Dieter Bohn Trolls World Tour tore a rift in the movie industry and I love it

Okay, so Trolls World Tour is allowed in the Oscars, as Julia Alexander reports. Next year’s Oscars will allow streaming-only movies to qualify, but with heavy restrictions. The pandemic and all, this is a special exception and the Academy swears it’s a one time deal. Nobody freak out!

But then some executive said the thing that was supposed to be left unsaid in an interview with the WSJ: “as soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats.”

Seems reasonable, right? Nope. It was tantamount to saying that because Trolls World Tour did really well as a streaming release, then hey, maybe movie theaters aren’t an absolutely necessary part of the movie ecosystem and it might be okay if future movies were streaming-first.

That seems reasonable too, right? Lol no, have you met the theater industry? Cue freakout: AMC Theaters will no longer play Universal movies after Trolls World Tour’s on-demand success. And Regal Cinemas warned Universal over Trolls World Tour skipping theaters.

My takeaway is that this is all very seriously hilarious. Alexander’s might agree, but she’s also got good analysis of what’s going on here: Trolls World Tour made nearly $100 million without theaters, but theaters aren’t obsolete.

Have I watched this movie yet? I have not, despite the fact that it was heavily promoted in the Apple TV interface. Will I watch it now? You bet, if only because I hope my money will further fuel this feud. Also I hear it’s pretty good.

(Yes, I love going to movies in the theater and I will continue to do so, but come on this fight is amazing let me have this.)

Verge Reviews

┏ DJI Mavic Air 2 review: great photos without the Pro price. Do not miss this video from Vjeran Pavic if you care about drones or photography at all.

All that said, the Mavic Air 2 is the drone I’d recommend to someone looking for more advanced controls and better video and photo quality than entry-level models but isn’t willing to spend more than $1,000. You won’t find a better drone for anywhere near this price.

┏ Oppo Find X2 Pro review: supercar smartphone. Sam Byford reviews:

Make no mistake, Oppo is aiming straight for Samsung’s heart here. The €1,099 ($1,180) Find X2 Pro competes with the high-end Galaxy S20 phones on design, speed, features, cameras, and price, and in many regards I think it comes out on top. If you live in a country with a competitive market for Android phones — i.e., not the US — it should be taken very seriously, even though for me it has a single deal-breaking flaw.

┏ Google Pixel Buds review: second time’s the charm. Great review from Chris Welch and Becca Farsace. I’ve been testing them myself too, and I completely agree with everything they say. I’m especially pleased at how low-profile they are, how convenient the touch controls are, and how open the feel. I’m bummed by how they perform at like hour four in terms of both comfort and battery life.

┏ Blink Mini review: a strings-attached home security cam. Looks like Blink went too far in restricting its cloud storage, putting more behind a paywall than Wyze.

┏ Intel NUC 9 Extreme review: small size, big potential. Fascinating review from Dan Seifert. The price is quite high but in context I could see arguments about it being reasonable. The big, big question is whether or not Intel will commit to sticking with this modular concept for long enough for it to matter for future upgrades.

Tech news

┏ This electric skate shop owner wound up with (almost) all of Boosted’s inventory. Sean O’Kane’s story only gets better after this amazing opening:

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean right now, there’s a boat carrying a bunch of electric scooters from China to the United States. But when they arrive they won’t be delivered to Boosted, the electric skateboard startup that designed them, because the company recently went out of business. Instead, they’ll head to a warehouse in the San Francisco Bay Area owned by Brian Schwarz, a kite surfing enthusiast who runs electric skateboard and scooter retailer Last Mile SF.

┏ Microsoft confirms Windows 10X is coming to laptops amid big jump in Windows usage. Just when you thought you knew what Windows 10X was going to be (if you’ve thought about it at all, that is), Microsoft is changing the plan. I’m honestly not sure what the goal is here. Challenging Chromebooks? Admitting that dual-screen laptops won’t actually be a thing? All I know is that variant-versions of Windows do not have a great track record, so the burden of proof is on Microsoft to show that it is necessary, and then to show that it could be good.

┏ Microsoft’s Your Phone app will soon let you control music on a phone from your PC. Windows works better with Android phones than macOS does with iPhones.

┏ iFixit’s iPhone SE teardown reveals which pieces come from older iPhones. iFixit says that the camera sensor can be swapped with the camera sensor from the iPhone 8 and it’ll work fine. They also look nearly identical from the outside. That’s not an 100 percent guarantee it’s the same sensor, but it likely is. That makes the iPhone SE’s camera results that much more impressive, but it also likely explains the lack of night mode and otherwise bad low light performance.

┏ How to use your DSLR or mirrorless camera as a webcam. I did this and good golly you have no idea how much your webcam sucks. It sucks a lot! Even if it’s a dinky point and shoot, look at whatever camera you have and see if it has an HDMI-out port.

I only wish that this didn’t require buying a $100-ish dongle, otherwise I’d recommend it to everybody. Canon does it right by offering direct software without the need for an extra geegaw.

COVID

┏ Candidates can’t campaign, so they’re trying to go viral. Local politics looks very different right now, Makena Kelly reports:

Succeeding on those platforms requires a very different set of skills from traditional campaigning. If their candidates aren’t starting with name recognition or institutional support, the only option is to build it online. And in the mad scramble for followers, campaigns are starting to behave a lot more like influencers.

┏ Apple and Google show what their exposure notification system could look like.

In one new twist, the companies plan to restrict access to a single app per country in an effort to avoid fragmentation. But the wording of the principle leaves the door open for countries like the US where the response has been led by states. “If a country has opted for a regional or state approach,” the restriction reads, “the companies are prepared to support those authorities.”

┏ Apple and Google pledge to shut down coronavirus tracker when pandemic ends. This is all great news. Shows how important it was for Apple and Google to detail their plans early, take feedback and adjust. Russell Brandom has the details, including this one:

Some of the changes seem designed to address privacy concerns that came up after the initial release. Under the new encryption specification, daily tracing keys will now be randomly generated rather than mathematically derived from a user’s private key.

┏ No one knows when the COVID-19 pandemic will end. Mary Beth Griggs with the bracing truth: stop thinking in terms of end dates, start thinking about a new way of living.

The dates politicians are throwing around are not finish lines. They aren’t guesses at an end date for this pandemic, either. Shelter-in-place orders are just time-outs. We have no sure-fire treatments for the virus, no vaccine, and a limited supply of health care workers. To keep as many people alive as possible, we’ve done the only thing we can do to slow the spread: we’ve hid from each other.

┏ Online schooling has a tech issue that no apps can fix. Natt Garun describes the very real struggles faced by students around the US: lack of technology and terrible broadband access on top of everything else.