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 November 11th to November 17th, 2018:
- SpaceX’s StarLink internet gets the go ahead
- Twitter might get an edit button
- Sony drops out of E3
- My Health Record opt-out period extended
- NZ’s Rocket Lab has first launch
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:
November 11th to November 17th 2018.
Stories
Would it be a week in review without something from Elon’s corner? I think not! So lets kick things off with a little SpaceX news and the FCC approving an addition 7.5k satellites for their first phase of the low-orbiting mesh network called Starlink.
The revised and approved plan puts 11,000 satellites into orbit just 550km above us to provide what Elon believes to be the global internet provider of the future. This is a revised plan shifting the satellites closer to the earth and reducing the number required to provide a more reasonable latency and better coverage.
No word on when they’ll start going up there but it’s interesting none the less.
Good old Jack Dorsey emerged from the shadows to say that adding an edit button to Tweets is probably a good idea and something they might be working on. Ahhhhhh duh Jack!
Whilst Dorsey and Twitter acknowledge everyone wanting to be able to fix a spelling mistake or accidental pasting of an incorrect URL into the tweet Dorsey was quoted as saying “we can’t just rush it out”, which makes sense because they’ve only been talking about it for a good decade now.
In other words… don’t hold your breath.
Sony, or rather PlayStation have revealed they will NOT be participating in next year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3 for the first time… ever!
Revealed somewhat unintentionally via a press release from E3’s organising body the list of major exhibitors had one notable absentee to which Sony has since confirmed.
Sony has also cancelled their PlayStation Experience show which they’ve held in North America for the past four years. When questioned why they felt they didn’t have any known major titles to show off and wanted to give their fans an experience worth attending and not just do it for the sake of it.
No word on if Sony will go the EA route and setup shop somewhere else in LA around E3 next year, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Back in Australia, the controversial My Health Record system not only lost major people behind its implementation but served as a hot topic in parliament as its opt-out period was due to come to an end on November 15th.
With thousands choosing NOT to use the digital medical record system it was argued that people have not been fully informed of the privacy and security issues around it and the opt-out period has been extended until at least January 31st, 2019.
As to whether or not opting-out is right for you, that’s something you should evaluate and look into yourself and now you have more time to do so.
And finally, proving our neighbours are better than us once again, New Zealand’s burgeoning space program flew into action once again with Rocket Lab successfully completing their first commercial launch.
Ironically they sent up some Australian satellites to be used for satellite internet and the little-country-that-can is scheduled for another launch in the coming weeks.
Go NZ!
Outro
And that’s it for another week!
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Also on the site we also have a new feature piece based off Apple’s recent MacBook Air & Mac Mini announcements analysing if Apple really know or have a plan for the Mac at all moving forward.
Have a great week and bye for now.
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