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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In the week that was May 20th to May 26th, 2018:
- GDPR comes into effect
- Insta tells you it’s time to stop
- Red showcases the Hydrogen One smartphone
- Resident Evil 7: Streaming to a Switch near you
- The Expanse lives on thanks to Amazon
Intro
Hey everyone, my name’s Raj Deut and it’s time to take a look back at the tech news in the week that was:
May 20th to May 26th, 2018.
Stories
Hey guess what, we’ve updated our Privacy Policy raspberry.
How many emails have you gotten about it? Well, fear not, the light at the end of the tunnel is here. The European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation Act A-K-A GDPR went into effect Friday, meaning that companies with EU peoples involved need to be a little more forthcoming with what they do with your personal data.
For websites and online services operating in the EU or those with a global reach it’s meant updating their privacy policy and building new tools accordingly.
The end result is an email for basically every website you’ve ever used in existence telling you that they’ve done so and you need to agree or re-subscribe to their spam under the new terms.
Facebook and Google have both done this but that hasn’t stopped Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems lodging a case day 1 seeking a combined fine of 7.2b Euros, or 4% of a company’s global turnover as per the GDPR’s terms.
It looks like user-slash-device health could be the next big push with Google announcing new metrics to track how long you spend on your phone and Instagram now announcing they’re doing similar.
The new feature being tested with a select group of users tells you when you’ve seen everyone’s insta posts over the past 48 hours.
In addition to stopping you scrolling through the same shit forever the app will now also allow you to “mute” another user meaning you can save face when you bump into them but no longer have to see every photo of their new born child.
Just when you thought it was never going to exist at all Red held an event to showcase their Hydrogen One Android based smart phone.
The prolific camera manufacturer hyped up the tech world with the promise of a “holographic” display smartphone without offering much more than a giant “BUY NOW” button that evidently many people clicked.
The ground breaking display appears to be something similar to Nintendo’s 3DS without the slider and uses two front facing cameras to track the user’s eyes to create the effect.
Attendees appeared satisfied by its quality but not over the moon with little to showcase. We’ll just have to wait and see if the tech takes off after the phone’s release.
Capcom has announced that Resident Evil 7 will be coming to the Nintendo Switch, but it will be doing so in a slightly different way.
Unable to power the game locally with it’s limited power Capcom is planning to stream RE:7 to the portable console over Wi-Fi.
While not the first implementation of game streaming services many have come before it such as OnLive and PlayStation Vue none have been very popular with internet speed and controller lag issues rampant.
Don’t expect this to be good, or to even work in Australia. In fact I’d go as far to say don’t bother at all. It’ll be bad.
And finally while my Twitter feed exploded the other week with love and joy for some show called Brooklyn 22 or something another far more interesting one hung oh so precariously in the balance also.
Operatic space drama The Expanse has thankfully found a new home being picked up by Amazon. Officially announced Saturday morning by Bezos himself the show will continue its production with Amazon effective immediately.
Outro
And that’s it for another week!
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Have a great week and bye for now.
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