Tech News Roundup for June 8, 2020

It was a light weekend, but here are a few things that caught my eye over the last few days

Airbnb reporting an increase in domestic bookings

Some interesting data from Airbnb related to COVID-19.  The company is reporting an uptick in “local” bookings, which are defined as bookings within a country.  Over half of between May 17th and June 3rd were bookings within roughly 320km of the home address of the person booking the stay.  The data also suggests longer local trips compared to shorter international ones.  Part of this is theorized to be because of expanded work from home programs allowing people to work from different locations.

It will be interesting to see this trend over the short to medium term as the world continues to deal with COVID-19 while still opening up and allowing more travel

The Verge

Google Duo Now Allows Anyone to Join a Call With a Link

Google’s video calling service, Google Duo, launched in mid 2016 to little fanfare because of it’s very basic and bare bones feature set.  While it’s companion chat product, Allo, died a quick death, Duo gained enough popularity to stick around and the company has continued to develop it.  With COVID-19, the pace of development has quickened greatly.  One thing that was missing compared to competitors like Skype and Zoom was the ability to send a link that anyone can click on to join a call.  Google has fixed that, and now the option exists.  This makes Duo a more viable option for group video calls, which most of us are doing a lot more of now.

Android Police

YouTube Posts Documentation on Monetization

One thing that has been frustrating for many YouTube creators are the often opaque rules around monetization of videos.  For creators trying to actually make some kind of income from YouTube, these rules and the lack of transparency around them meant that a video the creator believed was safe to monetize would be flagged and had monetization removed by Google, which affects the channel as a whole.  Having a video demonetized too often risks Google demonetizing an entire channel, which would be devastating to creators.

Google has finally published guidelines on what videos can and cannot be monetized, as well as examples of where the line is on whether a video can be monetized or not.  This doesn’t solve the problem with the algorithm and discoverability on the platform, which is an even bigger issue than the monetization rules, but hopefully this helps creators know where the line is, and make it easier to stay in Google’s good graces when attempting to monetize.

The Verge

Google Support

Twitter Labels Tweets Falsely Linking 5G to COVID-19

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic there have been several conspiracy theories stating that the brand new 5G technology for cell phones is the cause for the virus.  It even escalated to the point that several cell towers in the United Kingdom were set on fire.  This is despite the fact that there currently is no 5G service in the United Kingdom.  There is no link between 5G and COVID-19, but those pushing the false claims and conspiracy theories have used social networks to propgate the false stories.  Twitter has begun tagging tweets that link 5G to COVID-19 with a fact check, which is a link that directs users to a page that states there is no link between 5G and COVID-19.  This is welcome, and took far too long.

Business Insider

Tech News Roundup for June 5, 2020

Here are a few things that caught my interest over the last couple days.

Supreme Court of Canada resumes hearings… via Zoom

The year of 2020 is weird.  Many institutions that have done things a certain way for a long time, sometimes literally centuries, must adapt.  The Supreme Court of Canada is no different, and this week began having official hearings virtually via Zoom.

https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/06/03/supreme-court-virtual-hearings-for-the-first-time-ever-via-zoom/

iPhones stolen from Apple stores during the protests and looting in the United States are being tracked.

A good reminder of how many modern electronic devices can work.  One of the very unfortunate part of the protests in the US has been the widespread looting of stores in various cities.  Apple is now saying that iPhones looted from their stores are all being remotely disabled and tracked.  This makes reselling them impossible and could potentially help law enforcement in apprehending those who were looting.

This also serves as a warning on buying used newer model iPhones from the US for the next few months.  There is a chance you could be buying one of these devices.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/local-authorities-will-be-alerted-iphone-looters-end-up-with-useless-phones/

Germany will require gas stations to provide charging for electric vehicles.

Electric vehicles are the future, but the infrastructure to charge them on long duration trips remains a hurdle, though not as big of one as many people realize.  But, the EV charging situation can always improve, and as part of a COVID-19 stimulus package Germany will be requiring gas stations within the country to install and provide EV charging.  This will greatly help with range anxiety on EV’s with more plentiful options for charging on the go, which should help adoption of those vehicles.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/5/21281380/germany-electric-car-chargers-gas-stations-adoption-vehicles-environment

Instagram requires users to obtain permission before embedding posts.

Have you ever seen embedded posts from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc?  They’re used all over the place on the internet, basically a fancier way of linking to posts that show it inline. These posts show the post, any text or media, as well as a link to the post and the user’s profile. The Twitter embed directly shows the author of the post. You can see an example of both Twitter and Instagram embeds below.

It was 6 years ago today that my Mom's life was saved by an organ donation. It feels different this year not being able to see her because of the coronavirus, but I am no less thankful.

Organ donation works. pic.twitter.com/TYb9Po7N7P

— Tyler Hardeman (@wunderbar) April 18, 2020

Spring blooms

Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

Since no one actually reads terms of service, it has been discovered that Instagram actually requires someone who plans to embed an Instagram post elsewhere to obtain explicit permission from the person who originally posted the photo. 

This is a very bad precedent for the web.  Embeds do not “steal” content.  But Instagram is treating it like they do.  This has the potential to have serious negative consequences for content creators trying to build and expand an audience.

Instagram needs to fix this. They should either improve their embeds to have better, clearer attribution, or get rid of embeds altogether. But if this is how Instagram wants to continue, it is not sustainable.

Note: The instagram photo is one of mine, so I have given myself permission to use my photo.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/instagram-just-threw-users-of-its-embedding-api-under-the-bus/?comments=1&post=38957885

Tech News Roundup for June 3, 2020

Here are few things from the last couple days that got my attention

Dell XPS 13 Long Term Review

I’ve owned this laptop for almost two years, and used it almost every day. I wrote about the good and the bad about it.

thewunderbar

Leaked image of new Google streaming stick

Google’s Chromecast has been a wonderful device and technology, and really advanced how we streamed content.  With not much more than a simple tap of a button on our phones, we can send video content to a TV through a chromecast device.  But one thing that Chromecast has always lacked is direct control of the device.  There is no remote, and no way to control a chromecast device without a smartphone or tablet.  For some users, this has been a deal breaker.  Google’s answer appears to be a device that is similar to a chromecast, but features Android TV built in.  It still supports traditional Chromecast from a device, but this new device will include a remote, and a GUI interface so it can be used independently.  It is likely that this device would have been announced at Google I/O, but with that event being cancelled, it remains a mystery when Google will announce it.  Hopefully it is soon.

Mobilesyrup

30 Years Later, Unreleased “Days of Thunder” Game for the Nintendo Entertainment System Recovered from Floppy Disks

A really fun one here.  A video game adaptation of the movie “Days of Thunder” was originally planned for the original Nintendo video game system, but was never released.  Recenlty, someone found the source code of the game spanning across multiple floppy disks, and was able to reconstruct it and get the game working.

gamehistory.org

Mark Zuckerberg faces backlash from employees over Facebook’s policy on fact checking and taking down misinformation

Mark Zuckerberg has largely kept Facebook with a “hands off” approach to posts with false or incorrect information.  This is in contrast to Twitter, which has increased it’s labelling of such content, recently restricting and/or labelling Tweets from US President Donald Trump.  Zuckerberg has so far said Facebook will not take similar action, and is facing significant push back from employees on this practice.

The Verge

SpaceX Falcon 9

Ars Technica has a great piece about the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which has been the key to the company’s success.  There are a couple really interesting stories about the early days and first few launches of the Falcon rockets.

Ars Technica

Microsoft Edge rolling out via Windows Update

Microsoft has completely rewritten the Edge Broswer, which is the built in web browser in Windows 10. The first version of it was made available in January, and now Microsoft will begin pushing it out automatically via Windows Update.  This will replace the previous version of Edge.  The new Edge is based off of Google’s Chrome browser.

Thurrott

Tech News Roundup for June 1, 2020

Here are a few things that got my interest in the last few days

SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 Launch

After weather scrubbed the launch attempt last Wednesday, the SpaceX Demo-2 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center on Saturday.  Two astronauts launched in a Crew Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, a milestone launch in several aspects.  It was the first launch of humans on a privately developed space ship and the first launch of US/NASA astronauts from US soil since the final flight of the Space Shuttle in 2011.  The launch occurred on Saturday afternoon, and the Crew Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on Sunday morning.  The astronauts will spend anywhere from 30 to 120 days on the space station, evaluating the performance of the Crew Dragon as it remains docked.

NASA

The Accuracy of Fitness Trackers

Fitness tracking is a technology category that has exploded in recent years.  Many companies make devices that can track many metrics of fitness, from steps, to calories, to full workouts of differing types.  The Next Web has an article questioning the accuracy of these “mainstream” fitness trackers.

I’ve owned and used devices that can track some kind of metrics for many years at this point, and my personal stance is that I don’t count any of these as 100% accurate, or gospel.  I like to use them as a guide.  If a tracker tells me I walked 7000 steps one day, 9000 steps the next and then 3000 the day after that I don’t consider those numbers 100% accurate, but it does give me a gude as to how active I was on a a given day.  That’s how I use them.

The Markup

Shaw asks the CRTC to exempt it’s Fibre+ Gig plan from being offered to resellers

Internet providers in Canada are required to lease space in their infrastructure to smaller, 3rd party providers.  This has been one of the CRTC’s efforts to increase competition and reduce prices for internet service.  The major ISP’s in the country, Telus, Rogers, Bell, and Shaw, have all fought against this provision at every possible turn, so Shaw’s petition to the CRTC here is not surprising, but disappointing.

Mobile Syrup