Saintel Daily - If it Happened

by Staff Writer August 20, 2017

ICYMI: Season 7, Episode 6 from Game of Thrones Was Just Leaked

The most recent leak that HBO has on it’s hands isn’t because of hackers. But rather, two distinct internal blunders. Well, internal in that it originated throughout the production process. Rather than from an outside source, such as a hack. Game of Thrones has had its fair share of leaks. The first four episodes of Season 5 were leaked online. This was in part due to the fact that advance screeners were sent out to members of the press. HBO decided to scrap screeners for Season 7 because of this reason, but that hasn’t prevented two major leaks already.

The earlier leak of Season 7 was related to a distribution partner in India. The partner accidentally posted it on it’s own platform. While I’m sure it was, in fact, an accident. It makes you wonder how these things can happen. But the most recent leak comes out of Spain. A spokesperson for HBO had this to say: “We have learned that the upcoming episode of Game of Thrones was accidentally posted for a brief time on the HBO Nordic and HBO España platforms. The error appears to have originated with a third party vendor and the episode was removed as soon as it was recognized. This is not connected to the recent cyber incident at HBO in the US”.

You all remember that “recent cyber incident” right? We wrote about it on sainteldaily.com, so have a look if you haven’t already. … Read the rest

by Staff Writer August 19, 2017

T-Mobile Improves Service (Big Time) With 600 MHz LTE Network

Recently, T-Mobile spent $8 billion on new low-band spectrum to improve its wireless network. And as of a couple of days ago, that network is online. Cheyenne, Wyoming is the first place in the country to use T-Mobile’s 600 MHz LTE network. They are calling it a “cluster site”. T-Mobile’s Chief Technology Officer, Neville Ray has described this rollout as a “massive milestone” for T-Mobile and one that should make significant impact on closing the gap between T-Mobile and Verizon.

Calling this a “massive milestone” is actually an understatement. This kind of project typically takes years. For example, in 2008 Verizon bought 700 MHz spectrume from the FCC in a similar auction. But they weren’t able to turn the network on until 2010. The FCC only granted the licences in June, so for T-Mobile to have this up and running by August is nothing short of incredible.

The 600 MHz spectrum is going to be huge for T-Mobile as it will fix the network’s coverage problems. In general, the lower the frequency, the better the coverage. Lower frequency radio waves travel further and can penetrate objects better, which means better coverage in rural areas and inside of building. Which is where Verizon’s network is currently excelling, because of the low band spectrum.

The Wyoming site that was launched earlier this week is the first of many that should be live by the end of the year. The image above shows where T-Mobile is planning on expanding that coverage in 2017. … Read the rest

Off Topic

by Staff Writer August 19, 2017

Some Tech does not work Due to Colour of your Skin

While not as controversial as what’s been happening in America, this still bothers me. On Wednesday, a Facebook employee in Nigeria posted a video of what was called a “minor inconvenience”. In the video a white man, and a dark-skinned black man are both trying to get soap out of a soap dispenser. The soap will dispense for the man with white skin, but not for the darker skinned black man. I’m not suggesting that this should offend you, but it does lead me to think about how companies create and test products. Especially from an inclusion perspective. Meaning, for all users.

For those of you who don’t know, soap dispensers (in general) use an optic sensor to detect when a hand is underneath or in front of it. Most of the more advanced sensors don’t have a problem with dark skin. But cheaper ones, can have issues. Chukwuemeka Afigbo noted in his post that “having a dark skinned person on the team would have resulted in a better product”. And he’s right. If the sensor is unable to penetrate skin tones due to the amount of light, then you should test this on all different skin tones, and in different light settings. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t. Well, other than money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgaoBHTbWBg

But this isn’t limited to just soap dispensers. Earlier this year, it was discovered that the fitness tracker, Xiaomi Mi Band2, also wasn’t working on darker skin colours. … Read the rest