Tech Roundup: Jony Ive Departure, Oppo MeshTalk & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Raspberry Pi unveils fourth generation of its low-cost, high-performance computer for US$ 35; comes with 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU, 1GB/2GB/4GB RAM, two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, and USB-C power support.
• Italy's data protection watchdog Garante issues Facebook with a €1 million (~US$ 1.1 million) fine for violations of local privacy law attached to the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.
• Apple's longtime design chief Jonathan Ive to depart the company next year to launch his own design startup LoveForm (he's been with Apple since 1992); says "While I will not be an [Apple] employee, I will still be very involved—I hope for many, many years to come. This just seems like a natural and gentle time to make this change."
• Google's sister company Sidewalk Labs releases blueprints for Quayside smart city in Toronto months after proposing a data governance model that places "urban data" under the control of an independent Civic Data Trust; says gathered data will not be sold, used for advertising, or shared without people's permission.
• Google — and University of Chicago Medical Center — get sued in a potential class-action lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of inappropriately accessing sensitive medical records belonging to hundreds of thousands of hospital patients; alleges Google's access to patient records from the University of Chicago Medicine between 2009 and 2016 to build new AI diagnostic tools were not sufficiently anonymised and put the patients' privacy at grave risk.
• U.S. president Donald Trump said he'll allow U.S. companies to sell equipment to Huawei, signalling a turnaround just weeks after the government called the telecom giant a threat to national security. (Note: Huawei is still on the Entity List of companies that the U.S. Department of Commerce bars from dealing with American entities.)
• France's Ministry of Digital Affairs says Facebook has agreed to hand over identification data of French users suspected of hate speech on its platform to judges, in what's a world first.
• State-sponsored adversaries reportedly steal billing data, and call records from over 10 cell providers worldwide as part of a "massive-scale" espionage attempt against at least 20 individuals, according to a new discovery made by security research firm Cybereason.
• Facebook revises Terms of Service (effective July 31) to clarify how the company makes money and better explain the rights people have when using our services; says "We don't sell your personal data to advertisers, and we don't share information that directly identifies you (such as your name, email address or other contact information) with advertisers unless you give us specific permission."
• Oppo unveils the first phone with an under-the-display selfie camera at Mobile World Congress Shanghai; announces a new proprietary communications technology called MeshTalk designed to let people call or chat across medium distances without using cellular networks, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth for distances up to 3 kilometres (1.86 miles) via a custom, low power chipset, which enables a LAN network and relay communication system between multiple OPPO devices when they are within range.
• Music streaming service Spotify gets caught up in a data scandal of its own; new investigation by Billboard finds the service's deal with record labels allows them to grab extensive data (email address, what you've listened to and saved to your library, playlists you've made or subscribed to, artists you follow, and what you're playing right now — also asks to be able to take actions on your behalf including change who you follow, add or remove songs from your library, create/edit/follow playlists, and even control Spotify on your devices) about listeners when they "pre-save" upcoming song releases.
• New research finds Google's Safe Browsing technology, which scans URLs to alert users of dangerous websites, to be inconsistently applied on its Chrome desktop browser versus its mobile browser; URLs that were being flagged as 'deceptive sites' when opened through the Google Chrome desktop browser were not identified as malicious on the Chrome mobile app.
• Google's video chat service Duo lets you send self-destructing photos to contacts that expires after 24 hours; officially begins rolling out location history auto-delete tool, which lets users pick either 3 or 18 months of data retention.
• Google makes live developer documentation website for Fuschia, its ongoing open-source hybrid operating system for mobile, tablet, and laptop devices; said to be working to replace NFC based Android Beam sharing with new Fast Share that leverages Nearby service in Google Play Services and makes it easy for Android device owners to share files with one another à la AirDrop in iOS/macOS.
• Google adds new alerts in Google Maps that lets users know when the cab they are in goes off-course by more than 500 metres; rolls out machine learning based live traffic delays for buses and predictions of transit crowdedness in nearly 200 cities globally for Google Maps on iOS and Android, weeks after bringing the feature to India.
• Brave partners with Yubico to bring YubiKey hardware authentication key support for Brave browser for iOS; leverages Apple's Lightning connector to allow the key to be plugged into iPhone/iPad to authenticate sign in to third-party websites.

The new Raspberry Pi 4 (Image: Raspberry Pi)

• Microsoft's Bill Gates acknowledges missing the mobile boat; says his "greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is."
• India tops smartphone data usage worldwide with an average monthly mobile data usage per smartphone with 9.8GB per user.
• OpenID Foundation pens a letter to Apple; says the current set of differences between OpenID Connect and Sign In with Apple reduces the places where users can use Sign In with Apple and exposes them to greater security and privacy risks.
• Microsoft reportedly working on dual-screen Surface tablet named Centaurus that will run Android apps alongside Universal Windows Platform apps; unveils OneDrive Personal Vault, which protects sensitive folders with two-factor authentication and is expected by year end, and ups OneDrive's US$ 1.99/mo plan from 50GB to 100GB.
• Apple confirms it has acquired autonomous driving startup Drive.ai, hiring dozens of its engineers and taking over its autonomous cars as its self-driving tech ambitions slowly take shape; Uber acquires Seattle-based Mighty AI, which helps train computer vision models, to strengthen its self-driving car unit.
• Instagram product chief Adam Mosseri says the company is not eavesdropping on its customers' conversations offline — via microphones — to target them with ads; to begin putting photo and video ads in Explore feed — ads to not appear in the Explore grid itself, but they'll appear once a user taps on an Explore post and begins scrolling through that discovery feed.
• Google-owned YouTube adds new features that helps users fine-tune their browsing experience on the platform; rolls out topics and related videos on its homepage and under its "Up Next" tab, adds ability to remove suggestions from channels users don't want to watch, and provides more information about why certain videos were recommended to them.
• Co-working space provider WeWork acquires Waltz, a building access and security management startup that lets users access different spaces with a single credential, for an undisclosed amount; follows its acquisitions of Teem, Managed by Q (both office management platforms), and spatial analytics startup Euclid that allows companies to analyse the use of workspaces by their employees and participation at meetings and other events.
• Chinese media giant ByteDance spent ~US$ 1 billion advertising TikTok in 2018, heavily promoting its short video app on Facebook and Instagram, and becoming Snap's biggest advertiser, reports The Wall Street Journal.
• Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy celebrate their 12th (June 29, 2007) and 10th (June 29, 2009) birthdays, phones that were largely responsible for heralding a new era of smartphone technologies.
• Mozilla plans to include a random password generator in Firefox browser; previews an entirely reworked version of Firefox for Android based on GeckoView rendering engine with faster performance and default tracking protection features.
• Alphabet to merge its cybersecurity subsidiary Chronicle into Google Cloud later this year; comes following the division's acquisition of data analytics platform Looker, as the internet giant continues to streamline its product lineup.
• Apple's music streaming service Apple Music surpasses 60 million paying subscribers, two months after hitting 50 million mark in April.
• Retail giant Amazon launches a new service in the US called Counter, a free in-store pick-up service where Amazon shoppers can arrange to collect packages from over 100 Rite Aid drug stores across the country.
• Facebook-owned WhatsApp begins testing new feature that allows users to share their Status (aka Stories) on Facebook and other apps; says it's not linking users' accounts on the two services, but that it is making use of Android and iOS data-sharing APIs to transfer the data between apps.
• Snap Inc.'s Friendship Report finds that people's average social circle consists of 4.3 best friends, 7.2 good friends, and 20.4 acquaintances; says "Honesty" and "authenticity" are the most important qualities of a best friend.
• Twitter begins testing an easier way to access lists by just swiping directly from the home screen; trials a redesign of desktop web interface with trends on the right and navigation pane on the left.
• Microsoft-owned professional social network LinkedIn says it will change its algorithm to favour posts that cater to niche professional interests as opposed to elevating viral content.