Weekly digest - 2019.02

Weekly digest - 2019.02

It's a tradition that during second week of January, most of business related to the consumer technologies gather in Las Vegas for the CES. Here is the list of more interesting news.

  1. Lets start with surprising announcement from Samsung and Sony that their new Smart TVs will support AirPlay. To clarify the confusion Apple announced that leading TV manufacturers will be integrating AirPlay 2 into their TVs.
  2. Chinese EV startup - Byton - has shown their 49-inch screen. It doesn't sound special, except this screen is inside the car. I must admit, it looks gorgeous; however, I'm wondering how useful it is as well as how much it distracts a driver.
  3. Speaking of screens, LG has presented first rollable OLED TV. You may ask why one would need to roll their TV screen. Beside the ability to hide the screen when requested, I don't have any other answer. This is not important when we look at this from technology point of view. If we can roll an OLED screen, that means we are really close from getting foldable OLED phones and tables.
  4. HTC announced Vive Pro Eye. This is virtual reality headset with eye tracking built-in. Eye tracking allows developers to increase the quality of the games/applications. This can be achieved by using high quality assets for objects that are in front of player's eyes and lower quality assets for elements that are outside eye's focus area. Beside the visual aspect, eye tracking will add some new capabilities to the headset e.g. hands-free interactions. The price is still unknown, but the headset should be available in the second quarter of 2019.
  5. Google assistance is getting momentum. It will be integrated with many new products including TVs, phones, speakers and even shower. I wish Siri had those capabilities.
  6. Yubico presented the first Lightning security key for iPhones. Securing keys are now a standard for computers, but I have never heard of such solution for a phone. So now, if one needs to protect their phone even more, they have a solution that is even approved by Apple.
  7. AMD announced the Radeon VII. This is first 7nm GPU and promises significant performance improvements over current AMD's flagship card - Radeon RX Vega 64. Also, with this card, AMD wants to compete with Nvidia's RTX 2080.
  8. A lot of cars have been announced, including flying car, walking car as well as smart vehicles. I like to see cool technologies, but I hope that CES don't become an auto show.

Now, let's move on to other news. There was a lot of rumors regarding Apple. First we got a first "alleged" mocks of the new iPhone. We cannot see the from of the phone, but it's remored that Apple wants to move all the sensors behind OLED screen and remove the notch. I really like this idea, I got used to the notch, but still it is hideous. If those rumors are true, new iPhone might looks like Samsung Galaxy S10.
As we are on the topic of leaked photos, new iPad mini has emerged basically from grave. I thought the mini series is dead, but it looks like Apple still is considering small form factor. The future will tell who was right.

Also this week, we got a first real result of buying GitHub by Microsoft. Users can create unlimited private repositories for free. This is the feature I have been waiting for a long time. I know I can create private repositories for free on Bitbucket or GitLab, but anyone is on GitHub and if I want to start something privately and later on share this with others now, I can do this without switching between different repositories.

This week there is no list of interesting things. I suggest to browse the YouTube or your tech site of choice and check what else has been announced during CES.

Weekly digest - 2018.52

Weekly digest - 2018.52

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.

Weekly digest - 2018.02

Weekly digest - 2018.02

Second week of January is traditionally the CES week. As always, they were multiple hardware announcements and presentations. You can check what's new watching coverages from Marques Brownlee here and here, or Linus Tech Tips.

The CES is not the only thing that happened this week. Here is the list of cool things I stumbled upon.

MPC Blade Runner 2049 VFX breakdown
This is how young Rachael was brought to life in Blade Runner 2049. It is astonishing to see how technology advanced during just couple of months. Tarkin, in Rogue One, was remarkable technological achievement, but he was not perfect. Here I cannot tell the difference between Sean Young and hers computer counterpart.

Xcode hardware performance
Ash Furrow compiled the list with Xcode's performance on various macs. It already has the statistics for newest iMac Pro. What's disappointing, the new powerful hardware doesn't make fresh build times noticeably faster. The improvements are only for incremental builds.

I’m harvesting credit card numbers and passwords from your site.
David Gilbertson explains how hackers can create bogus NPM package and use it to steal information without us knowing. This is reminder that we should always verify our 3rd party dependencies!

SpaceX launched Falcon 9 with Zuma satellite
Once again Space X launched its Falcon 9 rocket and landed it at Landing Zone 1. This was 21st successful landing of the first-stage of the rocket. Unfortunately they are rumors that the entire mission wasn't that successful. The Zuma satellite failed to reach the orbit and was lost. The mission was a secret, so we will not know, at least not in the near future, what really happened.

Zuma mission start
John Kraus captured this photo of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with Zuma satellite. If you like this photo, you should check out his website.


Image credits: John Kraus.