April 2020
- Zoom Hits Pause: Eric Yuan Promises 90 Days of Security-Only Work
Zoom's CEO admits the app's security and privacy failed under lockdown-driven growth, freezing new features for 90 days to fix them.
- T-Mobile and Sprint Are Officially One Company Now
T-Mobile closed its $26.5 billion Sprint merger on April 1, 2020, collapsing the US carrier market from four major players to three.
- Starlink's Satellite Fleet Keeps Growing, and So Does Astronomers' Frustration
SpaceX has dozens of Starlink batches in orbit, and astronomers are increasingly vocal about bright satellite streaks ruining telescope images.
- Teams and Meet Scramble to Catch Zoom's Lockdown Boom
Microsoft Teams and Google Meet report huge usage spikes as they race Zoom for the suddenly essential video-call market.
- Your Laptop Is Stuck in a Warehouse Somewhere
Work-from-home demand is colliding with COVID-19 factory slowdowns, and budget laptops and webcams are vanishing from shelves.
- Neanderthals Were Making Cord 50,000 Years Ago, and That Changes the Story
New evidence from a French site shows Neanderthals used fiber and cord technology far earlier than assumed, challenging old ideas about their cognition.
- Visual Studio Online Gets a New Name: Visual Studio Codespaces
Microsoft rebrands Visual Studio Online as Visual Studio Codespaces, betting on cloud-hosted dev environments as the future of coding.
- Samsung Brings 5G Downmarket With the Galaxy A51 5G and A71 5G
Samsung's new A51 5G and A71 5G bring 5G, Infinity-O displays, and quad cameras to the mid-range starting at $499.99.
- Long March 3B Fails at Launch, Takes Indonesian Satellite Down With It
A Long March 3B rocket suffered a third-stage engine anomaly on April 9, destroying Indonesia's Palapa-N1 satellite in China's second launch failure in under a month.
- Apple and Google Team Up on a Contact-Tracing API
Apple and Google jointly announced a Bluetooth exposure-notification API to let public health apps on iOS and Android interoperate.
- Comet ATLAS Is Falling Apart, Amateur Astronomer Shows
Amateur astronomer José de Queiroz photographed Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS showing clear signs of fragmentation, likely ending hopes for a naked-eye 'great comet.'
- Everyone's Stuck at Home Building a Gaming PC, and 'Big Navi' Rumors Just Got Louder
Lockdown-driven demand for gaming PCs is colliding with a fresh wave of leaks about AMD's next flagship RDNA GPU.
- Open Source Is Booming Right Now, and That's Not Only Good News
Lockdown has sent pull requests and new contributors surging on open-source projects, but maintainers warn review capacity isn't keeping pace.
- OnePlus Goes Flagship-Only With the 8 and 8 Pro
OnePlus announced the 8 and 8 Pro today, both packing Snapdragon 865 and Adreno 650, with US sales opening April 29.
- Smallsat Launchers Hit Turbulence as the Pandemic Slows the Range
COVID-19 safety measures are delaying smallsat and rideshare launches even as demand from Earth-observation and comms startups keeps climbing.
- AI Labs Turn Their Models Loose on the Coronavirus
DeepMind and academic groups are applying protein-folding and molecule-screening AI to speed up the search for COVID-19 treatments and vaccine targets.
- NASA Sets May 27 Target for First Crewed Launch From US Soil Since 2011
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced a May 27 target for the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission carrying astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS.
- Good Luck Finding a Switch Right Now
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has pushed Nintendo Switch demand so high that the console is sold out nearly everywhere in the US.
- 'Zoom Fatigue' Becomes a UX Problem Software Makers Must Design For
Video calls have replaced in-person meetings, and the exhaustion they cause is now a design challenge, not just a personal one.
- Hubble Confirms Comet ATLAS Has Shattered Into Pieces
Hubble images from April 20 show Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) broken into at least three or four fragments, likely ending hopes for a great naked-eye comet.
- GitHub Satellite Goes Fully Virtual, and the Speaker List Just Dropped
GitHub previewed its speaker lineup for Satellite 2020, the developer conference it's moving entirely online for May 6.
- SpaceX Launches 60 More Starlink Satellites, Nails Another Landing
SpaceX's seventh Starlink batch flew on a Falcon 9 making its 84th flight, the most-flown active US rocket, with another clean droneship landing.
- Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 'Focal Fossa' Lands, and It's a Meaty Upgrade
Canonical's new LTS release ships WireGuard support, Kernel Self Protection, hardened Secure Boot, and FIDO passwordless login, with support through 2025.
- The Second-Gen iPhone SE Is Apple's Bet That Specs Aren't Everything
Apple's new $399 iPhone SE packs the A13 Bionic into the iPhone 8 body, betting that power and price matter more than a modern design.
- Hubble Turns 30, and It's Still Not Done
The Hubble Space Telescope hit its 30th anniversary this week, and NASA/ESA marked it with a new image of a giant red nebula and its blue neighbor.
- Everyone's Cloud Migration Just Got a Deadline
Distributed teams are rushing to cloud infrastructure and remote-friendly CI/CD as office access disappears.
- With the Gym Closed, Your Wrist Is the New Trainer
As lockdowns keep gyms shuttered, interest in smartwatches and fitness bands is spiking as people look for ways to track workouts at home.
- Apple and Google Hand Developers the Exposure-Notification API
The first version of the joint Apple/Google COVID-19 exposure-notification API is now available to public health developers ahead of May's public rollout.
- OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro Finally Hit US Shelves
OnePlus's Snapdragon 865 flagships go on sale in the US today, starting at $699 and $899.
- Twitter's Usage Boom Meets an Ad Slowdown
Twitter's Q1 2020 mDAU jumped 24% YoY, but revenue rose just 3% as COVID-19 hit ad spending late in the quarter.