Google has announced its newest mobile device, the Pixel 4. With it comes a variety of new and innovative advancements for its users. Take the phone’s Motion Sense, which allows users to swipe or wave their hand for certain tasks. Then there is the phone’s Recorder app which records and transcribes audio into text.
It is clear why this is one of the most highly anticipated phone releases in quite some time:
“For the first time, Google said the Pixel 4 is available for purchase from every major U.S. carrier, which should help boost sales compared to previous Pixel models. (Earlier Pixel phones were only available through Verizon or unlocked from Google and other vendors.)
The Pixel 4 includes big improvements to the night sight camera, to the point where Google is confident you can use it to capture pictures of stars in the night sky, even the Milky Way galaxy. Most phones can’t do that. The Pixel 4 also has a new 90 Hz display, the second such device after the OnePlus 7 Pro to offer it. This makes scrolling much smoother than on traditional displays, but at the cost of battery life. Google will let you turn it on and off manually.”
The biggest knock against the Pixel? It’s too expensive. The Pixel 4 with 128GB of memory will run you about $999, which is significantly more than the latest Apple release, the iPhone 11. Without a price reduction, the Pixel is only available for those with deep pockets.
London has been the central hub for finance in Europe over many decades. However, with Brexit looming, the city’s place among the financial elite is put into question, especially if foreign talent in the country head back to EU nations after Brexit is finalized. Richard Hoar, director at finance and technology recruiter Goodman Masson, sees the financial services industry moving to more localized solutions:
“More of a growth in regional and country-based financial services communities in Europe, as countries become increasingly wary of being over reliant on London financial services for everything they need.”
On the flipside, others see London as a resilient city, and one that will have no problem maintaining its foothold as the premier financial city in Europe no matter what happens with Brexit. Yet, even those who favor London recognize the split between the two parties is unprecedented, making it difficult to make predictions about the future.
British nationals who want to remain EU residents will face an uphill battle if Britain does not come to a Brexit deal. It could cost €210 for Britons to secure residency in the EU, not to mention minimum salary requirements. This has the potential to effect an estimated 1.2 million British nationals living in countries throughout the European Union.
Many, like Jane Golding, the chair of lobby group British in Europe, hope to come to terms on an EU-wide solution instead of each nation enforcing their own laws on the matter:
“If there had been a ringfenced solution, in a no-deal scenario you would have an EU-wide solution. But what we are facing now is 27 different solutions,” she said. “In effect it is a European postcode lottery, and rather than our EU rights being safeguarded at an EU level, our rights are being outsourced to the 27 countries.”
For now, Britons will have to deal with each EU member state individually. For instance, Austria is set to charge €210 for a residence permit while France would only charge €119. Other countries are putting in more stringent requirements, such as Poland which would require those seeking long-term residence permits to prove they have not spent more than 10-months outside the country in the past 5-years.
Europe is piling on against big tech companies once again. This time, chip-maker Broadcom is the target. The EU opened a complaint against Broadcom in June and is now taking interim measures to make sure the company is not suppressing its competition.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner fears for the chip making industry if Broadcom is not slowed down:
“Interim measures aim at preventing irreversible harm to competition,” Ms. Vestager said at a news conference in Brussels, adding that they “allow the Commission to order a company to stop conduct that we consider at first sight to be illegal.”
Ms. Vestager said her office had weighed the company’s right to defend itself versus a need for “speed and effectiveness in antitrust enforcement.”
It is expected that Broadcom will appeal the decision. At the same time, this use of “interim measures” has not been implemented in decades, and does not bode well for other tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, some of which are already under investigation by Vestager and her team.
