Interesting Tech News from September 2020
This is a monthly column of curated tech news, highlighting interesting and/or valuable tech developments from the past month, which are impacting our society directly or indirectly. It also gives some vague sense of the trajectory that the technology as a whole is taking. The aim is to share the information concisely, in an easy to understand manner, help you fill some gaps on what you might have missed & learn something new.
INTEL ANNOUNCES 11TH GENERATION TIGER LAKE PROCESSORS FOR MOBILE LAPTOPS
You will soon start to see mobile laptops equipped with 11th generation Intel’s Tiger Lake processors. Here are the main features:
It’s based on a new 10nm Willow Cove architecture.
It supports Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6.
Integrated Xe graphics card’s performance was impressive. Monica Chin from theVerge played Overwatch and Epic at an almost 60 fps.
Cinebench score for one of the Tiger Lake’s processor i.e. 1185G7 i7 Tiger was 595 for a single core, compared to 474 score by AMD Ryzen 7 4800U.
So, the bottom line is that the processor has an impressive performance, especially the graphics card. How much efficient it would be in terms of power consumption i.e. battery usage remains to be seen.
Additionally, Intel also announced new EVO certification standard. If the laptop you are buying has an EVO logo, that would mean, you are guaranteed to be getting a high standard laptop.
High Standards for Laptops
9 hours of single use?
Does it have Wi-Fi6 and Thunderbolt support?
Does the laptop offer Fast charging?
Does the system wake up in less than a second?
APPLE TIME FLIES EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
Apple introduced iPADs, Apple Watches, Service Bundles and new Services in its Time Flies September event. It also released iOS 14, iPADOS 14 and WatchOS7 the next day on 16th of September. Key announcements were as follows:
Budget iPAD with a faster A12 chip.
Premium iPAD Air with a faster A14 chip, 12MP camera, new larger screen design, new touch ID sensor integrated into the top button.
Apple Watch series 6 with the new oxygen sensor, straps and much more. Also, a cheaper Watch SE.
Apple Fitness+ and Apple One Subscription plans.
On the software side, iOS 14 comes up with new privacy, App organizational and accessibility features. Ad tracking privacy feature, which Apple was planning to introduce in September has been delayed due to concerns from companies like Facebook, which rely heavily on ad revenue. Very briefly some iOS 14 highlights are:
New dot visible for mic and camera to show the user that the App is using them.
MAC address randomization.
New ways to organize apps
Redesigned widgets
Compact design for phone calls and Siri
Some handy accessibility features hidden in the settings such as customizing the back-tap button to take screenshots etc.
You can find out more about the product launches and software releases on Apple’s website.
AMAZON ANNOUNCED NEW HOME AND CAR PRODUCTS IN ITS FALL HARDWARE EVENT
Echo Show 10 which will follow your movement as you move and speak using computer vision and audio beam forming technology. No facial recognition.
Ring Always Home Cam, which can fly around your home in a designated set path. Idea is that if you are not at home and there is some alert, the drone can leave the dock and check the surrounding area.
New Eero 6 mesh routers and extender system, equipped with Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax technology.
The new spherical looking Echo and Echo Dots speakers with Alexa.
Plug in new ring car alarm into your vehicles OBD port and get alerts on the ring App if there is a break-in.
Further enhance the security of your car by installing Ring Car Cam, which has 2 HD cameras front and back and can send alert to your ring app.
Amazon also launched Luna, a new cloud gaming service.
You can find more details on the above and other announcements that were made here.
EXTENDING THE RANGE OF 5G MMWAVE AND MOVING TO LOW DENSITY AREAS
5G mmWave range is roughly 500 meters, which means that this technology is more suited for high density areas. However, Ericsson, Qualcomm and US cellular network were able to achieve data rates of more than 100 Mbps at an extended range, which was over 5Kms. This was achieved by applying extended range software on Ericsson hardware and using a device equipped with Snapdragon Modem and Qualcomm QTM527 mmWave antenna. This will open the door for 5G mmWave deployment in rural areas and expand the service to areas which previously seemed not possible.
TESLA’S NEW BATTERY, NVIDIA’S RTX 3080 GPU AND FACEBOOK’S OCULUS QUEST 2
In other Fall announcements, Elon Musk unveiled new battery technology capable of providing 16% more driving range and 5 times more energy. When it will be in production? We don’t know yet.
Nvidia launched RTX 3080 GPU based on Nvidia new Ampere architecture. As per theVerge review, gaming at 1440p and at a higher frame rate has been impressive. 4K was not a disappointment either. However, there have been reports of crashes. Is it the capacitors or drivers? If the driver is fixing the issue by limiting performance, that might invalidate some of the reviews.
Oculus Quest 2 hardware, which Facebook launched this month, has impressive reviews and sounds like a worthy upgrade over its predecessor but requirement for a Facebook only login might be a No-No for many people, due to privacy concerns.
MAJOR CYBER ATTACKS DISCOVERED IN THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER 2020
Indian PM Modi’s personal website’s twitter account, with over 2.5 million followers, hacked. Twitter’s response: “We are actively investigating …”
Universal Health Service’s healthcare facilities had to shut down their computer systems because of a cyberattack. Obviously, healthcare workers had to switch to paper records. There is speculation that it was a ransomware attack, however the company did not confirm. Ambulances had to be diverted and surgeries were cancelled because of this.
Ransomware attack, at a German hospital however, caused a woman’s death, because the hospital could not accept the emergency patients. The attack was not intended for the hospital though, as the note was addressed to nearby university. The cyberattack can be treated as a possible homicide, if it is found to be linked to the woman’s death.
Data Center company Equinix claims that it was able to contain the ransomware attack and that no data was compromised and no customers were effected. Allegedly Netwalker was used for the attack but the company did not confirm.
NOTABLE TECH ACQUISITIONS IN SEPTEMBER 2020
Ericsson acquires Wireless WAN solution provider Cradlepoint for $1.1 billion. Cradlepoint’s solutions, for example 5G edge router, helps businesses switch from wired broadband to fully wireless connectivity. First responders also use their solutions.
Nvidia $40 billion takeover of UK’s mobile chip maker Arm will need approval from a number of countries before the deal gets finalized.
Microsoft buys Bethesda, the game company behind titles such as Doom, Fallout and Skyrim for $7.5b.
TikTok deal with Walmart & Oracle will be reviewed by the Chinese authorities.
Verizon acquires mobile virtual network operator Tracfone for more than $6 billion.
OTHER TECH NEWS FROM SEPTEMBER 2020
Android 11 is out.
Apple backed down from taking a full 30% cut from Facebook events.
Microsoft’s Office, Outlook and other services suffered global outage. Apparently, there were issues with the authentication, which are being investigated.
Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S will launch on November 10th. Series X will be more powerful capable of playing 4k at 60fps. On the other hand, series S will be capable of playing 1440p at 60fps. X will have optical drive and series S will not have any drive.
Can you trust all of the reviews on Amazon? Not really. I have had personal experience, where the product was genuinely bad but had 5-star reviews. I had to return it and report it.
You always have to be wary of uploading or saving images through an app like Instagram, WhatsApp etc. There is always going to be some new vulnerability, due to third part libraries being used in the code. This can help the attacker exploit your phone. There has been one vulnerability with Instagram, which Facebook fixed back in February but the details of which have only now been released.
Google will be launching Pixel 5 today. A new Chromecast streamer is also expected to be unveiled.
Thank you and see you next month.