Episode 611 – Aussie Tech Heads Shownotes

posted in: Show Notes

 

Amazon Quietly Reversed Its Aussie Shipping Ban (In Time For Black Friday)

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/11/amazon-quietly-reversed-its-aussie-shipping-ban-in-time-for-black-friday/

  • Earlier this year Amazon stopped shipping products to Australia from its online U.S. and UK stores.
  • That decision has now been reversed, conveniently in time for Black Friday sales period.
  • Amazon quietly changed its mind, with the reversal taking place overnight. A spokeswoman said it was customer complaints as the reason for the decision.
  • The amazon spokeswoman said “As a result of customer feedback, from November 22 Amazon customers will now be able to ship eligible items from Amazon.com to Australian delivery addresses.
  • The timing is certainly interesting – the Black Friday sales period is already in full swing and Christmas is only a few short weeks away. Perhaps copping the online GST is worth it for the retailer after all.
  • But before you go on a spending spree, there is one important thing you should know, and that is – only items sold on amazon.com will be shippable to Australia. If you want to buy something from a third party seller on the site, you won’t be able to. So make sure you do your research.

 

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Wi-Fi 6 Is Coming: Here’s Why You Should Care

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/10/wi-fi-6-is-coming-heres-why-you-should-care/

 

  • Get ready for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology called Wi-Fi 6 (so it is named) and it is going to appear on devices from next year.
  • Wi-Fi 6 will support 8K video streaming. That means it should support transfer rates of 1.1Gb/s over the 2.4GHz band (with 4 streams available) and 4.8Gb/s over the 5GHz band (with 8 streams available).
  • Roughly speaking, you can look forward to 4x to 10x speed increases in your Wifi , not bad is it..
  • Another improvement to Wi-Fi 6 is improved power efficiency – Which means a lower power draw on all Wi-Fi 6 enabled devices. That’s good because it means that your batteries in your phone or laptop should last just that bit longer.
  • What will you have to do? …

Nothing much really , Wifi 6 is backwards compatible, so it will still work on your current router — you just won’t be able to get the faster speeds until everything on your network is Wi-Fi 6 enabled…. It’s pretty much like now , if your using a gigabit router , you won’t benefit from gigabit speeds until everything on your network has a gigabit interface.

 

 

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Google Assistant Now Works With Siri

– Well Sort Of

https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/11/google-assistant-now-works-with-siri-sort-of/

 

 

  • While Apple and Google play well together well in some areas – such as the multi-billion deal that makes Google the default search on iOS – they are on less friendly terms in other areas.
  • Apple and Google, and a few others, are locked in a pitched battle to dominate automation through smart assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google’s platform. But an update to the iOS version of Google’s Assistant bring them together.
  • The update allows you to launch Google Assistant on an iOS device by saying “Hey Siri, OK Google…” Which sounds kinda sounds funny but gets the job done….lol
  • So, if you’ve used Google Assistant to create a specific sequence or events in your home automation system or some other process, you can now use Siri to launch those actions.