What’s new
IBM announced collaboration with JPMorgan Chase, Daimler and Samsung in a Quantum Computing project
JPMorgan Chase, Daimler and Samsung will be among the first group of businesses to gain access to IBM’s new 20 quantum bit (qubit) IBM Q quantum system to help uncover commercial, industrial and scientific quantum computing applications. Other new members of IBM’s Q Network include JSR Corporation, Barclays, Hitachi Metals, Honda, Nagase, Keio University, Oak Ridge National Lab, Oxford University, and University of Melbourne.
You can read more here.
Apple invested $390 million in TrueDepth component maker Finisar
According to Apple’s statement, with this investment Finisar will build a new 700,000 square foot plant in Texas, hire 500 workers, and make more vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). These lasers are a component in Apple’s TrueDepth cameras, now being used in the iPhone X for features including FaceID and Animoji.
More info are available here.
New products
LG V30+
LG V30+ will have a 6-inch Quad HD+ OLED FullVision display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 4GB RAM. It will come with 128GB of internal storage and a dual main camera with 16MP and a 13MP sensors.
More info here.
Honor 9 Lite
The phone will have a 5.65-inch FullView display with Full HD+ resolution and dual cameras on the front and rear. It will come with a 2,900 mAh battery and Kirin 659 processor.
More info here.
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Microsoft launched improved AI-powered search features for Bing
The search update powered by Ai are meant to provide more thorough answers and allow for more conversational or general search queries. The Bing team is also adding relevant analogies or comparisons to search answers that make the provided information easier to understand.
You can read more here.
Google Assistant will be available for older Android phones and tablets
Google has announced Assistant is available on Android tablets running Android 7.0 Nougat and 6.0 Marshmallow, and phones running 5.0 Lollipop. Google said that Android 5.0 Lollipop, which launched way back in 2014, is currently run on nearly 26-percent of Android devices.
More info can be found here.
Fun stuff
A wet string was used to transfer data at 3.5Mbps
An experiment by staff at UK ISP Andrews & Arnold has redefined the meaning of a fibre connection by showing that a piece of wet string can handle ADSL. The results, published on company CEO Adrian Kennard’s blog, showed that soaking the string in fresh water didn’t work, but using salt water allowed it to carry a 3.5Mb/s signal along its length.
You can read more here.
