Tech Round Up Week 3 May 2020: DJI Potentially Banned in USA, Facebook Acquires GIPHY and more

The United States of America might be banning importation and sales of DJI’s drones in the country. Earlier this week, the US International Trade Commission’s chief administrative law judge ruled that SZ DJI Technology Co. Ltd., the world’s biggest manufacturer of consumer drones, violated Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 in the US.

The judge suggested barring the following DJI products from importation into the United States: the Mavic Pro, Mavic Pro Platinum, Mavic 2 Pro, Mavic 2 Zoom, Mavic Air, and Spark, as well as a cease and desist order which prohibits DJI from selling any of these products that are already in the U.S. when the exclusion order is issued. All of these DJI products could be removed from the U.S. market as early as July 2020. 

Google Chrome will be deleting ads that consume too much computing resources in an effort to improve battery life, lower network usage, and increase website speeds. Google has recently discovered that while only 0.3% of ads exceed the usage threshold, those ads are responsible for 27% of network data used and 28% of all ad CPU usage.

Google will be filtering the ads by focusing on resource-heavy ads that consume more than 4 megabytes of network data, ads that occupy the browser’s main computing process for more than 60 seconds total or for 15 seconds of any 30-second period.

GIPHY, a well-known website for making or sharing animated pictures (GIFs), has been acquired by Facebook to be integrated with Instagram. The cost of this partnership was estimated to be US$400 million by news website Axios, although both companies declined to comment. GIPHY will also be further integrated with other Facebook-owned apps.

Nevertheless, GIPHY will still be available on platforms like Twitter, Snapchat and ByteDance’s TikTok. GIFs do not have any online tracking mechanisms such as pixels or cookies, hence those wary of their privacy need not fret. 

Sony’s PS5 console is set to be released soon with new technology, including an SSD that improves load times significantly, a new DualSense controller and other features to improve games further. The technology is being backed up with impressive software such as Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5. But what about games?

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, Fortnite, Godfall, Outriders, Quantum Error, Scarlet Nexus, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 and Watch Dogs: Legion are the confirmed upcoming games for the PS5. Rainbow Six Siege, Rainbow Six Quarantine, Warframe, The Elder Scrolls VI, Battlefield 6, Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone and Call of Duty 2020 are the unconfirmed but expected games for the PS5. This is surely a list to look forward to!

In a recent rumour, it has been revealed that Apple is working on two new iPads, a 10.8-inch model and an 8.5 to 9-inch model. The screen size of the iPad Mini has stayed at 7.9 inches so far, hence this new rumoured display size will certainly be of interest to Apple fans, especially those that prefer the portability of the Mini. The larger display can either be achieved by the iPad itself getting bigger or the bezels around the display getting reduced. These devices are rumoured to be launched in the first half of 2021.