that works with any text field within Windows 10 or any app.

You can read more about the update here.

One of the key individuals behind Tesla's future is without a doubt the VP of Autopilot Jim Keller. Keller has been leading the development of autonomous driving chips inside Tesla, which many would agree is one of the key advantages of Teslas.

Now the semiconductor giant Intel has managed to lure Keller into leaving Tesla.

See, Tesla has been buying their chips from Nvidia but while doing that they've been investing heavily in their own chip R&D. Jim Keller has been the person who has been leading the effort to create their own proprietary chip that would not only fit their need better but would be cheaper to produce.

Keller has not revealed exactly what was the reason for departure from Tesla, but apparently Intel offers something better. Whether it is personal chemistry, heftier bonuses, problems with the program, or a better work environment, Tesla will likely miss Keller dearly.

Now the company has to find another chip guru to replace Kellers undeniable expertise in semiconductors. Prior to Tesla Keller worked at AMD where he lead the development of Zen architecture and PA Semi where he was developing Apple's system-on-chips.

One thing is for sure: Keller hasn't started hating autonomous driving all of a sudden since the new job at Intel is in the exact same field.

Google has introduced its email service, Gmail, one of the services largest updates ever. Gmail's UI and feature set has been fairly stagnant over the years and was definitely due a revamp.

The more modern look includes rounded elements, clearer and larger fonts, and updated icons. What you are really happy to see, though, are the new features.

Gmail now offers a snooze feature for specific email threads, integrated rights management (IRM) for business oriented users, and email specific two-factor authentication (2FA) among other things.

Snooze works exactly as you would expect. You'll be pausing the notifications for a specific thread until you have time to focus on your emails again.

There's also a new feature called nudging that allows Gmail to recognize emails that need attention, and might save the user a lot of trouble.

One of the more requested features, however, is automatically destroyed messages. A feature which was popularized by Snapchat, of course, has made it to Gmail but is a little bit different as you might imagine.

Unlike on Snapchat, Gmail allows the user to determine how low the message will be viewable and can block forwarding the email. The feature is called confidential mode, and it works with both Gmail users as well as other email providers users via https.

WhatsApp will soon start banning users who are under 16 year old. The change is related to European Union's GDPR legislation and how WhatsApp has decided to implement it.

The change will affect only those who live in European Union. Previously the age limit in Europe has been 13. The upcoming GDPR privacy legislation doesn't require companies to raise the age limit, but it has special clauses aimed at protecting minors. Thus, Facebook - who owns WhatsApp - has decided that it is easiest to simply raise the age limit across Europe.

Ibn coming weeks users of WhatsApp within European Union will be faced with a questionnaire asking for their age and also to agree with new, GDPR-compliant terms of service.

GDPR is one of the biggest privacy legislation changes in the World, giving EU citizens rights to their data and restricts how companies can use the data they have collected.

GDPR gives EU member states the right to choose the age of data handling consent (when the person is deemed capable of giving consent for companies to have his/her data collected) to be between 13 and 16 years, but apparently Facebook/WhatsApp has decided that it is easier to simply raise the age limit to 16 all across European Union rather than to deal each country's age limit separately.

Google's Chrome has been the market leader in web browsers, especially the desktop versions, for a long time, and for a very good reason. Frequent updates and Google's track record of bringing new features while not forgetting to keep it speedy and secure has been the winning formula.

Now the search giant is readying a new update that will bring an updated look to the browser. The early version, called the Canary, has revealed that Google is moving towards a UI look with rounded edges.

This look, that resembles earlier Firefox builds from few years back, also features a darker tone for tab bar. There's also a new + button on Windows and Linux on the left side of the tab bar.

Unfortunately at this point we don't know when exactly this new UI look is going to hit the stable version. If you'd like to move to it already you can install the Chrome Canary v68 and change the options from chrome://flags/#top-chrome-md to "refresh."

Apple has today issued a worldwide battery replacement program, or a recall, for one of its MacBook Pro models. The computer in question is the 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar.

According to the company some of the laptops have a component that has been deemed prone to failure. The component is only said to be found in some more specific versions but cannot be entirely isolated so the recall is issued to all 13-inch MacBook Pro models without Touch Bar that have been produces between October 2016 and October 2017.

While Apple denies that there is any risk of safety involved, one should definitely return the device to be repaired. The repair is largely as simple as switching the battery, but other issues with the laptop might have to be fixed before the replacement.

You can check whether your MacBook Pro is indeed part of the replacement program by visit Apple's official site. In order to check the status you'll need the serial number which can be found from the Apple menu item "About This Mac."

Google's mobile operating system is the most popular around the world, but it is not without faults, far from it. Many of you are familiar with the Android's fragmentation problem, also known as "where are the damn updates?!", but there are some other key issue too.

One of them is something that is perhaps not discussed enough, the messaging mess. For iPhone users both SMS and instant messages are as simple as 1, 2, 3 – you use iMessage and that's it.

On Android over the years you've been through dozens of applications that designed for different purposes by different teams for different kinds of people. Finally Google has decided to call it quits and just go with what Apple has determined to be the best practice.

The best practice, of course, is the way of the iMessage – and don't get me wrong there are no perfect solutions as will become evident. When using iMessage you'll send messages and pictures over the internet for blue dot contacts (with iOS device) and over the cellular network for green dot contacts (non-iOS users).

The same will apply to Google's new messaging app that is called Chat, according to a scoop by The Verge. Chat will be released somewhere between 6 and 12 months from now, and will be replacing Google's current messaging apps on all Android devices.

For many years, the Autumn release of new iOS operating system update has also meant that at least one of the iPhone models will be cut off from receiving the latest OS version, officially killing the product's support.

As the inevitable iOS 12 update is approaching, the next in line to be retired would be iPhone 5S, released back in 2013.

However, it seems that there's going to be a change to the familiar pattern and none of the iPhone models would be cut off this time around. At least if believe this Reddit discussion where a redditor had found out that latest WebKit tests specifically state that iPhone 5S running on iOS 12 is part of the test suite.

If true, the change would make iPhone 5S the most updated iPhone model ever. It has gone through five major iOS updates and if iOS 12 really comes to it, it would be the phone's sixth major iOS version.

iPhone 5S was released in September, 2013. If the iOS 12 really supports iPhone 5S, the model's lifespan would be more than half a decade.

Perhaps nothing is a bigger focus point for technology giants these days than artificial intelligence. Companies try to integrate smart, and often learning, systems to almost all facets of modern technology.

Google has been at the forefront of this AI revolution for years, and one of the more important achievements is the Google Assistant. Google Assistant is of course an ever-learning voice assistant just like Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, or Samsung's Bixby.

You can talk to Google Assistant nowadays via Google Home devices but more importantly on hundreds of millions of Android phones. The company has been looking to integrate Assistant more seamlessly with smartphones, but traditionally you'd have to first wait for the features to be applied to their own Pixel line of smartphones.

However, according to CNET, the second largest Korean manufacturer, LG, is about to release the first ever phone, dubbed LG G7 ThinQ, to feature a Google Assistant button. Then again, Google's last year's Pixel 2 phones have a squeeze sensing feature that opens up the Assistant.

Netflix revealed their quarterly results this week, and even most of the more positive analysts didn't guess how well the three month period has gone for the streaming giant. Adding around 7.4 million new subscribers it was a whole million ahead of Wall Street estimates.

This means that Netflix's global user base has grown to around 125 million even when the company has in the recent past increased some of its pricing. However, Netflix is definitely not without competition these days, and Jeff Bezos wants to makes this clear.

Following the Netflix reports, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos unexpectedly revealed some stats about Prime memberships. Previously the company has stayed quiet about the subscriber counts but Bezos decided to share with investors that Prime subscribers have surpassed 100 million.

One doesn't know if the sudden urge to reveal membership details came because of Netflix's recent announcements but it does put Amazon's prowess into perspective. Obviously Prime membership offers much more than the Grand Tour toting video streaming service, which is continuing to invest in original content.

While Amazon isn't all in on the video streaming quite like Netflix and its $8 billion investment in programming, it definitely has potential to make Netflix's future seem a bit more uncomfortable.

Russia has banned popular messaging app Telegram and tries to block it as well as it can. This week, Russia blocked tens of thousands of IP addresses in order to block its citizens' access to Telegram - and failed.

At first, Russia's communication authority Roskomnadzor blocked tens of thousands of IP addresses that belong to Amazon's cloud services. Later, Roskomnadzor blocked yet another bunch of IP addresses, thus time those that are used by Google's cloud services.

The result?

Now Russians cannot access to thousands of unrelated web services, online games and more. Even some Russian banks are on the block list.

And yes, Roskomnadzor own website was hosted on one of the blocked IP addresses, too, so it wont work either..

Things that @roscomnadzor successfully blocked:
✔Their own website
✔and their monitoring devices (Ревизор)
✔Google Cloud
✔Amazon AWS
✔Payment processors
✔Retail store chain
✔Gett ridesharing app
✔National social network OK

What @roscomnadzor didn't block:
❌Telegram

— Manual (@CatVsHumanity) 18. huhtikuuta 2018

Samsung has released a weird, weird little phone. Company's latest smartphone doesn't have any form of Internet connectivity at all.

The phone, Samsung Galaxy J2 Pro simply cannot be connected to the Net. It has decent 2600mAh battery, 1.5GB RAM and 16GB internal storage and decent 8Mpix camera (and 2Mpix front camera).

Oddity is aimed at Samsung's home market, Korea. Company targets elderly people with the product, trying to make the phone easier to grasp than most smart phones. Samsung also suggests that the phone could be perfect for students who want to avoid interruptions through social media and instant messaging.

Phone retails for appx €150 / $185, which seems bit steep for a phone without any form of online capabilities. But there's a unique option there, too: Samsung promises to give full refund to those who purchase a more expensive Samsung phone after the school year in Korea ends.

In the arena of television and media, cable companies and Netflix are rivalries of the most epic proportion, or so you'd think.

For many of the Netflix generation there aren't much to gain from old-fashioned cable television while cable companies want to protect their TV profits with expensive subscriptions.

Comcast, Spectrum (formerly known as Time Warner), and others are bending over backwards trying to keep their customers. Bundling TV with internet, and even home phone, is the go-to strategy of aforementioned companies.

Now, they've seemed to have accepted defeat and joined Netflix's side, or are at least flirting with the idea. Comcast, the largest of them all, has entered in a partnership with Netflix and is offering the streaming service in a new bundled service package.

Of course cable companies offer internet in addition to TV, and with that internet many choose to watch Netflix. In fact, on the X1 platform nearly half of the users use Netflix actively.

Netflix on the other hand is getting access to millions and millions of potential new customers with not much work on their side, so it seems like a good deal for both of them.

The companies have already been in a partnership via Comcast's X1 platform but now they are ready to expand. Comcast's statements says they are going to offer "new and innovative Xfinity packages, including a Netflix subscription."

In recent years, as physical music media has largely disappeared from use and from stores, there's been one exception that has seemed to cement itself with a surprisingly strong foothold.

While CDs have been crushed by streaming services, people still find use for old vinyl records. Perhaps it is the fact that they are the most tactile, physical media and the opposite of where the mainstream is now.

Austria based company Rebeat Innovation is trying to hit this niche with a new product it has collected $4.8 million in investments for. The technology, dubbed High Definition Vinyl, is said to be a better version of the age old method of listening to music.

The HD vinyl is said to provide a richer, more authentic sounds with higher peak volumes compared to traditional vinyl records, Pitchfork reports. It is unclear how the higher volume is managed but the company says the technology increases the amplitude up to 30 percent.

Most of the largest car manufacturers of the world are developing both autonomous vehicles as well as full electric cars. Both of these are of course the wheelhouse of Tesla, lead by the generation's revolutionary numero uno.

Tesla has been an important player in both respects for years but only after the release of Model 3 (pictured) has it really become a truly dangerous to some of the biggest – and oldest – companies in the world.

However, an affordable electric car has been problematic, to say the least. Tesla is struggling with the production, and ramping it up seems to where it needs to be is posing troubles even Elon Musk didn't expect.

Perhaps Tesla is better at doing higher end cars, and should stick to them?

Well, according to Reuters, as soon as next year Tesla is going to start producing yet another model, and it's not the super car Roadster. The report says that Tesla is looking to start production of a new Model Y before the end of 2019.

Model Y is slated to be Tesla's fifth car model, after Roadster, Model S, Model X, and Model 3. It's a crossover, quite like the Model X, that has some functionality of a SUV but in a more compact body, likely based on Model 3.

Google is planning to do a fairly meaningful user interface revamp to its beloved email service, Gmail, according to a leak by Android Authority. The renovation will include new features that have been used in Google's 2015 launched email service Inbox.

Among these updates Google will introduce smart answers and mute to Gmail, but perhaps more importantly user interface will get a refresh. Nothing major will change, as you might imagine, after all the companies don't want to fix what's not broken and thus no radical changes are usually expected.

Google will move Gmail's interface more towards its Material Design design philosophy most likely familiar from Android. This means turning some buttons into round bubbles and changing some colors, fonts and other minor elements.

Function-wise Gmail will retain everything you've gotten used to, and the bulk of options should be in their own usual places.

Leak doesn't have information when this update would be released but it might be as soon as Google I/O next month. Learn more about the leaked update at Android Authority.

Google is in talks with Nokia to buy their air-to-ground LTE technology, Bloomberg reports. According to the information acquired by Bloomberg, Google's parent company Alphabet wants to expand its current ISP service to new markets.

Nokia has developed a technology called A2G (air-to-ground) which uses mobile broadband connections to connect airplanes to ground cell towers. This means that you don't have to bounce the connections off of satellites. It improves upon both speed and latency of the connection on planes that traditionally use satellites for internet connectivity.

Google has been looking into bringing fast internet connections to flights. Currently the market leader is Gogo Inflight Internet operated by Chicago-based Gogo.

The search giant has been looking for ways to connect people of the world in myriad of ways. One of these is of course Google Fiber, which has been expanding slowly but surely, but also cross-ISP service Profect Fi as well as more experimental connectivity advancements in Project Loon with high-altitude balloons.

AfterDawn's own official Android app has been updated. The new version, v1.10, is now available.

After the initial launch of our own app, we've focused on fixing bugs that have crashed the app in certain cases. Thus, the new version is mostly a quick bugfix to known problems.

The app's stability rate has been bit over 99 percent, but we obviously aim to make the app as stable as possible.

Furthermore, the new version also improves both, search and "news by tag" listings, making them "infinite". Being infinite means that once you reach the bottom of the news list, the app will load more (older) content for the results, allowing you to search through our entire news database of 19 years.

The app is free, doesn't require any specific persmissions and includes all of our news ever released - ever since 1999.

Get it now:

Google only really sells one type of TV product at this moment, albeit in a couple variations. That is of course the immensely popular Chromecast streaming dongle we all know and love.

However, other manufacturers already offer perhaps a more Google-y TV experience than Chromecast already. That is due to the fact that Google has offered its Android TV platform for manufacturers since its inception alongside a now discontinued Nexus Player.

However, Google has been rumored to be releasing a new Android TV product, and that is exactly what we've got for you today. The US regulatory body for communications, FCC, has revealed a product by the name of 4K ATV Stick, manufactured by a Chinese company called Shenzhen SEI Robotics.

Now, it could be just another Android TV device from a no-name Chinese company, but we believe, as do the hawkeyed Ausdroid, that this is in fact the upcoming Google device.

There's a few hints in the pictures provided by the FCC. First and foremost you can't miss the huge Google logo on the front, but perhaps even more importantly the device is fitted with the Google Assistant out of the box.

Hackers that call themselves Prosox and Kuroi'shi have successfully hacked YouTube. They managed to remove the most successful music video of all time, Despacito.

Before removal, hackers managed to change the video's thumbnail images to gang members from the show Casa de Papel.

Despacito, a song by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee was the first video ever to reach more than 5 billion views in YouTube.

Also some other music videos were removed by the same group - all of them were added to YouTube's VEVO music video service.

Just as Spotify entered the stock market in an unusual direct listing that determined its market value at nearly $30 billion, Apple has announced that its 2015 launched service hit a new milestone.

Apple Music, the streaming service launched at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in July of 2015, has reached 40 million subscribers. The company revealed the new subscriber count via Twitter, although from an usual source.

The tweet was posted by Steven Huon, the content boss of Apple France, and not by say Tim Cook, or Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, who revealed just a month earlier at SXSW that Apple Music had 38 million subscribers.

I doesn't necessarily mean Apple managed to rack two million new subscribers within a month – although it has been closing in on Spotify's subscriber acquisition numbers after a shaky start – although it is possible. It could be that Cue has a little bit older data at SXSW.

The world's largest streaming music service, Spotify, started the year with 70 million subscribers. The Swedish service has added 5 million subscribers every three months or so, which would make Spotify's user count somewhere around 75 million at this moment.

WhatsApp is the de facto messaging app in most countries around the world. Only the United States, Canada and handful of other countries prefer Facebook Messenger over WhatsApp. In China, WeChat is the king, but for the rest of the world WhatsApp is the number one messaging app.

Alright, headline might be overstating the issues. WhatsApp doesn't suck, it is actually a brilliant little app. But it has problems that frustrate a lot of its users.

It is naive to think that people could simply switch to a better platform. Forcing all your relatives, coworkers, etc to switch to something else is next to impossible, when they also have their relatives, coworkers, and friends using the same app.

Thus, it is better to think what are the biggest problems with WhatsApp and hope that Facebook - who owns WhatsApp - does something about those issues.

So, my two cents on what I think are the biggest problems with WhatsApp:

Platform lock-in

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted in an interview with VOX that company scans through all private messages people send through Facebook Messenger.

Company tells that all the private messages are being scanned by automated systems to detect contents that violate Facebook's Terms of Service. Furthermore, some of the messages detected - or reported by users to Facebook - will be read by human moderators in order to see if the message violates Facebook's TOS.

According to Facebook, the very same tools and methods are used to monitor both, public Facebook posts and seemingly private Messenger discussions.

The king of music streaming, Spotify, completed the public listing process yesterday. The company officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) where the market initially valued the company almost at $30 billion.

Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek wrote a blog post a day earlier thanking hard-working employees for the past years, but more importantly looked in to the future.

The company has been a huge influence in music industry as a whole. During its early years it was the target of artists, activists, and record companies who believed that especially the free tier is the essentially stealing from the artists.

Later Google and Apple have followed suit, and streaming music is overwhelmingly the choice of music media these days. And Spotify has turned millions of non-paying customers into real customers.

The company in fact boasts now a total of over 160 million listeners, of which more than 70 million are paying a monthly subscription fee. The worldwide customer base is unparalleled, although Apple Music is challenging Spotify's numbers in the US.

NYSE recognizes Spotify, that did an unusual direct listing instead of a fancier more traditional IPO, now with a ticker SPOT. Spotify opened with a stock price of $165.90 which is a quarter up from its initial reference price.

Google's URL shortener Goog.gl is shutting down, the company reports. The service that was introduced in 2009 is going to be killed off and you'll have to rely on bit.ly and others.

Google has announced that come April 13th the service will not function anymore and you should switch to a different ULR shortening service. Among the more popular are aforementioned bit.ly as well as ow.ly.

Don't worry though, this doesn't mean that URLs already shortened with Google's service won't work after next Friday. Goo.gl URLs will be working in the future as well but Google just simply doesn't allow you to make new shortened web addresses.

Google retains the Goo.gl console from which you can modify your links until March 2019 when that is shut down. Even after that you'll be able to use already created URLs.

The search giant is suggesting you move to what it calls Firebase Dynamic Links. Google introduces these new type of dynamic links in 2016 and you can check them out on the short below.