Here are a few of the stories I’ve found interesting so far this week
Federal Government Will Impose GST/HST on Digital Services
This is a big one for Canadians. As part of this week’s fiscal update, the Federal Government has announced its intention to require foreign companies that sell digital goods to collect GST/HST. Currently, companies that operate outside of Canada are not required to charge GST for “digital goods” while companies based in Canada do. This will affect companies like Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Pateron, etc who will now have to collect the taxes on every payment. The government says this is to level the playing field and help ensure those largely US based companies “pay their fair share”
The “pay their fair share” line is a bad one, because the GST/HST are consumption taxes paid by consumers, not the companies collecting them. Unless a company like Netflix decides to absorb the cost of the GST, this will cost consumers more. However, the idea of “leveling the playing field” is one with merit that I can get behind. Bell Media’s Crave service must charge GST, so why shouldn’t Netflix?
Even if passed, this won’t take effect immediately. The target date for collection of GST on digital transactions is January 1, 2022.
Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 888
At Qualcomm’s annual product showcase summit, held remotely this year because everything is remote this year, the company has revealed the Snapdragon 888 system on a chip. This processor will likely be in the majority of high end Android phones released in 2021. It features the usual promises of faster performance and greater power efficiency, and includes a few interesting goodies like an integrated 5G modem, instead of the separate part that was required for 2020’s Snapdragon 865. It also is the first Snapdragon processor to feature the ARM X-1 architecture, which expands on the idea of a processor with some high performance cores and some efficiency cores. The Snapdragon 888 features one very high performance core that is designed for powerful burst operations, 3 “regular” high power cores, and 4 efficiency cores. The idea behind the one very high performance core is that it will make quick operations like opening an app even faster using that one processing core.
It is likely that the first phones with the Snapdragon 888 will be Samsung’s Galaxy S21 line of phones, which are expected to be announced in January.
nVidia Announces RTX 3060 Ti
Out of nowhere, nVidia dropped another video card. On Tuesday, review embargos lifted for the new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and the card went on sale Wednesday morning. The 3060 Ti is a $400 USD video card that reviewers are calling the best card for 1440p PC gaming…. If you can find one in stock.
https://pcper.com/2020/12/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3060-ti-founders-edition-review/
Amazon Adding MacOS to EC2
This one is a bit more for professional/enterprise but it’s still an interesting story. Amazon’s EC2 service is a cloud computing service that allows a person or company to essentially access a computer in the cloud. There are many uses from this, from general computing, to development, to testing. Until now Windows and various flavours of Linux were available, but not MacOS because it is not possible to run MacOS without Mac hardware. Amazon is now offering access to MacOS in its EC2 platform by literally buying Mac Mini computers and sticking them in data centers, giving the option to access a Mac computer “in the cloud” for the first time.
This has huge potential for certain companies that are mostly operating on Windows environments. For development, it could be huge. Currently, you need to have a MacOS computer to develop applications for iOS. This meant that even for companies that operated on Windows, there had to be Mac computers around to be able to do Mac specific work. Now, the option exists to subscribe to EC2 and use a Mac remotely.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/amazon-web-services-adds-macos-on-bare-metal-to-ec2/
Salesforce to Buy Slack for $27.7 Billion USD
Just a quick update since this was in talks last week, but earlier this week it was made official that Salesforce intends to buy Slack for $27.7 Billion USD. This is a win for both Salesforce and Slack.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/salesforce-acquires-slack-for-27-7-billion/