The most friendly Pokemon GO weekend event of all begins today. This is what's called the Pokemon GO "Special Friendship Weekend." During this event, we're going to ramp up right into the event in which we'll gain access to the most awesome Shiny Pokemon that's ever rocked a Pokemon Gym. That is the RHYDON family, here at last, in yellow, with a special attack that'll be exclusive to this event!
Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Season 7 started its run this week with an episode called "The Bad Batch." With this, the Star Wars animated series jumps right back into the thick of things with one of the most interesting and must-see story elements - the clones! Here we're focusing on individual Clone Troopers, including some new characters we've never seen before - genetically modified to be different from the rest.
The year 2020 will prove to the world just how ready Huawei is to live in a world without Google on Android. Huawei was blocked last year from working with Google directly, leading them to seek an alternative to GMS: Google Mobile Services, aka official license from Google to include Google apps and the Google Play digital content store on Android devices. Here in 2020, Huawei's about to release their first phone with both the Huawei app store and HMS: Huawei Mobile Services, and it won't be the last.
Today the LG V60 ThinQ smartphone leaked in a major way. This device previously appeared in a set of images showing the back side and - strangely enough - the inside of the phone. Now we're getting a better look at the front side of the phone - along with the display and the way in which the front-facing camera and sensors are handled by the manufacturer. This smartphone will likely appear detailed and released for sale later this year.
Upon digging deep within the code for the first Android 11 / Android R developer preview Beta build of Google's new mobile OS, colors were discovered! Colors were found in a code dump from the Google Pixel 4 version of Android 11 DP1 (developer preview 1) here in February of 2020. The colors available seem to match those of Google's own logo, with Google-logo-toned yellow, red, green, and blue.
There's an Pokemon GO event going on in May for which you'll need to buy a digital ticket in order to participate. This is the Pokemon GO 2020 Safari Zone Philadelphia event, and it'll cost you between $12 and $26 to join in on the fun. This event focuses on red, white, and blue Pokemon, and includes some Pokemon that wouldn't otherwise be available in the region - including Mr. Mime.
Today we're looking at the Shiny Pokemon released to Pokemon GO in the month of February of 2020. This includes all the Pokemon released right up through today, the 20th of February, 2020. There've been several Shiny Pokemon released into the game in the last two weeks, which means we've got a lot of monsters out there with far higher rates of Shiny spawn than normal! Plus we've got a Mystery Bonus hour to look forward to tonight - two times the Stardust!
Deadpool is the latest skin available in Fortnite courtesy of the latest in Battle Pass bundle rewards. The Fortnite Chapter 2, Season 2 Patch was also released today - it's jam packed with a bunch of oddities - including decoy grenades and disguises. Proximity mines are here too - but they're not quite so big a surprise as the... very strange new skin called Meowscles.
A list of top marketplace-centric companies was released today. It's called the A16Z Marketplace 100, and it ranks the top 100 companies that are marketplace startups and/or non-public companies. On top of this list are four titans - all four of them relatively new companies - followed by a fifth... Valve. The top four companies on this list account for a whopping 76 percent of consumer spend. That's a dominance we don't often see in any industry... unless we're talking about the smartphone market, of course.
This week Google is "previewing" policy changes to Android and Google Play that'll impact the ways in which developers of apps are able to access location data on smartphones and tablets. This affects background data collection with respect to systems like GPS location tracking, and it all starts in Android 11 / Android R. This is a major move - or it would appear to be a major move - in the smartphone user control realm in reaction to concern about how and when location data is used by apps - both known and unknown and/or malicious.
The future is slightly cooler than the present, according to a pair of prototype devices revealed today by HTC. This is HTC Project Proton, a prototype (a pair of prototypes) for "XR glasses-style" devices "from HTC Vive." Specs are forthcoming, but we've got some imagery of both different sorts of device. These prototypes were made specifically to gather public opinion well in advance of production.
Today Microsoft Defender ATP for Linux was made available for public preview, and a version for iOS (for iPhone and iPad) and Android were announced. The Android and iOS versions of Microsoft Defender ATP will be released later this year. Today's preview of the Linux version was first shown at Ignite 2019 running on Ubuntu.