# In This Issue

- Android 11 enters public beta, looks like welcomed a refinement release

- ARM-based Mac rumours flare up prior to upcoming WWDC

- Pocket Casts removed from Chinese iOS App Store & Apple hits US$1.5 trillion market cap

- Reports of VMware Fusion’s death are greatly exaggerated

- Cheap Fetch Mighty PVR, Amazon Echo Studio & 3rd-gen Echo, Xiaomi Android TV box, Google Nest Hub, Two Point Hospital

# News

#### Android 11 enters public beta, looks like welcomed a refinement release

After a slight delay due to US citizens finally cracking the shits over their fucked situation, Google took the covers of Android 11. Notifications are getting tweaked again, with chat apps (e.g: Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, etc) getting their own notifications section. Pressing the power button brings up a "digital wallet" kinda like on the iPhone and adds a section for smart home controls via Google Assistant. Screen recording is now built-in to the OS, so every phone with Android 11 will be able to do this (I'm shocked it wasn't already). If you want a full rundown of what's new The Verge has you covered. The beta is available now for Pixel owners if you’re keen to see what’s new.

#### Amazon announces 12 month moratorium on selling facial recognition tech to cops

Amazon has done something to try and show they’re not totally oblivious to what’s going on around them, deciding to halt sales of its Rekognition service on AWS to law enforcement for one year. They hope that in the next 12 months US Congress will "place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology" and business goes back to normal. Why not just copy IBM and Microsoft and say they'll stop selling facial recognition tech until laws enacted, what's with the 12 month bullshit? Meanwhile, 250 Microsoft employees are asking their bosses to stop selling services to police (like, all services - Office, Windows etc.) and throw their support behind defunding police agencies, starting with their home town of Seattle. The link has the email employees sent to Satya Nadella in full. Vive la revolution!

#### Pocket Casts removed from Chinese iOS App Store & Apple hits US$1.5 trillion market cap

Apple has removed Pocket Casts from the Chinese App Store. According to the Pocket Casts Twitter account, Apple's action was "at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China". They're not salty about it though, as they "believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship. As such we won't be censoring podcast content at their request". It's unknown if Pocket Casts got yelled at by the Chinese Cyberspace Administration (lol) and refused to kick a podcast out of its app, or if the CAC contacted Apple directly and Apple just nuked Pocket Casts to appease their 2nd biggest market. Oh, Apple shares hit an all time high today, valuing the company at US$1.5t - by far the most valuable company on the planet.

# Not News

#### Reports of VMware Fusion’s death are greatly exaggerated

For a while I thought VMware was putting their Fusion and Workstation desktop virtualisation clients out to pasture, but it seems like there's someone at VMware that gives a shit as Fusion and Player recently received nice updates. VMware Fusion 11.5.5 on the Mac gained container support! Install the update, open Terminal, and check out the vctl command for controlling Docker containers. This is for being able to run containers within your VM environment, right? Otherwise you'd just install Docker directly on your Mac? For Windows users, the annoying "you must disable Hyper-V" prompt when running Workstation is gone! You can use Hyper-V and VMware side by side on Windows 10 now. I ran into this problem recently (long story, don't ask) so I'm glad it annoyed someone at VMware way more than it annoyed me.

# Bargains

- Fetch Mighty PVR - $299 delivered

- Amazon Echo Studio or 3rd-gen Echo - $279/$99 at Amazon AU

- Xiaomi Mi Box S 4K Android TV - $83 delivered from TobyDeals

- Google Nest Hub - $98 at JB Hi-Fi

- Two Point Hospital for PC (and I think Mac, don’t quote me on that) - $16 on Steam via WinGameStore

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