The Morning After: Monday, October 30th 2017
Monday morning time.
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.
This Monday, you're waking up to Nintendo's hit console on track to outsell its predecessor's lifetime sales in a single year, rigid region-based search from Google and Kinect's weird experimental life.
Apple fires employee after daughter's iPhone X video goes viral
Just because a tech company has announced a product doesn't mean employees are free to share or talk about it. Unfortunately, one Apple engineer learned that the hard way. Apple has reportedly fired a iPhone team member after his daughter Brooke posted a hands-on video showing off his iPhone X before launch. Brooke took down the video as soon as Apple requested it, but the takedown came too late to prevent the clip from going viral, leading to seemingly endless reposts and commentary.
Banana fiber sanitary pads can solve big problems in India
With its sanitary pads for the Indian market, startup company Saathi solves two problems at once. Just 16 percent of women in India use sanitary protection due to poverty and other reasons, which causes health and social issues. At the same time, manufacturing them wastes millions of gallons of water, and two million tons of pads end up in landfills every year. To help with all that, Saathi's pads are affordable, made from discarded banana tree fibers.
We take sanitary napkin usage for granted in North America and Europe, but it's a huge issue in India and other developing nations. "In India, out of 100, only 16 women use sanitary pads," Tarun Bothra told Engadget. "It varies from region to region as to why. In some places they're not affordable, and in others, there are religious taboos."
Kinect: Seven years of strange experiments
Kinect is dead. The writing has been on the wall for years, at least since Microsoft de-bundled the motion-tracking system from the Xbox One in 2014, knocking $100 off the price tag and making the system more competitive with the PlayStation 4.
The Kinect debuted in 2010 with the Xbox 360, and it had a good run, overall: Microsoft sold roughly 35 million devices in total. However, the Kinect never quite found its market -- the one application that would turn the hardware into an essential piece of home technology. The Kinect was a product out of time, but that's not to say it didn't contribute to some truly wild experiences over the years.
