News archive (9 / 2020)

Google's much anticipated Pixel event has just ended, and the company had to offer two new Pixel phones. The new 2020 Pixel models are Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G. These join the already announced Pixel 4a.

These two new models actually have more in common than you'd think, and Pixel 4a 5G (pictured at the top) shares much more of its DNA with the new Pixel 5 than the namesake from earlier this year, Pixel 4a.

In fact, there aren't that many things at all that differentiate Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5. Both have the exact same camera setup with a 12.2 MP default shooter and a 16 MP super wide camera, as well as the 8MP f/2.0 selfie shooter. Both also feature the higher mid tier Snapdragon 765G chipset.

There is a little more RAM, 8GB vs 6GB, in the Pixel 5, and while the display is slightly smaller, 6.0 vs 6.2, the Pixel 5 does have 90 Hz refresh rate. Battery life should also be better on the Pixel 5 with slightly more capacity, 4080 mAh vs 3885 mAh, and you can charge it wirelessly.

Samsung surprised us yesterday with a new smartphone announcement. Usually after the Note announcements Samsung readies itself to reveal midrange A series phones but this time it was in fact a new Galaxy S.

The new phone is called Galaxy S20 FE and is thus a continuation of the company's flagship brand. Specs-wise it is a lower high-end or perhaps a top notch mid tier device, one that would challenge the likes of OnePlus 8, for example.

To fit neatly into S20 family it needs some specs from the higher end, and that is where the large 120 Hz display, triple camera with Space Zoom, and 5G connectivity comes in.

The display is 6.5 inches which fits nicely between the regular S20 and the S20+, but the resolution has been lowered to Full HD (1080 x 2400).

Some were expecting Tesla to announce yesterday the million mile battery, but perhaps unsurprisingly that didn't happen. However, there was an announcement that Elon Musk says will bring EV prices down.

Tesla has developed a new type of battery technology that will be much more cost effective. One of the main aims of the project has been to remove cobalt from the equation for its costly nature, both in terms of money and manpower.

Musk hopes that Tesla will be able to produce much of its future next-gen batteries themselves but partnership with Panasonic and their battery production is likely to keep going for a while.

Tesla's upcoming so-called "tabless cells" are going to be up to six times more powerful in addition to increasing the range by 16 percent. The official product name of the cells without tabs connecting battery cells to each others are 4680 cells.

There's potential for a massive price drop in prices of electric cars, and could be on par with combustion engines. Musk promised a $25,000 EV once the technology matures.

Musk also announced the new Model S Plaid which has the much-teaser Plaid drivetrain and impressive specs. Zero to 60 in under 2 seconds, over a 500-mile range, top speed of 200 mph and a price of $139,000. It should be available late next year.

Microsoft released the Xbox Series X as well as the smaller and more inexpensive Xbox Series S for pre-ordering yesterday. The company also expanded the accessories for the consoles ahead of the pre-orders.

In a blog post they've unveiled the new color version of the new Xbox controller. There aren't any surprises here, except for the color, the controller works just like the initial black and white versions.

In addition Microsoft announced a USB-C cable and a wireless adapter for people to connect their Xbox controllers to their PCs. If yours had Bluetooth neither of these are, however, necessary.

In a row between Facebook and European Union over data portability between Europe and United States, the stakes are getting higher.

After the European Court's ruling in August that terminated the Privacy Shield agreement between United States and European Union, U.S.-based tech giants such as Facebook haven't been allowed to transfer their European users' data to their datacenters located in United States.

The court ruling simply stated that because United States allows its intelligence agencies to snoop on data located in U.S. -based servers, data transfers from Europe can't happen anymore, as European citizens' data could be compromised.

Now, after the ruling, Irish data authority, Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) decided that Facebook must comply within three weeks and stop sending its European user data to United States.

Facebook has now sued DPC, stating if the data flow between two continents is banned, it can't continue in Europe. Meaning basically that services that rely on unified user database, namely, Facebook and Instagram, would shut down in Europe.

One of the very key problems with WhatsApp is the fact that very few of its users actually realize that their behavior can be tracked in real-time, no matter what.

Everyone using the popular messaging app knows the fact that WhatsApp shows your "last seen" status by default. And some also know that the "last seen" data can be hidden through WhatsApp's settings.

But you can't hide the "online now" status which appears whenever you open the app. And that particular information is available to all WhatsApp users, not just to your contacts. So, anyone who knows your phone number, gets the information when you're online.

Now, there are tons of apps and services available that hook into that data. Basically, you download one of those apps and tell which phone number you want to start monitoring. Then, the app tracks, anonymously, when the given phone number appears online and records that. And as the app "pings" the status every 30 seconds or so, you'll soon get a full picture of when the particular user was using his/her WhatsApp.

From that data, after, say two weeks' worth of monitoring, one can easily draw conclusions on user's sleeping patterns, when they might have been in night club, etc.

You know that feeling when you wanted to watch some good olde music videos from 1980s on YouTube, just to realize two hours later that you've spent the past hour watching conspiracy theories explaining how 5G networks caused liberal lesbians to invent coronavirus in order to replace all world leaders with lizards? Yeah. That feeling.

Now, how did you end up there? Nobody really seems to know. YouTube's recommendation algorithm has been in the spotlight of increasing controversy over the last few years, as it seems to prefer recommending user to watch as much weird and potentially dangerous stuff as possible. Videos about conspiracy theories, blatantly racist videos, anti-vaccine videos and even videos encouraging viewers to radicalize somehow (all the styles and genres are there, from far-left radical communism through far-right extremities to good olde jihadism).

Obviously, Google, who owns YouTube, wont tell, as the recommendation algorithm is one of its business secrets. But there's a word out there that even Google doesn't really know how it works anymore, as it is driven mostly by machine learning and some level of AI.

Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox, now wants to understand how the YouTube's recommendation algorithm really works.

Back in the day, in 1980s, the world was mostly dominated by Commodore 64. But handful of countries, most notably, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Spain and Finland, had an alternative, too.

The system was called MSX, the first-ever standardized home computer platform. By standardization, it meant that any manufacturer that wished to build MSX-compatible computers, could do so. And the system actually worked: games and programs made for MSX platform worked pretty much perfectly on all MSX computer, whether they were made by Sony, Sharp, Canon or Spectravideo.

Later down the line, MSX standard evolved into MSX2, then to MSX2+ and finally, to MSX TurboR standards.

Now, as with most other popular computer platforms from 1980s, MSX is nowadays far from dead. It has decent hobbyist following that develops new programs, games and even peripherals for it.

And such dedication sometimes brings susprising results. This time around, it is 99% perfect port of super Mario World running on MSX2 platform.

World's largest robovac manufacturer iRobot introduced a new pair of robotic vacuums to the mid-price range today.

First of all, there's Roomba i3+ that brings a very desirable feature from the company's high-end models to the mid-price range. Roomba i3+ has the similar self-emptying dustbin feature that is found from company's high-end models Roomba i7+ and Roomba s9+.

Roomba i3+ is capable of emptying of its own, rather small, internal dustbin to a much larger dustbin, located in the charging dock, whenever it goes recharging itself. In our tests of i7+ and s9+, such feature means that the owner needs to empty the (docking station's) dustbin only every three or four months.

Obviously, iRobot has hindered some features in $599 Roomba i3+ in order to maintain the difference between that and its $799 Roomba i7+. Most importantly, the new Roomba i3+ wont have the smart mapping features of Roomba i7+. Meaning that owner can't tell Roomba i3+ to only clean kitchen today, as can be told to i7+. Instead, i3+ simply cleans the entire apartment and then goes back to the charging station and empties its dustbin.

iRobot also released a cheaper sibling to Roomba i3+, dubbed as Roomba i3. The $399 robovac is identical to Roomba i3+, except for the fact that it doesn't have the self-emptying capabilities (which can be purchased separately at later date, but costing more than the $200 price difference between the models).

PS5 Showcase provides PS5 console launch date and price, along with information on accessories and launch day games.

We are getting close to the next major console battle. This time, Microsoft's Xbox Series X goes up against rival Sony's PlayStation 5 for your cash. Where can you get a PS5 and when? How much will it cost? What accessories will be available at launch and what games will be available? How much will those cost?

Here's how it breaks down.

PlayStation 5 hardware launch details

There are two options for your PlayStation 5 purchase this fall. You can buy a PS5 with an Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive or you can purchase a PS5 Digital Edition at a lower cost. The lower cost results from the lack of a Blu-ray drive, if you hadn't already guessed, meaning that the only way to acquire games for this version is digitally.

Other than the Blu-ray drive, there is no other significant hardware difference between the two choices: they both the same x86-64-AMD Ryzen Zen 2 CPU and AMD Radeon RDNA 2-based graphics engine, support 4K graphics with ray-tracing, and both pack ultra-high-speed SSD with integrated I/O for speedy loading times.

Both consoles will be available in the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea from November 12, and will launch a week later on November 19 in Europe, Middle East, South America, Asia and South Africa. Pre-orders are available now from select retailers.

Apple announced a bunch of devices in both iPads, the 8th gen iPad and new iPad Air, as well as Apple Watches, Apple Watch Series 6 and entirely new Apple Watch SE, but they also had some nice service and software announcements.

And we're not talking about the annual iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, etc updates, although there were those too. We're talking about the completely new service collection Apple One.

Apple One is a umbrella under which Apple has collected all of its most important services. This includes iCloud, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, and Apple TV+.

There are three tiers to the service with the cheapest being $14.95/mo Individual plan. With $19.95/mo you get the service for the entire family, and if you require Apple New and new Fitness+ services, the Premium package is for you at $29.95/mo.

Apple has updated their iPad lineup with a new regular 8th gen iPad and also a refresh of the iPad Air.

The new iPad Air has gone through a design revamp that inches it close to the iPad Pro. With the new sleek, edgy, and more industrial design you might not even be able to distinguish it from the iPad Pro.

In size it is nearly identical to the 11-inch iPad Pro, and the Liquid Retina display with True Tone technology is very similar too with only the slightest, even unnoticeable differences in size and resolution.

The bezels have undergone a massive reduction to the point that the Touch ID has been moved to the power button.

It also now has a f/2.0 and up to 60 fps FaceTime camera, 7 MP like previously, and improved 12 MP back camera from the iPad Pro.

Apple announced, as expected, the new Apple Watch Series 6 to replace last year's Series 5. However, the more interesting announcement was the completely new Apple Watch SE.

The company obviously borrowed the SE moniker from the iPhone in which it represents a cheaper version of their flagship device. In this case too, the Apple Watch SE is a cheaper version that combines some of the features from the flagship to some tech from previous generations.

Apple Watch SE features the last years S5 chip which isn't quite as fast as the new S6 on Series 6 but, according to Apple, is up to two times faster than the Series 3.

Apple's yesterday's virtual press event brought about a couple new product in both iPads as well as Apple Watches. As expected the Cupertino company announced the new Apple Watch Series 6.

This new version focuses a lot on health and fitness related features.

There's now a new red light sensor for measuring blood oxygen. This allows the user to monitor effective breathing and stress related to blood oxygen. This means that it can be used for both exercise and health purposes like to monitor asthma.

Apple unveiled yesterday a bunch of products in the iPad and Watch categories. Arguably the most influential is the new version of the original iPad.

The regular old iPad is the most popular of the Apple tablets, and now there's the 8th generation out. Apple has upgraded the interior with a new A12 Bionic chip which produces market-leading performance.

According to the company, the new iPad is twice as fast as the most popular Windows laptop, three times more powerful than the most popular Android device and up to six times faster than most popular Chromebook.

Other specs include a 10.2" Retina display, a HD resolution FaceTime camera, 8 MP shooter in the back, 10 hour battery life, USB-C charging and support for Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil.

The world is about to end? What would you do? That is the core question that Tinder's interactive adventure Swipe Night asks.

Launched back in 2019 in the United States, now the event has arrived to the rest of the world, too. It is basically am adventure show that you get choose how it goes forward, where every now and then the events are stopped and user is asked to swipe either left or right in order to decide how the plot continues.

Global launch of the Swipe Night was initially planned for March, 2020 but the global pandemic kinda changed the plans. But now Tinder seems to be confident that it is right time to bring the end of the world adventure to the rest of the world, too.

Speed is very important when playing the Swipe Night - user has only 7 seconds time to decide how to swipe when the story stops. After all the steps have been completed, the story ends, but also the results of how user swiped in each step will be added to the user's own Tinder profile.

Customs and Border Patrol has a lot of important duties, one of which is recognizing and seizing counterfeit products that try to circumvent the intellectual property rights.

It might not be as flashy as stopping a thousand pound shipment of heroine, but CBP does get their hands on a lot of illicit tech products. In this case that is exactly what they thought they had.

Instead they seized a shipment of very legit OnePlus Buds, wireless earbuds by the popular Chinese Android enthusiast brand. Not only did they mistake OnePlus headphones as counterfeit Apple AirPods, they posted this epic failure for all to see on social media.

From the tweet you can clearly see the original retail box with a OnePlus logo as well as the product name, UPC, et al.

It is strange to think that the CBP would even entertain the idea that these are a copy of AirPods. Sure, they are white and kind of similar, but if you have AirPods at hand, you can quickly see the difference.

More importantly, they aren't trying to copy Apple logo, name, or even product name.

This embarrassing mistake got even more hilarious when OnePlus USA tweeted a reply, "Hey, give those back!" with a smiley.

Nvidia is known as the top dog in graphics cards but not many realize what kind of a behemoth it in fact is. The company's market cap is about $320 which puts them ahead of giants like Walt Disney or Coca-Cola.

Now, the GPU and SoC maker has flexed its muscles and acquired the world's leading mobile chip designer ARM Holdings. ARM was bought from the Korean technology giant Softbank for around $40 billion.

Softbank acquired the company every smartphone maker, and user, depends on for $32 billion a few years back. Softbank will hold on to a just under 10 percent stake in the company.

The UK-based ARM Holdings is known for its ARM processors, an architecture used by nearly all smartphones whether it'd be Android of Apple-designed silicon. Even the upcoming non-Intel Macs are going to run ARM architecture.

This is a massive deal in the smartphone and mobile world where Nvidia has had trouble expanding to. This means that Nvidia enters, as the deal closes, the realm in a big way.

Nvidia has also suggested that it will offer ARM customers licensing deals with Nvidia hardware. It will be interesting to see what the two companies can come up together.

The controversial social media TikTok has been acquired by a company that not many even considered in the race. Oracle, the company behind MySQL, Java and other computer technologies, has bought TikTok's American operations, Bloomberg reports.

Microsoft was in talks with TikTok for a while, and the Chinese-owned social media even tried to sweet talk U.S. government into not having to sell its operations.

However, Trump administration didn't back down from forcing change in ownership for the U.S. operations to keep up the app available. The administration cited security concerns with Chinese government possibly intervening in TikTok's businesses and data.

And now we're at Oracle owning the teen-focused app with short videos of dancing and cute animals, what else.

Oracle is one of the largest technology companies on the planet but they are largely developing enterprise solutions, AI, cloud computing, and data technologies, not so much consumer products or apps.

Microsoft has confirmed what was leaked already earlier: both the Xbox Series X and Series S are heading to stores near you in November.

The $499 – as the Best Buy leak suggested – Xbox Series X and the discless and the smallest Xbox ever, $299 Xbox Series S, are slated for global release on November 10. If you insist that you get your hands on one of these as soon as possible, you can pre-order them starting 22, 10 days from now.

This also give Microsoft an indication of what type of volume is expected at the launch, and perhaps make them more prepared for the game-starved public.

Microsoft also has a monthly subscription offer in Xbox All Access, which allows you to get Xbox Series X as well as Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $34.99. A quick 1+1 tells us that this 24-month commitment will cost you a total of $840 in two years.

With the cheaper Xbox Series S, the same subscription goes for $24.99/mo or $600 over the two year period.

Motorola has announced the second version of the second coming of Razr. The new Motorola Razr 5G is based on the original, legendary, Razr and is the second version of this new era of folding displays.

As you might gather from the name alone, the single most important new feature of the device is 5G connectivity. This is made possible by the new Snapdragon 765G chip which powers the likes of OnePlus 8.

Motorola hasn't quite managed to fit all the highest end parts in the second version either, which is evident by the mid-tier, albeit higher mid-tier, chip. Same continues mostly throughout the rest of the specs, although there are improvements across the board over the predecessor.

The Razr 5G has 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage space, the battery is slightly bigger at 2800 milliamp hours, and the cameras have improved: a f/1.7 and 48 MP shooter (Quad Pixel taking 12 MP shots) in the back and a f/2.2 and 20 MP (QP @ 5MP) selfie camera in the shell.

The eleventh major revamp of the Android mobile operating system was officially released this week, and here are new features at a glance.

Android 11 was released on September 8 without a release name of a popular dessert, since that practice was halted with Android 10. The new Android 11 logo accompanies this news item and references the film 'This is Spinal Tap' by depicting a dial turned up to 11.

Most of the changes for this iteration happened under the hood, affecting performance, 5G connectivity, security and so forth. Yet there are still revamps that will be very noticeable to users who upgrade when their device is eligible, or get Android 11 on a brand new device.

Here we will take a look at the primary feature changes:

Conversations Notifications
Notifications from all messaging apps such as the internal Messages app, WhatsApp, Messenger and so on, will be packed together in Android 11. This way your notifications for received messages will not be mixing in with "likes" or other kinds of notifications that pack the notification area.

Conversations can be marked as priority to make them more visible on screen, and also to bypass Do Not Disturb mode if it is activated.

Microsoft has finally officially announced the Xbox Series S. Most of the limelight is directed at the upcoming Xbox Series X but for a long time we've known that the Redmond giant has a secondary, more affordable gaming console in the development.

Now the Series S has been revealed, and the company has confirmed that it joins Xbox Series X at launch.

As expected, the Series S is a slightly less powerful, cheaper, and also, according to Microsoft, the smallest Xbox in history. It will retail for $299.

While it is much more inexpensive than one would imagine from a next-generation console, Microsoft promises next-gen performance.

Microsoft also announced the price of Xbox Series X. The bigger brother will retail for $499, which is just about what we've gathered from rumors and leaks.

We're still waiting from Sony, who've yet to announce PlayStation 5 pricing. It wouldn't be surprising if Sony would hit the same price points with their duo of next-gen consoles, the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. That is what the previously mentioned leak also suggested.

Chinese manufacturer OnePlus is making a strong push towards the higher echelon on smartphone manufacturers with the latest models upping the specs, quality and price.

While OnePlus 8 series is still fairly new, we know that soon enough we'll get to experience another OnePlus phone thanks to the company's two model a year strategy.

The latter half of the year produces usually a slight upgrade over the first model of the year marked by the addition of T in the name. This years model is expected to be OnePlus 8T.

There's no word yet whether the company will announce both the mid priced OnePlus 8T as well as a truly flagship tier OnePlus 8T Pro. However, new leak reveals a lot about the former.

According to Android Central, we should expect an announcement late September or early October.

Specs-wise there's some nice upgrades to the current generation model. While the OnePlus 8T display is going to be the same size, refresh rate is going to be upped to 120 Hz, which is on par with OnePlus 8 Pro. There's no word on resolution but we'd guess it's going to remain Full HD+.

Nintendo has today announced quite the selection of Mario games for the Switch. Of course the Mario announcements didn't come out of the blue, it's all because of the 35 year anniversary of the original Super Mario Bros. released in 1985.

Mario Kart franchise will get a new take on the classic kart racing game. The new Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit combines remote controlled cars with mixed reality.

As the player you are controlling a remote controlled car with a camera around a virtual race track built in your home. The game will be available on October 16.

If you don't really understand how all of that works, here's the trailer.

Finnish WordPress developer company Seravo Oy has found a serious vulnerability in WordPress plug-in that is used by more than 700'000 websites globally.

Plugin, called WP File Manager, has a 0-day vulnerability that allows attackers to upload files to websites without authorization and execute code remotely on all WordPress instances that have the said plugin installed.

Basically utilizing the vulnerability, attackers can steal data, destroy sites or add their own code to websites, which could mine cryptocurrencies or distribute harmful code to website users' computers.

Both, the basic version of WP File Manager and also the paid-for version, WP File Manager Pro are affected. In total, these plugins have more than 700k active installations globally.

Developers were alerted of the issue and they released a updated version v6.9 that fixes the security problem. It is adviced to update WP File Manager to 6.9 or above - or uninstall it immediately.

More info: Seravo Oy press release

WordPress is by far the most popular publishing platform in the world, with millions of websites using it as their content management system and more.

As the relations between two huge countries, India and China, have been sour for most part of this year, the situation also has effects on digital world.

India has recently made it very clear that its attitude nowadays, especially with digital and consumer electronic products is that "everything that is made in China is bad". This has extended to digital products, such as games and apps. India just recently banned pile of Chinese apps from app stores available in India, including popular social media app TikTok.

Now, countryu has banned further 118 Chinese apps. One of those apps happens to be PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, an fps game that is currently the most popular app in India - and a huge success globally. Developer of the game is Chinese Tencent.