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Weekly Tech Recap - № 244 - Surface Duo SDK, Cruise Origin, Google Envelope, Office365 ProPlus, etc.

January 24, 2020.

Surface Duo SDK

Surface Duo.

Surface Duo. © Microsoft.

Last October, Microsoft surprised the world with its dual-screen folding phone, the Surface Duo, which runs on… Android! Today, Microsoft announced the availability of a preview SDK for this device (Surface Duo SDK Preview Release), along with documentation and examples. The SDK requires Android Studio and Android Emulator, the latter of which simulates the functioning of a Surface Duo on-screen. It includes Native Java APIs, for example the Hinge Angle Sensor, which gives the angle of the hinge between the two screens of the Surface Duo. Microsoft says that more functionalities will be added over time. If you’d like to see how the Surface Duo software will work in real life, Zac Bowden has posted videos of the emulator on Twitter. Microsoft has also announced the upcoming launch of a Windows SDK to develop applications optimized for the Surface Neo, a folding, dual-screen tablet that will work with Windows 10X and that should be available by the end of the year.

Windows Developer Blog, Kevin Gallo, “Announcing dual-screen preview SDKs and Microsoft 365 Developer Day.”

 

Cruise Origin, the original driverless taxi

Cruise Origin.

Origin. © Cruise LLC.

Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors specializing in autonomous vehicles, unveiled Origin, its first car to function without human intervention. The electric vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or even a dashboard was designed with space and comfort in mind, unlike other autonomous vehicles, which are adaptations of traditional cars, like Waymo’s cars based on Toyota Priuses, Lexus SUVs and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans. Cruise says that their vehicle, developed in partnership with Honda, will be launched as a driverless taxi service. Though they were unable to say when this might be, they did insist that the Origin is a production-ready vehicle and not a mere prototype. Just don’t expect to see the Origin on your street anytime soon, since driverless cars do not meet the US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which set out requirements for motor vehicle design, construction, performance and durability. For now, the Origin will be used in private, closed spaces like GM’s plant grounds in Michigan. The car build has submitted an application to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in order to obtain an exemption from specific FMVSS regulations, which would allow it to operate the Origin in public spaces.

YouTube, “Meet the Cruise Origin.”

YouTube, “Exclusive look at Cruise’s first fully driverless car.”

The Verge, Andrew J. Hawkins, “Exclusive look at Cruise’s first driverless car without a steering wheel or pedals.”

Mashable, Sasha Lekach, “Cruise Origin reimagines the driverless car as a spacious box made for ride-sharing.”

 

Envelope delivers a digital detox

Google Envelope.

Google Envelope.

Google Envelope. © Special Projects.

Sometimes, you have to unplug to get back to the basics, to focus on a task or simply to get back in touch with your surroundings. Unfortunately, we are all chained to our smartphones, which are so clever at monopolizing our attention, keeping us reachable night and day, and generally enslaving us. But there is hope: Google Creative Lab has devised an ingenious way for us to get a “digital detox”, designing a paper envelope that wraps around your telephone, allowing only its basic function to work (in case you didn’t know, it’s making and receiving calls). So 20th century! “The idea is to try and last as long as possible before opening the envelope and getting your old phone back”, says the designing team in the video below. Interested? For the moment, Envelope only works with the Pixel 3 A. You’ll need to download the app on Play Store (source code available on GitHub), then print out the PDF envelope and follow the instructions for assembly. Now, with some simple and minimalistic cutting and pasting, you can turn your smartphone into a dumbphone, and (re)discover the world around you.

YouTube, “Envelope - temporarily transform your phone into a simpler, calmer device.”

Experiments with Google, “Envelope.”

The Verge, Jay Peters, “Google designed an envelope you can use to hide your phone from yourself.”

 

Microsoft forces Bing into Chrome

Opt Out.

© iStock.

Microsoft announced today that future Office365 Pro Plus installs and updates will include a Chrome extension that forcibly changes the default search engine to Microsoft’s own search engine, Bing. Yes, you read that right. What’s more, it will do so without warning. Sysadmins can’t wait! If your default search engine is already Bing, Office365 will not install the extension. This new “feature” will only take effect in certain countries at first: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, United Kingdom and United States. Why this change? The cynics are saying that Microsoft has so much money that they wouldn’t mind paying the prestigious amount of 611 million dollars that the Redmond giant was fined by the European Union for “abuse of dominant position”, or even beating Google’s record-breaking fine of 1.5 billion dollars for “abusive practices”. Microsoft’s actual stated reasoning for the change is to automatically enable Microsoft Search within the user’s browser. This adds Microsoft Search results to standard Internet search results when a user types a string into the browser’s address bar—meaning the search results will be populated by hits from internal documents, emails, Teams conversations, and more. The wisdom of schooling users to search for internal, likely confidential data in their Web browser’s general-purpose search bar is questionable.

Ars Technica, Jim Salter, “Microsoft’s sneaky plan to switch Chrome searches from Google to Bing.”

 

Plastic-to-palm

Palm print recognition.

© iStock.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is considering equipping its bricks-and-mortar stores (Amazon Go, Amazon Books, Amazon 4-star, Whole Foods) with a system to let customer pay for purchases by scanning their palms. Last December, the US Patent and Trademark Office publicly disclosed a patent application from Amazon for a “biometric identification system” including a hand scanner that can read characteristics such as veins, bones or soft tissue. It seems that the vein network in people’s palms is as distinctive as fingerprints, and as accurate for identification purposes. In this case, vein network detection is done through near-infrared scanning, a technology that is contactless, i.e. more hygienic than fingerprint scanning. That said, biometric data are getting bad press these days, and many people will not be too keen on linking up their biometric data to their bank data, and storing it all on Amazon’s cloud.

GeekWire, Nat Levy, “Here’s how Amazon’s rumored pay-by-hand tech could work.”