The Federal Aviation Administration has given its first air drone delivery certification in the United States to Alphabet's Wing Aviation, paving the way for the service to begin commercial package delivery in Blacksburg, Virginia. "This is an important step forward for the safe testing and integration of drones into our economy," said U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. [More...]

The European Parliament overwhelmingly approved two measures that would integrate the region's fragmented law enforcement and home affairs databases into a centralized one that would include biometric information on some 350 million EU and non-EU citizens. It approved creation of the new system on two votes -- one to merge border control systems, and one to merge law enforcement systems. [More...]

Foldable phones have been dealt a setback by Samsung's announcement that it has postponed indefinitely the release of its Galaxy Fold. Samsung pumped the brakes on the $1,980 phone's release after several reviewers reported problems. Samsung acknowledged that their experiences indicated the device needed further improvements to ensure the best possible user experience. [More...]

The big news last week was that Apple finally agreed to settle its fight with Qualcomm. Kudos to Tim Cook, because I've known a lot of CEOs rather who would have fought to the death than admitted they were wrong -- and not only wrong but acting disingenuously the entire time. Fighting this to the death would have been far worse. What spurred the settlement likely was he defense Qualcomm mounted. [More...]

The Walt Disney Corporation officially announced Disney+, its direct-to-consumer streaming service, during its Investor Day webcast last week. The new over-the-top service will become available on Nov. 12 for a $6.99 month subscription. Disney+ will arrive with more than 25 new TV programs, as well as more than 10 new movies. The service will expand to include Disney classics and other IP. [More...]

Apple and Qualcomm unexpectedly announced a settlement as their case entered the second day of a hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Diego. In related news, Intel announced it was getting out of the 5G smartphone chip business. The Apple-Qualcomm settlement provides an unspecified one-time payment from Apple to Qualcomm, among other terms. [More...]

Condres OS, a distro much like the defunct Apricity OS, could be a speedier replacement for Linux OSes that have turned slow to no-go in recent new releases. Condres OS is an Arch-based distro that offers many pleasing usability traits similar to three popular Debian-based distros: Linux Mint; Peppermint; and Zorin, which bundles ICE and Wine accouterments. Condres OS, as is typical of Arch distributions, comes with a rolling release upgrade model. [More...]

The ramp-up to Apple's Worldwide Developers' Conference this June has begun, with reports circulating about the goodies the company will include in the next generation of its desktop and mobile operating systems. The latest revelations include macOS support for the iPad as an auxiliary display, native to desktops and laptops, and iOS support for multiple windows within apps. [More...]

A copyright directive that some fear could break the Internet has cleared the final hurdle in the European Union. The directive makes platforms for user-uploaded content -- like Google and Facebook -- legally liable for violations of the rights of copyright holders. It requires them to obtain the permission of the holders before posting content to their sites. [More...]

It is expected that 5G will move aggressively into the market, with near-complete major metropolitan coverage by the end of the year. This technology is a game-changer, but it doesn't come without issues, one of which is the massive change in network loading. 5G will shift the bottlenecks from the wireless networks to the backhaul, where the expected massive increase in traffic will force some rather impressive network upgrades. [More...]

Google announced a host of new services, features and partners at Google Cloud Next '19 Day 2 in San Francisco. The new unveilings followed its announcement of Anthos, an open source platform powered by Kubernetes, on Day 1. Anthos is "a single platform for developers and operations; it is for on-premise and multicloud installations," said Google SVP Urs Hölzle. [More...]

Apple plans to introduce a number of new products in the next two years that will sport a new display technology, according to master Apple watcher Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities. Based on Kuo's predictions, which were reported widely on Tuesday, Apple will use new "mini LED" technology in three new products: a 31.6-inch monitor, a new iPad, and a new MacBook. [More...]

Microsoft has released the first Dev and Canary channel builds of the next version of Microsoft Edge, based on the Chromium open source project. The company last year revealed that it was reworking its browser to be based on Chromium. Now the latest developments are ready for early testers on several versions of Windows and macOS. So far, however, no support is available for Linux. [More...]