| Huawei is in a tough position. Google pulled its Android vendor license, Intel, Qualcomm, and ARM refuse to work with the company, Microsoft pulled its laptop and cloud offerings, and now the mobile company finds itself ejected from the SD and Wi-Fi standards associations. If you want to make a product that uses SD cards, you need to join the SD Association. It’s a non-profit organization that sets standards for SD and microSD cards, and to membership is required to build products that use the standard. Without the membership, you can’t make SD cards, and you can’t make products that work with SD cards. And now Huawei isn’t a member. So going forward any new phones it develops can’t use Google apps, must rely on stock Android (or the backup OS the company claims to have in the works), find some other mobile processor besides ARM’s to use, and forgo SD cards in its devices. To make matters somewhat worse, it appears the Wi-Fi Alliance also ejected Huawei. Ejection isn’t quite as dire, Huawei can continue to incorporate Wi-Fi into its products, but it won’t get certification for those products. All of this only affects the future, though, anything that already made it through the process should be covered. But the future is rapidly approaching, and Huawei is not in a good position to meet it. [Android Police] In Other News: - A 13-year-old Australian Hacked Apple for a job: How do you prove your passion for a company while showcasing your skills? If you said “hack them of course,” well stop. That plan didn’t work out well for a minor in Australian who created false credentials to break into Apple servers. He was caught, and the courts let him off with a slap on the wrist (due to his age). [Gizmodo]
- Best Buy canceled all Galaxy Fold pre-orders: Samsung’s Galaxy Fold still can’t shake out a release date. Given that fact, Best Buy wisely chose to cancel all pre-orders for the $2000 phone. If you dropped the money to get an experimental phone only to discover it easily breaks, you’re probably thankful Best Buy has your back right now. [Engadget]
- Microsoft’s Project Xcloud can stream more than 3,500 games: Microsoft released more details about its upcoming streaming service, and the biggest nugget may be the fact that it can stream over 3,500 games without developers needing to make any changes. E3 should be exciting this year…well unless you’re Sony. [The Verge]
- An original Apple I crammed into a briefcase sold for $500K: Apple I computers are rare to find, and typically sell high at auction. MacBooks didn’t exist in 1976, so what’s a person to do for portability? Shove the thing in a briefcase, naturally. Probably worth every penny for a board handbuilt by the Woz himself. [TechCrunch]
- HP wants you to buy a wood laptop with a better trackpad: Ok, the device isn’t made totally out of wood, it’s likely just a veneer, but the new models from HP certainly are beautiful. Even better, HP’s latest laptops ditch Synaptic trackpad in favor of Precision drivers. The net gain is trackpads that aren’t awful. Hopefully. [The Verge]
- Asus’ ZenBook Pro Duo is a Laptop with a second screen in the keyboard: Asus’s new laptop is wild. At first, it’s your standard 4K 15-inch laptop with a full sized keyboard. But then you can’t help but notice they crammed a second 4K display above the keyboard. Space is an issue, so the touchpad is off to side and doubles as a numpad. Only time will tell if the concept holds up in use, but in pictures, it looks neat. [ZDNet]
- Corsair’s new SSD is so fast it needs a heatsink: AMD recently announced support for PCI Express 4.0, which is fantastic for SSD drives. PCI is typically a bottleneck for SSD’s, and Corsair’s new entry shows what you that choke point up. The company promises its new MP600 SSD can reach up to 4950 MB/s sequential read and 4250 MB/s write speeds, nearly double of the fastest cards before it. All that speed comes with heat, hence the ginormous heatsink. Super fast. [AnandTech]
- Apple’s new iPod Touch brings a newer processor and a larger hard drive option: The iPod Touch’s last refresh came in 2015, meaning the media player is long in the tooth. Apple took care of that today with a healthy spec bump, giving the iPod Touch the A10 Fusion processor. That’s enough to grant Augmented Reality capabilities. Paired with a new 256 gig hard drive option, the iPod Touch should chug along just fine for some time to come. [Apple]
- Ikea’s mobile apps will let you buy stuff soon: Buying Ikea products online requires using the company’s website, and the company app’s act solely as store companions. An upcoming redesigned app adds buying options, which should save 4000 steps in the showroom. If you’re wondering what’s taking so long to finish the app, they’re still trying to figure out how to insert code 47B into 59A with the provided allen wrench. [Digital Trends]
The World Health Organization (WHO) decided to officially place “gaming disorder” to its list of “globally recognized diseases.” Before you get out your pitchforks, this isn’t some statement that all gaming is bad or anything of the sort. The Who classifies Gaming disorder with the following patterns of behavior: 1) impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context);
2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; and
3) continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
The idea isn’t that gaming itself isn’t bad. But that some individuals may become addicted to gaming, and start ignoring real life responsibilities, obligations, and relationships. These people may stop leaving the house, going to jobs, meeting with friends, in favor of playing games. No matter how detrimental it is to their life. If you doubt this could really happen, then you should realize that describes a period of this writer’s life. For a little over a year, I stopped working, stopped interacting with people, let bills go unpaid, failed out of college, and nearly tossed everything away that mattered. Most days I didn’t leave my bedroom except to get food. All so I could play an online roleplaying game that just seemed to matter more than all of the above. Breaking the pattern of behavior entailed a complete life change and ongoing choices of avoidance. Recognition of addictive behavior is essential to find solutions to stop and break the pattern. And this is a crucial first step for people trapped in a cycle of their own making, completely unaware (or unwilling to admit) of what they’re doing to themselves. [BBC] |
