🔋 Good morning! I’m back from a few days break and feeling recharged!
Well, I was fresh, until I realised we’d have to keep talking about TikTok. But this week also has the Google hardware launch on Sept. 30, the Xiaomi Mi 10T series earlier in the day, and Apple could be getting close to announcing an October event too? There is hope!
TikTok saga continues (Part IV)
Sorry (again) but the TikTok saga continues, and continues with the Sunday evening events that shape the start of the week.
The latest, at least, is pretty straightforward: as a ban was set to come into force prohibiting new downloads of TikTok, a US judge temporarily blocked the White House executive order (Reuters).
- Four hours before the ban was set to start, US district judge Carl Nichols granted a preliminary injunction sought by ByteDance, meaning the app remains on US app stores.
- The judge's reasoning was sealed, but is expected to be released this morning. The actual order is readable via DocumentCloud.
- What we do know is that Nichols declined “at this time,” to add further blocks, including on potential more strict Commerce Department restrictions that will take effect on 12 November.
- The same kind of block allowed WeChat to continue to operate normally.
- So, fair hearings in US courts for companies based in China. (Judge Nichols was nominated by President Trump last year, h/t WSJ).
What’s next?
- It’s a short-term victory but still the deal with Oracle and Walmart may come to pass.
- The US Committee on Foreign Investment still must approve the deal, including the issue of majority ownership, what ownership means, and what portion of TikTok is sold.
- Meanwhile, the Chinese government could also squash any deal that ticks all the boxes on the US side.
- In better news ...this can’t go on forever, right?
Round Up:
🔜 Leak: These are the new Mi 10T series phones: 144Hz, big battery, and Snapdragon 865 (Android Authority).
🤔 Is $629/€629 the right price for the Pixel 5? (Android Authority).
📦 Amazon Prime Day(s) 2020 officially starts on October 13 across two days, early deals announced (Android Authority).
🔝 Apple iPad (2020) review: Peerless performance outweighs dated design (Android Authority).
📺 Review: TCL 6-Series TV — the best television for almost everyone, but note these TVs “cannot display 4K pixel resolution at 120 Hz, so it cannot take full advantage of the upcoming PS5 and Xbox Series X” (Wired).
🔓 Windows XP source code has leaked (The Verge). And, part of the fun is there’s loads of weird stuff in the code comments (Reddit).
❓ Also, more seriously: Is Windows XP source code leak a bad thing? (Hackaday).
📱 Facebook Gizmo: either a consumer device never launched, or Facebook’s internal meeting room tools (Twitter). More here (andrea-locatelli.com).
💻 Battle of the $350 laptops: Acer Swift 1 vs. Gateway Ryzen 3 3200U (Ars Technica).
⛔ US tightens exports to China's largest chipmaker SMIC, citing risk of military use (Reuters).
🎦 PSA: Google Meet to limit meetings to 60 minutes on free plans from September 30th (The Verge).
⛏ Minecraft is being used to teach AI to how to do urban planning (Input Mag).
🐭 Logitech MX Anywhere 3 review: The best compact wireless mouse, just know it is quite small (Laptop Mag).
🔥 HOTorNOT shaped the social web as we know it — great retrospective with the founders about the forgotten site that may have started it all (Mashable).
🌑 NASA wants ideas for keeping Moon missions powered in the dark, key for long-term lunar settlements (Engadget).
🚲 This person cycled 2,550 miles from Poo Poo Point to Pee Pee Creek, raising money for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen (Twitter).
🤔 “Is it me or has YouTube's advertising amount been extra ruthless lately?” (r/nostupidquestions).
Monday Meme
Here’s a classic:
- But! But! As Carl Sagan wise noted, this may partly be due to the gradual, natural change in constellations. Both over the centuries due to celestial positions shifting and moving, but also our terrestrial aspect, too, as we’ve migrated across the entire planet, especially important on north and south aspects.
- And, as u/NewAgeRetroHippie96 said:: “Maybe we're just missing the contextual stars. Like, maybe because of modern light pollution most of us have missed out on seeing the "cloud" of duller background stars that help shape the goat. Maybe, I dunno.”
- Could it be?
All the best,
Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor
