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 July 1st to July 7th, 2018:
- Samsung phones sending photos & messages by themselves
- Twitteriffic removes push & streaming ahead of Twitter deadlines
- Kim Dotcom loses extradition appeal in NZ
- Uganda start taxing social media usage
- NBN falls dramatically short of install targets
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:
July 1st to July 7th, 2018.
Stories
Samsung has found themselves back in hot water this week. Users of the companies Galaxy range of smartphones have reported their phones sending random photos to random contacts via the Samsung Messages app.
To make matters worse the messages are also unlogged and users are only aware of the messages being sent when told by the unintended recipient.
It’s believed the bug is related to an RCS profile update, which in Australia is only used by Telstra.
Twitter client Twitteriffic is proactively removing functionality from both it’s extremely popular iOS & macOS clients ahead of Twitter’s impending deadline to nerf third party applications.
In a move to soften the blow ahead of August 16th’s switch off date the company announced that push notifications and timeline streaming would be removed in the new versions.
A timed refresh option has been implemented as a means of the app still loading the latest tweets in chronological order however the only workaround for push notifications is to sadly install the Twitter’s own official client.
MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom lost his appeal against extradition to the US in a New Zealand court this week.
Arrested at his New Zealand home years ago for the alleged creation of a worldwide criminal organisation, Dotcom plans to take his extradition appeal to New Zealand’s High Court as a final attempt to remain in the country.
The US are seeking extradition as they believe Dotcom and MegaUpload’s sharing of copyrighted films, music and other media is alleged to have cost copyright holders upwards of US$500 million.
In what would come as a life changing shock for Love Island contestants and pretty much anyone under 70 in Australia, Uganda’s government has implemented a daily tax for using social media.
Telcos in Uganda began collecting the equivalent of 7 Aussie cents per day should you access one of a list of social media services including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn & Facebook.
The tax is then passed onto the government who have implemented the policy as a means to “cope with the consequences” of internet gossip.
Human rights group Amnesty International have damned the tax calling it harmful to the right to freedom of expression.
And lets finish things off with some more fantastic NBN news. Despite the government and NBN’s promises they have yet again missed their install targets for the financial year.
Aiming for 8.7m ready to connect premises they hit less than 50% of that reaching just 6.9m with even less achieving an activated status.
There’s been no response from the government as yet to their continual failure on a faster, cheaper NBN using a Multi Technology Mix but then it’s hard to put lipstick on a pig.
Outro
And that’s it for another week!
The big show is back this week, a new episode with James, Ant & myself is hitting soon as well as the last of our E3 coverage focusing on hands-on titles.
A big shout out to our amazing patreon supporters, for you guys the new episode of “I don’t quite know” hits this week!
Don’t worry though, if you want to hear the episode with the amazing Jeff Cannata then you still can by signing up at reckoner.com.au/patreon
Have a great week and bye for now.
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