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Tech Briefs: Samsung’s 5G, Twitter gets hacked, Peacock app

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On this episode of Tech Briefs, presented by Samsung Galaxy 5G, Greg Nibler and Pavi Dinamani dive into the biggest technology stories of the past week to help make sense of what they mean and how they affect us. Topics include how the speeds of 5G will change the way we connect, the Great Twitter Hack of 2020, and what we can expect from the NBC Peacock app.

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The promise of what 5G will bring has been all over the news for years, but what exactly is 5G? The “G” stands for “generation,” and each generation represents a big leap over the generation before, going all the way back to the 1970s. We’ve been on the 4th generation for around a decade now, and carriers are running out of capacity in major metropolitan areas. Because 5G allows for high usage, rolling out high wave spectrum networks allows for more traffic — and more devices. With this interconnectivity and more devices, 5G will help pave the way for autonomous vehicles, remote machine operation, and more.

While your current phone likely won’t support this next generation, new 5G devices — such as the Samsung Galaxy S20 5G or the Samsung Galaxy A71 5G — will. All four major careers in the U.S. now offer Samsung Galaxy 5G.

In other big news of the week, numerous high-profile Twitter accounts were hacked on July 15. This included big names such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Apple, Uber — the list goes on. The scam involved tricking people into clicking through and depositing money in a Bitcoin wallet — it ended up raking in about $100,000. The hackers were able to access internal systems and tools, allowing them to bypass two-factor authentication, as well as dupe some Twitter employees into making security-related errors or divulging information. About 130 accounts were targeted. The ramifications of someone being able to access such top-level accounts is unsettling, and Twitter will most likely need to answer how it plans to keep this from happening again.

Finally, we head to TV streaming and the new NBC Peacock app, which debuted nationally on July 15. It was a bit of a clunky rollout, and while it’s available on Microsoft and Apple devices, browsers, some TVs, and soon the PlayStation 4, it’s not available on Fire TV or Roku, which leaves a lot of people out. The Peacock app features three different subscription tiers: Peacock Free with ads, Peacock Premium, and Peacock Premium Plus. Peacock Premium offers the full line of programming, with ads, for $4.99, while Premium Plus features the full line of programming with no ads for $10. While there is a lot of good content on the Peacock app, it’s entering a very crowded field of streaming services, which could affect how many people pull the trigger on yet another one.

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Todd Werkhoven
Todd Werkhoven
Todd Werkhoven's work can be read at numerous publications and he co-authored a personal finance book called "Zombie…
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