Photos of the Xbox Series X leaked online

Photos of the next-gen console has were posted on NeoGAF and Twitter. It’s unclear how legitimate those photos are, but if this they are, it's the first time we can see the console with all the ports:

• HDMI Out,
• 1x front USB Type-A port,
• 2x rear USB Type-A ports,
• Ethernet port,
• Optical port
• Diagnostic port

Microsoft has not commented on the leak, so we will have to wait, probably till E3 2020, for official news.

iPhone 12 in new sizes?

According to report from Macotakara, this year iPhones will have new dimensions:

• 5.4-inch model will have a height that is midway between the iPhone SE and iPhone 8,
• 6.1-inch model will be midway between the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro Max,
• 6.7-inch model will be slightly taller than the iPhone 11 Pro Max.  Also, it will be thinner, 7.4mm instead of 8.1mm.

Disney+ in Western Europe

Disney announced that its streaming service, Disney+, will launch in Europe on March 24th.  It will be available in selected countries:

• Ireland,
• France,
• Germany,
• Italy,
• Spain,
• Austria,
• Switzerland,
• United Kingdom.

Belgium, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland will get access this summer. Unfortunately, Eastern Europe will have to wait till the first half of 2021.

Google I/O 2020 announced

Google revealed that its annual developer conference will take place from May 12th to May 14th. The conference dates were reveled through a puzzle game.

It's still unclear what Google is going to announce during the conference, but the preview of a new Android is a safe bet.

Dope links

• On the road to Swift 6
• Under the hood of Futures and Promises in Swift
• Optimizing views in SwiftUI using EquatableView
• Pull to Refresh in SwiftUI
• Sheets don’t inherit the environment
• When XML beats JSON: UI layouts
• Thanos JS - Reduce the file size of your project down to 50%,
  by randomly deleting half of the files
• Blazor and Native Mobile Apps
• Embedding Power BI in Blazor
• Deploy your side-projects at scale for basically nothing - Google Cloud Run
• Let’s Reverse Engineer Discord
• Working for someone vs. doing your own thing
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars -  Official Trailer
• LEGO International Space Station

Image credits: NeoGAF

This week pasted mostly on discussion about future of the Twitter. On August 16th, Twitter removed streaming APIs which most of the 3rd party Twitter clients relied on. They've done that without providing any substitute, so now the 3rd party clients are missing key functionalities like real time notifications. This of course pissed a lot of people off and was interpreted as a di*k move to force user to use either web or crappy PWA clients. It also restarted the debate about future of the Twitter itself because this is not first time when Twitter has made a questionable decision. From many opinions I read, I completely agree with Sarah Perez:

Perhaps, users want a consistent experience — one that doesn’t involve a million inconsequential product changes like turning stars to hearts or changing the character counter to a circle. Maybe they appreciate the fact that the third parties seem to understand what Twitter is better than Twitter itself does: Twitter has always been about a real-time stream of information. It’s not meant to be another Facebook-style algorithmic News Feed. The third-party clients respect that. Twitter does not.

And I believe this is the core of the problem. If we look back at all the (questionable) changes that Twitter made, e.g.: algorithm driven timeline instead of chronological one, it looks like Twitter's management at all cost tries to make a clone of the Facebook. They are completely missing the point that Twitter was different idea and had different purpose.
In my opinion, if Twitter continues doing this, sooner or later, it will hit rock bottom. This is why I started looking for alternatives. Right now people are moving to Mastodon - the decentralized Twitter alternative. I joined it to see how it is going to evolve. You can find me there @mtynior.

From the other news. This week Motorola released new P30 Smartphone, which looks like iPhone X. Actually this is iPhone X, those phone are identical. Something tells me there is a lawsuit in the air...

Also this week, Lucasfilm and Disney released first trailer for upcoming TV series - Star Wars Resistance. My first impression was that it looks very cartoonish. But for now, I will not judge it. I was also skeptical after watching the first trailer of the Start Wars Rebels. And it turned out to be better than most of the Hollywood blockbusters.

Finally, here is list of interesting things.

Unreal Academy

The 2018 Game Developer Roadmap

The Productivity Stack

How to launch a side project in 10 days

GRID: A simple visual cheatsheet for CSS Grid Layout

Lessons from a small Firebase project

How to build a single page application using server-side Blazor