Weekly digest - 2019.16

Weekly digest - 2019.16

As I mentioned last week, we had Star Wars Celebration. I've already covered Rise of Skywalker and  Jedi Fallen Order. Now, it's time to catch up with other news.

The Mandalorian

This is the first, beside Star Wars TV Special, live action Star Wars TV series, so I've been really excited for this panel. Unfortunately we have not learnt many details, but what have been leaked looks promising. It looks like we will get dark, greedy world that I love in Rogue One. And if Dave Filoni created the story on level of Rebels, we will get Netflix's quality show. Can't wait to 15th of November, when series will debut on Diney+.

Star Wars The Clone Wars

This panel haven't brought any surprises as most of the story have been already told one way or another, but at least we've got official trailer. Unfortunately we still don't know when it will be released.

Notre Dame

On Monday the Notre Dame cathedral burned down. Normally I would not cover such tragedy, but Ubisoft released Assassins Creed Unity, which featured the detailed recreation of the cathedral, for free. I thought it was cheap and low marketing action, but later on Ubisoft announced that they will give $500K for restoration process. Maybe it was a PR stunt, but at least those money will be used to something good.

Playstation 5

This week we got couple of details about next generation of Sony's console. Here is what we learnt, so far:

  • It will not be released in 2019,
  • 8-core CPU  based on AMD’s 3rd gen Ryzen (7nm Zen 2),
  • GPU based on AMD’s Radeon Navi with support for  8K resolution and ray-tracing,
  • Custom AMD chip for 3D audio,
  • SSD storage,
  • Backward compatibility with PS4 games,
  • Physical drive, probably Blue-ray, but the type of the drive has not been confirmed.

So far it looks promising. The only thing that is a mystery now is pricing, but I think we will find it out next year.

Broken Samsung Galaxy Fold

Samsung has started shipping review units and multiple phones already broke after couple days of usage. I knew this device will be a prototype to see how this technology behaves and how people use foldable phones, but I didn't expect to see such problems before the premiere. Hopefully Samsung finds out the root of the problem and the next generation will not have such issues.

Crew Dragon anomaly

On Sunday SpaceX was doing static fire test of the Crew Dragon capsule, but something went wrong and vehicle exploded. At the moment we don't know why it happened and how is it going to affect the manned mission, originally planned for this July.

Weekly digest - 2018.46

Weekly digest - 2018.46

This week Stan Lee has passed away at the age 95. He lived wonderful life and left us his great legacy in form of superheroes: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Daredevil, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, The X-Men, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four.
We have lost a great visioner and storyteller, but today his creations are more popular than ever. He and his life's work will be remembered by many generations.
Rest in piece Stan Lee.

In terms of the tech news nothing special happened, so I just prepared the list of more interesting news:

As this week was pretty boring, maybe this list of cool things will be more interesting.

Gogs: a painless self-hosted Git service

web.dev - the ultimate resource for developers

What Web Can Do Today

To www or not to www – Should you use www or not in your domain?

My App Is Dead in the Water

Creating iOS 12 Shortcuts with JavaScript and Shortcuts JS

Emoji Builder


Image credits: Wikimedia.

Weekly digest - 2018.43

Weekly digest - 2018.43

Steve Troughton-Smith couple weeks ago released a repository with his custom Hermes watch face. He inspired many developers, this resulted in many amazing faces. He also inspired me. Couple years ago I saw a Mario face on Moto 360, since then I wanted to have this face on Apple Watch. This week I finally had time to play around with custom watch faces and as a result I created this. Right now this is just a prototype, but I'm already very happy with the overall result.
I would love to publish this on my GitHub, but I'm afraid that Nintendo is going to remove it, because of copyrights for Super Mario Bros assets. Right now, my plan is to create completely custom assets that will resemble the Super Mario, yet different enough that Nintendo would not pursue any legal actions.
I spent the most of this week making my various watch faces, and it was amazing. It reminds me of good old times, when as a kid I was trying to create my own simple video games. Creating custom watch faces was the most fun I've had in a long time.
Also, there is something personal in this. You are creating a face for yourself, and don't have to think about other users and theirs potential problems. I didn't realize that thinking only about my own needs might be so freeing and enjoyable.

Did you know that R in iPhone XR means nothing? If you want to learn more interesting things, please check following links.

Relative Grid Items with CSS Variables

GitHub launches Actions, its workflow automation tool

Understanding JSON Web Token Authentication

Introduction to Glitch for Node.js Apps in the Cloud

5 Open Source HTML5 Video Players for 2018

Weekly digest - 2018.17

Weekly digest - 2018.17

This week Disney announced new TV series - Star Wars Resistance. It will be animated story of young pilot - Kazuda Xiono - recruited by the Resistance. For now we don't know much about the story, beside the fact that we'll meet new trilogy characters like Poe Dameron and Captain Phasma.
The series is created by Lucasfilm Animation veterans, including Dave Filoni.
Show will have its premiere this fall.

After many years Google decided to redesign Gmail. After Google Calendar, the mail client also got the Material design.
I must admit that after years of using old Gmail, now it feels strange, but I'm sure this is something that I'll get use to.

Unboxings of Nintendo Lobo started showing up on YouTube. I must admit, after watching first announcements I was skeptical. Now, after seeing how this works behind the scenes I am really impressed. I had no idea how much ingenuity and engineering was put to create Labo experiments.

And last but not least, here is the list of interesting articles.

Here are three common ways to create your Lambda functions with AWS
Serverless becomes more and more popular. Here you will learn how to create serverless functions using AWS.

Creating a Website with Nuxt.js and WordPress REST API
From this article you will learn how to create custom CMS using Vue.js, Nuxt.js and Wordpress as a backend.

I built a screenshot API and some guy was mining cryptocurrencies with it
Good reminder that we should always protect our APIs because they can be exploited to do unusual things.

Higher Order Function and its uses in Swift 4
Here you will find overview of functional programming in Swift.

Managing UI Colours with iOS 11 Asset Catalogs
Arnold Sakhnov explains how to manage and use UIColors in iOS projects.

JavaScript ES6 — write less, do more
Short but refreshing overview of new functionality introduced in ES6.

Vue.js & Electron: The easy way
Vue-CLI 3 is here and from this post you will learn how to use it to create Electron project.


Image credits: Disney.

Weekly digest - 2018.03

Weekly digest - 2018.03

First two weeks of this year were quite busy. We had CPUs meltdowns, then we had
busy CES. Finally, this week was a normal one, at least for most of us. So, if you are not running for your life, check this list of interesting things I stumbled upon this week.

Making of Apple's emojis
10 years ago Angela Guzman was an intern at Apple. Today, she give us insight into how the Apple's emojis were created. It is really interesting to read how things we use every day became the reality.

CALayer tutorials
If you ever wonder how all those fancy iOS animations are made, this is the site for you. Shannon Potter wrote multiple in-depth tutorials explaining how to do them.

Nintendo Labo
Nintendo goes back to making toys. This time, it is going to make cardboard accessories to Nintendo Switch. It looks weird at the beginning, but actually it is clever combination of portable console and piece of cardboard.

Nintendo Switch Emulator
Speaking of Nintendo Switch. CEMU Emulator now supports Nintendo Switch. It supports one game, to be precise. Nevertheless, here you can see The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in stunning 4k 60fps!

GeForece Now - cloud gaming by Nvidia
Nvidia presented their own gaming service. It allow to play AAA games on your ordinary PC and Mac. At the moment, the service offers almost 150 games, including Star Wars Battlefront II, The Witcher 3 and PUBG. Pricing is still unknown, but you can try to get access to the free beta.

BeatSaber
Beat Saber is a VR rhythm game. I'm not a big fan of music games, but this one is impressive. Something tells me, this might be a hit 😉.

Star Wars Rebels Mid-Season 4 Trailer
After 4 seasons, Star Wars Rebels is coming to an end. Here is the official trailer of remaining episodes.


Image credits: Disney.