Uncrowned Guard
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Google Photos was launched back in 2015 and was set to give their users unlimited photo storage and used it as a major selling feature of Google’s Pixel phones. Now, Google is not just removing unlimited storage for these users, but they are reducing the limit all the way down the 15GB combined free storage that any Google account owner gets.
This means your photo storage limit will be added into your Gmail and Google Drive amounts and if you go above 15GB, you will need to pay for a storage plan though Google. Users are unsurprising upset as Google as marketed the storage as forever and even used multiple statements to backup that claim like "And when we say a lifetime of memories, we really mean it" from the head of Google Photo in 2015.
There are some good points to this move as Google has stated that currently uploaded photos will not go against the 15GB storage limit. Google has also stated that on average 80% of users can fit 3 years of photos and videos withing the 15GB storage. Not to mention that Google still beats Apple’s 5GB free tier of storage and Microsoft’s nonexistent free tier of storage.
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The popular BattleBots robot fighting league is returning the Discovery Channel on December 3rd! Sportscaster Chris Rose and UFC fighter Kenny Florian will also be returning to provide play by play commentary for the show.
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Uncrowned Empire has added a series of changes to our websites as we prepare to go live. Check below to see the changes! We plan on adding more articles like this as we work on our communication.
- Website is now fully live for user use during development
- Added dedicated section for company news
- Compacted forums for more simplified layout
- Made Calendar public for sharing company wide events
- Website is now fully live for user use during development
- Now shares all Uncrowned news directly from Uncrowned Empire
- Vastly expanded forums for more content
- Added calendar to list tech events, releases, etc.
- Added new section for tech based resource guides
- Fixed user group permission issues in using forum
- Fixed moderator permissions in editing articles
- News articles will now be promoted directly from the In The News forum
- Website is now fully live for user use during development
- Now shares all Uncrowned news directly from Uncrowned Empire
- Vastly expanded forums for more content
- Added calendar to list gaming events, releases, etc.
- Added new section for our Shooter guides and class system
- Fixed user group permission issues in using forum
- News articles will now be promoted directly from the Gaming News & Upcoming Releases forum
Known Issues
- All sites Image uploading is creating an error during larger files
- All sites Bookmarking to mobile home screen creates a solid icon
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Apple's One More Thing event has released the details of their new laptop lineup that will include the new Apple M1 chip. The new MacBook Air and 13 inch MacBook Pro will be launching on the 17th with these new chips and so far the benchmarks look fairly good. The Mac Mini is also listed to receive a M1 chip upgrade, but the iMac and larger MacBooks are still mysteries.We are still waiting to see some real world testing and real benchmarks as Apple's comparison to "the best selling Windows laptop" most likely means an i5 machine of some type. Geekbench currently has the M1 chip slightly above the Intel i7 chip and if Apple's other performance goals (e.g. battery life and iGPU) are on par, then these chips will do very well in the ultra book market. **Although, we are not sure how reliable that Geekbench score is**
The M1 chips are based off of the ARM chip set and there are some hurdles due to this move. Adobe and many other products are not planning support until 2021, so you may want to hold off swapping out your main work laptop for a bit. Overall we are very excited for these new chips as ARM based laptops have always been an exciting concept.
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I know life can be rough, but what are your best estimates of how often you workout? I try to get 3-4 times a week.
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With the launch of the new 5000 series AMD chips, Intel seems to be on a serous decline in the CPU world. However, we are curious to what our legion prefers as most of our company runs of Intel and switching the AMD will be a decision coming up soon.
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The classic debate of Coke vs Pepsi and their huge lineup of products.
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Full Internal & External Media Servers
These allow your play your owned media at or away from home.
Emby - https://emby.media/
Plex - https://www.plex.tv/
Local Only Media Servers
These will generally only work on your local network.
Kodi - https://kodi.tv/
Got more for the list? Let us know in the comments!
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We all have those songs that strike a chord within us, lifting our spirits, calming our minds, or simply setting the tone for our day. So let's share and maybe discover some new jams along the way!
What was the last song you listened to?
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Anime, moves, TV, or even online series! Let others know what you watched and if it was any good.
For me it was the two Equalizer movies and I would certainly recommend both (but the first is by far the better of the two).
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Feel free to let us know how you found us and perhaps what got you to sign up to the Uncrowned Legion.
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Apple has all the details of their Apple One subscription service out now, as it now live and available for users. The subscription service starts at $14.95 and has three packages ranging up to $29.95 (USD prices) and has packages for both individuals and families.
All the plans include Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and some form of iCloud storage (from 50GB to 2TB). The two upper plans include up to 5 users sharing the plan and the top plan also includes Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+ (coming soon).
You will need the latest iOS or iPadOS to purchase these plans, but you can enjoy the benefits on any device that can utilize the app(s) (e.g. playing Apple Music via a browser).
Overall, the package is a great deal for what you get, and it will be exciting to see how Apple One pans out as the individual services grow and expand.
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The new and independent organization that will be overseeing Facebook’s Oversight Board is ready to start considering cases of moderated content to oversee. If you are not following this new board, it will be tasked with providing independent oversight regarding Facebook’s moderation of content. The board was announced in 2018 after multiple recent controversial moderation decisions from Facebook and even being pulled before the US Congress for their moderation decisions.
Details are still limited and most of the process is in development, but we do have some notes about the service:
- First, you will need to “exhaust the platform’s internal appeal process” for moderated content before you can even send it to the new board.
- Second, decisions can take up to 90 days to change or support the original moderation option.
- Third, (and you may have done the math here already) there is extraordinarily small chance the new board will handle content related the 2020 election as that is less than two weeks away. Also, the board has made mention that they will not even be selecting their first case for the first few weeks of submissions meaning the first decision is likely months away.
The board is made up of 20 activists, journalists, lawyers, and even a former prime minister, and has been labeled by some as “Facebook’s Supreme Court.” The service will be available to both Facebook and Instagram users, but the board has made it clear that only a fraction of the cases submitted will be seen by them. Facebook has also stated that some “prominent” cases may be sent directly to the new board instead of their internal moderation.
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Tuesday marked the filling of a landmark lawsuit against Google by the Department of Justice, who is accusing the tech company of illegally holding monopolies is both the online search and advertising markets. This lawsuit comes after over a yearlong investigation into anticompetitive practices being performed by the company. One large aspect of this lawsuit is deeming Google the "gatekeeper" of the internet as the company dominates contracts with major phone, computer, and software companies as the default search engine. This is being coupled with an alleged case of Google strong-arming android phone manufacturers to preload Google apps as part of the phones package.
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina and Texas have all filed as plaintiffs of the lawsuit and this move continues the US Government's move to place big tech under stricter investigations and regulations as of late. "Today's lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed," Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president of global affairs, said in a blog post. "People use Google because they choose to, not because they're forced to, or because they can't find alternatives."
Google's antitrust problems are not just limited to the US, as the EU has recently fined the company for $1.7 due to "abusive online ad practices" and stated they would be looking into the company's search dominance at a later date. The last large tech monopoly battle was Microsoft in the 1990s who ended up settling with the government after the department of justice investigated them for their PC company monopoly.
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Google is doing some rebranding as of late and one aspect of that move is the new Google Workplace coming to replace G Suite. This is more then the recent Gmail rebranding as it will be coming with changes to the service as a whole. Many Gmail users may have noticed that Google has been adding its other services as a direct integration into Gmail, like Chat and their office suite, and now those changes will be coming to the business side of the Google ecosystem. “Work is no longer a physical place that we go to, necessarily,” Google Workspace VP Javier Soltero stated during the press meeting and a lot of the changes are certainly focused on working from home and virtual offices.
One of the main goals of Google Workplace is to unify the currently existing services within the ecosystem, which we find as a great step in the right direction as Gsuite has never truly felt like a fully integrated service like Microsoft Office, but it certainly got the job done either way. However, with the recent pandemic pushing work from home, the slight bonuses this full unification will have are a very nice touch on the service. Google Meet is a major focus point of this new service and that will certainly help businesses struggling with the whole "virtual office" concept as employees are currently jumping in and out of applications and services to work together.
However, it is not all good news. First the tiers are being pushed as the same price as Gsuite with a $6 a month/user entry level and a $12 a month/user for the standard package, but we now have a $18 a month/user as a "pro" plan that seems to list a bunch of feature we used to have in the cheaper plans. On top of the pricing changes, we have completely lost unlimited drive storage and have been reduced to 30Gb, 2Tb, and 5TB plans based on your package. There is also a planned Essentials plan that won't use all the features of the basic plan, but will cost $8 a month/user, so we will need to see how this works out as the price currently does not make much sense.
Overall the improvements sound amazing and we are excited to see them here as we do use Gsuite ourselves. However, like most services, it does appear that we will be getting less for the same price after the upgrade goes though.
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Microsoft has announced their Surface Laptop Go as a budget machine in a small form factor starting at $550. Budget laptops have been flying off the shelves during this pandemic and the new Surface Laptop is likely to do the same. It comes with a 12.4-inch touchscreen with a good enough 1536 x 1024 resolution and is (in our opinion) the best looking and most stylist laptop in this price range. We are excited to meet this new laptop due its size making it a great travel companion as it is smaller than many 11.6" laptops with a much more premium feel, but we are not excited about the price points.
At $550, the entry level Surface Laptop Go enters the market of "high end budget" laptops and with 4GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, but we advise looking elsewhere for a Windows machine as it simply will not perform well during the needs of most users (like installing any sizable programs or multitasking). The next level up, at $700 and offering 8GB of ram with 128GB of storage, to make it one of the best options for a small form factor laptop, but we would no longer consider this "budget" priced and better preforming alternatives are starting to stack up fast. At $900, you can grab a model with 256GB of storage, but with just an i5 and 8GB of ram we simply cannot recommend this price level. All models do come with an i5 CPU.
In short, we love that there are smaller laptops coming back to the market and the mid-range $700 Surface Laptop Go is a great choice for a small, travel friendly device to get some light work completed on. However, the $900 version only has the surface style going for it as the price is just too high for its specs and while the $550 might still be able to call itself a budget device, the specs are going to leave many users frustrated and feeling like it was very overpriced.
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What some are calling a Surface Laptop Go is rumored to arriving this holiday season at an affordable price. Microsoft's new laptop is rumored to be and i5, 4 GB RM, and 64 GB storage budget machine that will put itself inline to complete with the new high end Chromebooks and the rumored low end Macbook. The current price is estimated at $499, but that is merely speculation from multiple sources and a direct price leaks seems unfounded.
The current budget Surface product, the Surface Go, has been doing very well and it makes sense as Windows has also been the budget friendly OS when compared to Mac. We have complained many times that the surface lineup is simply too over priced as a whole for the market Windows should be in.
Project Sparti is the current name for this new laptop and has been linked to an October lineup. I know I would certainly love to see Microsoft go head to head with Google's Chromebook for the low budget machine.
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Following Microsoft’s announcement last week that support for Internet Explorer will be ending on August 17th, the company has now released a few additional support dates for the end of this iconic browser after 25 years.
November will be the final month where Microsoft Teams will support utilizing IE for integrations. This may not be a major point for individual users, who hopefully have long moved on from IE, but it is a hurdle for many corporations still powering though the aged browser.
2021 will be the slow death of IE on the other Office 365 Apps. This will include all the office apps that many of us have come to love, like Outlook and Word. The browser integrations with these apps will slowly transition over to the new Chromium version of Microsoft Edge, which has been going over very well in the community.
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Fortnite, the wildly successful video game, is owned by Epic Games who is currently in the process of suing the mobile giants Apple and Google after getting removed from the app stores on both iOS and Android phones. Why was Fortnite removed? Well, they attempted to bypass the charges set by those companies when an item is purchased from their store to "lower consumer prices".
For most apps that would try this, it would be a simple ban from the store and the story would end, but Epic Games is clearly going use their vast income to put up a fight. If Epic Games wins this battle, then the far reaching effects of this lawsuit will change much more than just the stores you see on your phone and may hit into nearly every industry locked behind a singular "store", like game consoles and everyone's favorite Microsoft Store.
However, why would Epic Games be able to win this battle as the terms are clear and fair across the board. Well the answer to that question is what this lawsuit will find out, but anti-trust laws are a major part this lawsuit as a large company locking all their services behind a single payment method starts to become more and more like a monopoly as the company grows to the size of Apple or Google. As the lawsuit states: “Apple’s removal of Fortnite is yet another example of Apple flexing its enormous power in order to impose unreasonable restraints and unlawfully maintain its 100 percent monopoly over the iOS In-App Payment Processing Market,”
So, we will have to wait and see how this battle of giants ends and hope that in some way it benefits the end user. However, with other tech giants like Microsoft trying to get xCloud into the app stores and even Google with its own Stadia platform, the battle may very well be as clear as mud as more parties get involved.
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Users of Google Play Music are beginning to find the process of transferring their music library to YouTube Music already live. Checking to see if your account can begin this transfer is an easy one-click process that will most likely be available to everyone in a few days.
If you are curious if you can begin your library transfer, then just head on over to https://music.youtube.com/transfer and see if the tool is available for your account. If it is available, you will see a transfer button to begin the process or you will simply see a waiting message if it is not. If you got the waiting message, don't worry, as the tool will likely be live for you soon.
Multiple sources have confirmed that the mobile YouTube Music app currently can not start the transfer for any account, but this feature should also be live soon enough as well.
Thankfully it does appear that the transfer process is going to be smooth and easy for most users, but we understand that YouTube Music is not for everyone. Our staff always recommends keeping your music on your own system and setting up a server (Like Plex) to avoid these issues, but Plex is not for everyone either.
[Discussion] Over a Dozen States Listed in Comcast's New Internet Caps
in Tech News
Posted
Comcast has added extensions to their data caps in other states with the COVID-19 work for home push, but this gesture still small when looking at all the other cable companies simply offering unlimited data. Comcast does offer higher tier plans with unlimited data and faster speeds, but appear to be all over $100 a month.
Comcast has added extensions to their data caps in other states with the COVID-19 work for home push, but this gesture still small when looking at all the other cable companies simply offering unlimited data. Comcast does offer higher tier plans with unlimited data and faster speeds, but appear to be all over $100 a month.
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