TWTW: March 4th – March 10th, 2018

The week that was (TWTW) takes a look back at the week’s most prominent tech stories from around the world.

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Lastly you can find a full transcript of this week’s episode below.

In the week that was March 4th to March 10th, 2018.:


Intro

Hey everyone, Raj Deut here for Reckoner with a look back at the tech news in the week that was:

March 4th to March 10th, 2018.

Stories

Samsung held an event in New York to launch their 2018 range of high end QLED TVs. The new sets now use a single cord that Samsung call an “invisible” connection to carry both power and picture to it from their breakout box. The new TVs also serve as a smart home hub for Samsung’s range of devices as well as incorporating their continuously mocked virtual assistant “Bixby”.

The TVs also include a new “Ambient” mode that got a lot of traction essentially making the display look somewhat transparent when not in use and display what look like Android widgets floating on it.


Google released a developer preview of Android P earlier in the week. The new version has a number of enhancements including a new notification panel, screenshot annotations, support for hardware notches and much more.

The preview is not intended for those to put it on their everyday device but released for developers to get ahead of the systems official launch likely to be later in the year.


Chinese hardware goliath Xiaomi has confirmed that it will indeed begin selling its smartphones in the US before year’s end.

Rumours of their expansion into the US market have been rampant over the past few months however many thought they wouldn’t come to fruition given the country’s current president and their lack lustre relationship with China at the moment.


And speaking of Trump. The president held a one hour round-table with a select group of individuals to discuss violence in video games following the horrific school shooting in Florida recently.

From all reports the closed discussion was largely a waste of time, reiterating that there is no factual link between violence and violent games.

What it did do was shift the focus from the real problem for a moment that is of course US gun law.


Sticking with video games it was a crazy week as things begin to head up ahead of the Game Developers Conference in San Fran this month and of course E3 in June.

Nintendo held a Direct and announced a slew of titles the biggest of course being that Super Smash Bros would be coming this year.

Ubisoft took the covers off The Division 2 in a surprise announcement telling us to look out for more info at E3 as well as pushing South Park’s Fracture But Whole to the Switch.

Activision dropped a logo for the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 that sent the twitter-sphere into meltdown for its improper use of roman numerals.

And EA announced their game distribution platform EA Origins is opening up to other publishers adding Warner Brothers’ titles such as the Batman Arkham and LEGO series.


Finally, on home soil. Two IT workers at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology were held for questioning after a raid was carried out on their Melbourne offices this week by the Federal Police.

The two staff members have allegedly been making use of the bureau’s super computers to mine cryptocurrency in an egregious misuse of government resources.

Outro

And that’s it for another week! If you enjoyed the show then please do leave it a review, subscribe and give it a thumbs up when you can.

Be sure to stop by the Reckoner website and check out our unique look at the world of tech and look out for some new announcements coming very soon!

Thanks for tuning in, have a great week and bye for now.