Less than 24 hours after Jack Dorsey quit as CEO of Twitter, Square, where he is also CEO, has renamed itself to Block. On Twitter, Block said the name "references the neighborhood blocks where we find our sellers, a blockchain, block parties full of music, obstacles to overcome, a section of code, building blocks, and of course, tungsten cubes". Much like how Facebook renamed itself Meta, all the businesses Square operates (Square, Tidal, CashApp, TBD54566975 and soon to be AfterPay) are now under the Block umbrella.
Qualcomm's got a brand new flagship SoC - the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. It'll be manufactured by Samsung with their fancy "4nm" process, new GPU, 7x CPU cores of various performance, a faster 5G modem (10,000 Mbps support, lol) and a fat 18-bit image signal processor. According to Qualcomm the 18-bit ISP will allow for "three exposure HDR stacking", an "increase of 4 stops in dynamic range" and "5x better night mode shots". In terms of raw power however, Apple's latest SoC is still faster than Qualcomm's still un-released SoC, that's how wide the gap is between them. Should start appearing in smartphones "by the end of 2021".
The Productivity Commission's latest Right to Repair report has suggested that Australia "trial a product labelling scheme within five years for products such as white goods or consumer electronics where people can see information on repairability and the durability of a product". It also recommended "warranty regulations be amended to state that right to remedies under consumer law do not require consumers to have previously used authorised repair services or repair parts", "requiring manufacturers to provide software updates for reasonable periods" and "governments find alternative dispute resolution processes for people with repair issues, to avoid matters ending up in the courts". All good ideas, let's see if any government has the intestinal fortitude to do implement any of it.
📻 I Ran (So Far Away) - A Flock Of Seagulls
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