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 September 30th to October 6th, 2018:
- Surface lineup gets a refresh
- Surface headphones jump out of nowhere
- Google stream some games
- Bloomberg report on how China hacked everyone
- Aussie lobby group forms to tackle Gov backdoor
Intro
Hello everyone, my name’s Raj Deut and it’s time to take a look back at the tech news in the week that was:
September 30th to October 6th, 2018.
Stories
Microsoft’s turn to get the ball rolling this week. They kicked things off with a very large, yet very known about, event for their Surface family of products.
The new Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 were the least exciting, they got some spec bumps and now come in matte black but are still missing USB-C & Thunderbolt 3, which is surprising consider their baby brother the Go does.
The Surface Studio 2, which is their tilting, iMac like machine also received a spec bump and has done away with any hybrid storage relying purely on SSD and incorporates a new super high quality 192 PPI display.
The surprise announcement for the event was a new piece of hardware from Microsoft: The Surface Headphones. The new headphones will directly complete against Sony & Bose in the high end noise cancelling headphones market and include a dial feature to progressively adjust just how much exterior noise they cancel out.
The laptops, tablets & computer will be available here before Xmas, the headphones at US$399 will only be in the US.
Google took the wraps off their rumoured gaming service this week. Dubbed “Project Stream” the new service is, as the name suggests, a game streaming service rather than a physical console… at this point.
Utilising Chrome the service will allow users to stream games from their server and be played either with a mouse & keyboard or controller.
Announced to recruit US only beta users the service is being tested in conjunction with Ubisoft with the new Assassins Creed game its flagship title.
Probably the biggest story this week is the report by Bloomberg’s Businessweek on a Chinese hardware hack allegedly infiltrating Apple, Amazon, the US Government, banks and others.
US owned Supermicro, hardware motherboard manufacturer to literally everyone, has had a small chip, no bigger than a grain of rice, added to an unknown quantity of devices whilst being made in China.
The chips purpose and function is hard to determine but appears to phone home and could potentially divert data and information back to the China state.
And finally back on the home front. Telstra and Optus along with
the usual tech suspects like Amazon & Google have joined together to lobby the Australian Government’s “Assistance and Access Bill” or otherwise known as “Build us a giant back door that will be abused and a honey pot for hackers Bill”.
The group’s largest concern is that despite being the ones forced to implement the solution and subvert to the government’s will they’ve not once been consulted or approached about it leading up to its introduction.
Outro
And that’s it for another week!
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Be on the look out this week. Reviews of a new travel router and coincidentally one of Microsoft’s Surface products, the Surface Go will drop in video form.
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Have a great week and bye for now.
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