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.

Interesting links

• Star Wars logos: the evolution of a film icon
• Star Wars Celebration is a Reminder That Fandom is Far Healthier, and Far More Positive, Than the Internet Would Lead You to Believe
• Easy CSS Animation With Transition & Transforms
• Cool uses of the ::before and ::after pseudoelements
• The Web Developer's Guide to DNS
• Introduction to Elasticsearch
• Four Startup Engineering Killers
• Original Apple wallpapers optimized for iPhone X
• Retro Tech: Game Boy

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.