Microsoft is planning a launch event in early May. The company is said to be launching a new version of their current Xbox One game console.
Rumors have it that Microsoft is releasing a Xbox One S All-Digital Edition on May 7. This new version is a cheaper version of the already affordable Xbox One S, and, as you might decipher from the new name, doesn't include a Blu-ray or any other optical drive.
It is a perfect first step towards the digital content that will be distributed by Microsoft's upcoming xCloud platform, which is due at E3 in June.
At this point there's no word on how much exactly the new Xbox One S All-Digital Edition will cost, but thanks to the folks at Windows Central we have a picture of what the retail box will likely look like.
Apple is readying up the launch of a new streaming video service, and it might be here sooner than we thought in October.
Cupertino giant is focusing much of its efforts to launching this service, and even the new iMacs and iPads released earlier this week seemed like an afterthought, which shows how important the new video service is.
Apple will reveal the new platform next Monday, and while there's no official information yet, Recode says they know what to expect.
According to them, Apple's new platform isn't going to challenge Netflix as much as you and I might have thought. It's not going to be a Netflix clone but instead going to offer other video streaming services a platform on the Apple ecosystem.
Facebook hasn't exactly been the poster boy for a good social network in that recent past, but there might be still things that haven't been uncovered.
In fact, one new issue was revealed by the company just now. Facebook admits that hundreds of millions of passwords were stored in their servers in plain text, that is without encryption of any kind.
While it's unlikely that any outsiders could have accessed the data, there is a possibility that Facebook employees managed to get their hands on Facebook users' passwords and abuse them.
Facebook claims that there is no sign of any Facebook employee abusing the plain text passwords, although that would probably be fairly hard to diagnose anyway.
Some of these passwords have been stored in this internal server since 2012. According to a source within Facebook, who spoke to Krebs on Security, from 200 million up to 600 million passwords were in danger of leaking.
The same source says that more than 20,000 Facebook employees had the capability to leak the data, and a total of 2,000 employees made around nine million inquiries to the database.
Microsoft has released a patch for Windows 7 which brings along a new dialog box reminding of the most unfortunate news. Well, unfortunate if you don't want to change your operating system.
See Windows 7 is about to go obsolete, in terms of software updates at least. The 2009 launched operating system will not receive support after January 14, 2020.
The market share of Windows 7 was still over 35 percent in late 2018, and in fact it was just December last year that Windows 10 managed to overcome the market share of Windows 7.
There's fortunately still plenty of time, 299 days to be exact. Unfortunately the free updates from Windows 7 to Windows 10 are far gone. Enterprise customers can buy an extended security update package that will provide support until 2023.
If you happen to be in a fairly unpopular limbo of Windows 8, you will continue to receive updates until January 10, 2023.
As expected, the European Commission has now come up with a fitting bill for Google's newest strain of antitrust violations.
As reported earlier, Google violated EU's antitrust laws with their advertisement network AdSense.
During the time of previous reports the size of the fine was not revealed, but now we have proper figures from the European Commission themselves. As reported, this one is the smallest of the three antitrust fines Google has gotten from EU, but is still significant and in the same billion dollar range as the others.
Previously Google has been ruled two fees, 4.34 billion euro ($4.91 billion) for abusing competitive advantage with Android and 2.4 billion euro ($2.72 billion) for preferring Google's price comparison data in their search engine.
Google is set to pay a fine of 1.49 billion euro (approx. $1.69 billion) for requiring advertisers an exclusivity, or "relaxed exclusivity", for search adverts. This happened since 2006 up until 2009, after which Google implemented a less strict but still illegal Premium Placement clauses.
Microsoft, like many others, paid close attention to Google's Game Developer Conference keynote this week. Google's new cloud gaming platform Stadia probably sent shivers down the spines of people at OnLive and others, but Microsoft doesn't seem too phased.
According to reports, Microsoft's Xbox boss Phil Spencer sent a memo to employees thanking for the hard work they've done in the recent years.
He said that Google's announcement only validifies their mission during the past two years and which will be unveiled at E3 later this year. Spencer is of course talking about a cloud gaming platform of their own, which is called Project xCloud within the company and is now seemingly confirmed for June launch.
Just Google, Microsoft has a strong cloud service infrastructure which will help in the logistics side of things. In addition Microsoft obviously has strong gaming pedigree, which Google largely lacks.
It looks like the cloud gaming wars are just around the corner, and there's plenty of contender of the highest tech tier.
As expected, Oculus has finally revealed that they'll be bringing a new virtual reality headset to market soon. The device, called Rift S, has been developed, somewhat surprisingly, with the help of Lenovo.
Rift S is a more mobile headset that integrates new environment sensing cameras which means that there's no need for external motion sensing cameras.
However, to keep the price down they've had to make some compromises compared to previous Rift headset. While the resolution has gone to 1280 x 1440 from 1080 x 1200, the refresh rate is actually lower at 80hz (was 90hz) and OLED panels have been changed to less impressive LCD technology.
There's no setting for the optics either, so you won't be able to change the distance of the lenses to your specific needs.
The headphones are also a downgrade to what Oculus uses in it's cheapest Go headset, which are near-ear speakers. There are other slight changes too which TechCrunch has listed nicely.
Oculus has confirmed the price at $399 and they should become available some time this spring.
Norwegian public broadcaster NRK has found out that Nokia's Android phone, Nokia 7 Plus, leaks data to servers in China.
The data leak was found out by a Norwegian citizen, Henrik Austad, who wanted to find out what his phone sends over the Internet. He found out that his phone sent an unencrypted data burst every time a phone was switched on. This data package included phone's location, SIM card number and phone's serial number among other details.
The data was sent unencrypted over the Internet to a server located in China, operated by Chinese government-owned ISP China Telecom.
Nokia itself doesn't manufacture phones nowadays, but instead, has licensed its brand to another Finnish company called HMD Global. HMD Global says that the claims are true, but were caused by a bug in specific production batch - and that the issue has since been fixed with later production phones. HMD Global also says that the information leak didn't include anything that could be associated to a specific person or to allow tracking of a specific person.
As HMD Global is based in Finland (as is Nokia whose license they are using), the Finnish Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman has announced that they will start an official investigatio into this matter. European Union's GDPR data procetion directive states clearly that while data can be pretty much freely transferred within the European Union, with user's consent, the transfer of data to outside of the European Union is a different matter. With such case, there needs to be a legal rationale behind the data transfer and the user should know about it.
Google announced a new cloud gaming platform called Stadia earlier this week. Few of the luckier gaming reporters have managed to get some hands-on time with the service, and we've got some news about some of the platforms issues.
If you aren't familiar with the new service, well, read our previous article, but in short terms it is a game streaming platform that allows you to enjoy performance intense games on any screen.
This means that the heavy lifting is done in Google's services and the picture is just transferred to your phone, PC or even TV screen.
However, one problem remains. Latency.
Latency of course being the time it takes for the command to go from your button press to the servers and them come back as an accordingly updated frame to your display.
When you are doing the calculations locally you need to take into account the time it takes to transfer the data back and forth. Eurogamer have done a little bit of a test with the help of Digital Foundry on Stadia's latency, and determined that in very ideal conditions it could provide as good latency as a locally operating Xbox One X.
As Google announced their upcoming cloud gaming platform, they also introduced their newest piece of hardware. While Stadia doesn't require any hardware boxes to operate, Google did reveal the Stadia controller.
The Stadia controller looks like a typical console game controller, perhaps a combination of both Xbox controller and the Sony's DualShock.
The controller connects straight to the Stadia server using WiFi and it recognizes which device or screen you are going to play the game on.
The controller has two dual triggers for index fingers, a D-pad, two analog sticks, and four ABXY buttons like the Xbox controller.
It also features both a dedicated capture button for YouTube streaming as well as Google assistant. Pressing the latter will open up Google Assistant which you can use by voice with the built-in microphone. Google Assistant is said to have special in-game features that are put in place by the game developers.
The controller comes in three different colors, and just like the service itself will be available later this year.
Google has revealed that it is introducing a new gaming service to the public later this year. The service called Stadia offer games as streamable content to all screens.
The search giant's new service isn't really anything new in the gaming sector. Services like OnLive, Nvidia's GeForce Now, and others already offer a cloud gaming service. Google plans to expand the experience to more screens, and with some impressive specs.
According to them, everyone with a Chromecast, or even a Chrome browser, could play the newest games in 4K and 60 fps. This includes graphics intensive games like Doom Eternal in HDR.
The company compared the processing power dedicated to player to PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. In fact, they said that the 10.7 teraflots beats both, even combined, since PS2 Pro calculates at the speed of 4.2 teraflops and Xbox One X at around six.
Google also announced partnership with AMD which has developed a chip for Google's data centers. This allows the closest possible location to deliver gamers the performance they need.
Being close is probably the toughest problem for game streaming platforms. You cannot have too high of a latency, especially in action-packed games. There is no word how they are going to tackle the problem, except relying on extensive data center network.
In addition to new iPad models, Apple has already this week revealed new iMacs. While iMac Pro was left untouched, both 4K and 5K models of the iMac got some improvements.
The first update in two years to regular iMacs comes with improved performance but same design. After such a long time you are rightly expecting a fair bump in computational prowess, and you'd be right.
According to Apple, the 21.5 inch 4K iMac improves performance up to 60 percent over its predecessor, while the 27 inch 5K iMac destroys the previous model with 2.4x (240%) the performance.
The new 21.5 inch model features a generation old Intel Core processors but the 27 inch 5K iMac at least offers in the highest tier the newer 9th gen Intel Core processors. The CPUs in the new 21.5 inch models are either quad-core or 6-core ones while the 27 inch model offers 6-cores except for the top tier 8-core processor.
Both have AMD's Radeon Pro Vega GPUs, and Apple claims that the graphics performance has been improved by 80 percent in the smaller iMacs and 50 percent in the 5K models. The cheapest model has a Radeon Pro 555X, the top 21.5 inch model a Radeon Pro 560X, and the three tiers of 27 inch models have Radeon Pro 570X, Radeon Pro 575X, and Radeon Pro 580X.
To start off the week Apple revamped their iPad lineup with two new models. Neither the iPad Air (pictured below) or the iPad (pictured above) mini are the cheapest iPads around but they do bring something new to the table.
The more expensive of the two, iPad Air, offers the newest A12 Bionic chip you find in the iPhone XS. Not quite as fast as iPad Pro but still blisteringly quick. Also it supports Apple Pencil, although not the 2nd gen one like iPad Pro.
There is no 120hz ProMotion support like in the iPad Pro in iPad Air's 10.5 inch display but it does support TrueTone colors, just like the bigger brother. Talking about size, Air weighs one pound just like the newest regular iPad. They've shaved off some thickness though, it being only 0.24 inches thick. Still not quite as thin as the largest iPad Pro.
The new iPad mini on the other hand features similar specs with a 7.9 inch TrueTone display, same A12 Bionic chip, and support for 1st gen Apple Pencil. The resolution in 2048 x 1536, which is lower due to the size but gives it nice 326 ppi pixel density, a little bit above aforementioned larger siblings.
The FaceTime cameras are a big upgrade from regular iPad. Both iPad Air and iPad mini can now take 7 megapixel selfies and record Full HD video. The back camera is still just a 8 MP f/2.4 shooter.
The United States regulatory body for telecommunication, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has decided to create a experimental license for a new terahertz spectrum.
Like the gigahertz spectrum in use today, and far into the future, it will provide means for wireless communications but at far greater speeds and provide new possibilities. The new spectrum ranges from 95 GHz to the new tera terrority at 3THz.
Some of the spectrum, 21.2 Ghz to be exact, was set aside for scientific and governmental purposes.
The FCC terahertz test license is going to be valid for testing during the upcoming 10 years in which FCC believes new technologies using denser wavelengths will emerge. However, the license also allows the sale of terahertz equipment during this 10 year test period.
While increasing the frequency of the wireless connection increases the potential speed, it also makes the range much shorter and connection more susceptible to obstacles. Perhaps terahertz will bring along a new wireless data transfer technology for equipment that is nearly touching, maybe between components of the same device.
Google is about to receive a third fee for antitrust violations from the European Commission. Again Google has violated the laws by preventing third parties from displaying Google competitor advertisement on its AdSense network.
According to the Reuters, EU's legislative and regulatory body is going to address Google a fine next week. The fine is not going to be as high as the previous ones, but at this time there's no word on how much Google has to pay for the violations.
Nonetheless this one will certainly sting too, as just the fact that EU is striking down anything that smells like a monopolistic policy or practice is going to tighten Google's ropes.
Previous billion dollar fines came from Google giving themselves an unfair advantage regards to Android against competitive platforms and price comparison data in the search engine.
The former was the larger one at 4.34 billion euro ($4.91 billion) and the latter cost Google another 2.4 billion euro ($2.72 billion).
This is likely not the last we hear about EU and their antitrust battles with Google. European Commission has recently started new investigations into Google's search engine data and how they treat competitors.
Microsoft is planning a launch event in early May. The company is said to be launching a new version of their current Xbox One game console.
Apple is readying up the launch of a new streaming video service, and it might be here sooner than we thought 
Facebook hasn't exactly been the poster boy for a good social network in that recent past, but there might be still things that haven't been uncovered.
