Weekly digest - 2019.22

Weekly digest - 2019.22

Deepfakes becomes real

Researchers from Samsung’s AI Center have figured out a method to train the AI to animate a person's face from an extremely limited dataset, like a single photo. They achieved this by training algorithm for detecting facial features and face landmarks, like shape of the face, eyes, mouth shape, etc. They used 7,000 images of celebrities gathered from VoxCeleb to train the model and achieve realistic results.

What they achieve is really impressive and scary at the same time. I'm afraid that soon we will have problem to tell the difference between what's real and what's fake.

Facebook & cryptocurrency

According to BBC, Facebook plans to launch its own cryptocurrency in 2020. New digital currency, named GlobalCoin, will be launched in 12 countries and it suppose to make money transfers easier for Instagram and WhatsApp users.

This is an interesting approach, and it's completely different from Apple's "traditional banking" route. I'm curious how it will be adopted by users. Maybe, finally, the cryptocurrency money transfers will become widely used.

iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 rumors

One week before WWDC, Guilherme Rambo revealed screenshots of some upcoming iOS 13 features. So far, the following changes will released with new operating system:

  • Dark mode,
  • New toolbar for screenshots editor,
  • Redesigned Reminders app,
  • Find my iPhone and Find my Friends apps are united into one app called Find My.

On the macOS side, we got screenshot of new Music and TV apps.

Those features align with previous rumors about iOS 13 and macOS 10.15, so there is high chance that we will see the rest of anticipated features on Monday.

New iPod Touch

Apple has quietly updated the iPod Touch with new A10 Fusion chip. Beside new CPU, iPod got new version with  256GB of storage. And that's it. This update is strange as Apple didn't even use latest generation of  A11 or A12 chips.

I'm surprised that Apple even bothered to upgrade iPod Touch, but apparently  they are convinced that users need more performance. Maybe they think that people will use iPods to play games, for example from Apple Arcade. Well, iPod Touch, with starting price at $199, is definitely chipper than the iPhone, so they might be people who like mobile games, but cannot afford a new iPhone. In that case, iPod Touch is reasonable choice.


Image credits: Egor Zakharov

Weekly digest - 2019.21

Weekly digest - 2019.21

Huawei vs USA

Google has immediately suspended all operations with Huawei on May 19th. This means that Huawei will not be able to use Google's Android on their phones and Google Play services. For now, currently sold devices will be receiving security updates, but this might change in the short future. MKBHD has explained this in his video.

This whole situation is a result of the trade ban issued by US government on China. Google is just one of the several tech companies that suspended partnership with Huawei. Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Xilinx have stopped supplying Chinese company with new parts.

Huawei was one of the fastest growing tech companies in a world. Now, when they have no software and they are cut off from main suppliers, their future doesn't look that good.

MDS vulnerabilities

New procesor's vulnerabilities have been discovered. They are really bad. Both Intel and AMD processors are affected, but fixes hit mostly Intel processors. Intel losses even 5 times more performance than AMD. Phoronix run a set of benchmarks which shows about 15% performance drop on Intel processor, when AMD lost only 3%. What's even more interesting Google and Apple advise to disable Hyper-threading on Intel chips, which can cause even 40-50% performance drop.

New MacBook Pro

Apple has refreshed their MacBook Pro line. New computers can now get 9-gen of Intel's Core processors. The base model starts with a 2.6GHz, 6-core i7, which can turbo boost up to 4.5GHz. If  we need more performance, we can buy model with 8-core i9 chip with a 2.4GHz base speed, which can turbo boost up to 5.0GHz. Apple also added more options for the GPUs. The base model has Radeon Pro 560X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. As an option we can choose the Radeon Pro Vega 16 or 20, both with 4GB of HBM2 memory.

Also new MacBooks come with 3rd generation of the butterfly keyboard. Apple updated the materials used to create butterfly mechanism. According to Apple, those changes should solve the majority of the keyboard issues, but looking at this thread from iFixit employee, the reality might be disappointing.

Keyboard Service Program for MacBooks

Apple has not only updated the keyboards, but they also updated their keyboard repair program. All MacBooks with the butterfly mechanism  will now be fully eligible for Apple’s Keyboard Service Program. All repaired MacBooks will get newest, 3rd generation keyboard.


Image credits: Dice

Weekly digest - 2019.20

Weekly digest - 2019.20

2019 iPhone design

Mark Gurman tweeted a photo of alleged case molds for upcoming iPhones. Those molds align with previous rumors and shows much bigger, square camera bump. The bigger bump could be justified on the next iPhone XS ans XS Max, which are suppose to get 3 rear cameras, but XR model, despite the rumors about having only 2 cameras, also has square bump, almost the same size as XS will have.

Next Star Wars movies

Last week we got confirmation of the next Star Wars trilogy. This week, Bob Iger confirmed the rumors that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Games of Thrones show runners, will create next movie.  I'm stoked to see next movies, but looking at the turmoil the last season of Games of Thrones created I'm also a little bit worried.

Beside this, we also got more detailed release dates:

  • Part 1 - 16th December 2022
  • Part 2 - 20th December 2024
  • Part 3 - 18th December 2026

3rd Star Wars TV show

Bob Iger also revealed that during 3 years break from the movies we will get 3 Star Wars TV shows. So far we know about The Mandalorian and Cassian Andor series. The third one was a surprise and becomes an interesting mystery.

App Store Monopoly Lawsuit Against Apple

The U.S. Supreme Court decided to proceed with the class action lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit was filed in 2011 by some iPhone users who believe that Apple violates federal antitrust laws by requiring apps to be sold only through  the App Store. This allows Apple to collects a 30% cut from all purchases, which leads to inflated prices of the applications.

Long story short, iPhone users believe that apps would be priced lower outside of the App Store, as Apple's 30 percent cut would not be calculated into  prices.

I have mixed filings about this. I agree that 30% cut is a big one and it didn't change since the beginning of the AppStore, but I also doubt that apps would be priced differently outside of the AppStore.  


Image credits: Mark Gurman

Weekly digest - 2019.19

Weekly digest - 2019.19

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:

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:

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.


Image credits: Gogole

Weekly digest - 2019.18

Weekly digest - 2019.18

F8 2019 Conference

Last year's Facebook conference was shadowed by the Cambridge Analysis scandal. This year company told us that it is "focusing" on privacy. I'm not going to comment this, and I move on to other topic.

First of all the website will be completely redesigned.  It's about time to do so. Right now the site feels old and inconvenient. I only hope that Facebook will not force more "recommendation" algorithms. I know what I want to follow and in what order. So I would appreciate if Facebook stoped filtering the content for me.

Second thing are new versions of the Messenger. Beside size and speed optimisations it will have end-to-end encryption. Also, we will get the desktop versions for Windows and Mac.

From other news, Facebook said that it going to extend the dating features with secret crush. And Oculus Quest and Rift S will be released on May 21st.

Peter Mayhew passed away

Peter Mayhew, the original actor who portrayed Chewbacca in Star Wars, has died at the age of 74 on the evening of April 30.

This is a really sad news, yet another actor from original cast is gone ☹️

MacBook Pro Keyboard Failures

On Reddit, user named cli3x posted and interesting analysis of the MacBook keyboards failures. Long story short, it looks like the design of the butterfly switches is faulted and non of the upgrades Apple did, during last year and a half, are going to solve keyboard issues. This fragment sums this up perfectly:

Macbook owners, please beware. Always have AppleCare, even if paying extra to cover a flaw that should be properly dealt with is morally questionable and a shitty thing to do.

Firefox's "armagadd-on"

On Saturday, almost all Firefox's extensions stopped working.  It turned out that the signing certificate has expired. It took Firefox's team couple of hours to pinpoint and fix the issue. In a meanwhile, the workaround was to disable add-ons' certification validation.

Lesson from this incident is clear, always check when your certificates are about to expire and set a reminder in your calendar.


Image credits: Facebook