Google’s subsidiary DeepMind Health is restructuring and becoming part of the company. Now that its new app Streams is a Google product, people are concerned that Google will start linking patient health data to their respective Google accounts.
Google says the restructure is necessary to allow DeepMind’s flagship health app, Streams, to scale up globally. The app, which was created to help doctors and nurses monitor patients for AKI, a severe form of kidney injury, has since grown to offer a full digital dashboard for patient records.
My first headline idea for this was “Google Spits in the Face of HIPAA.” You could just delete your Google account, but the health data will likely be added to an advertising profile of you instead.
A normal display for a Mac or PC nowadays has an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10. But an ultrawide display has an aspect ratio of 21:9 and sizes can be substantial. And, unlike the failed technology of curved 4K/UHD TV displays, a curved computer monitor is actually useful. And beautiful. Digital Trends has put together an analysis of the five best. The “best ultrawide monitor overall” went to the Samsung CF791 (shown), but there were other categories.
Be careful though, ultrawides are dangerous — once you try one, you’ll be spoiled for all other monitors. Even the sharpest, clearest 16:9 monitor will seem insubstantial and inadequate by comparison.
John Martellaro and Dave Hamilton join host Kelly Guimont to talk about MacTech Conference, Apple throttling iOS devices, and Dave gets new vocabulary.
We have a deal for you on Pagico, a one-stop app that helps turn all of your tasks, notes, and projects into beautiful interactive flowcharts. There’s more info in the deal listing, and you can get this app through us for $19.
B&H is today, Tuesday 13 November, offering massive discounts on MacBook Pros via its DealZone. A Mid 2017, Space Gray 15.4″ MacBook Pro with a 2TB SSD can be purchased for for $2,799, a reduction of $1,420 on the original price. Meanwhile, the 512GB model can be purchased for $2,199 – an $800 saving. The savings are only available until midnight Eastern Time on Tuesday, or while stocks last. Most US states also qualify for free shipping, while UK customers can get shipping from $5.46. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in the market for a new laptop! More details, and other deals are available via the B&H website.
LONDON – UK telecoms provider EE announced that it is bringing super-fast 5G mobile connectivity to 16 UK cities in 2019. The launch will initially take place in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester. It will then be rolled out to Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. While this is undoubtedly good news for UK consumers, ZDNet explains that we should not get too excited yet: “The first 1,500 sites that EE is upgrading to 5G amount to around 7% of its total sites, and cover 15% of the UK population. However, these sites use 25% of all data across the whole network.” Here are some more details on the rollout:
Coverage won’t be total: 5G will be offered in the busiest parts of the six launch cites — including Hyde Park in London, Manchester Arena, Belfast City Airport, the Welsh Assembly, Edinburgh Waverley train station and Birmingham’s Bullring. EE said it will also be offering some 5G services in the busiest parts of ten other UK cities — Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry and Bristol.
Following much speculation and political lobbying, Amazon revealed on Tuesday that it will open its second headquarters in Crystal City in Virginia and New York City. Furthermore, Amazon announced that Nashville will be the base for its new Center of Excellence for its Operations business. The center will be responsible for the company’s customer fulfillment, transportation, supply chain and related tasks. The Washington Post outlined the significance of the decision for the places that the online retail behemoth has selected:
The choice of Crystal City in Arlington County as one of the winners cements Northern Virginia’s reputation as a magnet for business and potentially reshape the Washington region into an eastern outpost of Silicon Valley over the next decade.
Legendary comic book writer Stan Lee passed away yesterday. Apple is featuring a story in the Today section of the App Store called Remembering Stan Lee. Today Apple celebrates Mr. Lee’s legacy with apps and games featuring his iconic crimefighters in all their masked glory. On the app side, we see Marvel Unlimited, Marvel: Color Your Own, comiXology, and Olli by Tinrocket. In the game section we see Marvel Contest of Champions, Marvel Strike Force, Marvel Battle Lines, and Marvel Avengers Academy. Finally, the story notes that Mr. Lee served in the Army during WWI, and two apps in this section include Sandboxx, to send a letter to service members, and Apple Books.
Another Facebook vulnerability has been found that could have exposed information about users and their friends.
The security company Imperva has released new details on a Facebook vulnerability that could have exposed user data. The bug allowed websites to obtain private information about Facebook users and their friends through unauthorized access to a company API, playing off a specific behavior in the Chrome browser. The bug was disclosed to Facebook and resolved in May.
At this point Facebook is a giant dumpster fire. Get out while you still can.
In another BGP hijack, Google traffic was rerouted yesterday through Russia and China. This included Google Cloud, YouTube, and other services.
Specifically, network connectivity to Google was instead routed through TransTelekom in Russia (mskn17ra-lo1.transtelecom.net), and into a China Telecom gateway (ChinaTelecom-gw.transtelecom.net) that black-holed the packets. Both hostnames have since stopped resolving to IP addresses.
Hijack me once, shame on you. Hijack me twice, shame on me.
A new HTTP version is coming, and it will work differently than previous versions. Instead of using TCP, it will use a Google technology called QUIC.
In its continued efforts to make Web networking faster, Google has been working on an experimental network protocol named QUIC: “Quick UDP Internet Connections.” QUIC reinstates the reliability and ordering that TCP has but without introducing the same number of round trips and latency.
For example, if a client is reconnecting to a server, the client can send important encryption data with the very first packet, enabling the server to resurrect the old connection, using the same encryption as previously negotiated, without requiring any additional round trips.
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