Apple's HomePod speaker coming to Canada on June 18

A year after they debuted at WWDC 2017 and six months after they went on sale in the US, Apple's Siri-powered speaker is finally coming to Canada. The long wait would have been well worth it for Canadians looking to sink $449 into the Apple Music connected speaker because a new software update now makes it capable of creating stereo pair and multi-room functionality.

This is thanks to an update in iOS 11.4 which brings AirPlay 2 as well as compatibility with other AirPlay 2-enabled speakers when they become available, "so Siri can control music playing on speakers from Bang & Olufsen, Bluesound, Bose, Bowers & Wilkins, Denon, Libratone, Marantz, Marshall, Naim, Pioneer and Sonos."

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Active Shooter simulator game on Steam is insensitive to victims of mass shootings

Updated on Tuesday, May 29, 2018 at 9:27PM by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

It is May 2018 and there have already been 23 school shootings in American schools, that's one school shooting a week.

What's more alarming than the frequency of these shootings is the thought that these horrific acts are the new normal, that they are inevitable, and that they are bound to happen again.

This is why Active Shooter, a first-person simulator video game is a bad idea.

The game puts players in point of view of either an active shooter killing students and cops in a school or a SWAT operative, is a terrible and deeply insensitive idea. While the game's developers Revived Games and distributor Valve/ Steam can trivialize this as another first-person shooter, or a 'Dynamic SWAT simulator', it's clearly an expoitative and deeply insensitive game.

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Amazon Prime Video saves 'The Expanse'

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just announced that Amazon Prime Video will save The Expanse which will see a Season 4 coming to the streaming video service. This is huge news as fans of this transcendent science fiction series based on the books from author James S.A. Corey, The Expanse was cancelled by Syfy Channel in the US ( Space channel in Canada) earlier this month which prodded millions of fans to rally behind the show and launch a #Savetheexpanse movement.

Based on a series of nine books, The Expanse TV series (shot here in Toronto) is one of the best cast, intelligently produced and engaging sci-fi shows on TV. The beauty of the show is that while it is on its third season, it's barely scraping the tip of the iceberg of this epic show. Kudos to Amazon for seeing the value of good programming. This alone is worth the subcription to Amazon Prime Video.

What to expect at Apple's WWDC 2018

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple has announced that the WWDC 2018 Keynote will be livecast out of the McEnery Center in San Jose so the world can tune in to their Safari browsers (or Edge, Chrome or Firefox) or Apple TVs to see the announcements unfold. WWDC kicks off on June 4.

What's expected this year aside from the yearly updates to iOS, watchOS, macOS and other surrounding operating systems and ecosystems is more focus on Machine Learning, possibly a Siri redux hopefully making the pioneering but stunted smart assistant more of a player in the market.

Apple hasn't had a major event for 2018 but it has had various OS 11 and 11.3  issues as well as growing dissatisfaction with aspects of its hardware products like the keyboard on the MacBook Pro, reports of iPhone performance throttling due to sub-optimal batteries on older devices as well as a number of products announced but never shipped (AirPower, AirPods charging case).

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