Dieter Bohn No, 5G is not getting people sick.

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I appreciate everybody who wrote in to say thanks for the very brief intro I wrote about responsibility earlier this week -- and to those who are happy to just have some gadget news to read. The latter will continue to be the main focus here, but put me on the side of the out-of-context Twitter accounts when it comes to knowing what to responsibly do with a platform when you are lucky enough to have one. Anyway, our sister site The Strategist compiled a list of 77 black-owned businesses you might consider supporting. 

Here are some of the big tech stories from The Verge yesterday.

Tech news

┏ CES will be held in-person in Las Vegas next year. I’d be angrier about this idea if I didn’t believe that many people will make the right call regardless of this decision and not go. Go ahead and spend lots of money for a party nobody will attend, CES.

┏ Sega’s Game Gear Micro is four $50 consoles with four games each. I was very excited for these until I saw the cash-grab move of separating out the games into four different “collectible” editions. Lame.

┏ BBC releases its own ‘Beeb’ voice assistant in beta. I wrote about this way back in August.  I still think context-specific assistants that can be called by the more general ones is a really smart idea and I hope it takes off.

┏ Microsoft’s new Edge browser now rolling out via Windows Update. It’s surreal to me that this step has taken this long, but I get it: Edge was missing key features up until recently (and it still has a few to fill out). Even so, it’s been by browser of choice on Windows.

┏ Honor’s latest smartphone has a temperature sensor.

┏ Google accounts now work with NFC, USB-C, and Lightning security keys on iOS.

┏ Dyson shares new photos and videos of its canceled electric SUV. The steering wheel is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Reviews

┏ Huawei P40 Pro review: there’s a catch. Sam Byford reviews. I’m genuinely torn up about the camera! I don’t know if I’d say it would win in a hard-nosed head-to-head, but it definitely seems like its in the upper echelons. More importantly, it definitely seems like Huawei is doing a better job of executing on the “just throw better hardware at the problem” camera strategy than Samsung. That’s why I’m a little torn up: it doesn’t matter outside China, where this phone is almost surely doomed because...

the trade war President Trump is waging against China has expanded to single out Huawei specifically, placing the telecoms giant on the Entity List and banning most American companies from doing business with it. Whatever your views on the national security allegations, the consequences for Huawei’s phone business are clear: the company can’t ship new devices with Google services, including Google apps and the Play Store. And, for a variety of reasons, this makes these phones total nonstarters for most people in most Western markets, not just the US.

┏ Suntable solar speaker review: convergence at a price. Thomas Ricker reviews a thing that I ...I want? I think I want this. It’s nuts and silly and a waste of money and it’s a crowdfund and therefore may never come to fruition and even if it does it may not ship for an eternity and customer support will likely be anemic and ....yeah I still want one.

A solar table that charges an internal battery to power an integrated Bluetooth speaker while wirelessly charging your phone has limited appeal — especially when it costs $349. But as ridiculous as it sounds, the Suntable is convergence done right.

┏ Ultimate Ears’ HyperBoom is my desert island Bluetooth speaker. Cameron Faulkner:

When it comes to power, the HyperBoom earns its name. I’m convinced that it’s far more powerful than the Google Home Max that I have in my apartment, and that front-firing speaker requires being plugged in at all times. As the photos indicate, the HyperBoom has four sides, and you’ll get a lot of sound from every angle, albeit different kinds of sound. In this diamond-shaped speaker, the two 4.5-inch subwoofers face the rear. So you’ll get the best bass performance if you let it reverberate your walls near the corner of your room.

More from The Verge

┏ 5G coronavirus conspiracy theorists are endangering the workers who keep networks running. Deeply affecting story from James Vincent. As with anti-vaccine conspiracies, this is the sort of thing that we have a responsibility to push back on when we hear it. I still think 5G is overhyped, but this is obviously a wholly different issue.

Since the UK entered lockdown in March, engineers like Qureshi had unwillingly found themselves on the front line of a strange global crusade. Conspiracy theorists had linked the spread of the novel coronavirus to the installation of new 5G mobile networks, with some claiming the cellular network weakened the immune system and allowed the virus to thrive, while others said 5G masts were broadcasting the virus through the ether (all “crackpot” claims, to quote the UK government). The thing these theories have in common is that they give people someone to blame. And though some of that paranoia comes from a reasonable mistrust of large corporations and institutions, the end target was always workers like Qureshi, out on the street in high-visibility vests, just trying to do their job.

┏ Byte flight. Zoe Schiffer on how new work-from-home possibilities could remake the Bay Area:

If working from home becomes an attractive perk in the ultra-competitive hiring market for tech workers, however, these companies may have no choice. Google famously discouraged remote work in the past. Now, employees are pushing for more flexibility post pandemic, citing the unaffordable housing market and local hostility toward tech workers.

┏ SpaceX is launching its latest batch of internet satellites, including one with a visor. Loren Grush:

This sunshade is SpaceX’s latest attempt to dampen the brightness of its satellites, which appear particularly bright in the sky during sunrise and sunset on Earth. At these times, the sunlight hits these objects when people are shrouded in darkness on the Earth below, making them shine in the sky. It’s something that has caused major concern for those in the astronomy community, who are worried that the bright satellites could muck up their observations of the Universe.