Huawei temporarily loses its membership in the Wi-Fi Alliance

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After the Trump administration added Huawei into its Entity List, the company has slowly been losing access to its US-based partners. The company’s inclusion in the list prevents the Chinese company from doing business with organizations based in the US. It’s already lost access to its partnerships with the likes of Google and its Android platform, Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft, and recently, ARM. This time, the company has lost its membership in the Wi-Fi Alliance, which could impact Huawei’s future business. According to a statement from the Alliance, “Wi-Fi Alliance is fully complying with the recent U.S. Department Commerce order without revoking Huawei Technologies’ membership. Wi-Fi Alliance has temporarily restricted Huawei Technologies participation in Wi-Fi Alliance activities covered by the order.”

The Wi-Fi Alliance is a consortium of companies that influence the development of new wireless technologies. While Huawei will still be able to develop Wi-Fi products, for now, they won’t have a say on where wireless technology is heading. And if this continues on for an extended period of time, it could mean Huawei could be less competitive in this respect. It could create its own consortium or join those that don’t have connections with the one in the US, but the company might find it difficult to compete on a global scale.

Source: Android Authority

Netflix promotes ‘Black Mirror’ with ‘Little Black Mirror’ video series

Netflix taps Latinx social media stars to promote the upcoming season of Black Mirror with its short video series it’s calling Little Black Mirror. The three mini stories take inspiration from the tech dystopian universe created by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones. It’s aimed at the Spanish-speaking audiences and stars the likes of Maia Mitchell, Lele Pons, Rudy Mancuso, Hannah Stocking, and Alesso, to name a few. To promote the series, Netflix tapped YouTube personalities from across Latin America to create their own take on the series. These three mini episodes will launch on May 26, June 2, and June 6^th on the Netflix América Latina channel. Meanwhile, Black Mirror’s fifth season is coming out on June 5^th.

Source: Variety

Paramount delays release of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ movie to fix main character’s design

There was backlash when the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog dropped last month. The design had been, as Engadget describes it, nightmare-inducing. Now, Paramount just announced that it is pushing back the release of the film “to make Sonic just right.” The film was originally slated for a November 2019 release, but now it’s been pushed back to February 14, 2020. Let’s hope they’ll be able to get the look right. We think Detective Pikachu might have set the bar for how cute yet realistic these animated characters could be if done right.

Instagram’s IGTV now supports landscape videos

Instagram has conceded that vertical videos aren’t all their cracked up to be. The app’s IGTV feature will now support landscape clips. The change was made because of creators’ and users’ feedback. The company said in a blog post, “In many ways, opening IGTV to more than just vertical videos is similar to when we opened Instagram to more than just square photos in 2015. It enabled creativity to flourish and engagement to rise—and we believe the same will happen again with IGTV.”

While it wasn’t outright said, Instagram had trouble making IGTV flourish. While the creators who worked with Instagram to build IGTV content liked it, they weren’t able to monetize these videos. The vertical video format also meant that they had to optimize their videos for the platform. It felt like there was extra work for little return. And according to creators who talked to The Verge, view counts were lower on the platform than on others. It was only when Instagram started allowing them to share the story to their feeds did viewership numbers increase.