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Amazon Looks To Ditch Homegrown Software For Android in Fire Tablet Revamp

2 months 2 weeks ago
Amazon is plotting a big change to its Fire tablet lineup following years of escalating gripes from consumers and app developers over the company's homegrown operating system. Reuters: As part of a project known internally as Kittyhawk, Amazon plans to release a higher-end tablet as soon as next year offering the Android operating system software for the first time, according to six people familiar with the matter. Since the Fire tablet's introduction in 2011, Amazon has used what is known as a "forked" version of Android with custom modifications that make it work like a unique operating system. [...] The first Amazon Android tablet, slated for next year, will be pricier than current models, the people said. One of them said Amazon had discussed a $400 price tag, nearly double the cost of its current higher-end $230 Fire Max 11 tablet. IPads, by comparison, range from $350 to $1,200. Reuters could not learn additional specifications for the planned Amazon tablet, such as screen size and speaker quality or memory capacity. Amazon historically has avoided using software or other products from third parties, preferring to develop the services in-house or, barring that, to acquire a competitor.

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UAE Adds Newborns To Major Genome Project

2 months 2 weeks ago
Abu Dhabi is gathering the DNA of Emirati newborns in a significant expansion of a national genomic sequencing project that aims to put the UAE on the cutting-edge of health care. From a report: The UAE capital has so far mapped the genomes of 68% of Emirati citizens, a spokesperson for M42, the firm running the program, told Semafor, while at-birth sequencing is being offered to parents on a voluntary basis across several hospitals, and aims to detect over 800 treatable childhood genetic conditions. Only around 1% of the world's mapped genomes are of Arab descent. The UAE is looking to address the gap while tackling public health issues and expanding personalized health care offerings.

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IETF Draft suggests making IPv6 standard on DNS resolvers - partly to destroy IPv4

2 months 2 weeks ago
Dragging DNS into the modern age. And if that means fewer people need to buy IPv4, so much the better

A pair of networking researchers have proposed that the Internet Engineering Task Force define support for IPv6 as a best practice for operators of DNS resolvers – the servers that translate URLs into IP addresses – and one of them hopes adoption of the idea will accelerate the demise of IPv4.…

Simon Sharwood