| As if airline flights haven't gotten stressful enough, here comes the latest twist. |
| The Department of Homeland Security is considering banning computers aboard flights from Europe to the United States, because it believes terrorists could conceivably convert a laptop into a bomb, according to news reports. . |
| On my beloved MacBook Pro or iPad? Really? Tell me it's not so. |
| Welcome to the new Talking Tech newsletter, USA TODAY's take on the week's most important tech news. |
| Snap's rough start as a public company, a watch from Microsoft that can calm Parkinson's tremors, and a new touch screen Amazon Echo all grabbed headlines this week. But the one that rocked this reporter was a proposed laptop ban. The broader ban would extend the previous restrictions enacted in March on flights from eight countries in the Middle East and Africa to the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security said this week it was considering expanding the ban to include in-bound flights from Europe. |
| If this happens, then what? The last time I looked, most passengers on my flights were doing things electronically—watching movies on their phones, tablets and laptops, playing videogames or reading, and some of us were actually working. We were going through e-mails, writing reports, scanning spreadsheets, editing photos or videos, and dare I say it, writing articles. Nothing provocative mind you, just news you can use about the latest twists and turns in the world of technology. |
| Computers on our lap are part of the way we fly. They do more than just help us kill time—they enable us to catch up on work, in an environment with no distractions. Airlines have figured this out. Some offer streaming entertainment and free inflight Wi-Fi via their own apps, downloaded on your own computer, tablet or phone rather than the back of a seat in front of you. |
| Will we survive without our largest devices? Of course we will. We may go back to reading paper books. Or worse, talking to our neighbor. More likely, we'll be stretching every last minute out of our smartphones, playing games, reading, anything we could do with them offline, before the battery dies. |
| But—as smartphones get bigger every year—do we have to worry about them getting banned too? Please no. |
| That one, we couldn't live with. Then there would be real riots at airports and in the skies. |
| Listen to the #TalkingTech Podcast here — |
| And in other tech news from the week: |
| ALEXA, I CAN SEE YOU NOW |
| Amazon is bringing video to the Echo personal assistant. It will add a video screen with the new Show, a $229.99 device for all the same stuff Alexa does, like recite the weather, play music and news and answer questions, plus the ability to make video phone calls and show you recipes, instead of reading them. The unit will ship at the end of June. The regular Echo, a runaway best-seller for Amazon, sells for $149. |
| DISAPPEARING PROFITS |
| Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, had its first quarterly report as a public company this week and the results were so poor most of Snap's gains disappeared quicker than a Snap selfie. The company missed analysts estimates on revenue, warned it wouldn't supply financial guidance, and tried to insist it was more interested in capturing more revenue per user than growing its user base. Investors weren't buying the argument, sending the stock on a nose-dive, down 21% the following day, to its lowest point as a public company. |
| BOTS AND OTHER FUTURE STUFF |
| At Microsoft's Build developer conference in Seattle, the Windows maker mostly focused on hard-core geek stuff, but did wow the crowd by showing a prototype of a watch that eliminated the arm shaking that often plagues those suffering from the neurological disease Parkinson's. The watch vibrates in a distinctive pattern to disrupt the feedback loop between brain and hand. There was no timetable given for when we might see the watch. |
| WHEN JOHN OLIVER SPEAKS — |
| HBO's John Oliver has proven again and again that he can use his Last Week Tonight HBO soapbox to goad people into action, even for a topic as wonky as Net neutrality. On Sunday night, he urged his viewers to comment on the current Net neutrality rules , which require Internet service providers to treat all legal content equally. So far, nearly 200,000 comments have been logged by the Federal Communications Commission, which is considering killing the rules. Before Oliver spoke out, the FCC had only received about 30,000 comments. There may have been more: The FCC says it suffered a DDoS attack Sunday night that prevented comments from being submitted. |
| NEXT WEEK IS ALMOST HERE |
| We've got two big tech events, the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, featuring an appearance from former baseball great turned tech investor Derek Jeter and the big Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View, Calif. Google is expected to announce several updates to its Home personal digital assistant, a new version of the Android mobile operating system and updates in virtual reality products. |
| Listen to the #TalkingTech newsletter podcast here— |
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| And that's your weekly tech round-up. As for what Talking Tech readers are buzzing about: Here are the most shared stories of the week. What was your favorite? |
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