Daily Tech News and Updates: June 2019

Sunday, 30 June 2019

Factbox: Inside Loon's internet balloon venture

Alphabet Inc through Google and other subsidiaries has invested heavily over the last decade to make high-speed internet accessible to billions more people.

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iOS 13: beta, release date and feature list

Australia's best cheap headphones, discounts and deals in July 2019

With headphones of all types, colours and styles flooding the market, it’s hard knowing which ones to pick – do you go for the premium model you’ve always wanted, or are you better off just grabbing a cheap set from the discount bin?

Well, it’s worth remembering that cheap headphones are cheap for a reason, so even if saving money is priority we can’t recommend those $2 discount-bin variety that you find all over the world. And, as you’ll find out below, you don’t always have spend a lot of dosh to snag a great set of headphones either.

To save you the time and effort, we’ve put together this dedicated guide to the best bargains on great-sounding headphone. We constantly monitor major Aussie retailers and go a-huntin’ to bring you the most worthwhile deals on a variety of sets – from in-ear buds to noise-cancelling cans to Sony headphones – so check out our continually updated list below to discover the best current headphones deals in Australia.

Best cheap over-ear headphones this week

Best cheap in-ear headphones this week

The best deals on our favourite headphones

To help you decide which headphones work best for you, we've decided to put together a little buying guide with a list of our favourite recommendations.

The headphones you'll find here have tons of features to help you to get the most out of your music, or any other form of audio-visual entertainment you prefer, however you like to listen to it.

For the most part, when shopping for noise cancellation headphones we've gotten used to making a compromise between shutting the world out and wanting great sound performance. But no longer. Sony's WH-1000XM2 cans are a great redesign of the already-excellent MDR-1000X and offer not just perfect noise cancellation but also score top marks in sound quality. These headphones easily outclass Bose's flagship QC35 II in terms of both soundscape and feature set.

Read more: Sony WH-1000XM2 review

The very popular and excellent Bose QC35s underwent an upgrade and now come with Google Assistant at your beck and call. For a premium price, not only do you get Bose's world class noise cancellation and good sound quality, you also get a personal butler and an incredibly comfortable set of cans. And with up to 40 hours of battery life, you'll get through any long-haul flight.

Read more: Bose QuietComfort 35 II review

For a little over $100, it's hard to recommend a better sounding pair of 'buds than the 1More Triple Driver in-ears. It's hard to fault the headphones, if you can put up with the rubber cable and the plastic remote. Even that is just us nitpicking. For the price, it's our top recommendation of in-ear headphones if your phone still has a headphone jack or you don't mind using an adaptor.

If you're a frequent flyer, or commute long distances daily, you'll understand the need for a great pair of noise cancelling headphones. Unfortunately, most of them cost a pretty penny. But not the Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2. These headphones offer not just good sound and shut the world out, but do it at pretty much half the cost of the usual suspects of Sony, Bose and Beats. They also have a useful feature that turns the headphones off when you're not wearing them, saving battery. And did we mention you can pair two devices at once as well? If that isn't great value, then we don't know what else is.

Read more: Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2 review

With headphone jacks fast disappearing from flagship handsets, wireless headphones is the way to go. But not everyone likes the feel of a set of cans on their head and cables, no matter how small, can get annoying. If that's describing you, then true wireless 'buds are the answer to your prayers. While most of them compromise on sound quality, the Jabra Elite 65t not only sound good but offer ambient noise isolation as well. They're an excellent substitute if you aren't too keen on the other-worldly look of Apple's AirPods.

Read more: Jabra Elite 65t review

It's hard to find the Optoma NuForce BE Sport4 wireless 'buds, but if you're after a set of no-frills headphones that don't compromise on sound quality, you'll want to look for these. They do an excellent job of isolating sound when in a noisy environment and boast up to 10 hours of battery. And with a 15-minute quick charge, you'll get an additional two hours of playback out of them.

Read more: Optoma NuForce BE Sport4 review

If you're after more information on headphones in different form factors, take a look at some of our other dedicated audio articles:

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China’s BOE to Mass Produce LCD Screens With Fingerprint Sensor

China-based BOE Technology Group has successfully made an in-display optical fingerprint sensing solution for LCD screen.

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Vulgar Videos Made on Chinese Social Media Apps Make Their Way to WhatsApp

The titillating videos made on Chinese social media apps have now found a bigger mobile-based messaging medium to corrupt young minds: Facebook-owned WhatsApp.

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Mobile users can now switch providers with one simple text

Phone customers will be able to switch providers with a single free text under new rules.

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Avengers: Endgame rerelease earns $7.8M, not enough to dethrone Avatar - CNET

Although a $2.76 billion box office isn't anything to complain about.

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Japan will restrict the export of some materials used in smartphones and chips to South Korea

Japan’s trade ministry said today that it will restrict the export of some tech materials to South Korea, including polyimides used in flexible displays made by companies like Samsung Electronics. The new rules come as the two countries argue over compensation for South Koreans forced to work in Japanese factories during World War II.

The list of restricted supplies, expected to go into effect on July 4, includes polyimides used in smartphone and flexible organic LED displays, and etching gas and resist used to make semiconductors. That means Japanese suppliers who wish to sell those materials to South Korean tech companies such as Samsung, LG and SK Hynix will need to submit each contract for approval.

Japan’s government may also remove South Korea from its list of countries that have fewer restrictions on trading technology that might have national security implications, reports Nikkei Asian Review.

Earlier this year, South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled several Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, that had used forced labor during World War II must pay compensation and began seizing assets for liquidation. But Japan’s government claims the issue was settled in 1965 as part of a treaty that restored basic diplomatic relations between the two countries and is asking South Korea to put the matter before an international arbitration panel instead.

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Facebook civil rights audit says white supremacy policy is ‘too narrow’

Facebook’s second progress report pertaining to the civil rights audit conducted by former ACLU Washington Director Laura Murphy is here. Over the last six months, Facebook has made changes around enforcing against hate, fighting discrimination in ads and protecting against misinformation and suppression in the upcoming U.S. presidential election and 2020 Census, according to the progress report.

While Facebook has made changes in some of these areas — Facebook banned white supremacy in March — auditors say Facebook’s policy is still “too narrow.” That’s because it solely prohibits explicit praise, support or representation of the terms “white nationalism” or “white separatism,” but does not technically prohibit references to those terms and ideologies.

“The narrow scope of the policy leaves up content that expressly espouses white nationalist ideology without using the term ‘white nationalist,'” the report states. “As a result, content that would cause the same harm is permitted to remain on the platform.”

Therefore, the audit team recommends Facebook expand its policy to prohibit content that “expressly praises, supports, or represents white nationalist ideology” even if the content does not explicitly use the terms “white nationalism” or “white separatism.”

In Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s note today, she acknowledges the recommendation.

“We’re addressing this by identifying hate slogans and symbols connected to white nationalism and white separatism to better enforce our policy,” she wrote.

Sandberg also noted how Facebook recently updated its policies to ensure people don’t use Facebook to organize events intended to intimidate or harass people.

“Getting our policies right is just one part of the solution,” Sandberg said. “We also need to get better at enforcement — both in taking down and leaving up the right content.”

Sandberg is referring to the fact that Facebook has sometimes wrongfully taken down content meant to draw attention to racism and discrimination.

Facebook temporarily banned a social justice activist for commenting on racism

As Murphy noted in her report, “the definition and policing of hate speech and harassment on the platform has long been an area of concern. The civil rights community also claims that a lack of civil rights expertise informing content decisions leads to vastly different outcomes for users from marginalized communities.”

Facebook now says it’s taking steps to address this. One step, Sandberg says, is to have some content reviewers focus just on hate speech.

“We believe allowing reviewers to specialize only in hate speech could help them further build the expertise that may lead to increased accuracy over time,” Sandberg wrote.

Additionally, Sandberg has formalized a civil rights task force at Facebook. This task force will live on beyond the audit in order to continue building more awareness around civil rights issues on Facebook.

And ahead of the upcoming presidential election, Facebook says it is working on new protections against voter interference and is adding a policy that prohibits “don’t vote” ads. That policy is expected to go into effect before the 2019 gubernatorial election. On the census side, Facebook is working on an interference policy that it expects to launch this fall.

In March of this year, Facebook settled with the ACLU and others pertaining to discriminatory job ads. Just days later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Facebook was in violation of the Fair Housing Act through its ad-targeting tools. This case is still pending.

In the meantime, Facebook has since begun working on a new system so that advertisers running US housing, employment and credit ads will no longer be able to target by age, gender, race, religion or zip code.

When this system launches, there will be a limited number of options by which to target. Additionally, Facebook won’t make any new terms available without first running it by the ACLU and the other plaintiffs from the March 2019 settlement.

In order to implement this new system, Facebook will ask advertisers to explicitly note if the ad involves housing, employment or credit opportunities. If it does, advertisers will be directed to the new system. Facebook is also putting tools in place to identify ads that advertisers failed to flag.

Additionally, Facebook is working on a tool that will let users search active housing ads by the advertiser and by location, whether or not they are in the target audience. This is expected to be available by the end of this year. Down the road, Facebook plans to make similar tools available for employment and credit opportunities.

“Given how critical access to housing, employment and credit opportunities are, this could have a significant impact on people’s lives,” Murphy wrote in her progress report.

This audit began in May 2018 following one scandal after the other pertaining to misinformation, and Facebook’s policies and people of color on its platform. The first six months entailed Murphy conducting interviews with civil rights organizations to determine their concerns. This last six months largely focused on content moderation and enforcement. The civil rights audit is far from over, and Facebook says we can expect to see the next update early next year.

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South Korean trade official says Japan's export curbs violate WTO rules

Japan's decision to tighten curbs on tech material exports to South Korea violates World Trade Organization rules and Seoul would respond firmly, a senior official at South Korea's trade ministry said on Monday.

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Aussies can get Audible and Kindle Unlimited free for three months

Amazon Prime Day isn’t too far away and, in the lead up to the big sale, the e-commerce giant is offering Australian Prime members a chance to experience some of its other services for free.

If you are an existing Prime member but have never tried Audible or Kindle Unlimited before, you can sign up for either one or both services between July 1 and July 31 and you can enjoy a three-month long free trial period for each service.

Now, presumably this means that those who haven't trialled Amazon Prime before can sign up for a free 30-day trial (making use of it during Amazon Prime Day while you're at it), and then sign up for both the Audible and Kindle Unlimited offers as well.

So many stories…

Audible and Kindle Unlimited are for booklovers. If you love to read, then Kindle Unlimited will give you access to over a million ebooks. If any of those ebooks have an audio version available on Audible, you’ll even be able to listen to the narration if you don’t have the time to read. To use Kindle Unlimited, you will need the Kindle app on your handheld device or get yourself an Amazon Kindle e-reader.

For booklovers who are constantly on the move, Audible is a great option. It’s the largest library of audiobooks and members can choose one audiobook each month regardless of price. Purchasing additional audiobooks won’t cost more than $14.95 each, and you can swap them out any time.

If you aren’t a Prime member already, now is the perfect time for you to sign up and take advantage of not just the three-month free trial of Audible and Kindle Unlimited, but also save a packet on a variety of goods during this year’s Prime Day.

To sign up for any of the services, just click on the green button.

Amazon Prime Day date confirmed for Australia – it's set to be a 65-hour epic sale!

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Android's new Fast Share is Google's answer to Apple AirDrop

Pokemon Sword and Shield's producer attempts to calm outraged fans - CNET

The new Pokemon games won't include every Pokemon ever. This has some fans upset.

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Social media: Church of England unveils online guidelines

Social media has "downsides" but also helps to "share the good news of Jesus Christ", the Church says.

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Japan to tighten curbs on tech material exports to South Korea amid wartime labor row

Japan will tighten restrictions on exports of high-tech materials used in smartphone displays and chips to South Korea in response to a South Korean ruling on war-time forced labor, the industry ministry said on Monday.

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How to watch NASA's critical safety test of the Orion crew capsule - CNET

The Orion module is set to take astronauts to the moon in 2024 but first needs to pass a test of its emergency abort system.

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Amazon Prime Day in Australia: What to expect during Prime Day 2019

TechLife's August 2019 issue is out now!

Asus 6Z 128GB, 256GB Variants to Go on Sale for First Time Today: Price, Specifications, Launch Offers

Asus 6Z comes with features like a 6.4-inch full-HD+ screen, 5,000mAh battery, a rotating dual camera module, and octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC.

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Japan to tighten export rules for tech materials to South Korea amid wartime labor row

Japan will tighten restrictions on the export of high-tech materials used in smartphone displays and chips to South Korea in connection with a dispute over a South Korean ruling on war-time forced labor, the industry ministry said on Monday.

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Neil Gaiman's Sandman series may have a home at Netflix - CNET

The tale of Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire and Delirium could be streaming soon.

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Ducati racer Carlin Dunne dead following Pikes Peak Hill Climb crash - Roadshow

The 36-year-old rider died less than a quarter mile from the finish line at the mountain's summit.

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Women's World Cup 2019: A game-changing tournament for female footballers - CNET

Commentary: The 2019 Women's World Cup is already living up to expectations. But life as a "pro" is far from smooth sailing.

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Oppo pushes mobile photography to new extremes with Reno 10x Zoom

Recent years have seen mobile photography pushed to new extremes. While mobile phones have all but replaced standard point and shoot cameras, they are now aiming at higher-end cameras with features such as bokeh effect, low-light photography and higher optical zoom ranges.

Oppo was the first mobile phone manufacturer to showcase prism-based camera technology, that allowed for much larger optical zooming than the 2x zoom found on most phones. The Oppo Reno 10X Zoom features a hybrid zooming mechanism that get you a 10x lossless zoom. If you really want to stretch it out, it can go as high as 60X digital zoom which is unheard of in a smartphone.

The Oppo Reno 10X Zoom is a flagship phone with top specs, such as the latest Snapdragon 855 processor with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It looks gorgeous with a full screen design on the front and Oppo’s ingenious shark-fin slider that hides the front facing camera. The phone is absolutely gorgeous and feels very premium in your hands. We especially recommend the Ocean Green color if you want to stand out.

One of our favorite features is the O-dot placed below the camera, that helps prevent the camera lenses from getting scratched. It’s a tiny design detail that not only looks good but serves a much needed function.

Let’s come back to the camera system consisting of a 48MP Sony sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide sensor, and a 13MP telephoto lens. This setup allows the Oppo Reno 10X zoom to take highly detailed pictures in daytime, naturally lit pictures at night, and very creative shots using the wide-angle lens or the very impressive zoom range.

While the camera is the highlighting feature, the Oppo Reno 10X Zoom is a flagship product from every other angle as well. It’s a phone that truly pushes the boundaries of what mobile phones are capable of.

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Spotify, Apple Music and the rest are secretly fixing your mainstream taste in tunes - CNET

Music's new era of streaming is catalyzing independent artists and indie music companies -- and giving you even more choices.

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Mitsubishi might bring back the Lancer Evolution, report says - Roadshow

Mitsubishi hasn't exactly been faithful to its performance roots of late.

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iPhone XR vs. Galaxy S10E: Camera comparison - CNET

At $750, both phones are cheaper than their flagship cousins. But which of the two takes better photos and videos?

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HTC sees mixed reality as the next “disruptive technology” after smartphones

HTC expects mixed reality, the combination of virtual reality and augmented reality, to become the next “disruptive technology.”

“There are some technical hurdles now such as resolution and tracking the ability to move forward but we want to overcome that. Vive Reality is the ability for us to switch between real life, mixed reality and full virtual reality,” Graham Wheeler, president for HTC Europe, Middle East and Africa, told TechRadar Middle East after announcing the winners of the “VR & Beyond” competition held in collaboration with Burj Khalifa, HTC Vive and Dubai Future Accelerators.

The competition, themed around the Burj Khalifa, was initiated in November 2018 and received 115 virtual reality submissions globally. The winner – Game Cooks from the US - and runner-up estudiofuture from Spain, were honoured on Thursday.

With 5G and artificial intelligence coming into the picture, Wheeler said that the Vive Reality experience is going to change dramatically. “It is not because of the speed of 5G but because of the latency. We use machine learning in some of the development techniques, which I cannot elaborate on now, but the combination of 5G and AI will put VR as the next entertainment medium,” he said.

Moreover, he said that HTC’s to-be-launched premium PC VR headset Cosmos, has a halo design and has taken some of the feedback “we learned from our previous headsets”. “We believe that Cosmos is an exciting step in VR and opens it up to new audiences,” he said but did not reveal more details about the headset. According to HTC’s website, Cosmos has an LCD display with a resolution of 2,880 x 1,700 pixels, an increase of 88% over the original Vive, and 40% better lens clarity over the original model.

Foreseeing the future of VR

Wheeler said that the VR market is growing at a rapid rate. “The growth curve is brilliant for us and nothing is a success overnight. With governments, venture capitals and companies coming to the forefront of investing in the content, the market has a bright future down the lane,” he said.

HTC’s Viveport has more than 3,000 apps, with more local content developers set to be added in. Wheeler noted that many companies are turning to VR to drive education, training, design and retail sales.

According to research firm International Data Corporation, worldwide spending on augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) is forecast to reach $160 billion in 2023, up from the $16.8 billion in 2019. The research firm said that the worldwide shipments of AR/VR headsets are forecasted to reach 8.9 million units in 2019.

By 2023, virtual reality headsets are expected to reach 36.7 million units while the AR headset market forecast to reach 31.9 million units in 2023.

Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobile Device Trackers, said that new headsets from brands such as Oculus, HTC, Microsoft and others will help fuel the growth in 2019 and beyond.

However, he said that it's not only the new headsets that will drive the AR/VR market forward but also the latest chipsets from Qualcomm.

These are the best VR games you can play right now

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Cozycozy is an accommodation search service that works with hotels and Airbnb

French startup Cozycozy.com wants to make it easier to search for accommodation across a wide range of services. This isn’t the first aggregator in the space and probably not the last one. But this time, it isn’t just about hotels.

When you plan a trip with multiple stops, chances are you end up with a dozen tabs of different services — on Airbnb to look at listings, on a hotel review platform and on a hotel booking platform. Each service displays different prices and has a different inventory.

While there are a ton of services out there, most of them belong to just three companies: Booking Holdings (Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak, Agoda…), Expedia Group (Expedia, Hotels.com, HomeAway, Trivago…) and TripAdvisor (TripAdvisor, HouseTrip, Oyster…). They all operate many different services in order to address as many markets and as many segments as possible.

Cozycozy.com wants to simplify that process by aggregating a ton of services in a single interface — you can find hotels, Airbnb listings, campsites, hostels, boats, home-exchanging apartments… You can filter your results by price or you can exclude some accommodation styles.

The company doesn’t work with hotels and doesn’t handle bookings directly. Instead, the service searches across all the usual suspects. When you want to book, you get redirected to the original listing on Airbnb, Booking.com, Hostelworld, etc.

The startup recently raised a $4.5 million funding round (€4 million) from Daphni, CapDecisif, Raise and many different business angels, such as Xavier Niel, Thibaud Elzière and Eduardo Ronzano.

Cozycozy.com co-founder and chairman Pierre Bonelli also previously founded Liligo.com. It is one of the most popular flight comparison website in France. It was acquired by SNCF in 2010 and then eDreams ODIGEO in 2013.

cozycozy com page de resultats

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Week-in-Review: Auditing a dark age in Apple design

Hello, weekend readers. This is Week-in-Review where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged on TechCrunch this week to surface my favorites for your reading pleasure.

Last week, I talked about how YouTube was letting its commenting system turn from a festering wasted opportunity into a liability.

Screen Shot 2019 06 28 at 8.37.42 PM

The big story

Plenty happened this week, though most of the news signified something larger looming on the horizon, more on that in a bit.

One undoubtedly meaty news item was that Jony Ive, Apple’s most iconic executive persona, announced that he was leaving the company this year.

Ive has undoubtedly been a powerhouse of industrial design who has helped craft some of the most iconic products from one of the most influential tech companies. The issue is perhaps what Apple’s vision of industrial design transformed into in his final years at the helm.

Jony Ive is leaving Apple to launch a new firm

Ive shifted away from managerial roles in 2015, but the Chief Design Officer’s influence has been evident it the past several years of very beautiful devices designed around the occasional flawed hypothesis.

Poor design is more than the oft-memed Apple Pencil jutting out of an iPad lightning port or the Mighty Mouse with a charger piercing its underbelly. The company’s aesthetic choices in how they curve their screens or shape their aluminum have stayed true but you don’t have to look too far to find a pattern of carelessness in a number of Apple’s device which occasionally have prioritized svelte profiles over actually even working.

Ive is design genius, but like all people we elevate with that title, he and his design ethos grew further disassociated with the public over time. All designers miss the mark occasionally, but an obsession with minimalism pushed the company in some troublesome directions that the company is only now coming to reckon with.

Apple’s design degradation is perhaps nowhere more visible than in the ill-fated AirPower. The device, which designed to charge your iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch simultaneously, was beautiful, but Apple’s aggressive design left physics in the rearview mirror. Ambition is one thing but letting function drive form to the point that you publicly announce a product that wasn’t physically possible showcases where Apple’s marketing showmanship butt heads with actual device capabilities. Apple abruptly cancelled AirPower this year, more than a year after its expected release.

If AirPower was a pithy signifier, the degradation of the company’s Mac line has been Apple’s abasement opus.

The problematic keyboards, the useless TouchBar and the shrinking number of ports on its laptops have defined the past five years of the company’s laptop line. There isn’t much that needs to be said about the anti-consumer design decisions that took Apple’s best generation of the MacBook Pro in the 2011/2012 era and cursed it with an unneeded rethinking.

The about-face that the company took on its Mac Pro line shows just how misguided its thinking was and how Ive and company let innovative design poison the good will it had built up with customers. The company’s 2019 line is a total rejection of the 2013 trash can which showcased some major design hubris.

These missteps don’t fundamentally complicate the legacy of Ive or Apple. The past decade has also seen thoughtful designs take shape from the Apple Watch to the iPhone X to the iPad Pro, but industrial design is a means to an end and the manner in which Apple has determined where the customer fits into its design ethos could perhaps use some rethinking as the company enters a new design era.

Send me feedback
on Twitter @lucasmtny or email
lucas@techcrunch.com

On to the rest of the week’s news.

space starship 4

Trends of the week

Here are a few big news items from big companies, with green links to all the sweet, sweet added context.

SpaceX preps for a Starship payday
Elon Musk is still trying to get SpaceX’s Starship off the ground, but the company’s leadership is already planning for the reusable rocket’s commercial heyday. Read more about the aggressive timeline here.
SF throws Juul the bird
San Francisco doesn’t always operate on the right side of interacting with new technologies and startups, but the city government took final steps to be the first city to ban sales of electronic cigarettes, taking aim at Juul, which seems to be one of the more morally bankrupt SF startups out there. Read more on the ban here.
Reddit takes steps to isolate r/The_Donald
Reddit has had a tough time growing up over the past several years, part of that has been a handful of problem communities on the site. This week, Reddit took the unique step of quarantining r/The_Donald after threats against public officials and members of the police. Read more about the quarantine here.
Tesla’s cell jealousy
Tesla electric vehicles are awfully reliant on Panasonic’s battery cells and the company is investigating how it can reduce that dependency, though the company’s significant demands suggest that even if they succeed in the aggressive move, it would take an awful long time to scale to meet their needs. Read more on the report here.

GAFA Gaffes

How did the top tech companies screw up this week? This clearly needs its own section, in order of badness:

Facebook’s head of spin makes a push:
[Facebook makes another push to shape and define its own oversight]
FB isn’t sure what to do:
[Facebook’s content oversight board plan is raising more questions than it answers]

Extra Crunch

Our premium subscription service had another week of interesting deep dives. We had a story that should be interesting to a lot of younger founders that are scaling their entrepreneurial ambitions while they’re still in classes.

How to scale a startup in school

“…Once you have a job in an industry you want to be in, network like your life depends on it. Get to know the talented people around you and try to help them as much as you can…”

Here are some of our other top reads this week for premium subscribers. This week, we talked a bit about the future of marketplaces and you should think about naming your startup.

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