This week, the Warren campaign goes open source, NASA unveils a new mission to the Sun, Microsoft and Spotify have product updates, T-Mobile closes merger with Sprint and, the iPad is 10 years old. Like every week there’s more in the Other News section and the Interesting Things of the Week.
Warren Campaign
(This should have been in last weeks post because it was actually released that Friday but it only made the news on Sunday)
Late Su.nday night it hit the news rhat Elezableth Warren’s campaign is open sourcing all their campaign software. Late Su.nday night it hit the news that Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is open sourcing all their campaign software. Open Source means that its all publically accessible and also anyone can get access to the source code for use and modification for free. Here’s the Campaign’s original Medium Post.
Some of those tools are:
- Spoke — Spoke is a peer-to-peer texting platform
- Polaris — A polling location lookup tool
- Caucus App — An app used to manage Caucus events and calculate delegate numbers
NASA’s next mission to the Sun
In a press release on Monday, NASA selected the SunRISE mission which will “study how the Sun generates and releases giant space weather storms” NASA press release. The mission will consist of six CubeSats each 6U in size. The 6 CubeSats will map the storms and how they interact with interplanetary space. They are set to launch no earlier than July 1, 2023.
Apple Acquisitions
This week Apple acquired multiple companies, Voysis and DarkSky. Voysis is an AI startup that specializes in natural language processing. It’s thought that this acquisition will go toward improving Siri. DarkSKy is a well-known weather app that uses multiple sources and AI to generate hyperlocal forecasts. Apple hasn’t commented on the acquisition but it is thought that DarkSky’s tech will be rolled into IOS at some point. They also announced that it will be removed from the Play Store on July 1st and their API will be discontinued at the end of 2021.
Product Announcments
Microsoft 365 for Conusmers
On Monday, Microsoft put out a press release announcing Microsoft 365 Persomal and 365 Family. The Personal plan costs $6.99 includes the Office suite including Outlook (50GB of email), comes with 1TB of OneDrive storage. The plan also includes Skype call recording and 60 international Skype minutes. It also includes the new Microsoft Teams for Consumers
The Family plan includes all of that and some extra family sharing features. It also has some family saftey features that work on Windows, Xbox and, Android.
Spotify
On Tuesday, Spotify announced that the Spotify Kids app launched in Canada, the US and, France. The app launched in beta last year in parts of Europe, parts of South America, Mexico and, Australia. It has lots of kid approprote playlists, will also include whitenoise for bedtime and bedtime stories and, educational content. The app is part of the Spotify family plan.
T-Mobile
On Wendsday, T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint closed. T-Mobile claims that the merger improves their network by 14x. Also John Legere is stepping down as CEO as of April 30th, former COO Mike Sievert will replace him.
Zoom
This week Zoom has been in the news a lot. But its not as serious as you might think. They’ve already patched some of them and lots of those issues are correctable when you set up a meeting.. In a company blog post the CEO appogized and committed to a 90-day feature freeze to allow them time to fix all the security issues. My impression of the situation is that it came from the Silicon Valley ‘move fast and break things’ model.
10 Years Of iPad
On Friday, the iPad celebrated it’s 10th anniversry. I got my first iPad about 8 years ago to use for school since then the iPad has changed a lot. I’m might eventually write a full article on the development of the iPad.
Interesting Things Of The Week
- 1:1 Scale Earth in Minecraft
- Never Buy hardware today for software tomorrow
Other News
Also this week,
- HQ Trivia is Back
- the Pixel 3 is indefintely out of stock on the Google Store
- Microsoft News Bar
- OnePlus hardware event on April 14
- Slack csn now intigrate with Microsoft Teams
- Facebook Messenger app now on Mac & PC
- Disney+ to stop cropping old episodes of The Simpsons
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