Amazon Echo update doesn’t forget the bass

Amazon’s been listening. Not just to your every word (waiting for you say “Alexa”), but also to the widespread criticism of the audio quality on the new Echo. The company issued a software update on Friday to improve the second-generation Echo’s sound profile. It should have installed automatically, meaning you may have already noticed a bit more bass in your music this weekend. You can see if you have the latest software by looking under the Settings section of your Alexa app. The version number should be “592452420.”

After checking that I had the right software, I asked Alexa to play “In the Night” by The Weekend, which was my comparison song in my review. When I first tested the Echo, the music sounded tinny and lacked bass. This time around, I could clearly hear the thumping beat. The tweaks didn’t seem to hurt the vocals, which sounded strong even before the update. I asked my Google Home to play the same track at the same volume (which I also did in my review) and noticed less of a difference between the two, especially in the bass. The Google speaker delivers subtler highs though, which makes for a more well rounded profile.

The bass still isn’t as strong as it was on the Echo Plus, which was punchy enough that I could actually feel it in my chest when the beat dropped at the start of the first verse. But since the new Echo costs just $100 (less than the Echo Plus and the Google Home), I’m happy to live with a barely noticeable difference.

I already liked the rest of the new Echo’s features, including Alexa’s prowess and Amazon’s communication features. This update shows that Amazon not only pays attention to feedback, but that it can also quickly provide solutions — which should keep the Alexa faithful from jumping ship.

AT&T’s ‘Flying COW’ drone provides cell service to Puerto Rico

These days, it’s just as important to have communication up and running after a major disaster as it is to have power, food and drinkable water. The FCC approved $77 million to fix communications in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, while Project Loon (a collaboration with AT&T, Alphabet and T-Mobile) has found ways to get the internet up and running via LTE-providing balloons. Now, AT&T has deployed its helicopter Flying COW (Cell on Wings) to temporarily provide data, voice and text services to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

AT&T claims that this is the first time such a device has been deployed. The Flying COW hovers 200 to 400 feet above the ground and offers wireless connectivity in an up to 40-square-mile area, a distance that AT&T says is farther than other temporary cell sites. The drone is currently in the San Juan area of Puerto Rico and the company plans to relocate it to various other areas, including a military hospital at Manati Coliseum.

Source: AT&T

Sony’s new PSVR bundle includes the apt version of ‘Skyrim’

Sony is making up for its dearth of big exclusives this holiday season (expansions for Horizon: Zero Dawn and Uncharted don’t count, sorry, and racing sims don’t quite have mass appeal) with a concerted focus on PSVR. Come November 17th you’ll be able to pick up a new bundle with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, a pair of Move motion controllers, the PlayStation Camera and updated PSVR headset for $449.99.

The game celebrates its seventh birthday on November 11th, and since 2011 it has been repackaged for multiple platforms a number of times. If you don’t own a PSVR but still want a fresh place to play, it’ll be released for Nintendo Switch on November 17th as well. Bethesda’s other PSVR experiment, Doom VFR will be released December 1st.

Via: VR Focus

Source: PlayStation Blog

21st Century Fox held talks to sell most of its assets to Disney

Like it or not, the trend toward media consolidation isn’t slowing down any time soon: CNBC sources understand that 21st Century Fox recently held talks to sell most of the company to Disney. The media giant would offload its movie studios, TV production business, entertainment channels (like FX and National Geographic) and international properties like Sky. This would theoretically create a “more tightly focused” company that revolves around news and sports — reportedly, Fox believes it doesn’t have the kind of scale needed to compete with the assets it currently has, while Disney does.

Notably, Disney couldn’t buy Fox’s core TV resources even if it wanted to. American companies aren’t allowed to own two broadcast networks, and buying Fox Sports would raise antitrust questions when Disney already has ESPN under its belt.

Neither Disney nor Fox has commented on the apparent scoop, and it’s crucial to note that there’s no guarantee anything will happen. CNBC’s tipsters said that discussions aren’t happening at this moment — the talks have been off-and-on. This doesn’t rule out the possibility of the two companies returning to the negotiating table, but nor should you expect a deal in the very near future.

If something does materialize, it would have a tremendous effect on the media landscape, including streaming. While Fox would be more specialized, Disney would have even more reach than it does now. It would have yet another movie studio under its belt, more TV resources and a greater footprint abroad. And that, in turn, could bolster plans for its in-house streaming services. Disney would have a giant catalog of Fox shows and movies on top of ABC, Marvel and other heavyweight brands. It wouldn’t have as much reason to play nicely with multi-studio streaming services like Amazon and Netflix.

Source: CNBC

‘Final Fantasy XV’ multiplayer DLC pushed back to November 15th

Back in September, Square Enix announced upcoming multiplayer DLC titled Comrades for Final Fantasy XV, its blockbuster game that came out a year ago. Unfortunately, the extra content was delayed past its initial Halloween release date, but not for much longer: The publisher tweeted that it’s coming out on November 15th.

#FFXVComrades will be released on 15th November!
We hope you will join us in bringing the Light back to Lucishttps://t.co/I8d7LhT6wI pic.twitter.com/tvuOsvka6P

— Final Fantasy XV (@FFXVEN) November 6, 2017

As previously revealed, Comrades takes place after Chapter 13 of the main game’s story, when [spoilers] crown prince Noctis dips out of the waking world for his crystal cocoon spirit journey. In his place, players inhabit one of the Kingsglaive, the royal police tasked to keep the peace in a world overrun by monsters. Customize your own avatar and team up with up to three of your friends as you take on missions and quests. A future update will supposedly let you roam with members of Noctis’ bodyguard boy band (Gladio, Prompto and Ignis).

It’s still unclear how much Comrades costs as a standalone content expansion, though it’s included in the game’s all-DLC Season Pass.

Via: Niche Gamer

Source: Square Enix (Twitter)

You can now stream Deezer on Roku devices in the US

It just got easier to use your Roku player (or Roku TV) as the heart of a home stereo setup. Deezer has launched a Roku channel for American users, giving you access to its Premium streaming music service on the big screen. Fork over $10 per month and you’ll get unfettered streaming along with Deezer-specific twists like Flow (a never-ending mix of favorite and recommended music) and special mixes.

This probably won’t sway you if you’re already using Spotify’s Roku channel. And Deezer support is arguably more important in the service’s European home turf, where the Roku channel is already available (Latin America receives support soon). Consider this, though: there aren’t exactly many choices for streaming music on Roku boxes, so this adds some much-needed competition.

Source: Roku Blog

Judge rules Canada’s de-indexing order won’t apply to Google in the US

For the past few years, Google has been the subject of a legal debate in Canada, one aiming to determine whether Canadian court rulings regarding the internet are applicable just in Canada or should be enforceable worldwide owing to the borderless nature of the web. In June, the Canadian Supreme Court decided that they should be enforced globally, but a US federal judge has now weighed in, and at least in this particular case, the Canadian ruling won’t apply in the US.

This all began back in 2011 when Equustek, a Canadian networking device manufacturer, sued Datalink Technologies, a former distributor, for allegedly stealing its technology and trade secrets. A number of court orders were issued against Datalink, but rather than ceasing to infringe on Equustek’s intellectual property, it instead moved its operations outside of Canada and continued to make sales online.

Equustek then asked Google to block over 300 Datalink websites, which it eventually did, but only in Canada. The websites still showed up in Google searches done outside of the country. Equustek then took Google to court and sought a ruling that would compel the company to de-link Datalink websites from all search results worldwide. The court’s decision was issued in Equustek’s favor and it was upheld in both the Court of Appeal for British Columbia and the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court’s ruling was issued this past June.

However, Google filed its own lawsuit in the US in hopes that the Canadian order would be deemed unenforceable and last week, as Ars Technica reports, US District Judge Edward Davila issued a ruling that did just that. The judge found that the Canadian ruling violated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which stipulates that providers of online services, like Google, can’t be held liable for content created and posted by others. In his ruling, Davila wrote, “Datalink — not Google — ‘provides’ the information at issue,” adding, “Google’s search engine helps users discover and access content on third-party websites, but it does not ‘provide’ that content within the meaning of Section 230.”

A number of civil liberties groups spoke out against the Canadian Supreme Court’s ruling saying that it set a dangerous precedent of internet censorship. A spokesperson for OpenMedia said at the time, “There is great risk that governments and commercial entities will see this ruling as justifying censorship requests that could result in perfectly legal and legitimate content disappearing off the web because of a court order in the opposite corner of the globe.” And in an amicus brief filed in support of Google’s US case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, “The Canadian court’s order sets a dangerous and unbounded precedent that will have applications in countless other contexts. If one foreign court can impose its speech restrictive rules on the entire internet despite the conflict between its rules and those of a foreign jurisdiction the norms of expectations of all internet users are at risk.”

Davila’s decision appeared to reflect that sentiment, stating, “By forcing intermediaries to remove links to third-party material, the Canadian order undermines the policy goals of Section 230 and threatens free speech on the global internet.”

Via: Ars Technica

Source: US District Court

Apple Reportedly Shifted Billions of Dollars to Small Island of Jersey Amid Tax Crackdown

Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its controversial Irish tax structure by moving the majority of its offshore cash holdings to the small island of Jersey, a self-governed territory with loose ties to the United Kingdom, according to leaked financial documents obtained by The New York Times and BBC.

The island of Jersey via its Chamber of Commerce
The so-called Paradise Papers, primarily sourced from offshore tax law firm Appleby, reveal that Apple’s two key Irish subsidiaries were managed from Appleby’s office in Jersey from 2015 until early 2016. Apple chose Jersey after exploring several potential tax havens, such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Apple said it made regulators in the United States and Ireland, and the European Commission, aware about the reorganization of its Irish subsidiaries, and added that the changes haven’t reduced its tax bill.

“The changes we made did not reduce our tax payments in any country,” an Apple spokesperson told The New York Times. “At Apple we follow the laws, and if the system changes we will comply. We strongly support efforts from the global community toward comprehensive international tax reform and a far simpler system.”

Apple turned to Jersey after European officials began to crack down on the so-called “Double Irish” tax structure Apple had exploited.

The “Double Irish” tax loophole allows for multinational corporations to funnel revenue through an Irish subsidiary, which in turn sends that money to another Irish subsidiary that has residency in a tax haven. In a nutshell, the practice has enabled Apple to save billions of dollars in taxes around the world.

The European Commission found Apple paid between 0.005 percent and 1 percent in taxes in Ireland from 2003 through 2014, compared to the country’s headline 12.5 percent corporate tax rate. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the Commission’s ruling against Apple was “total political crap” and that the tax rates were a “false number.”

When questioned by the United States Senate investigative subcommittee in 2013, Cook said “we pay all the taxes we owe.” He added that Apple doesn’t “stash money on some Caribbean island.”

While that was true at the time, it’s clear Apple was exploring similar options as part of its tax minimization efforts.

“This is how it usually works: You close one tax shelter, and something else opens up,” said Reuven Avi-Yonah, director of the international tax program at the University of Michigan Law School. “It just goes on endlessly.”

Cook has made it clear that Apple is willing to repatriate some of its offshore cash holdings into the United States, but he recently said tax reform is “sorely needed” first. U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed lowering the headline corporate tax rate to 20 percent, down from 35 percent currently.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: corporate tax
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Intel Teams Up With AMD for New 8th-Generation Processors With AMD GPUs

Longtime rivals Intel and AMD are joining forces to produce new 8th-Generation H-Series Intel mobile processors paired with stacked second-generation High Bandwidth Memory and custom-built discrete graphics from AMD, Intel announced today.

For the new H-Series chips, which feature all of the above listed components in a single processor package, Intel says is using its Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), a power-sharing framework that reduces the standard silicon footprint to less than half that of standard discrete components on a motherboard.

At the heart of this new design is EMIB, a small intelligent bridge that allows heterogeneous silicon to quickly pass information in extremely close proximity. EMIB eliminates height impact as well as manufacturing and design complexities, enabling faster, more powerful and more efficient products in smaller sizes. This is the first consumer product that takes advantage of EMIB.

Intel has also developed unique software drivers and interfaces for the discrete GPU to coordinate information among all package elements, managing temperature and power delivery along with allowing system designers to optimize the power sharing between processor and graphics for specific tasks like performance gaming.

Through this collaboration, Intel and AMD are aiming to create a chip that will enable thinner, lighter, more powerful mobile devices through a better combination of performance-level processors and discrete graphics in a smaller form factor. The end goal is to create laptops that are thin and portable, but still powerful enough to handle serious gaming and other GPU intensive tasks.

The partnership will allow AMD and Intel to better compete with Nvidia in the high-end laptop/compact desktop market.

There are, however, still a lot of unknowns about the chip, and Intel says more information will be available in the future. The first machines that use the new technology will be released in the first quarter of 2018.

Tags: Intel, AMD
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Comcast wants the FCC to pre-empt state net neutrality laws

Why it matters to you

The battle over net neutrality is far from over, and now, a conflict between state and federal jurisdiction is taking center stage.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has made clear his dedication to rolling back net neutrality provisions outlined during President Obama’s administration, and companies are taking note. Comcast recently met with Pai’s staff to try to prevent individual states from setting their own net neutrality rules, for fear that states might try to stop internet service providers (ISPs) from “blocking, throttling, or discriminating against online content,” Ars Technica reported. In addition, Comcast asked the FCC to undo a previous classification of broadband as a Title II common carrier service. Should Pai and his staff agree to this, it would effectively undermine the FCC’s legal authority to enforce net neutrality rules.

While Pai has noted that he has every intention to reverse that classification, more contentious may be preventing states from implementing their own broadband regulations. As per an ex parte filing submitted by Comcast, the company “also emphasized that the Commission’s order in this proceeding should include a clear, affirmative ruling that expressly confirms the primacy of federal law with respect to BIAS (Broadband Internet Access Service) as an interstate information service, and that pre-empts state and local efforts to regulate BIAS either directly or indirectly.”

Comcast is by no means the only party to seek federal pre-emption of such state laws. Verizon also asked the Commission to block such rules, and both current and former Republican FCC commissioners are asking Pai to pre-empt states. Former Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell made an appearance before a Congressional committee last week, during which he noted, “The FCC should use its ample statutory authority to pre-empt states and localities to promote flexible and clear national rules that protect consumers and markets alike.” He noted a “disturbing trend” in which “states and localities have tried to regulate many aspects of the broadband market, potentially creating a confusing and innovation-killing patchwork of local laws governing both the economics of the internet and consumer privacy.”

Despite these requests, it’s unclear if the FCC is authorized to pre-empt state net neutrality laws. In fact, back in 2015, when the FCC attempted to pre-empt state laws preventing municipal broadband expansion, a federal appeals court determined that the Commission had actually exceeded its legal authority. So we’ll just have to see what the fate of net neutrality may be.

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