Gamescom 2019

Here is the list of more interesting games presented during Gamescom:

• Borderlands 3
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
• Comanche
• Darksiders Genesis
• Death Stranding
• Destiny 2: Shadowkeep
• Disintegration
• Empire of Sin
• Erica
• Everspace 2
• Fifa 20
• Hotline Miami Collection
• Gears 5
• Ghostrunner
• Humankind
• Kerbal Space Program 2
• Life is Strange 2: Episode 4
• Little Nightmares 2
• Marvel's Avengers
• Monster Hunter World: Iceborn
• Need For Speed Heat
• Orcs Must Die! 3
• Port Royale 4
• Predator: Hunting Grounds
• Remothered: Broken Porcelain
• The Cycle
• Ultimate Ski Jumping 2020
• Wasteland 3
• Witcher 3 for Switch

Android 10

Google has changed the naming convention of their mobile operating system. After years of using alphabet letters, also associated with funny names of sweets, company decided to change the naming convention to numbers.

I was wondering how Google would name the Android after the Z version.  I got the answer sooner than expected 😅 The Android's naming convention was a really cool idea from marketing perspective. But  from practical point of view it was confusing to the users, so I'm surprised that happened now, but overall it is a good decision.

D23 Expo Panel

This week Disney hold its annual conference. This year the main focus was of course on the new streaming service. You can watch the Star Wars segment yourself here.

Star Wars Episode IX: The raise of Skywalker

There is no new news about the movie, similarly to previous movies, Disney waits with the marketing campaign till late September/early October. But we got short new footage and new poster.

The Mandalorian

It looks like The Mandalorian is one of the most important projects for Disney+, so we got a bunch of cool news:

• First official trailer
• Official poster
• New images from the TV Series
• Taika Waititi is the voice of IG-11
• Ming-Na Wen joins the cast of the Mandalorian

Obi-Wan Kenobi TV Series

Yes! It is happening! During the D23 Kathleen Kennedy and Ewan McGregor officially confirmed that Obi-Wan Kenobi TV Series is coming to Disney+.  So far, we know that all the scripts have been written, and it will begin filming in 2020.

The Clone Wars

Unfortunately we didn't get any new news beside the release window. The last season of the Clone Wars is premiering in February 2020.

Cassian Andor Series

There is no new information about the show. It is currently in preproduction and scheduled to shoot next year.

Other news

Here is the list of other interesting announcements and news from D23:

• Marvel's She-Hulk Series
• Marvel's Ms. Marvel Series
• Marvel's Moon Knight

Spider-Man is leaving MCU

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige will not produce next Spider-Man movies, which basically means that Spider-Man will no longer be part of the MCU. According to Deadline, the reasoning behind this decision is a dispute between Sony - which holds the rights to the character - and Disney - Marvel’s parent company - over revenue sharing from films.

This is a sad news, because the last 2 Spider-Man movies perfectly tied into the MCU making this universe reacher. According to some rumors the negotiations between Sony and Disney are still in progress, so maybe after current fans outrage, companies will find solution that will make everyone happy.

Interesting links

• How to port your iPad app to Mac using Catalyst
• How to render dynamic component defined in JSON using Vue.js
• Roll Your Own Comment System for a Static Site
• Top 15 Programming Languages by Popularity (2004-2019)
• Usage Share of Internet Browsers 1996 - 2019
• Screen Reader Demo for Digital Accessibility
• 365 days of growth — from 0 to $250k ARR without funding
• Build Your Own Fan Club: How to Use Your Email List

Google IO

Google held its annual conference this week. This year, nothing revolutionary announced,  it was rather a presentation of an evolution of the current products. You can watch a recap here. Here is the short list of more interesting news:

• Google Assistant became smarter and faster,
• AR walking directions in Google Maps,
• New Pixel 3a was announced,
• Android Q gets dark mode,
• Smart screen became Google Nest,
• Duplex is coming to the web

From all the thing that's been shown I'm most impressed by the Google Assistant. As I tweeted earlier this week, it is lightyears ahead of Bixby, Siri or even Alexa. I wish Apple care about Siri as much as Google does with Assistant.

PowerBeats Pro

Tech reviewers started getting their hands on the new Beats earbuds. First impressions are very positive. PowerBeats Pro are the best Beats ever, but they have two major issues. One is pricing and the second is ery big charging case. I have already accepted the price, but the case is humongous. It will definitely not fit to the pocket, so you either need a backpack/bag to carry it or leave it at home.

Windows Now Comes with Linux

Microsoft will ship a full Linux kernel in Windows 10. Although Microsoft added multiple Linux Bashes to Windows over the years, this is a big surprise.

New Microsoft Edge released as a preview

Microsoft has released a preview of their new browser powered with Chromium engine. Right now it is available only on macOS. I run a quick test with Tatooine.live. So far, this site worked properly only on Chrome, now it also works, without any issues, on Edge for Mac.

What's even more interesting, this is the first Microsoft's browser on the Mac since Safari replaced Internet Explorer over 15 years ago.

New Star Wars Movies

Disney has announced the release dates for its upcoming movies, including Star Wars. Right now, only new trilogy has been announced with following releases:

• Part 1 - Christmas 2022
• Part 2 - Christmas 2024
• Part 3 - Christmas 2026

So, after Episode 9, there will be no Star Wars movies for 3 years. Hopefully the new TV shows will fill the gap. Right now, we know nothing about this trilogy, but we know about 2 potential projects:

• Rian Johnson trilogy,
• D.B. Weiss and David Benioff (Game of Thrones showrunners) project in the Old Republic era.

No spinoff has been announced, which is disappointing, because I'm waiting for Kenobi movie.

Spider-Man: Far From Home Trailer

Roughly two weeks after Avengers Endgame premiere, the new Spider-Man trailer hit the web. The trailer shows the aftermath of the events from the Endgame and it looks like it's opening the Multiverse  for the Phase 4.

Interesting Links

• Former Google engineer reveals the secret YouTube plot to kill Internet Explorer 6
• Minecraft Classic in a browser
• Proxx - minesweeper in a browser
• Real Time Flight Map w/ Azure Functions, CosmosDB & SignalR
• Tinder’s move to Kubernetes
• Real-time satellite imagery on your desktop with Downlink
• How Dead Cells Secretly Stops You From Dying | Audio Logs
• How Idle Heroes made $100M in a Year
• A new (and easy) way to hide content accessibly
• 99 point checklist for web designers
• 4 reasons your z-index isn’t working (and how to fix it)
• Best Practices for Mobile Payment Experiences
• The curious case of the disappearing Polish S

Image credits: Gogole

During this week I looked back on what happened this year and I decided to pick my top 3 news from each month. Here are my picks.

January

1. Bitcoin bubble burst,
2. Meltdown and Spectre discovered,
3. EA became scared of YouTubers.

February

1. SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy into space,
2. Elon Musk started selling not a Flamethrowers,
3. Apple started selling HomePods.

March

1. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal,
2. Apple fixed buggy iPhone X ad before fixing the actual iOS 11 bug,
3. Current frequency deviations in Central Europe.

April

1. Mark Zuckerberg testified before members of Congress,
2. SpaceX reached the promised land of launching every two weeks,
3. GTA V has become the most profitable entertainment product of all time.

May

1. Google Duplex has been announced,
2. GDPR has become effective,
3. Premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

June

1. Microsoft bought GitHub,
2. Apple held WWDC,
3. Apple Pay became available in Poland.

July

1. Apple updated MacBook Pros,
2. New MacBook Pros fixed keyboard but overheats,
3. Clone Wars TV series has been renewed.

August

1. Apple became first IT company to be worth 1 trillion dollars,
2. Twitter limited access to the APIs,
3. CD Project released first gameplay of the Cyberpunk 2077.

September

1. Apple unveiled iPhone XS, XR and Apple Watch 4,
2. Google was celebrating its 20th birthday,
3. iOS 12 and macOS Mojave has been released.

October

1. LucasFilm shared details about first Star Wars tv series - The Mandalorian,
2. Apple shoved new iPad Pro,
3. Google unveiled Pixel 3, a tablet and HomeHub.

November

1. Disney announced new streaming service - Disney+,
2. Stan Lee has passed away,
3. Robert Kubica returned to F1.

December

1. Microsoft announced that it's working on a new browser,
2. YouTube Rewind 2018 became the most disliked video on YouTube,
3. Google’s Home Alone ad.

That's all folks. This was an incredible year. I hope next year will be event better.
Happy New year guys and see you soon!

Image credits: Annie Spratt.

This week was really uneventful. The only interesting thing was the Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 event, where new Note 9 has been announced, as well as new smart speaker - Galaxy Home. Also, Samsung has rebranded the Gear watches into Galaxy Watches so now we have entire Galaxy family of devices.
Samsung has also announced the partnership with Spotify. Now Samsung users can make Spotify the default music player across its devices.

Speaking of Samsung. One of the most popular games of last couple of months - Fortnite - was launched on Android... exclusively on recent Samsung Galaxy devices.
Last week we got news that Fortnite is not going to be available through Google Play Store. This week Epic Games dropped the bomb that it will be Samsung's exclusive at launch.
The rumors say that the exclusivity will last less than a month, but it still feels wrong.

That's it. As I said this was uneventful week. Now, the only thing left is to share the list of interesting articles.

Ray Tracing - Part 1

DX12 Ray Tracing Tutorials

Building Fluid Interfaces

Vue CLI 3.0 is here!

How I Built a Google Docs Imitation

Argon - A beautiful Design System for Bootstrap 4

Image credits: Samsung.

Last week we had F8 from Facebook, this week we got 2 more conferences - Build from Microsoft and Google IO. Microsoft focused on integrations and IoT:

• iOS and Android can sync with Windows
• Cartana and Alexa can work together
• Timeline for iOS and Android
• Microsoft will pay developers up to 95% of the revenue
• Sets and new Alt-Tab
• Kinnect brought to the cloud
• Azure IoT Edge
• Microsoft Graph
• Mixed reality comes to the workplaces
• Visual Studio Live Share Public Preview
• .NET Core 2.1 RC1
• .Net Core 3 will support Windows Desktop Applications

Next day, Google showed us:

• Android P
• New Google Assistant Voices
• Google Duplex
• Smart displays with Google Assistant
• Gmail with intelligent auto completion
• Google Maps gets social features and augmented reality
• Google photos get new editing features
• Google News
• Ability to copy text from real world objects

Now, we know what 3 of 4 biggest IT companies are up to, Apple will unveil its plans during WWDC next month.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the iMac. Personally I'm not a big fan of the iMac line, but without a doubt this machine changed the way how people perceive personal computers.

Speaking of Apple computers. On Friday a class action lawsuit was filed in federal court. Apple is accused of knowing about flows and defects in MacBook Pro's keyboard before it launched in 2015.
Last week we saw report about high number of keyboard failures in MacBook Pro, so this lawsuit was just a matter of time. As this "keyboard gate" is developing rapidly I will keep an eye on this matter with a great interest.

Also this week we had a premiere of the Solo: A Star Wars Story. The first reactions are positive, saying that the movie is funny. It looks like Lucasfilm did it again, even with directors swap in the middle of shooting.

As we are on the topic of Star Wars, Jon Favreau give us a couple of news about his upcoming live action TV series. It will be set about 7 years after battle of Endor. It will introduce brand new characters. The technology used for the Jungle Book and Lion King will also be used to make the TV show.

As for the interesting links, I only have one - E3 2018 conference schedule.

Image credits: Google.