Following many other countries' suit, Finland, launched today its official COVID-19 tracking application for iOS and Android platforms. App is called Koronavilkku(literally, coronavirus blink).
App, much like its many siblings in other countries, uses Apple's and Google's joint API that was created to track and trace novel coronavirus infections and alert about them.
Privacy?
App requires no registration or login details whatsoever and its privacy details were audited(link in Finnish) by Finland's National Cyber Security Centre, which found no privacy problems with the app.
App is anonymous and it wont pass any identifiable details of the user to the authorities, as its purpose is simply to alert the user if there user has been in close contact with a person who has COVID-19 infection.
How does it technically work?
To put it simply: through Bluetooth.
App doesn't use GPS or any other location data, but relies on close proximity of other Bluetooth devices.
Basically the app generates a random string for each device and distributes that data through Bluetooth data to other devices that have the same app installed - and vice versa. This random value is recreated every few hours to ensure privacy.
In a rather surprising move, Netflix has opened its service to be watched for free. Of course, this doesn't include everything Netflix has listed, but some of its hit series and original movies are now available for free.
There's no word whether the campaign is temporary one or permanent, but it is available globally as of now. Titles that can be watched for free include hits such as Stranger Things and Bird Box.
And no, registration is not needed in order to watch the titles. However, series have been limited to the first episode of each season, but movies can be watched in full.
Smartphone design has followed one trend for a very long time. The design goal of smartphones pretty much ever since the very first iPhone has been to minimize gadgets distracting from the large touch screen display.
First it was mostly directed towards reducing unnecessary bezels, then displays started pushing towards selfie cameras creating either a notch or a hole for the camera, and home buttons were removed and fingerprint sensors were moved under the screen.
Inscreen fingerprint sensors are still developing and haven't hit the accuracy and speed of the regular ones, but it seems inevitable that nearly all, at least higher end, smartphones will move to that direction in the future.
Xiaomi, one of the world's largest smartphone manufacturer from China, has been working on a similar tech for selfie cameras. This would mean that the screen would be entirely undisrupted, and without a need of a motorized selfie camera that pops out when you need it, like on some Asus and OnePlus phones.
The technology is in its third generation already, Xiaomi says, and the company is now ready to start making the transition to production models. According to them, the first phone to feature this tech is expected next year.
OnePlus has been an up and coming smartphone maker for a few years now. At this point the company has grown to challenge even the likes of Samsung with its flagship phones.
The company's latest OnePlus 8 series offers high-end specs, but to keep up with their initial mission of providing affordable smartphones out compromises, first time ever, they had to announce a cheaper model alongside the flagship series.
However, the 399€ (there's no US release as of now) OnePlus Nord won't be the cheapest OnePlus for long. A new leak has detailed an upcoming OnePlus device that could retail for around $200.
Android Central has managed to get their hands on the specs sheet of what is called OnePlus Clover. There's nothing tremendously impressive about the specs of this cheap phone, except for one thing: the battery.
The battery inside the phone is massive. A 6000 milliamp hour battery is something you don't see often in smartphones. Pair this up with a 6.52 inch 720p screen and you've got a indisputable battery champ in the making.
Considering that it is nearly 50% bigger than in OnePlus 8 while having to power much less intensive hardware, this should provide at least a two-day battery life without breaking a sweat. It's, however, not going to feature OnePlus 8's market-leading fast charging tech but does offer 18 watt fast charging.
Next generation of console gaming is soon upon us. While we still don't have an official launch date for either Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5, we know they both want to release their consoles just in time to absorb all of our Holiday dollars.
One of the more important things about both consoles that we don't already know, is the price. Rumors have suggested prices ranging from as low as $399 to closer to a thousand dollars. Both of which are likely to be wrong, at least for the regular versions.
However, DualShockers has noticed a curious little detail that might give an inkling on both consoles pricing.
According to them, both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 pages on Best Buy's website feature a financing option. This 18-month financing expires on Christmas day, December 25 2020, and it is only available for purchases worth $499 or more.
For most of us Bill Gates is still the quintessential billionaire, and for a good reason. The man has been at the top of the richest people in the world since the 90s, although has been dethroned a few times.
In recent years one man has, however, made it to the top of totem pole from not having a position in the top 10. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos passed Bill Gates a couple years back, and was the first to surpass $100 billion after Bill Gates did it in '99.
Now, according to Forbes, Bezos has taken a lead that is hard to catch up to. Report says Bezos has managed to increase his worth to $204.6 billion, nearly double that of Bill Gates' measly $116 billion worth.
Possessions of such magnitude are hard to even comprehend. With just a simple calculation we can determine that Bezos could spend a million dollars on a new home (or car, or boat) every day and he could to that consecutively for over 500 years before would run out.
As middle-aged (and older) people have flocked to Facebook-owned Instagram, teens have escaped the service and seem to have landed to Chinese social media superstar, TikTok.
According to ComScore United States usage stats, TikTok had half the monthly audience of Instagram's in July, 2020. But.. The service clocked more than 2x usage minutes compared to Instagram. According to latest stats, TikTok had appx. 100 million active monthly users in United States.
Apparently one of the very reasons for this difference is the TikTok's praised recommendation algorithm that tends to deliver "more to watch" features that people actually want to watch after one reel has finished.
According to Comscore data Americans spent 5 billion more minutes with TikTok from June to July. While TikTok has half the audience of Instagram its users spend DOUBLE the amount of time on the platform.
Elon Musk has been working on a lot of different things. Currently he's most known for his electric car company Tesla and space exploration marvel SpaceX. However, one his latest ventures might make an even bigger impact on people, if its wildest promises are met.
Neuralink is Musk's project where they try to accomplish a working computer-brain interface. Founded in 2016, Neuralink has been working on a device that attaches behind your ear and connects to the brain using the thinnest electrodes.
Previously the company has worked with animals to prove the concept and managed to monitor rat's brain activity and even given a monkey the ability to control a computer via the interface.
Now Musk has announced that this Friday the company is ready to give a live demonstration of its Neuralink device. The tweet also reveals that they will be telling more about human trials in 2020.
Computer-brain interface could provide immense amounts of useful data and functionality. The first and perhaps the most important use case is in healthcare. If everything goes to plan this might even give people back their sight among other things.
Most of us know that movies and TV series can be downloaded from those shady corners of the Internet, like from various BitTorrent websites, etc. But how the movies and TV series arrive to such services?
Nope, typically the latest movies and TV shows aren't put online by "entertainment wants to be free" enthusiasts, but actual, organized groups, belonging to something that is collectively called the "The Scene" or even more precisely, "The Warez Scene" or "The Pirate Scene".
That "scene" is built from various groups that are more or less organized in order to have the capacity to get the latest movie / TV show releases as soon as possible and then to distribute those movies, illegally, as quickly as possible to specific online services.
Now, some of the core groups of that world have been hit by law enforcement agencies in several countries. Police have raided individuals and servers in at least United States, Norway and Sweden in order to tackle operations of a group dubbed as SPARKS and its affiliated groups called b>GECKOS, DRONES, ROVERS and SPLINTERS.
It seems that the main target of such raids has been the so-called topsites, (S)FTP servers belonging to SPARKS or its affiliates. Such servers are basically extremely private online services where individuals can "drop" the latest pirated movies and where distributors then collect the latest loot and share it to wider audience through better-known services, such as The Pirate Bay et al.
4K has been a household feature of TV sets for years now. The current gaming consoles have moved to 4K ready gaming too.
Sony and Microsoft are planning on offering ever higher definition gaming in their next generation of gaming consoles, due later this year.
Nintendo has been reluctant to join the spec wars with the two, and probably for a good reason. However, hardware advancements are taken as needed with Nintendo's gaming products when they make sense.
According to a report by Bloomberg, next year is going to make sense for Nintendo to move to 4K. The report claims that Nintendo is planning a new version of the Switch for 2021.
The sources cited say that the new Switch will adds 4K resolution among other, presumably less important, things. While other details are still scarce, rumor also has that Nintendo is trying to also improve next year's game lineup with company's own games as well as games from some of the partners.
With 4K capabilities you can expect a boost in computing power too and likely actual performance wherever 4K is not used.
One of the most talkked about games of this year must be Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Its ability to recreate landscapes, buildings and entire cities by combining AI, machine learning and actual scenery footage is simply amazing.
Sure, it has its flaws, but that seems to be part of the lure - online communities have been filled with Flight Simulator screenshots from landmarks and regular homes all over the world.
Now, a Reddit user has set his virtual flight's coordinates to 38°15′00.5″N, 122°24′38.9″W and managed to take a photo there.
Those coordinates mark a significant piece of computing history, as there is the spot where the original Windows XP background photo was taken. The photo - taken in Napa Valley, Northern California - that once was the background image on more than one billion computers has a history of its own, as you can read from here. News about the MS Flight Simulator image was first spotted at Chinese ITHome website.
The fight between Epic Games and Apple has grabbed the headlines lately. And Epic is making sure that the legal case wont be forgotten.
Company is now launching a short, one-day tournament dubbed as #FreeFortnite. Prizes include "everything that is not made by Apple" and players using Apple products to play Fortnite aren't eligible to participate.
All of your friends. Fabulous prizes. And one bad apple. We're droppin the #FreeFortnite Cup on August 23.
Prizes include OnePlus 8 phones, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One X and Playstation 4 consoles and more. Furthermore, players can also win new skins to the Fortnite game - that obviously mock Apple and its products. Tournament will be held on 23rd of August, 2020.
World's most popular email service, Google-owned Gmail is in serious problems. Thousands of people are reporting outages worldwide as of now.
Problems seem to be widespread and affect different users differently. For most users, sending emails through Gmail seem to be failing. For others, using file attachments is failing. And for those who are using Gmail mobile app to connect to other email providers, aren't getting their messages downloaded.
We tried Gmail just a moment ago here in Finland and our problems were related to the IMAP account that was being polled by Gmail's mobile app: message headers came through (that is, subject line and the sender name), but the message itself was missing. Google has announced that it is aware of the outage, but hasn't informed yet what has caused the problem.
World's leading music streaming service is having issues at the moment. Spotify has been down for users in United States and Europe.
Down detector's outage map reveals that reports have come from mostly Europe and US east coast – central and pacific US are still waking up.
At this point Spotify hasn't issued any statements via its social media platforms, and there's no scheduled maintenance we are aware of.
While the app on both desktop and mobile don't stream music currently, the web players found at spotify.com seems to function properly. It's also worth noting that this probably doesn't affect all users
We'll continue to monitor the situation, and there's likely going to be a shift correction to the problem from Spotify.
Edit: Readers have confirmed that the service has also been down in Asia.
Epic Games has received support from gamers and from other firms as it takes on Google and Apple in court over their App Store policies.
Epic recently offered Fortnite players a 20 percent discount on its in-game V-bucks currency if they paid Epic Games directly. Bypassing Apple and Google's internal payment systems meant that Epic could avoid paying the standard 30 percent fee to the tech giants.
Apple was the first to retaliate by kicking the megapopular Fortnite off of its App Store, meaning there is nowhere now for Apple products' users to install the game. Epic seemed to be primed and ready for Apple's action and released a parody video of Apple's icon 1984-themed advert.
Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly. In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices.
Japanese electronics giant has no presence left in laptop and PC market where it was operating for three and a half decades.
Toshiba transferred its remaining 19.9 percent stake in Dynabook to Sharp earlier this month. The transfer was enabled through a share purchase agreement reached between Sharp and Toshiba in 2018 when Sharp initially acquired 80.1 percent of Toshiba Client Solutions Co., Ltd (TCS).
TCS changed its brand name to Dynabook in January 2019.
The action means that Toshiba - a consistent name in PCs and laptops since 1985 - now has no presence left in the PC market, while Dynabook has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sharp.
Toshiba's first laptop was the T1100, released in 1985. Over the decades it had considerable success with its Satellite, Qosmio, and Protege devices.
Leaked packaging and materials for Xbox controller confirm the existence of the "Xbox Series S" console.
There has been growing evidence that Microsoft plans to release a cheaper, possibly disc-less version of its upcoming Xbox Series X next-gen console. The codename for the project is well known - Lockhart - and now its actual name may be confirmed as the Xbox Series S.
Twitter user Zak S obtained a white next-gen Xbox controller on OfferUp for $35 and The Verge verified its authenticity. The packaging and materials that come with the controller mention both the Xbox Series X, and the Xbox Series S.
Earlier in the summer, leaked documents also showed that the Xbox Series X devkit (codenamed Dante) includes a Lockhart mode. The Lockhart hardware is expected to have 7.5GB of RAM (down from 13.5GB in the Series X) and a lower performance GPU. While it will pack the same CPU as the Series X, it's likely underclocked. Series S would be expected to be part of Microsoft's Xbox All Pass subscription push.
The focus of the Series X is also suggested to be on 1080p and 1440p resolution gaming, rather than 4K.
Apple has clarified that Microsoft's cloud gaming service won't be available for iOS devices because it breaches its App Store rules.
Microsoft's xCloud gaming service is expected to launch on September 15, having been in beta testing since November of last year. It will allow users to stream games across a variety of devices from the cloud.
While it was available for testing on Apple's iOS devices, it will not be launching for them next month. According to Apple, the problem is that xCloud violates numerous rules enforced on developers.
Firstly, Apple's rules stipulate that all games that would be made available through the App Store are submitted to it for checks. This is an issue for xCloud because a large number of titles would be available through an interface on the app, with many games becoming available the same day as they launch for purchase.
Secondly, games must also appear in the search on the App Store, but that would not the case with the xCloud app. Furthermore, games available in the xCloud app would not appear in charts.
Microsoft is pushing back against Apple's explanation, however, pointing out that all the games available in the xCloud library would be probed by games' rating bodies like the Entertainment Software Rating Board in America, and that further checks should not be required on Apple's end.
World's leading chip manufacturer Intel has been a target of hacking, says a swiss software engineer and leak hobbyist Till Kottmann.
Kottmann received leaked Intel documents from an anonymous hacker that contacted him via his Telegram channel. The 20 gigabyte package was uploaded to Kim Dotcom's Mega cloud storage site.
Some of these documents were marked confidential or restricted secret, and some are clearly just marketing material or manuals.
According to ZDNet's unnamed expert, the leak seems authentic and there are indeed confidential information among the leaked documents. This includes schematics for unreleased Tiger Lake platform, silicon and FSP source code packages, as well as encrypted Intel Boot Guard SDK.
There's no sensitive information about Intel's customers or employees, however.
Social media is once again in turmoil as a new Chinese-owned contender TikTok has gained foothold in the US. President Trump and the administration aren't happy about the national security aspect of TikTok, and in fact are going to enact a ban unless control changes.
The administration has given TikTok just over a month to figure out how to restructure the ownership of TikTok's US business or else they will institute a ban on the app.
Microsoft has been in talks with TikTok owner ByteDance for possibly buying the US business, but that might not be the only thing on the table.
According to Financial Times, the deal might be far bigger and Microsoft might be looking to acquire the entirety of TikTok's international operations, excluding China.
If Microsoft could acquire a successful social media it would elevate its business beyond what Apple or Google has managed.
However, sources have told Business Insider that Microsoft is not going to extend the deal. Microsoft has already admitted that it has started negotiations about the operations in US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Sony has today announced new closed back headphones to its award-winning and popular WH-1000X series. The new WH-1000XM4 are the fourth generation, as the name suggests, in Sony's flagship headphone series.
Sony has improved upon what already was the market-leading active noise cancellation. While the chip itself is the same, Sony has worked on especially the high and mid pitches sound removal algorithms.
The noise cancellation uses two microphones on each ear cup to produce the best ANC experience yet. This process also uses a new Bluetooth Audio SoC feature to analyze data over 700 times a second.
As with WH-1000XM3, the new model features ANC optimizer that analyzes the users head size as well as the effect of hair, glasses and so on to provide the most accurate noise cancellation. This also includes air pressure optimization when flying.
Tinder, the world's most popular dating app, has introduced a new subscription tier, dubbed as Tinder Platinum. The new subscription level adds on top of the existing tiers (Tinder Gold and Tinder Plus), introducing two important new features to the app.
First and foremost is the feature called Messages without a match, which basically allows one to send a short message (max 140 characters) to the recipient even when there's no match between the two.
In order to send such message, sender must be subscribed to the Tinder Platinum. Message is then attached to a super like that user sends to the recipient. The recipient sees the superlike, along with the message and then decides whether to like the sender or not.
If the recipient doesn't like the sender back, sender wont be able to send further messages. If recipient likes the sender back, a new Tinder match is formed and the two can then continue chatting as normal Tinder matches.
Samsung's this year's Unpacked virtual event ended with a bang as the company unveiled their next-generation foldable smartphone. After the introduction of Galaxy Note20, Galaxy Tab S7, Galaxy Buds Live, and Galaxy Watch3, the company had a "one more thing" in their back pocket.
They officially unveiled the new Galaxy Z Fold2, the successor to last year's immensely controversial Galaxy Fold. The company's initial failure to produce a foldable smartphone was obvious last year after reviewers found out that dirt could fairly easily enter the hinge mechanism and even under the display and break the whole thing.
After a callback and few more iterations of development, the Galaxy Fold was finally launched, although not many probably actually bought one.
The new smartwatch offers an upgraded design that inches it closer to traditional watch in many respects. It is smaller, thinner, and lighter while still managing to improve upon the specs ever to slightly.
According to the company, Galaxy Watch3 is 14 percent thinner, 8 percent smaller, 15 percent lighter than its predecessor Galaxy Watch. Nevertheless, they've managed to include slightly larger, 1.4 inch display (instead of 1.3").
Yesterday's virtual Unpacked event produced us a pair of both Galaxy Note20 smartphones as well as Galaxy Tab S7 tablets. Neither of these come with a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which brings us to the this announcement.
Samsung updated also their Galaxy Buds lineup. The new Galaxy Buds Live is a rather large upgrade to the predecessor with a new design and important new features.
The bean-shaped design is said to come from looking for comfort and fit. That remains to be seen but they are definitely unique.
Samsung's Unpacked gave us most importantly the new Galaxy Note20 smartphones but the company had a lot of somewhat secondary devices to show.
One of these was the new Galaxy Tab S7 and its better-equipped sibling Tab S7+. The new S7 is only a slight upgrade – with one major improvement – to last year's S6.
Regular S7 features a 11 inch LCD display with QHD resolution while the S7+ upgrades it to a 12.4 inch OLED panel and slightly upgrading the resolution along with the size increase.
Both of the new displays have 120 hz refresh rate which is probably the most important upgrade over the last year's model.
Samsung's today's first ever virtual Unpacked event has ended and the company has a lot of new Galaxy products to unveil. The most important of them all was of course the new lineup of Galaxy Note smartphones.
The Galaxy Note20 comes in two different variants: regular Galaxy Note20 and Galaxy Note20 Ultra. They both offer massive AMOLED displays measuring in at 6.7 inches with Note20 and 6.9 inches with Note20 Ultra. However, only the latter supports 120 hz refresh rate – the regular model comes with a rather pedestrian 60 hz display.
As you might imagine, the larger size of the Note20 Ultra also means a slightly larger 4500 mAh battery while Note20 has a 4300 mAh one. Both, however, support 25 watt quick charging as well as Qi wireless charging.
Connections-wise the devices are largely similar with both supporting 5G networks as well as speedy WiFi 6. Both also have either Snapdragon 865+ or Samsung's Exynos 990 chips. Ultra does have more RAM with 12 GB compared to Note20's 8 GB.
In terms of camera, the Galaxy Note20 Ultra is similar to the S20 Ultra with a 108 MP shooter accompanied by 12 MP ultrawide and a periscope zoom camera. The cheaper Galaxy Note20 on the other hand has a 12 MP main camera in addition to a tele zoom camera and a ultrawide.
One of the most important privacy court rulings in recent history was delivered two weeks ago when EU Court stroke down the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement. Privacy Shield agreement between EU and the United States allowed American companies to store and process EU user data within the United States.
But EU Court ruled that because United States allowed its intelligence agencies to access such data, the agreement between EU and US had to be terminated immediately. Since then, basically all American companies that maintained the user databases in U.S. soil and had EU users, were breaking EU legislation.
Problem is massive: Companies wishing to maintain unified user database must basically move it out of the United States - or United States as a country to change its national laws that permit its intelligence agencies to do surveillance on its own soil. Obviously the latter option is highly unlikely to happen.
Technically splitting user database into two separate sets, with separate rules, processes and data location would be a massive technical challenge to the Internet gients like Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
Following many other countries' suit, Finland, launched today its official COVID-19 tracking application for iOS and Android platforms. App is called Koronavilkku (literally, coronavirus blink).
In a rather surprising move, Netflix has opened its service to be watched for free. Of course, this doesn't include everything Netflix has listed, but some of its hit series and original movies are now available for free.
Smartphone design has followed one trend for a very long time. The design goal of smartphones pretty much ever since the very first iPhone has been to minimize gadgets distracting from the large touch screen display.
