Weekly News: Your Phone is an Earthquake Detector

If you are one of the 2.5 billion Android device users out there, you now have a brand new conversation topic. Soon your phone will be part of a worldwide earthquake detection network. Yes, your phone is an Earthquake Detector soon…

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Your Phone is an Earthquake Detector

While using smartphone sensors to build an okay seismometer app is nothing new, Google has a better idea: integrating it into the phone’s operating system directly. 

All devices running Android 5.0 and up will get the new feature through a Google Play Services update, essentially becoming decentralised tremor-monitoring stations that one day will help detect earthquakes early on and warn users. 

For now, Google plans on collecting data for a while to fine-tune the system before rolling out proactive alerts. But don’t worry. You can opt-out of the service via your phone’s settings. Although most people won’t even know it is there.

Toshiba-bye

Thirty-five years after debuting its first laptop, the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba announced it is abandoning the portable PC market. 

The entire PC hardware market, in fact. In 2018, Toshiba had already sold most of its PC business to Sharp, the same buyer this time around. 

The decision comes as the company announced its first quarterly losses in 4 years and officially marks the end of an era in laptop history. 

Toshiba laptops reached their heyday in the 1990s, when they came to dominate the global market. They started losing ground in the late 2000s after an industry shift towards more attractive designs and more powerful machines   

A good reminder of how important it is to adapt and keep innovating.

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