☕ Morning! Why yes, I have been watching Tiger King. One episode to go! Oh, and HQ Trivia is back just in time for lockdown. I might play again!
We know the OnePlus 8 will be out soon, because OnePlus CEO Pete Lau both confirmed that on Twitter, over the weekend, and noted the launch had been pushed back three times already.
What we didn’t expect was a new smartphone series, but I think I know why.
OnePlus 8: Latest bits and bobs
New OnePlus phones are pretty hotly anticipated and OnePlus is pretty good at dripping out information in advance.
Leaks do the rest of the work for us, and over the weekend a few new surprises popped up:
Which brings us to the OnePlus Z:
🔊 Good news! Our DGiT Daily podcast host Adam Doud is back at the helm of a podcast: his own! Check out the enjoyably named Benefit Of The Doud and subscribe. Episode 1 featured Adam and Mr Mobile, whose birthday it was yesterday, and Episode 4 featured David Imel, who you all know and love already, especially for his sensational photos of tech. Good times. (benefitofthedoud.com).
🕵️♂️ US govt tracking citizens through mobile ads from the likes of Foursquare to study coronavirus spread (Android Authority).
🔜 More than ever, it looks like OnePlus will launch a new mid-range OnePlus phone to go with its OnePlus 8 series: and it might be the OnePlus Z, a sort-of follow-up to the OnePlus X? (Android Authority).
📸 Why camera sensor size is so important (Android Authority).
🗣 Do free language learning apps actually work? (Android Authority). My own experiences match this pretty closely: it helps, but fluency is another big step.
💻 Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook, first seen in January, hits shelves April 6th (The Verge).
🗞 “In interviews with two dozen executives and employees at Facebook, Google and Twitter over the past few months, many described a tense atmosphere of careening from crisis to crisis to handle the newest tactics being used to sow discord and influence votes” (NY Times).
🎤 A Twitch streamer is exposing coronavirus cures and scams live (Ars Technica).
📺 Roku is giving away 30 days of premium video (Engadget).
📺 Former Amazon Studios Head of Strategy, Matthew Ball, has tracked COVID-19 impacts on Pay TV and streaming video, gaming and digital lives, and movie/theatre industries in three separate essays. Lots of insights and speculation, and I haven’t finished reading them yet. On Netflix: “...Netflix would prefer you watch 30 hours per month over 20, as this should positively affect your retention rate and its pricing power. However, it doesn’t want you to watch 90 hours in March as this consumption is likely to be pulled from April or May or June.” (matthewball.vc)
💸 Here is a discussion about people trying to find the most expensive single-button click you can do with AWS, or Azure, and so on: for example, reserving all data storage in Brazil. This has lead to fun posts about mistakes and single-button oopsies that actually happened (HackerNews).
⛅ Also: Microsoft details its adjustments to Xbox, Teams services during 775 percent surge in cloud demand in affected regions (microsoft.com).
🎶 Watch highlights from Elton John's relief concert: Billie Eilish, Dave Grohl, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Mariah Carey and more (Rolling Stone)
🚗 Which city treats its cars the worst? (Jalopnik).
👩🍳 Chefs of Reddit, what are some things people should learn to cook while self-isolating? (r/askreddit).
A relief from Corona memes this Monday, with 41 Quick Food Tricks from You Suck at Cooking:
“We’re going to start breaking this down into its basic components”:
Bonus: Oh alright, one pandemic meme.
Cheers,
Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.
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