Pixel 4

Google just tweeted an image of the Pixel 4, a phone that has not been officially announced and will not ship until October. This is probably Google's answer to a lot of leaks surrounding this phone. It might be unusual, but in my opinion, it is very smart move. As people already saw the phone, they might as well see it in high definition photo.

Also there another aspect of this "leak". As you can see, the new Pixel 4 has square camera bump, almost the same as new iPhone suppose to have. I'm wondering whether Google is trying to say, hey we were first.

iPhone 2020

We didn't even get this year's iPhone, but we already have rumors about its successor. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is planning to release 3 models:

• High-end 5.4' with OLED display and 5G,
• High-end 6.7' with OLED display and 5G,
• Low-end 6.1' with OLED display.

It looks like the equivalent of the current iPhone XS will be downsized, where equivalent of the iPhone XS Max will be even bigger. The XR model will be untouched in terms of size, but it will gain the OLED display.

To be honest, I don't like those changes. The current size of the iPhone XS is perfect for me, and I don't want to get neither bigger or smaller phone.  

New MacBooks

The Eurasian Economic Commission database is amazing source if you want to know what companies are planing to release. This time the information about several models of portable computers from Apple have pop up.  

As 15' MacBook Pros have already been refreshed, it means that probably the 12' MacBook, MacBook Air or even 13' MacBook Pro are going to get the update.  Also, there are rumors about brand new 16' MacBook Pro, but I personally doubt we are going to see it this year.

Interesting links

• Vue 3.0: What Evan You & Chris Fritz Say You Should Expect
• Vue 3 will change Vue in a big way - Current Syntax to be deprecated - Composition functions will eventually be the only way to build Vue components
• Vue's Darkest Day
• How to Design for the Web in 2019
• Rendering SwiftUI views to HTML
• An Introduction to Flutter
• Always be closing!
• An oral history of the hamburger icon (from the people who were there)
• I turned my Tesla into a pickup truck

Image credits: Google

E3 2019 Games

Here is the list of more interesting games presented during this year E3:

• 12 Minutes
• Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• Apex Legends
• Banjo-Kazooie
• Baldurs Gate 3
• Battlefield V
• Battletoads
• Blair Witch
• Bleeding Edge
• Borderlands 3
• Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer Ft. The Legend of Zelda
• Control
• CrossfireX
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Daemon X Machina
• Deathloop
• Doom Eternal
• Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
• Elden Ring
• FIFA 20
• Final Fantasy VII Remake
• Forza Horizon 4: Lego Speed Champions
• Gears POP!
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint
• GhostWire: Tokyo
• Gods & Monsters
• Halo Infinite
• Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
• Luigi’s Mansion 3
• Madden NFL 20
• Marvel's Avengers
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Minecraft Dungeons
• No More Heroes 3
• Ori and the Will of the Wisp
• Outriders
• Phantasy Star Online 2
• Psychonauts 2
• Rage 2
• Rainbow Six Quarantine
• The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance Tactics
• The sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• The Sims 4 Island Living
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition for Nintendo Switch
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Gameplay
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Trailer
• Tales of Arise
• The Outer Worlds
• Watch Dogs Legion
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Next Generation Xbox

Next gen Xbox, called Project Scarlett, will debut fall next year. It has been designed by the Scorpio team and it looks like the Xbox One X was a foundation for a next console. This is what we know so far about the hardware:

• Custom CPU based on AMD’s Zen 2 architecture,
• Radeon RDNA GPU,
• GDDR6 RAM,
• SSD for storage,
• Native 4K at 60 FPS, up to 120 FPS,
• Support for 8K gaming,
• Hardware accelerated ray tracing.

This is not much, but at least we know that next console will be available next year alongside PS5. 2020 will be a good year for gamers 😀

Google Stadia

Google has also announced more details about upcoming Stadia projekt:

• Google Stadia will launch in November in 14 countries (US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland),
• At the launch it will support at least 31 games,
• The Basic version will be available for free,
• The Pro version will cost $9.99 per month,
• At the beginning there will be also "Founder’s Edition", for $130, with limited controller, Chromecast Ultra and 3 months of Pro subscription,
• Stadia is not primarily a subscription service. Although some games will be included in a subscription, we will have to buy games separately. That's why the Basic version is free.
• It will require at least 10Mbps connection for 720p 60fps streaming with stereo audio,
• For 4K streaming at 60fps with  5.1 surround sound we will need connection capable, at least, 35Mbps.

Google Stadia looks promising and I would love to try it. Unfortunately it will not be available in Poland, and looking at status of Google Store in Poland I might have to wait for a while 😔

Interesting links

• The Swift 5.1 features that power SwiftUI’s API
• SwiftUI: Getting Started
• Ethereum for web developers
• Ethereum in Depth: Smart Contracts - Part 1: What is a Smart Contract?
• Ethereum in Depth: Smart Contracts - Part 2: How to Create and Publish a Smart Contract
• CQRS with MediatR (for Commands) and Odata (for Queries)
• How did Apple DO this?? - MacBook Pro 2019

Image credits: E3

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.

Interesting links

• CSS can do that?
• Docker for Absolute Beginners
• The Most Expensive Lesson Of My Life: Details of SIM port hack
• iOS 13 concept by Álvaro Pabesio
• How Apple Continuously Screws Developers and Doesn’t Follow Its Own Rules
• Manipulating the YouTube Algorithm
• My Video Went Viral. Here's Why
• Can we all please stop using Medium now?
• Someone is remaking Star Wars: Rogue Squadron in Unreal Engine 4

Image credits: Dice

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.

Interesting links

• A RealWorld Comparison of Front-End Frameworks with Benchmarks
• Tutorial - Shuffle a Deck of Cards in Vue.js
• How I configure VSCode for Everything
• Star Wars The Force Awakens - Original opening scene
• Every Marvel Movie Poster, Explained
• Hollywood Screenwriter Attempts To Write A Scene in 7 Minutes

Image credits: Facebook

This week Samsung held its UNPACKED 2019 event, during which they presented new phones. Lets start with phones we have already anticipated, Galaxy S10 and S10+. The first model starts at $899 and have following specification:

• 6.1-inch (3040x1440) AMOLED display,
• 8nm 64-bit 2.73GHz Octa-Core Processor,
• 8GB RAM,
• 128GB or 512GB of storage,
• 10MP selfie camera,
• Triple rear camera with 12MP Telephoto and wide-angle lenses, as well as 16MP ultra wide lens,
• Fingerprint reader built into the screen,
• 3.5mm Headphone jack 😉,
• 3400mAh battery with wireless charging.

The bigger model S10+ starts at $999 with following specification:

• 6.4-inch (3040x1440) AMOLED display,
• 8nm 64-bit 2.73GHz Octa-Core Processor,
• 8GB RAM with 128GB of storage, 8GB RAM with 512GB of storage, 12GB RAM with 1TB of storage,
• Dual front camera with 10MP selfie camera and 8MP depth camera,
• Triple rear camera with 12MP Telephoto and wide-angle lenses, as well as 16MP ultra wide lens,
• Fingerprint reader built into the screen,
• 3.5mm Headphone jack,
• 4100mAh battery with wireless charging.

And that's not all. Samsung following steps of Apple, introduced the "budget" version of the phone. Galaxy S10e starts at $749 with following specification:

• 5.8-inch (2280x1080) AMOLED display,
• 8nm 64-bit 2.73GHz Octa-Core Processor,
• 6GB RAM with 128GB of storage and 8GB RAM with 256 of storage
• 10MP selfie camera,
• Dual rear camera with 12MP Telephoto and 16MP ultra wide lenses,
• Fingerprint reader built into the screen,
• 3.5mm Headphone jack,
• 3100mAh battery with wireless charging.

The biggest surprised was introduced at the end. The Samsung Galaxy Fold is the first Samsung's foldable device. Here is the specification:

• Main screen is 7.3-inch Dynamic AMOLED display (4.2:3),
• Cover screen is 4.6-inch Super AMOLED Display (4.2:3)
• Has 3 cameras:
  • Cover camera 10MP selfie,
  • Dual front camera with with 10MP selfie and 8MP depth cameras,
  • Triple rear camera with 12MP Telephoto and wide-angle lenses and 16MP ultra wide lens,
• 7nm 64-bit Octa-Core Processor,
• 12GB RAM with 512GB internal storage,
• 4380mAh battery with wireless charging.

Samsung's Galaxy Fold foldable starts at $1,980 and launches on April 2. I'm really interesting to see how this foldable device will behave in real life and can't wait to try it myself.

Now, moving on to other news. Earlier this week, we got rumors that Apple is planing to release new 16-inch MacBook Pro. All we know so far is that new mac is supposed to have a brand new design. This is interesting rumor, maybe overheating and hinge issues force Apple to change the design. I will follow this topic with great interest.

Speaking of Apple, there is another rumor saying that Apple will combine macOS and iOS by 2021. We already know that we will be able to run iOS apps on mac using project Marzipan, which should be released this year. But the more interesting part is that we have a date when this transition should be in effect, which means that around 2021 we will get macs with ARM processors.

Thats all for this week. Last but not least, here is the list of interesting things.

Don’t get clever with login forms

7 Alternatives to the <div> HTML Tag

CSS Scroll Snap — How It Really Works

You probably don’t need a single-page application

Linux Reverse Engineering CTFs for Beginners

The shady economics of ‘buy one, get one free’ deals

Image credits: Samsung.