There’s no fighting in the war room
Happy St. Pat’s, and as Google/Alphabet’s Waymo autonomous car division squares off with Uber in lawsuit over stolen trade secrets, Alphabet officials are concerned that Uber’s lawyers, while viewing court documents, could potentially have access to even more Waymo trade secrets.
The lawsuit began after Waymo hauled Uber into court, claiming a former employee left the company for Uber after downloading a lot of Waymo’s self-driving tech secrets. Nine months later, Uber had their own self-driving car effort up and running with some tech that they say looked awfully familiar to Waymo’s, and Google released the lawyers.
As part of the legal process, Waymo has to tell Uber what they’re up against, and that includes documents with even more technical data on Waymo’s efforts. Waymo is trying to work some legal deals to keep their secrets secret, and Uber says that they haven’t seen any “sensitive” Waymo tech documents yet, so we’d say this whole legal drama clearly has a long, long way to go.
Vista is about to get harder to see
Still using Windows Vista? OK, hey, whatever works. But the problem is, Vista isn’t going to work for much longer, at least not very well, and neither will Windows 7, depending on what kind of computer you’re using.
Vista is essentially going to the data heaven on April 11th, when Microsoft will terminate all support for the OS. That could leave openings for hackers and data thieves as they pry for weaknesses in the OS.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is now sending prompts to users of Windows 7, letting them know whatever machine they’re using is now “unsupported hardware” – which, ironically, are new PCs, instead of old ones – and no further updates are forthcoming for them, either.
Naturally, Redmond would love it if you would take the time to update to Windows 10, and they did give a heads up about this last year, so this is more of a reminder than surprise. Go here for more details on Vista and here Windows 7/8 issues.
There are details in the dark
We talked recently about how High Dynamic Range picture quality, also known as “HDR”, is coming to everything from TVs to computer monitors to smartphones, and now, graphics card maker Nvidia has released a behind-the-scenes 4K HDR video ahead of the release of the rebooted Mass Effect: Andromeda video game. Got a 4K TV or monitor? Then shut off the lights and check this video out. What can we say, it looks amazing.
HDR technology gives video content better color, deeper blacks, more contrast and more detail than ever, and we even have a primer on why it’s the hot video tech of the moment, so check the link to learn more. Meanwhile, Mass Effect Andromeda comes out next week.
We’ve got more news on our Facebook page and YouTube channel, and be sure to tune in to this week’s DT podcasts: Close to the Metal (computers and such) on Tuesday, Trends with Benefits (general tech shenanigans) on Thursdays, and Between the Streams (movie and TV topics) every Friday.
