A [[Serverless]] email server on AWS using [[AmazonS3]] and [[AmazonSES]].
git: https://github.com/0x4447/0x4447_product_s3_email
“an unmanaged email server with unlimited email addresses that also offers the benefit of easily organizing messages by adding the + character to the email names. The + is converted to a /, which correlates to an object path in S3.”
via @brianleroux
2019 was an amazing year. Period. The year pretty much shook me off my comfort zone. I didn’t step out of it, the year shook me off and I simply followed its rhythm.
It’s easily the one year where I witnessed a lot of personal and professional growth; I hit some milestones, missed a ton of others, and still, I don’t know how to swim.
It was the year I became intentional about building and maintaining relationships, something I think I started late but still glad I started. The relationships I have cultivated in the past have significantly influenced the trajectory of my life from my teenage years and even through my twenties. I believe these relationships formed the bedrock of who I am today and what I do today. I am uncertain where I would be if I had not met some of the people I have met over the years.
I will turn 40 this decade. While that is scary to think about, I believe this decade will be a defining one and will set the tone to what the rest of my life will look like. For that reason, I am being a lot more deliberate with everything, particularly my words, thoughts, and actions.
Personal
In March 2019, I stepped away from paid employment and became a full time “house husband.” This period allowed me time for some much needed personal reflection, and in hindsight, the events that led to that moment weren’t happenstance. I like to believe that God had a hand in all. Clichè? I know.
In July of 2019, Olivia joined the board of Omin Inc. She has been on the board for about five months now and if the early signs are an indication of things to come, all I can say is that Lee, our current board chairman, has some serious competition. I am still here as their Chief Errand Officer(CEO) and I will always be at their beck and call.
In February I moved from a bachelor pad to a family home. The move was necessary and it afforded me some much-needed bonding time with my son; we play football together and I taught him how to ride a bicycle. I finally got a front porch like every self-respecting adult. My next goal is to buy a flower pot, put some flowers in it, tend to them and watch them bloom.
I cried once, maybe five times in 2019. Before that, the last time I cried was when I was burying my maternal grandmother in 2009 and here’s something I have come to learn about crying:
1) It’s therapeutic.
2) Tears never solve any problem, so when you’re done crying, your problems will still be there staring at you.
3) There’s a trick to crying without drawing too much attention to yourself: step into the shower, place both hands on the wall, lean in and let the tears roll down your cheeks. Don’t bawl you’re only going to end up attracting some unnecessary attention.
Professional - Hey Alta Labs
I started Alta Labs in 2019. I know what you may be thinking, however, starting the company wasn’t a shortsighted attempt at creating a startup in the Nigerian tech space. Rather, it was borne out of necessity; I and a brilliant group of young people identified a gap in the tech space which we strongly believe we are uniquely equipped and positioned to fill.
Alta Labs, a technology consultancy and strategy firm, was founded on a simple principle; to help African entrepreneurs scale their ideas quickly and affordably using modern technology. In a nutshell, how can we help them move their ideas from 0 to 1?
The solution we came up with is simple but effective; we will serve as the engine room for these entrepreneurs to help them do the non-sexy engineering work while they focus their energies on the areas of their businesses where they have a comparative advantage; sales, growth and building incredible teams.
So what did Alta Labs set out to do for companies and entrepreneurs?
Scale their team for efficiency: we have seen a lot of traditional companies in old industries try to ride the technology/digital wave and we are quite excited about this. But the problem is, a lot of these companies don’t have engineering as their strong suit, as such, it makes attracting and keeping talent a big problem. This isn’t an issue with the old companies alone, many start-ups hit this ceiling the moment they have found product-market fit, raised funding and are looking to scale. Our mission here is to help these organizations build desirable engineering organizations that will attract talent to them rather than them chasing talent.
Processes: like with team efficiency, most companies don’t quite understand what makes an engineering team tick. Why the engineering teams in company X are outperforming the engineering team of company Y.
Data stories: daily, businesses are acquiring more and more data, but they aren’t doing much with these data. We want to help companies maximize the goldmine that is data which are generated from their activities. We also want to help them tell stories using the data, drive user engagement and finally become their on-demand data engineers.
Training: Alta Labs is also well positioned to offer specialized training for companies with teams that are struggling with engineering processes and concepts.
Product Development: developing products for companies is not an easy task but Alta Labs is happy to do this particular heavy lifting for companies. We have the skill and capacity to cover everything in the product development process, from what you should build, why you should build, product design, DevOps and business intelligence.
In 2019 we spent time building, advising and consulting for some of the biggest brands you have come to love and admire: from a brand that is a two-person team to some of the biggest fintechs and financial institutions. We have powered and continued to power firms in e-commerce transport tech, human resources and edutech firms.
In 2020, I will be spending a lot of time leading the 12 incredible people at Alta Labs and building the company into an organisation that I would enjoy working at. We are very much aware of the task ahead and the possibility of challenges, however, we are confident that if we push harder, we will breakthrough.
Today, Alta Labs is engineering heavy, we still have a ton of roles to fill; product/project managers, business development, DevOps engineers, iOS(Swift) engineers and marketing. We are 100% bootstrapped so we will be growing the team steadily as our resources permits.
This is new territory for me, so I’ll be knocking on the doors of a lot more experienced people to help us on this journey. The request may vary from getting clarity around moving from point A to B or someone to just listen to me cry and rant.
This year I will be doing a whole lot of selling. Like a lot. I’ll be speaking to people everywhere; airport lounges, hotels, planes, church premises, malls, etc. There’s no shame here, our existence 100% depends on our ability to sell. So sell I will.
As a nod to the one company — Amazon — I have come to love and respect; it’s day one and will always remain so.
If there’s one thing I will be guarding fervently this year, it will be my time. This is the one resource that is limited in quantity and, unfortunately, I can’t buy more than the 24 hours that is allotted to each one of us.
It’s day one and will always remain so.
In all, 2019 was an amazing year.
What are you building? Tell me about it here and let’s see how Alta Labs can help - celestine(at)altalabs.io
Found via Peter Rukavina. This guide contains a lot of interesting nuggets that apply to my company too. There are some longstanding differences in preference in our team about real time communications and remote working. Me with a strong preference for remote and asynchronous as default. This guide may serve well for further internal conversations.
Bookmarked Guide to Internal Communication, the Basecamp Way
Today, Lenovo unveiled the latest ThinkBook designed for the next generation workforce. ThinkBook Plus features an innovative e-Ink cover display that helps users be more productive when multitasking by improving focus, collaboration and creativity. Featuring a 13.3-inch FHD main display and a 10.8-inch e-ink display on the cover, on which users can create illustrations and diagrams with the integrated Lenovo Precision Pen and receive essential notifications when the lid is closed allowing them to stay focused during meetings.
Looks like a ThinkBook 13s with a large Kindle cover, only that you can draw on it. The Yoga Book C930 had a similar display as a keyboard replacement and that was rather weird. This one looks more interesting.
Looks like it is going to USB-C charging because the charging port on the left side is gone, while the rest of the ports remain the same: full size HDMI, USB-C, headset. I cannot see the other side in any photo. On the 13s there are two USB-A on the right side.
ThinkBook Plus is supposed to be available in March and start at $1199.
Anonymous writes in…
Here’s what happened. Got all mic’d up, talked to the AV guy and he said my presentation would show on one of the screens at my feet. I asked: Not my text? The speaker notes? Nope…
Has this happened to you?
Excellent question! This has in fact happened to me recently. The tech team at the event was having issues so I put my presentation on a thumb drive and was given a clicker to control a mysterious computer backstage: no notes, no next slide preview, just the current slide. But alas, it’s just one of many horror stories I’ve had in my day…
Murphy’s Law governs events. If something can go wrong… it will. I experienced technical difficulties at 2 out of 3 in-person events I spoke at last year. It’s not just me either. I’ve had friends experience venue power outages, throw up, have hot mic situations, get their talk cut from the event entirely. It’s the Wild West out there.
Mix in a general lack of comfortability about wearing dress up clothes and you got a recipe for the body sweats. But fret not, dear reader! Problems are inevitable, but there are things within your control to help you avoid (or at least survive) a public speaking disaster.
Here’s a quick list of mitigation strategies I’ve set in to practice for myself. They divide up in to two simple categories: Before the Event and During the Event. You don’t have to do all of these, you can pick and choose from this menu.
I owe a lot in my career to public speaking. It’s not for everyone and that’s okay, but if public speaking is something you want to do I have two final bits of advice:
First forays in to public speaking can be a sweaty nightmare, but maintain a growth mindset and hope to get a little bit better every time. There’s lots of areas to incrementally improve your speaking skills and confidence. As vulnerable as it might be, be sure debrief and ask for feedback on each of your talks with either organizers or trusted friends.
It helps to know yourself too. Are you a walker on stage or do you stand still? What happens if the video team says “no walking” or there’s no podium. Are you funny? No? Then don’t rely on memes. Yes? Then don’t rely on memes. I kid, but there is a point where you have to make a decision about whether or not a meme adds or subtracts from the point you’re trying to make. Do you know how to operate a handheld microphone? If you didn’t know there’s a proper way to hold a microphone, then watch some YouTubes. There’s lots of big and tiny things you can do to improve a talk.
I’m still learning too. For the longest time I’ve thought about joining an organization like Toastmasters to help with all my “likes” and “ums”. I recently read Talk Like TED and picked up a few tips and tricks I’d like to incorporate into my future talks. I plan to read Lara Hogan’s Demystifying Public Speaking this year as well. I’ve considered paying for slidedeck design help just to make sure my talks visually look the best they can. I’ve been doing this for over ten years and there are still areas I’d like to improve.
Hope this helps you, Anonymous, and maybe others along the way. Remember public speaking is a craft and even if it doesn’t go well, hopefully you’ll get better and better as you practice it more.
If you let other departments treat your community like a noticeboard, don’t be surprised when members ignore your community like a noticeboard.
A single job advert alone won’t do too much harm.
But it’s rarely just a single job advert. Soon it’s a single job advert and a product announcement, corporate video, news about the new CEO, press release, and new year’s greeting etc..
The same thing that makes the community seem attractive to other departments (more attention) is the same thing that the community will lose by posting these announcements there.
A better approach is to set standards and adapt each approach for the community.
Instead of a job advert, offer community members $500 if they refer someone you eventually hire. Let them headhunt for you.
Instead of posting a corporate video, host a competition and invite members to create, edit, or critically evaluate your own videos.
Instead of posting news about the new CEO, host a live AMA with the new CEO exclusively for the community.
Instead of a press release, ask members for their opinions on the issues and let them chat with your experts.
Instead of a new year’s greetings, let members come up and share their priorities for the new year.
Whatever you do, don’t let the community become a dumping ground for everyone else’s content.
The Librem 5 software team have shared monthly updates throughout 2019 but we wanted to highlight some of the big achievements here.
As of 2019 we’re shipping a phone with a GNOME stack that has essential phone functionality. Work is ongoing to feed all that back into upstream GNOME (contacts, folks, gnome-settings-daemon, gnome-control-center (wwan panel), gtk, gnome-bluetooth, …) with gtk4 having to absorb the necessary libhandy widgets being the biggest block for 2020.
The phone specific parts: phosh, phoc, squeekboard, calls, chats saw considerable progress:
libhandy had several releases and got support for stick-to-finger gestures (and widgets that make use of it) as can be seen on the shell’s lockscreen. That support was in large parts contributed by a community member (exalm).
The list of adaptive GNOME apps is steadily growing.
We’re running pretty close to a mainline kernel, which several folks doubted would be possible, for several revisions. There’s good support for the devkit upstream and initial patches for the phone already made it back into mainline too. There’s some fun stuff like camera left for 2020. Most of the DSI display stack is upstream now with one driver missing but hopefully not too far away.
We can run mainline mesa as well, another thing that’s not common in the embedded world, which will give us support for games from flatpaks in the near future 🙂
The kernel team managed to bring up the phone hardware in almost no time.
We’re now basing off of PureOS and build images for both Debian and PureOS on a daily basis. We have a CI system that builds everything on commit and a release system that ships updates to the phones by simply creating a signed git tag. About everything we ship is Debian packaged (notable exception atm is u-boot). We are proud and excited to ship updates sometimes multiple times a week to existing Birch and Chestnut users.
Over the next few months we will be adding missing functionality and polishing the UX ahead of the Evergreen batch.
Thank you to the community for your code and testing contributions and your general support and enthusiasm for the Librem 5.
The post 2019 Year in Review: Librem 5 Software and Kernel appeared first on Purism.
The first American automobile maker, Duryea Motor Wagon Company, was founded in 1895; 34 more auto-makers would be founded in the U.S. in the following five years.1 Then, an explosion: an incredible 233 additional automobile makers were founded in the first decade of the 20th century, and a further 168 between 1910 and 1919. The pace from that point on continued to slow:
On a practical level, that “0” in the 1980’s could be applied to the entire list: by 1920 automobile manufacturing was already dominated by GM, Ford, and Chrysler. AMC, a combination of several smaller brands, was a brief challenger in the 1950s and 1960s, but the “Big Three” mostly had the market to themselves, at least until imports started showing up in the 1970s.
Just because the proliferation of new car companies ground to a halt, though, does not mean that the impact of the car slowed in the slightest: indeed, it was primarily the second half of the century where the true impact of the automobile was felt in everything from the development of suburbs to big box retailers and everything in between. Cars were the foundation of society’s transformation, but not necessarily car companies.
The story tech most loves to tell about itself is the story of disruption: sure, companies may appear dominant today, but it is only a matter of time until they are usurped by the next wave of startups. And indeed, that is exactly what happened half a century ago: IBM’s mainframe monopoly was suddenly challenged by minicomputers from companies like DEC, Data General, Wang Laboratories, Apollo Computer, and Prime Computers. And then, scarcely a decade later, minicomputers were disrupted by personal computers from companies like MITS, Apple, Commodore, and Tandy.
The most important personal computer, though, came from IBM, with an operating system from Microsoft. The former provided a massive distribution channel that immediately established the IBM PC as the most popular personal computer, particularly in the enterprise; the latter provided the APIs that created a durable two-sided network that made Microsoft the most powerful company in the industry for two decades.
That reality, though, was not permanent: first the Internet shifted the most important application environment from the operating system to the web, and then mobile shifted the most important interaction environment from the desk to the pocket. Suddenly it was Google and Apple that mattered most in the consumer space, while Microsoft refocused on the cloud and a new competitor, Amazon.
Any discussion of dominance in tech touches on three epochs: IBM, Microsoft, and the present day. In this telling, companies like Google and Apple may be dominant now, but so were IBM and Microsoft, and, just as their days of IBM and Microsoft’s dominance passed, so too will today’s companies be eclipsed. Benedict Evans made this argument in a blog post:
The tech industry loves to talk about ‘moats’ around a business – some mechanic of the product or market that forms a fundamental structural barrier to competition, so that just having a better product isn‘t enough to break in. But there are several ways that a moat can stop working. Sometimes the King orders you to fill in the moat and knock down the walls. This is the deus ex machina of state intervention – of anti-trust investigations and trials. But sometimes the river changes course, or the harbour silts up, or someone opens a new pass over the mountains, or the trade routes move, and the castle is still there and still impregnable but slowly stops being important. This is what happened to IBM and Microsoft. The competition isn’t another mainframe company or another PC operating system — it’s something that solves the same underlying user needs in very different ways, or creates new ones that matter more. The web didn’t bridge Microsoft’s moat — it went around, and made it irrelevant. Of course, this isn’t limited to tech — railway and ocean liner companies didn’t make the jump into airlines either. But those companies had a run of a century — IBM and Microsoft each only got 20 years.
None of this is an argument against regulation per se of any specific issue in tech. If a company is abusing dominance today, it is not an argument against intervention to point out that it will lose that dominance in a decade or two — as Keynes says, ‘in the long term we’re all dead’. The same applies to regulation of issues that have little or nothing to do with market dominance, such as privacy (though people sometime fail to understand this distinction). Rather, the problem comes when people claim that somehow these companies are immortal — to say that is to reject all past evidence, and to claim that somehow there will never be another generational change in tech, which seems unwise.
In this understanding of tech dominance, the driver of generational change is a paradigm shift: from mainframes to personal computers, from desktop applications to the web, first on personal computers, and then on mobile. Each shift brought a new company to dominance, and when the next shift arrives, so will new companies rise to prominence.
What, though, is the next shift?
There is an implication in the “generational change is inevitable” argument that paradigm shifts are sui generis. The personal computer was a discrete event, the Internet another, and mobile a third. Now we are simply waiting to see what is next — perhaps augmented reality, or voice assistants.
In fact, I would argue the opposite: the critical paradigm shifts in technology, which drove the generational changes that Evans wrote about, are part of a larger pattern.
Start with the mainframe: the primary interaction model was punched cards; to execute a program you had to insert your cards into a card reader and wait for the computer to read the program into memory, execute it, and give you the results. Computing was done in batches, because the I/O layer was directly linked to the application and data layer.
This explains why personal computers were so revolutionary: instead of one large shared computer for which you had to wait your turn, a user could access their own computer on their own desk whenever they wanted. Still, the personal computer, particularly in a corporate environment, lived alongside not just mainframes but increasingly servers on an intranet. The I/O layer and application and data layers were being pulled apart, but both were destinations: you had to go to your desk and be on the network to compute.
This last point gets at why the cloud and mobile, which are often thought of as two distinct paradigm shifts, are very much connected: the cloud meant applications and data could be accessed from anywhere; mobile made the I/O layer available anywhere. The combination of the two make computing continuous.
What is notable is that the current environment appears to be the logical endpoint of all of these changes: from batch-processing to continuous computing, from a terminal in a different room to a phone in your pocket, from a tape drive to data centers all over the globe. In this view the personal computer/on-premises server era was simply a stepping stone between two ends of a clearly defined range.
The implication of this view should at this point be obvious, even if it feels a tad bit heretical: there may not be a significant paradigm shift on the horizon, nor the associated generational change that goes with it. And, to the extent there are evolutions, it really does seem like the incumbents have insurmountable advantages: the hyperscalers in the cloud are best placed to handle the torrent of data from the Internet of Things, while new I/O devices like augmented reality, wearables, or voice are natural extensions of the phone.
In other words, today’s cloud and mobile companies — Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Google — may very well be the GM, Ford, and Chrysler of the 21st century. The beginning era of technology, where new challengers were started every year, has come to an end; however, that does not mean the impact of technology is somehow diminished: it in fact means the impact is only getting started.
Indeed, this is exactly what we see in consumer startups in particular: few companies are pure “tech” companies seeking to disrupt the dominant cloud and mobile players; rather, they take their presence as an assumption, and seek to transform society in ways that were previously impossible when computing was a destination, not a given. That is exactly what happened with the automobile: its existence stopped being interesting in its own right, while the implications of its existence changed everything.
I wrote a follow-up to this article in this Daily Update.
Privacy is a human right, and is core to Mozilla’s mission. However many companies on the web erode privacy when they collect a significant amount of personal information. Companies record our browsing history and the actions we take across websites. This practice is known as cross-site tracking, and its harms include unwanted targeted advertising and divisive political messaging.
Last year we launched Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) to protect our users from cross-site tracking. In Firefox 72, we are expanding that protection to include a particularly invasive form of cross-site tracking: browser fingerprinting. This is the practice of identifying a user by the unique characteristics of their browser and device. A fingerprinting script might collect the user’s screen size, browser and operating system type, the fonts the user has installed, and other device properties—all to build a unique “fingerprint” that differentiates one user’s browser from another.
Fingerprinting is bad for the web. It allows companies to track users for months, even after users clear their browser storage or use private browsing mode. Despite a near complete agreement between standards bodies and browser vendors that fingerprinting is harmful, its use on the web has steadily increased over the past decade.
We are committed to finding a way to protect users from fingerprinting without breaking the websites they visit. There are two primary ways to protect against fingerprinting: to block parties that participate in fingerprinting, or to change or remove APIs that can be used to fingerprint users.
Firefox 72 protects users against fingerprinting by blocking all third-party requests to companies that are known to participate in fingerprinting. This prevents those parties from being able to inspect properties of a user’s device using JavaScript. It also prevents them from receiving information that is revealed through network requests, such as the user’s IP address or the user agent header.
We’ve partnered with Disconnect to provide this protection. Disconnect maintains a list of companies that participate in cross-site tracking, as well a list as those that fingerprint users. Firefox blocks all parties that meet both criteria [0]. We’ve adapted measurement techniques from past academic research to help Disconnect discover new fingerprinting domains. Disconnect performs a rigorous, public evaluation of each potential fingerprinting domain before adding it to the blocklist.
Firefox’s blocking of fingerprinting resources represents our first step in stemming the adoption of fingerprinting technologies. The path forward in the fight against fingerprinting will likely involve both script blocking and API-level protections. We will continue to monitor fingerprinting on the web, and will work with Disconnect to build out the set of domains blocked by Firefox. Expect to hear more updates from us as we continue to strengthen the protections provided by ETP.
[0] A tracker on Disconnect’s blocklist is any domain in the Advertising, Analytics, Social, Content, or Disconnect category. A fingerprinter is any domain in the Fingerprinting category. Firefox blocks domains in the intersection of these two classifications, i.e., a domain that is both in one of the tracking categories and in the fingerprinting category.
The post Firefox 72 blocks third-party fingerprinting resources appeared first on Mozilla Security Blog.
"Do you remember when blogging was a thing and there were A-lister bloggers?" asks Jim Groom. Well, this isn't like that. This post describes a site that tests your web security - I ran it on my site as well and watched it test for various vulnerabilities and backdoors (disclosure: I'm hosted at Reclaim Hosting). And I too am an A-lister.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
CES is not just about new technologies and hardware. Google has pulled off the wraps from some new features for Assistant. Now you can schedule actions and also use the “Read It” command which reads out the news. The new features are expected to arrive later this year and will be available for public testing.
Continue reading →
Sony has unveiled an electric concept car called the Vision-S at CES 2020 in Las Vegas.
While the announcement came as a surprise, however, the company doesn’t plan to manufacture the vehicle. Rather, it aims to showcase its technology to license and sell it to other electric car companies.
The Vision-S is a sleek looking vehicle that features 33 different sensors, including a CMOS, LIDAR and ToF (Time of Flight) sensor. Sony partnered with BlackBerry and Bosch on select functions and has outfitted the Vision-S with ‘always-on connectivity,’ as well as a beautiful panoramic widescreen display in the front seats, while the rear-seats feature screens within the headrests. Each seat has its own built-in speaker with Sony’s ‘360 reality audio’ surround sound technology.
Sony states the prototype is powered by a “newly-designed EV platform” that can go from 0-100 km per hour in just 4.8 seconds. For reference, the Tesla 3 can currently reach that speed in 3.4 seconds.
“Sony is working to thoroughly understand the mechanism of cars — to not only comprehend how they are made and the challenges they present, but also their relevance to society. Towards this goal, Sony has developed a car that is both drivable and gives full consideration to safety. The car represents a fusion of Sony’s technology and creativity,” says Sony on its website.
This platform, which is possibly created by auto manufacturer Magna, will allow Sony to incorporate its tech into vehicles other than sedans.
The post Sony shows new interest in automotive tech with Vision-S electric car appeared first on MobileSyrup.
Samsung’s Bixby might be making its way to a home speaker with the Galaxy Home Mini, according to the CEO of Samsung’s consumer electronics division.
Hyunsuk Kim, the CEO of consumer electronics at Samsung, told Bloomberg that the company is preparing to release the Home Mini in early 2020. Samsung previously showed off the Galaxy Home last year at CES as well.
The report says that Samsung sees the Home Mini as a hub that is able to control other Samsung products that people have in their homes.
Samsung has been including its digital assistant into its recent TVs and sound bars and has made the service work alongside other connected devices from the manufacturer such as smart fridges and washing machines.
The tech giant has been testing the Galaxy Home Mini in its home country, South Korea, after it launched a beta program last August.
Samsung has not specified any details about pricing or an exact release date yet. Once it does release, it’ll have to compete with Google’s Home Mini and Amazon’s Echo Dot.
Image credit: Samsung
Update 07/01/20: The article was updated to include information about the smart speaker’s appearance at CES last year.
The post Samsung’s Galaxy Home Mini smart speaker set to launch this year appeared first on MobileSyrup.
While the big holiday sales are over, Anker is coming out swinging by continuing the savings into 2020.
This could certainly be just an opportunity to have a fire sale and get rid of old tech, but some of these deals might be worthwhile if you’re in the market for chargers and audio tech:
Source: Anker
The post Anker significantly discounts portable chargers and audio tech appeared first on MobileSyrup.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced a new spin-off Bluetooth standard for audio called LE Audio as CES 2020.
The new LE (low-energy) format is specifically for audio, which differentiates it from other formats like Bluetooth 5, which works for a variety of different uses. LE Audio includes native support for devices like hearing aids.
Interestingly, LE Audio also supports audio sharing thanks to a new ‘broadcast audio’ function. It lets people share what they’re listening to on their phones or other devices with people around them.
While this could be useful for individual users sharing music with family or friends, a more compelling use case is that companies could broadcast audio to everyone in a given space. For example, an airport could broadcast flight change information directly to people’s earbuds or hearing aids.
LE Audio also uses a new codec called Low Complexity Communication Codec (LC3). The new codec should offer up higher sound quality while also using less battery power. That could be a boon for true wireless headphones, which are exceedingly popular despite having middling battery life.
Finally, LE Audio will allow the transmission of multiple audio streams. According to the Bluetooth SIG, that should help improve things like stereo imaging on products like true wireless earbuds.
Bluetooth SIG plans to release the new LE Audio specification in the first half of 2020.
While CES 2020 tends to be about bigger announcements and far-out concepts, smaller things like updated Bluetooth standards like this will probably more real-world impact on people’s lives. If LE Audio accomplished what the Bluetooth SIG says it does, I’d expect to see significant improvements in Bluetooth audio quality on devices like true wireless earbuds. Also, look for interesting new use cases and maybe even high-tech hearing aids too.
Source: Engadget
The post New Bluetooth audio standard could improve audio quality, battery life appeared first on MobileSyrup.
Automotive companies usually create concepts drawing from fighter jets, ferocious animals and even mythical beasts. However, Mercedes has taken a new approach with its new concept vehicle shown at CES 2020, the AVTR.
As you probably guessed, it’s inspired by James Cameron’s Avatar, a movie that’s known for its futuristic setting and environmental impact.
As such, the Mercedes AVTR is inspired with technology from the film. It is fully electric, can drive sideways and features transparent doors.
Inside of the vehicle looks similar to an alien spaceship, with odd curvature seats and a white and blue interior.
Physical controls are a thing of the past, with this vehicle having no steering wheel and resorting to biometric sensors as a way to control the car.
The infotainment system is also ripped straight from the movie and is similar to a holographic interface. Activating the system requires the user to raise their hand in the air, where you then use hand motions and gestures to maneuver around the menus.
If you thought those features were normal, the Mercedes AVTR gets weirder, as it connects with the world around you using hatches that pop out from the rear of the car. This seems merely for aesthetic purposes only and has no significant use outside of its “connectivity.”
The entire idea behind this concept vehicle is that the user can truly connect with it, similar to how people in the movie connect with machinery.
The Mercedes AVTR is not simply for show, as it details the German manufacturer’s aim to making a zero-impact car.
“This may be in the distance but it’s our goal nonetheless,” said Ola Källenius, head of Mercedes.
However, like most concepts, this car is most likely just for show and will not be pushed into production.
Source: Mercedes
The post Mercedes reveals bonkers ‘Avatar’ inspired electric concept vehicle appeared first on MobileSyrup.
SanDisk has revealed a prototype of a new 8TB portable SSD, the biggest ever portable storage drive. The prototype, however, is small enough to fit in your pocket.
This is currently only a prototype, but spec-wise, it offers ‘SuperSpeed’ USB speeds up to 20Gbps. SanDisk may not be bringing this to market today, but a product like this is possible down the line.
Also unveiled at CES 2020 was a SanDisk 1TB Ultra Dual Drive Luxe USB-C dual connector drive that also sports USB-A. Amusingly, this USB flash drive was a prototype at CES 2018.
This drive is small enough to fit on a keychain, though don’t let the size fool you, as it will cost $249.99 USD (roughly $324 CAD) when it becomes available later this quarter.
Source: Western Digital
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Starting January 28th, Toronto-based national telecom company Rogers will deprecate its Edge Tab subsidy options in favour of Edge Financing, or just ‘Rogers financing’ going forward.
According to internal documents received by MobileSyrup, the carrier plans to remove Edge Tabs and migrate its Upfront Edge service to financing plans. Upfront Edge allows users to get a phone on contract for a reduced upfront price and either return the device at the end of the contract or pay a predetermined fee to keep it.
The document also addresses some of the questions around why Rogers is making the change. For example, it says that financing will help the company deliver a more straightforward, more transparent experience to customers. It also notes that Rogers won’t force customers to migrate to financing plans on January 28th. Existing customers on subsidized plans may remain on that plan until they choose to upgrade.
Customers on a subsidy plan will still be able to perform a price plan change without having to switch to financing. Additionally, those with multiple ShareEverything lines on device subsidy will see new upgrades of a single line “fall under [Rogers] existing policies” and may require price plan changes. It’s not immediately clear what that means, but it sounds as if subsidized options will still be available for share plans with multiple lines when upgrading a single line in the group.
Rogers provided MobileSyrup with the following statement regarding the upcoming changes:
“Consumers from around the world have enjoyed the benefits of device financing for some time and we’re really pleased to offer our customers this affordable and transparent option. Financing is a clear, simple and fair way for our customers to get the latest smartphones for as low as $0 down and no interest on Canada’s most trusted network.”
Further, Fido will move to exclusively offer financing for new device purchases on February 5th. It’s a significant development, considering Fido does not currently offer any financing options.
While Rogers chose to keep device subsidies available as an option for customers after introducing financing earlier this year, the carrier may have had plans to get rid of subsidies for some time.
In the company’s Q3 2019 earnings call, Rogers president and CEO Joe Natale spoke to the impact of financing plans, noting that online hardware upgrades were up 30 percent.
“And as we limit and eventually sunset subsidy plans, the shift from device subsidies to device financing is expected to drive significant cost efficiencies,” Natale said on the call.
Further, Natale said that Rogers thinks the “better model overall is to drive equipment financing and drive it hard.” He notes that with the increasing costs of phones, subsidizing them for customers incurs a huge cost on Rogers — almost $1 billion in 2018, according to Natale.
Rogers’ Chief Financial Officer, Tony Staffieri, echoed that, saying that Rogers believes “instalment financing is a win-win for [the carrier], the industry and consumers in many ways.”
Overall, the argument for improved customer experience and simplicity both appear present in the internal document regarding the upcoming removal of subsidized plans.
The document points out that the total cost of customer ownership over a term is the same on subsidy and financing, even during promotional periods. Speaking of promotions, the document also ensures that financing will still allow for promotions and deals. It also touts the benefit that monthly service and device costs are shown separately on financing bills and that financing costs drop off at the end of the term, making things more transparent for customers.
Ultimately, it seems like the change will ultimately prove beneficial for customers. Having written about carriers for some time now, and also working in carrier stores for several years, I can attest to the increased simplicity of the new plans. Anything that’s easier to understand is an overall win for consumers.
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At CES 2020, Google demoed a new preview Assistant feature that can read what’s on your phone screen in up to 42 different languages.
Screen readers aren’t new — remember Now on Tap? — but Google says it improved Assistant’s ability to detect sentences and speak naturally. In other words, Assistant should sound more human when reading to you. According to Google, the feature should work on any webpage or article; simply activate Assistant and say “read this.” It won’t work for you at the moment, however, since the feature is still in preview.
The more impressive part is the ability for Assistant to translate the text on the fly and read it in up to 42 different languages. Google has made some significant leaps in this area, such as with the Interpreter mode available on both Assistant and the company’s smart display products. Interpreter mode can listen to a conversation and automatically translate it for participants.
As for the screen reading capability, it has been part of Assistant for some time. It started as Now on Tap, which was part of Assistant precursor Google Now, and could read your screen and provide helpful tools related to what it saw. If you grant Assistant permission to read your screen, it can do a similar feature now, but the ability isn’t readily available. Users have to pull up Assistant and tap a suggested action button.
It’s possible this new reading feature could bring Google’s screen reading tech back to the forefront of Assistant. It could also prove incredibly useful for people with visual impairments, as it’d make it easier for them to access online content.
For now, however, the feature is just a preview with no set release date. Google plans to look into improvements like auto-scrolling sites as Assistant reads and highlighting the text it’s currently reading.
Source: The Verge
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An investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) has found that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) unlawfully searched travellers’ electronic devices.
The OPC report was responding to six concerns that the CBSA was examining cellphones, tablets, laptops and more at ports of entry. In one instance, a traveller’s social media and banking information was viewed by a CBSA officer, according to the OPC. In another, an officer is said to have taken a photo of the contents on a traveller’s phone.
As Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien noted in the report, officers can only examine electronic devices based on legitimate indicators that a search would produce evidence of illegal activities. These indicators can include the way a traveller responds to a question or a lack of matching identification on a suitcase.
Otherwise, an officer is only permitted to view digital documents via an electronic device. In these situations, internet connectivity must be shut down prior to examination, through such means as putting a phone in airplane mode.
While Therrien noted that all six complainants’ concerns were “well-founded,” he concluded that there were “insufficient training and accountability mechanisms” to ensure that border officers meet the necessary examination requirements.
Therefore, Therrien called for the CBSA’s digital device examination guidelines to be written into the custom act. This way, officers are held accountable for carrying out a search without “reasonable grounds to suspect” a crime.
For its part, the CBSA says it will run mandatory training for officers, update officer manuals, publish online guidance for travellers and more.
Via: The Toronto Star
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Via Kris Olds and Croakey.org this story is from Gemma Carey who lives in Canberra Australia and is an associate professor in the Centre for Social Impact at the University of South Wales.
Professor Carey writes that the smoke enveloping Canberra has shown the need “for better health warning systems, especially around hazardous air pollution, and for equity considerations to be foremost.”
In her city “the unprecedented fires which began on New Year’s eve brought a thick ‘fog’ of smoke across the ACT (Australia Capital Territory) and parts of New South Wales. Canberra, where I live, is perhaps worst hit with particle readings of up to 1800 2.5PM. The limit for hazardous levels is 200 2.5PM in the ACT, according to the ACT Government.”
Professor Carey wrote in December that women being pregnant in a climate emergency meant they are stuck indoors. “At that time, dangerous particles of 2.5 micrometres or smaller (‘2.5PM’) were at 100-300 – ranging from serious to hazardous.”
The air in Canberra is ten times over the hazardous level and is the poorest air quality of any city in the world. Air with this type of particulate creates complications for people with lung and breathing issues, and can impact heart disease and cancer rates. Research shows that the longer the exposure to these particulates, the higher the incidence of disease. Couple this with research showing that pregnant women exposed to these particulates appear to have babies that are premature, weigh less, and can be miscarried. What is not being calculated is that families in Canberra are also experiencing direct stress due to the fire disasters as well as the long term implications of particulate exposure.
Poorer areas in the city have worse air. Professor Carey states “We have no precedent in the scientific literature for the health implications of what is currently happening in Australia.”
Clean air is costly~“Since New Year’s, nowhere indoors is safe. Shopping malls, libraries and national monuments – where many were seeking refuge – are filled with smoke. Air conditioning systems are simply not designed for this level of pollution.”
Even air purifiers which cost 500 to 800 dollars are not affordable to many people and there are none left in Canberra or its suburbs. Indoors people wear high grade pollution masks. “I take it off only to shower and eat.”
The air particulate mask is only good for 100 hours and costs 50 dollars. Again as in the air purifiers, there is an equity issue of who can afford and access them. The masks available at hardware stores are not designed for the particulates that are raining down on Canberra.
While fires are expected to be more frequent, there has been little information from government sources on warnings and air quality. With poor education on the impacts of the particulate, “few people could be seen with masks on the streets of Canberra and many were out exercising, and drawing toxic particulates deep into their lungs, and passing through into their blood streams.”
Professor Carey observes: We will be counting the public health implications of current events for years, if not decades, to come.Without immediate action on climate change, living in facemasks trapped in our houses could become the new normal for Australian summers.”
And now there is a change in public expression of the climate emergency~ Australian doctors are finally publicly saying that people will die from the health impacts as reported in the Guardian.
You can follow Gemma Carey on Twitter at @gemcarey
Catherine, my partner of nigh on 29 years, has been living with metastatic breast cancer since the fall of 2014 (she would never say “battling” or “suffering from,” and I can attest that she has, indeed, been very much living).
While the last five years have seen many twists and turns, some of them wrenching and painful, like chemotherapy and radiation, and others, like travel, and Oliver’s completing high school, and the simple fact of living to see another year, filled with joy and contentment.
As I write, Catherine is still very much alive. But she’s moved to the PEI Palliative Care Centre, and has stopped being treated for cancer; her life from here will focus on relief of pain, comfort, and quality time with family. In the coming days or weeks she will die.
This is desperately sad, but also not empty of joy and insights and deep, deep emotion of the sort that one seldom gets to experience. We are well-supported by friends and family–the Island blanket is wrapping itself around us, I wrote earlier in the week to a friend–and while we’re not entirely prepared for what the next days and weeks will hold, we know we will weather them together.
Many have written me over recent weeks to ask if there’s anything we need, anything they can do.
We are, I am happy to report, blessed with a well-stocked larder.
But there are things you can do, right now, that will help:
Catherine needs all the energy she has, and so isn’t accepting visitors, but I will pass along messages to her.
Thank you to everyone who’s offered a kind word, a coffee date, additional patience, solidarity.
I’m taking a sabbatical from this space for a while, but I shall return.
(Me, Catherine and Oliver, Summer 2019)
Like clockwork, the January 2020 security patch is here for Pixel 2 devices and newer. The update is starting to hit devices now.
Factory and over-the-air (OTA) images are available now as well through the Android Developers website for those who prefer to take care of things themselves.
For the first security patch of 2020, things are pretty normal. The January update brings fixes for several issues and patches vulnerabilities from ‘high’ to ‘critical.’ The most severe was a media framework issue that could possibly allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code through a crafted file.
The Google security bulletin lists 37 security fixes and 10 functional updates included in the update.
It’s worth noting that the Pixel 4 devices should get the update alongside the other Pixels. In December, the update was delayed slightly for Pixel 4 and 4 XL phones due to the first Pixel feature drop. Further, some Pixel users who didn’t receive the December update should receive along with a cumulative January patch.
That said, those still holding on to the original Pixel won’t see any more updates. The phone that kicked off the Pixel line received a final update in December and will no longer receive updates going forward.
Source: 9to5Google
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Number one on Fred Wilson’s list of what will happen this decade: we begin to re-allocate captial to address the climate crisis:
The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital.
As I head back to work this year, this is at the top of my mind.
