Charlotte Henry

How much do you spend each month on subscriptions? Each year? The number is only is going up. In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Joanna Stern looked at ways we can all cut out the unnecessary subscriptions in our lives.

The assortment of services is harder to keep track of than the flavors of LaCroix sparkling water. And the number of subscriptions we pay for, and how much we pay, is only going to keep ballooning. Don’t get me wrong. I love subscriptions. I love that soon I’ll be able to pay $7 a month for the newly announced Disney+ instead of paying a la carte for each $3 episode of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.” But we can’t just go on signing up for “free trials” that turn into years-long payments. We have to pay attention to where our money is going.

Apple was frustrated at the speed Intel was developing a 5G modem long before it settled with Qualcomm. A report in The Information picked up by AppleInsider outlined the growing tensions between Apple and its supplier, which announced its departure from the mobile modem market shortly after the Apple-Qualcomm settlement was revealed.

In early 2017, senior Hardware Technologies VP Johny Srouji “barked” at Intel’s Venkata Renduchintala during a meeting at 1 Infinite Loop, according to a source for The Information. Srouji was allegedly frustrated with Intel’s work on the XMM 7560, intended for 2018 iPhones. The modem wasn’t functioning properly, two sources said, even though Intel had already overhauled it four times to put it on par with Qualcomm chips, and missed multiple deadlines along the way.

Uber announced a new Quiet Drive option in which customers can request that their driver not speak. Techcrunch reported that the option is available to Uber Black customers.

Uber did extensive research of drivers’ perceptions in the three months it took to develop the feature. But due to employment laws, it can’t actually require that drivers abide by user requests for quiet, though they might get negative ratings if they ignore them. Ghajar insists “It’s not mandatory. The driver is an independent contractor. We’re just communicating the rider’s preference. The driver can have that information and do with it what they want.” Given premium rides often cost 2X the UberX price and over 3X the UberPool price, Uber could make a lot of money encouraging upgrades.

Nerd culture may be mainstream now, but it was not always that way. In a moving piece for Wired, Paul Ford details his love story with tech.

No one loves tech for tech’s sake. All of this was about power—power over the way stories were told, the ability to say things on my own terms. The aesthetic of technology is an aesthetic of power—CPU speed, sure, but what do you think we’re talking about when we talk about “design”? That’s just a proxy for power; design is about control, about presenting the menu to others and saying, “These are the options you wanted. I’m sorry if you wanted a roast beef sandwich, but sir, this is not an Arby’s.” That is Apple’s secret: It commoditizes the power of a computer and sells it to you as design.

Startups often appeal to talent by offering them shares in the company. It can be great for both recruits and the companies that want them. However, a report by the Telegraph highlighted some of the issues that can arise too.

For start-ups, it’s a way to dangle the promise of enormous riches in front of recruits that they can’t yet afford to pay, since the shares cost nothing to give out but can be worth millions when the company matures. For established firms, it’s a way to win scarce talent away from rivals and secure its loyalty while keeping the wage bill low. But stock compensation has a dark side, and some tech workers are speaking up about it. They blame it for exacerbating the industry’s internal problems, such as inflated living costs and a lack of diversity.

Recently appointed Facebook executive Sir Nick Clegg gave his first media interview in his new role Sunday. He told Brian Stelter on CNN’s Reliable Sources that the problems facing Facebook “won’t suddenly evaporate” if it is broken up.  The social network’s co-founder Chris Hughes made such a suggestion last week.

Chopping a great American success story into bits” won’t stop foreign election interference or “poison” spreading online, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs and communications, told CNN Business’ Brian Stelter Sunday in his first US television interview since he joined the company last year. “We need to do more,” Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, said on “Reliable Sources.” But those problems “won’t suddenly evaporate. There will still be Russian trolls.”

Spotify Lite arrived in India Monday, adding further competition in the competitive and crowded market. The music streaming service told Techcrunch that the stripped-down Indian version is currently in beta. It first launched in Brazil in June 2018.

 Today, the app is publicly available in 22 countries including, now India. It has around 2.1 million installs, according to data from Sensor Tower. India has only produced a few thousand downloads for Spotify Lite so far, as it’s just gone live. That said, India will be a key market for Spotify Lite going forward, given the heated competition for streaming music services in a region where millions of internet users are coming online for the first time. Already, Apple, Amazon, and Google are running their own music services in India, where they face competition from local players Gaana, JioSaavn, and others.

The staff of The Office look to be headed to NBCUniversal’s forthcoming streaming service, Bloomberg News reported. The show is currently one of the most popular on Netflix. However, it is not clear at the time of this writing if it will remain on the platform as well NBC’s own.

At a presentation Monday, NBC suggested that the comedy about office workers in Scranton, Pennsylvania, will probably be part of an ad-supported online channel that’s slated to debut next year. But it’s unclear if the show will appear on the new service on Day One — and whether it will remain on Netflix too. “The Office” highlights the thorny relationship between Netflix and traditional media companies, which are rolling out their own streaming services. Netflix pays lucrative licensing fees to air shows like “The Office” and “Friends,” but it’s also a competitor for viewers’ time and money.

On May 16, a rare Apple-1 will be put up for an online-only auction run by prestigious British auctioneers, Christies. AppleInsider reported that it could fetch as much as $630,000.

An interesting example, Apple-1 motherboard serial number 01-0053 is housed in the bottom section of a briefcase, hidden by a makeshift aluminum control panel featuring a Datanetics keyboard. Built by hand in 1976, the board is thought to be among an original batch of Apple-1 units sold through Mountain View, Calif., computer store Byte Shop. It sports a white ceramic MOS Technologies 6502 microprocessor, selected by Steve Wozniak to power Apple’s first computer, as well as 8K bytes RAM split between two 4K chips and two original Triad power supply modules.

Nike has always been keen to use tech to innovate sportswear. Wired reported that with its new scanning technology, the company believes it has solved the problem is ill-fitting shoes.

The scanning tech uses the now familiar combination of computer vision, machine learning and recommendation algorithms to find your right fit in every Nike shoe style. But going beyond the traditional measurements of length and width, Nike Fit uses 13 points of measurement (though Nike says they system can take up to 32) including measuring the “toe box”, where it takes into account whether the splay of your toes will have enough room in your choice of trainers. The app is then supposedly able to recommend your best fit.