News archive (7 / 2020)

The next generation of console gaming is soon upon us, and Sony is preparing its peripherals to support the PS5. The company has announced a new Ready for PlayStation 5 badge.

The tagline will be used among Bravia TVs that support the high-definition gameplay provided by the upcoming PS5. They've developed the branding in cooperation with Bravia teams and Sony Interactive Entertainment, and it should ensure that gamers find their favorite PS5 TV easier.

The first Ready for PlayStation 5 branded TVs are going to be ZH8 (pictured below) and XH90/92 models that are current occupants of the Bravia family. The latter supports 4K gaming at up to 120 fps and the ZH8 supports an epic resolution of 8K, where ever it is available.

This year has been riddled with cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic, but most of us are hoping that it wouldn't be as big of a deal next year.

Some of the first indications that COVID-19 would be a serious issue outside China and in the west came from cancelled tech conferences. This included world's largest mobile conference MWC that was scheduled for late February.

The largest consumer electronics show in the US, CES, managed to run without much of a hiccup in early January when the spread was still somewhat contained. However, they won't be as lucky in 2021.

CTA, the organizer of Consumer Electronics Show or CES, has announced that they will be canceling next year's conference's physical manifestation. This means that CES 2021 will be an online-only event.

They've taken a page out of Apple's playbook, who very successfully held a virtual WWDC first time ever this summer.

Virtual CES 2021 will be held in the first week of the year. It remains to be seen how the reimagined conference will accommodate both exhibitors and the audience.

World's largest music streaming service has made immense investments recently in non-music audio. Most importantly the company acquired the exclusive rights to Joe Rogan Experience, and just yesterday it launched Michelle Obama's own podcast.

However, the Swedish powerhouse is still innovating in terms of music, too.

Spotify is testing a new feature that will extend the capabilities of Group Sessions. Group Session, a feature that was introduced in May, is essentially a party DJ that allows all the people in the area to add song to a playlist queue.

The new addition will allow online communities to use it too. Spotify Premium members can join the group and listen to the same songs at the same time no matter where they are.

You can have up to 5 people in a group and each member has the controls to pause, skip and add new songs to the queue.

To use the feature open Spotify and head to Group Session feature, located on the bottom right corner menu. You can share the link to your session by copying it to your social media or sending it to your friends.

Qualcomm's new Quick Charge 5 standard dramatically increases charging speeds for smartphones.

First debuted in 2013, Quick Charge is a proprietary charging standard developed by Qualcomm to deliver speedier charging of devices. Through its first few refreshes, it bumped the voltage beyond the 5V limit imposed by the USB standard safely. Later it gained compatibility with USB-PD (USB Power Delivery) along with other improvements.

Each refresh reduces charging times due to higher power output, but Quick Charge 5 is a significant improvement. With a compatible device and charger, it can charge a 4,500 mAh battery to 50 percent in about 5 minutes. The same battery can be charged from dead to full in about 15 minutes.

Underlying the improvements is 2S battery support and 20 Volts of power delivery, for a max power output of 100W+. At the same time, it is 10C cooler in operation than Quick Charge 4, while being 70 percent more efficient and about four times faster.

Quick Charge is the leading charging platform for mobile devices. There are more than 1,000 certified accessories on the market, of which 250 are smartphones. Its competitors in the space include MediaTek Pump Express and OPPO VOOC, which is licensed to OnePlus as Dash Charge.

Christopher Nolan's hotly anticipated spy thriller will debut in theaters internationally a week before it debuts in the United States.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic had delayed the release of Nolan's new thriller several times already, with Warner revoking any release date just a week ago. Today it was given theatrical release dates for scores of countries, most of which will have the film available to theatergoers a week before its available in the United States.

It will first be available on August 26 in 24 countries, among them the United Kingdom, Turkey, France, Italy etc. The next day it will be in theaters in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, and 15 others. On Friday, August 28, Tenet comes to East Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, and Vietnam.

The following Monday, September 3, it will be released in parts of the United States, but it depends on local COVID-19 policies. There is no date yet for the film's Chinese debut as the government has imposed a two-hour limit for films shown in theaters since they reopened.

Information on the plot of Tenet has been kept quiet, so a staggered rollout presents the risks of major spoilers leaking online, not to mention the threat of piracy. Still, Tenet looks set to be the first blockbuster to hit cinemas since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down movie theaters all around the world.

Facebook is taking the European Commission to court over broad data requests that could violate its employees' privacy or expose sensitive information.

The top competition regulator in the European Union has two ongoing probes into Facebook. One deals with Facebook's collection and use of massive amounts of data, while the other is aimed at Facebook's online marketplace. As part of the investigation, Facebook says it has provided 315,000 documents to the EU commission.

However, Facebook is now taking the commission to court arguing that its data requests are resulting in irrelevant documents being passed onto the EU. On these documents could include, "highly sensitive personal information such as employees' medical information, personal financial documents, and private information about family members of employees."

The EU Commission is seeking documents that include 2,500 specific phrases, some of which are "big question", "shut down" and "not good for us." According to the social media firm, these phrases may result in documents being handed over that include information related to its security.

Corning has revealed Gorilla Glass Victus and touted its improvements compared to its predecessor Gorilla Glass 6.

Over eight billion devices from 45 different brands have incorporated Gorilla Glass into their products. Consumers desire their mobile products to be durable and resistant to scratches and cracks. Nevertheless, most of us will have accidentally damaged a mobile device and we know that even scratches can affect usability.

It is good news then that the latest Gorilla Glass is reportedly much tougher than its predecessor. In lab tests, it has achieved drop performance up to 2 meters when dropped onto hard, rough surfaces. By contrast, Corning claims that competitive aluminosilicate glasses fail at about 0.8 meters.

Furthermore, it claims Victus is twice as scratch resistant as Gorilla Glass 6, and four times more resistant than competitive aluminosilicate glasses.

In the near future, Samsung will become the first customer to release a product using Gorilla Glass Victus.

Despite being delayed three times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet will not skip theaters for streaming or on-demand.

Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated spy film Tenet is currently on the shelf with no release date, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic keeping movie theaters closed. While other films have skipped the theatrical release date and premiered online, Tenet will not be given the same treatment, or so said John Stankey, Warner Bros chief executive, to The Wrap.

"Is it going to happen on a movie like Tenet or something like Wonder Woman 1984? I'd be very surprised if that would be the case. In fact, I can assure you on Tenet that's not going to be the case."

Stankey went on to say that he still believes that theatrical is important going forward, and some films are going to be more enjoyable in theaters than at home.

Other reports suggested that Warner is considering releasing Tenet in cities on a case by case basis, depending on COVID-19 activity in the area and local policy. For now, we are in the dark.

Plex has added more free content to its service, this time focusing on live television.

Since last year, Plex has been offering more than 14,000 movies, documentaries, and TV shows that can be watched on-demand for free. Now it has broadened its options by adding more than 80 television channels.

"Whether it's live news like Reuters, or kids shows like Toon Goggles, cooking shows on Tastemade, or sports on fubo Sports Network, or even eSports on IGN TV, we've got you covered," Plex announced on its website.



Find out more at: www.plex.tv/watch-free-tv

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has joined with others in a lawsuit targeting YouTube over fake Bitcoin giveaways on the platform.

High profile Twitter users were the targets of a hack pushing a Bitcoin scam a week ago. Out of the blue, several verified users of Twitter - including President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and others - seemed to tweet about a Bitcoin giveaway. Twitter responded rapidly by removing the tweets and launched an investigation.

However, Twitter is not the only platform where crypto scammers operate. YouTube also hosts videos of fake Bitcoin giveaways or promotions that use images of famous people. One of those people is Steve Wozniak, and he has called out YouTube for its lackluster response to the problem.

He contrasted the response of Twitter to the recent hack which came on the "same day" and said, "YouTube has been unapologetically hosting, promoting, and directly profiting from similar scams."

The scams trick targets into sending Bitcoin to an address with the expectation that will get it back and more. Of course, they don't receive any funds in return. Some of the victims of the scam then reach out to people like Steve Wozniak, demanding their Bitcoin back.

Ubisoft has revealed that it will not charge anything extra for games for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X when they launch this fall.

The next-generation consoles are set to land this holiday season kicking off another round as Microsoft and Sony go head to head for your money. 2K Games and Take-Two Interactive have already said they will charge an additional $10 for titles for the new consoles this fall.

By contrast, Ubisoft revealed during an earnings call on Wednesday that its next-gen games will retain the common $60 price tag this fall.

"We are concentrating on the Christmas releases. We have decided those games will be launched at $60"

2K previously revealed that the next iteration of its NBA 2K series will cost $70 for the new consoles when it drops this fall. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs Legion can be preordered for consoles already at $60.

A meta-analysis of research going back over a decades shows that playing video games does not lead to violent behavior.

The meta-analysis (examining a bulk of pre-existing research to draw conclusions) covered more than 28 separate studies dating back to 2008 probing for links between aggressive behavior and video games and was led by Aaron Drummond of New Zealand's Massey University.

The researchers acknowledge that the bundled research does show a positive correlation between gaming and aggression, but the effect is so little as to fail to meet the criteria even as a "small effect". Furthermore, the study found that there is no accumulative effect from smaller changes in temperament after gaming sessions over the long term.

"The current research is unable to support the hypothesis that violent video games have a meaningful long-term predictive impact on youth aggression," the report said.

The history of the video games industry has been shadowed by suspicions or even outright assertions that games are dangerous and can promote violent behavior, even being blamed for horrific events like mass shootings on occasion.

Slack has filed a complaint with the top competition regulator in the European Union, targeting Microsoft's Teams conferencing platform.

Comparing Microsoft's current practices and tactics with those of the 'Browser Wars' more than two decades ago, Slack VP Jonathan Prince is crying foul on Microsoft's bundling of Teams with its existing popular Office products.

Both group chat and conferencing products are very similar. In fact, they are so similar that Prince was comfortable describing the product as a weak copycat of Slack's product. He then goes on to compare Microsoft's deployment tactics for Teams to that of its bundling of Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system which resulted in an antitrust case in the U.S. two decades ago.

"They created a weak, copycat product and tied it to their dominant Office product, force installing it and blocking its removal, a carbon copy of their illegal behavior during the 'browser wars.'," Prince writes.

Teams launched in 2016 and was met with a trolling welcome placed in the New York Times by Slack. However, in the 4 years since Microsoft has seen its Teams userbase outgrow that of Slack.

Slack's position is that this growth is not generic, or based on the superiority of its product, but rather it's down to Microsoft producing an imitation and bundling it with existing popular software.

Apple is to loan unrestricted iPhones to security researchers to help them discover vulnerabilities that threaten their security.

Apple pays out bounties of up to $1 million to researchers who find bugs in their products' that could potentially be used for nefarious purposes. It has started to loan Security Research Devices (SRD) to researchers with a record of finding such vulnerabilities.

These SRD iPhones are not restricted in the way off-the-shelf iPhones are. They will provide full root shell access to the researchers and allow them to run their own commands and so forth. This can't typically be done on an iPhone. Some devices that are jailbroken can be probed in this way but jailbreaks are rarer with newer iOS devices.

To apply to receive one of these devices, a researcher must be an account holder in the Apple Developer program, have a track record of finding security bugs, and also reside in a region Apple is comfortable with.

Any bugs found in Apple's code must be reported to Apple as soon as possible, and problems with third-party software are to be reported to the appropriate vendor. Researchers who have an SRD iPhone cannot use it for personal reasons, and it must remain on the premises of the researcher.

OnePlus has been teasing us with their affordable yet well-equipped smartphone for quite a while now, and here it is finally. The company unveiled OnePlus Nord which means a "New Beginning" for the company.

OnePlus has traditionally released two sets of smartphones every year for a while now, before that it was just a single phone each year. However, there was one exception in 2015, when the company tried making a more affordable version of their smartphone.

However, this OnePlus X was the only of its kind, until now.

While OnePlus Nord definitely seems like a spiritual successor to the OnePlus X, it actually isn't that at all. There are number of reasons they chose to not name the new phone OnePlus Z, as intially rumored.

Most importantly, unlike the X, OnePlus Nord is packed with features. This is due to the fact that OnePlus flagship phones have become more premium products with a much higher price tag that in 2015. Thus the more affordable phone is more expensive as well.

OnePlus Nord is equipped with a 5G-enabled Snadpragon 765G chipset, quad camera in the back, dual camera up front, and a 6.44 inch, 20:9 and 2400x1080 90 hz OLED (they call it Fluid AMOLED) screen.

Netflix is launching a browser-based game today called The Old Guard. The player that achieves the high-score is entitled to a "immortal" Netflix subscription of of 1'000 months.

1'000 months is roughly 83 years, so it should last, if not your entire lifetime, pretty much into anyone's retirement. The game itself obviously advertises Netflix's similarly named movie, which in turn, is based on graphuc novel by Greg Rucka.

The game itself is a browser-based, top-down beat 'em up video game. Game will be available only for two days, launching on 17th of July, 2020 at 8pm PST and will close two days later, on 19th of July, 2020 at 8pm PST. Whoever has the highest score by end of the time period, wins the "immortal" Netflix subscription, worth appx. $9'000.

Game is available at www.oldguardgame.com.

Twitter is investigating a coordinated social engineering attack targeting its employees which resulted in high profile accounts being compromised.

A number of high-profile Twitter accounts with a lot of followers were seemingly compromised on Wednesday and used to advertise a cryptocurrency scam. Accounts belonging to former U.S. President Barack Obama, entertainer Kanye West, billionaire Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others were caught in the event.

Each was used to tweet about a bogus giveaway. It promised that if any person sends $1,000 to a Bitcoin address, it will return $2,000, masked as a giveaway to the community due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to reports, the scammers involved received over $100,000 in transactions going by publicly available blockchain records.

Twitter responded to the incident promptly and stopped all verified accounts from tweeting at all. Later, it restored access to many of the accounts but for the time being, is keeping compromised accounts blocked.

So how did this happen? So far Twitter has determined that there has been a coordinated social engineering attack aimed at its employees. These employees were targeted because they had access to Twitter's internal systems and tools. A social engineering attack targets an unpatchable vulnerability in security systems; the human. It is essentially the act of tricking someone with access do what the attacker wants. For example, if Twitter employees were conned into believing an attacker was part of the company itself, they may have granted access or handed over sensitive information under false pretenses.

As you might imagine, the technology industry has been suffering, although not as much as some other industries, ever since the COVID-19 hit the streets of Wuhan and the rest of the world.

For Apple this has meant the first ever virtual WWDC, iPhone production issues and plummeting sales.

While not selling expected amounts of iPhones translates straight into a bottom line of the quarterly reports, there are other not-so-direct implications too.

This is evident when DSCC has analyzed Samsung's Display division's quarterly guidance. Due to lower iPhone sales, Apple has ordered less of their high-end OLED displays – Samsung no longer makes LCD panels found in iPhone SE, iPhone XR, and iPhone 11 – but due to the contract Apple had to pay a fee for not ordering enough display panels.

Apple, just like any other tech manufacturer, has had their problems with products be it Macs or iPhones. Usually they've been rectified with callbacks or updates but sometimes there's enough reason for a class-action lawsuit.

This was the case with the batterygate couple years back. Apple was caught slowing down customers' iPhones to preserve battery life without them knowing.

Cupertino's own conglomerate decided to release updates to allow users control the battery and power management, changed the options in further models, and even issued a battery replacement program that ended up being super popular.

However, this wasn't enough to satisfy everyone, and a class-action lawsuit continued to demand reparations for the issue.

Just this week the lawsuit has entered a new phase where customers can submit a claim to the settlement payment. A website has been created for those who have been wronged. You might be eligible for a settlement of $25 if:

As the retro computing boom continues, this was probably something to be expected, somehow. LEGO and Nintendo have joined forces and created a gaming console made out of lego bricks.

The LEGO NES Console isn't a really functional gaming console, but a replica of the iconic Nintendo NES console, but made out of lego bricks. It aalso comes with a oöd-fashioned TV set, again, made out of bricks and, obviously, a game controller and Super Mario Bros. game. The TV set is equipped with a tiny crank. Rotating the crank will move a tiny Mario across the screen.

Google has revealed that their latest Android version has surpassed 400 million devices. According to the company the adoption rate has been far superior to any of the previous versions.

For ages we've known that Google's perhaps the most resilient issues is the fact that Android users don't get software updates. The adoption rate of new OS versions and thus invaluable security updates is sad compared to the likes of iOS.

However, over the years there has been improvement. Android Pie was better adopted than Android Oreo and Android 10 has blown Android Pie out of the water.

The Android Developers blog post reveals that Android 10 got to 100 million users in 5 months, or 28 percent faster than Android Pie.

The first 280 or so days that was required for Android 10 to reach 400 million devices the predecessor only managed to get to around 280 million devices.

Ever since Android 8 Oreo, Google has been improving the adoption rate with Project Treble. Project Treble allows manufacturers to separate their customized part of the OS from the core OS that can therefore be updated more easily without the manufacturer having to release their updated code.

If you have a significant other and you are sharing a music streaming service, especially Spotify with all kinds of algorithmic magic, you've definitely noticed some drawbacks.

On the other hand, if you both have the same service, there's probably quite a bit of overlap that makes it awfully uneconomical to have two plans. Well, turns out that Spotify has been thinking about rectifying these exact problems.

Cue Spotify Premium Duo.

Spotify's new couples plan, Premium Duo, offers two Premium accounts under the same umbrella. This allows them to enjoy the personalized and automized playlists separately but also to "unique benefits" as a couple at $12.99/mo. That's a three dollar premium compared to the regular Spotify Premium.

In addition to the custom playlists, users of course get access to the 50 million or so songs and an increasingly large catalog of podcasts, currently weighing in over 1 million podcasts and soon exclusively including the Joe Rogan Experience.

The COVID-19 crisis has affected a lot of industries is numerous different ways. For airlines and hotels it's been destructive but even technology companies have had their issues.

While China got through the epidemic fairly quickly and restarted production only after a month of pause, two at most, the cooperation between manufacturing in China and product design in Europe and the US was more complicated.

Among the affected was Apple, whose production was stalled and the development teams couldn't visit factories to make sure everything is running as planned. Rumors as early as March had it that Apple is considering postponing the iPhone launch.

This, however, might not be the case anymore, Nikkei reports. After long hours after things have moved on, Apple has slowly managed to claw back time.

According to the paper, Apple was three months behind schedule at the thick of it, which could've meant that this would've been the first year since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 that the company can't bring a successor to the world's leading smartphone to the market.

The introduction of chat room apps like Discord and Slack has made a huge impact on gaming communities and workplaces alike.

The former became the king of gamers overthrowing old-school programs that included the likes of TeamSpeak and Mumble. Offering more complex features and more thought-out interface it quickly became the de facto communications platform for gamers.

However, it has now saturated much of the market it wanted to capture, and thus is trying to explore new waters and conquer new lands.

The company says that it wants to be a communications platform for all kinds of daily conversing. Discord's new website claims it's "a new way to chat with your communities and friends."

Upcoming iPhone launch is closing in, although it's yet unclear whether COVID-19 had effect on the release date, and much of the rumorsphere is focusing at this point in time on Apple's new smartphone. The latest of them claims that the company has made a first-of-a-kind decision: not to include a charger or EarPods.

Now, this is still only rumors, and one should take it with a grain of salt, but it does sound oddly Apple-like. Whether they are going to be asking an ungodly amount of money for such a simple and obligatory accessory or not, it's going to anger some folks.

There is an other side of the coin for this one too. Apple would be reducing waste quite a bit, one can imagine. After all, we've all got probably one too many wall chargers for our phones – even after populating nearly all sockets in our homes – and there's plenty of crappy wired headphones to go around.

This might also be a blessing in disguise, since Apple's chargers are often trash in terms of wattage. Perhaps you'll finally get a proper fast charger for your phone.