Skip to main content

Last week in tech: New Bose headphones, more 5G internet, and Uber's new rating policy

[ad_1]


Every day, technology forces us to navigate a swath of complicated social situations. The grand champion of awkward, tech-based interactions, however, is the rating dance we do with Lyft and Uber drivers. This week, we found out that Uber riders with low ratings (rumors suggest the cutoff is somewhere around 4.6) may soon find themselves unable to request a car. It’s the kind of thing that sounds so convoluted and vexing that it would have been a Seinfeld subplot if the show was still on the air.



But, that wasn’t the only news in the tech world this week. Here’s a handy breakdown of the biggest stories you may have missed when you were writing fan-fic in which Kramer battles Uber after it bans him for trying to bring a live cougar he won in a card game into his driver’s GMC Yukon.



Listen to the latest episode of Techathlon


This week’s episode of the best tech-based game show podcast around is short and sweet. A new player joins the squad to take on a battery of trivia questions about all things electronic. There’s also a hot dog toaster test. We’ll be back with a full episode on Monday, so be sure to subscribe on iTunes, add us on Stitcher, join us on Spotify, or check us out on Anchor. You can also submit your scores, ideas, or unsolicited Seinfeld rantings by following us on Twitter.



Amazon announced a new Echo with a screen (and camera)


The $90 Echo Show 5 has a 5.5-inch screen and a built-in, Alexa-powered speaker. It features a sliding cover to block the camera in case you’re worried about Amazon spying on you as you stand in front of the refrigerator at 3:45a.m in your underpants, eating shredded cheese straight out of the bag. This thing will be extremely cheap when Prime Day and Black Friday roll around.



Alexa will now delete your requests from its history if you ask nicely


In addition to its new hardware, Amazon also gave Alexa a new feature. You can now ask the virtual assistant to delete your requests from the past day. In the future, you may be able to ask it to delete all of your requests. If you want this feature, however, you’ll have to opt into it, which isn’t the easiest process in the world.



Motorola announced a new modular phone


The Motorola Z4 is the latest in the company’s line of devices that use Moto Mods: interchangeable backs that add features, like additional battery storage or a beefed-up camera, to the phone. It’s ultimately still mostly a mid-range device, but it’s mostly compatible with the legacy mods, so it does suggest Motorola is sticking with this snap-on form factor for the foreseeable future.



Sprint got into the 5G game


Slowly but surely, the next-generation mobile data network is rolling out across the U.S. Now, Sprint has turned on its 5G network in a handful of cities including Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Kansas City, and Houston. Initial impressions show that the network is fast—assuming you have a phone that can connect to it (like the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G) and you stay exactly where the coverage exists.



Bose announced updated noise-canceling headphones


The Bose QuietComfort headphones have been among the best in terms of noise canceling for years, but now the company has introduced its new $399 700-series wireless headphones that promise some substantial upgrades. Bose claims that it's optimized the new 'phones for taking phone calls and combatting background noise that can make conversations tricky. That would have been quite handy this morning in the coffee shop next to a particularly loud (and failing) job interview. The headphones also have a much more-modern design than the flagship QCs, which constantly make you look like you’re headed to the airport.



Apple showed off a new iPod (yes, an iPod)


If you thought the noble iPod was dead, you’d be justified, but ultimately wrong. This week, Apple introduced an updated version of the iPod Touch with an A10 chip inside. The upgrade makes the player powerful enough to handle augmented reality apps and other processor-intensive software. The device starts at $199 and probably makes more sense than some snarky comments on the web would suggest.



[ad_2]

Written By Stan Horaczek

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ice technicians are the secret stars of the Winter Olympics

[ad_1] The emphasis of this year's two-week-long Winter Olympic Games has been placed squarely on the Olympians themselves. After all, the stated purpose of the international competition is to bring together the world’s greatest athletes in a nail-biting competition across fifteen different winter sports. But before the curlers, skiers, and skaters even arrived in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the Olympians of the ice technician world were already a few weeks deep in a competition of their own. Mark Callan of the World Curling Federation and Markus Aschauer of the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation both say they’re hoping to make the best ice the Winter Olympics have ever seen. To transform the barren concrete jungle of existing tracks and arenas into an ice- and snow-covered wonderland is an enormous undertaking. And it takes a keen understanding of the physics and chemistry that keeps frozen precipitation pristine. Curling Callan has been making and maintaining ice for m
Post a Comment
Read more

In the wake of NYC terrorist attack, Trump says he's ordered increased 'Extreme Vetting'

[ad_1] President Donald Trump has requested for a heightened vetting program following Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York. @realDonaldTrump: I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this! Earlier, he tweeted that the attack in lower Manhattan was committed by a "sick and deranged person." @realDonaldTrump: In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A.! His remarks came after a motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people on Tuesday, leaving at least eight people dead and a dozen injured. NBC News repor
Post a Comment
Read more

How to save everything you post to social media

[ad_1] If you get the urge to revisit that cute photo you posted some time last year, you'll have to scroll through your timeline for what feels like hours to track it back down. Instead, when you share a post on social media, also save it to your phone for safe-keeping. This will not only save your social media hits for posterity, but also make them easier to find if you ever need to rediscover them. In this guide, we focus on saving photos and videos, because text posts are slightly more complicated—the only way to really preserve text from Facebook and Twitter is to download your entire archive (we'll explain how to do this below), and Instagram and Snapchat don't let you save or export your instant messages at all. When it comes to photos and videos, there's a shortcut to make sure they stay on your phone: Originally film them through a dedicated app, which will save them to a gallery. Only then should you open up a social media app to share them. However, there'
Post a Comment
Read more