The gaff banner by: @brulaw
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
16th August 2019/Issue #331
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giffgaff Happenings
by bluemoonbaz
Nominate your local cause! - ‘giffgaff Community Projects’
Over the last decade, giffgaff has witnessed and harnessed the incredible power of connection and community. giffgaff need our help to identify 4 local communities, heroes or projects to work on. These can be causes that have the community at the heart, champion local people or places and/or don’t get the recognition that they deserve. giffgaff wants to unearth great stories of dedication, love, sacrifice and most of all: community spirit. A donation of £5,000 to help each project will be made, along with other support offered. Get involved here.
Launching multi-factor authentication
@captainben brings some big news that has been requested by the members for a long time. It means that when a member wants to do a SIM swap or change their email address, they will receive a text message and an email with a verification code to their mobile number or registered email address. They will then have to enter the code before the process is completed. This is a great step forward against fraudsters and scammers! Click here for the full update.
What will happen with 5G on giffgaff?
O2 have been talking about their 5G rollout which starts in October. As giffgaff uses the O2 network, when O2 rolls out the 5G capability, we’ll be able to take advantage of that 5G infrastructure. If you’re interested in being part of an early trial group please let us know. In the meantime, giffgaff would love to hear your thoughts on 5G. Sound interesting? Have a look here.
Q&A with the gaffer
@vespaash2 has been the gaffer at giffgaff for nearly a year now and hosted the Q&A with the members on Wednesday. You read the questions and Ash's replies here.
Getting ourselves ready for the platform migration
With the community migration closely approaching, @roxy_r thought it would be a good thing to have a thread where we can start talking about anything we need to do to support our members outside of the technical development of the platform. Have a look here.
Members' Discussions
Here are a few of our fellow members' recent discussion threads, head over and give your views:
Premium rate call and texts - apparently you can unsubscribe from them
giffgaff home and away holiday guides
Free giffgaff WiFi Extra! The price you pay?
Huawei Matebook D Laptop
by toxiic
Hi everyone. This week I’m going to be listing some cons of the Huawei Matebook D laptop (the version with: Ryzen 2500U, 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM). I listed the This laptop comes at a competitive price (£530-580 at the time of writing though it does change regularly) and generally is a great laptop for general use and even some non-intensive gaming.
Without getting too political, Huawei doesn’t have a great reputation at the moment. It also has the Huawei logo on the back (just thought I’d mention that as some people care about logos).
The screen is only 14” (though this could be a pro to some).
The screen isn’t very bright (though I wouldn’t worry about this too much whilst indoors).
Ports are quite limited (1 HDMI, 1 USB-C [for charging], 2 USB, headphone jack).
The fans get loud and don’t seem to stop very quickly after an intensive (or even light) loads have been put on the system.
Quite heavy considering its size.
Check the pros of this laptop here.
Tech Developments
by revilo10
Google Pixel 4 - Confirmed
Following months of speculation, leaks and renders, we finally have confirmation that later this year we will see the Google Pixel 4 range (That's what we expect) to be released. Let's jump back to a few months ago when Google started dropping hints.
It started with the usual post-Pixel 3 expectations of what we wanted to see in a new Pixel model. To fully gauge the jump that we wanted to see you have to understand that the Pixel, even the budget versions, have come top of their class for camera quality years in a row. Tech reviewers and writers alike all agree that Google has continued to smash it out of the park in camera quality. However, the top spot has been threatened with this year's flagships from firms like OnePlus and Huawei. The OnePlus 7 was ranked incredibly high for camera quality, and Huawei, despite controversy, has managed to deliver some superb phones recently. Oppo with it's Reno X10 Zoom has been highly regarded too. So the pressure for Google to deliver a top of the range camera in the 4 is mounting.
Onto leaks, we've seen all the usual leakage on Twitter, and
of a quad-lens Pixel 4 that got us extremely excited. Google gave us a first look into what we should expect at the end of July in a
blog post. This reveals very little that we haven't already learned from leaks, and no official full images have been shared as of yet, but we do know that we have an exciting new radar gesture feature, as can be seen in the video, which tracks your hand movements and allows you to control your phone from afar. Possibly opening up the opportunities to adapt this for 3rd party apps and games.
That's all we know so far, and that we will likely see the release of the 4 range at some point in October. Stay tuned for more!
Say Hello!
by kathleen414
Welcome @cee3829 to giffgaff here.
Say hi to @mysti over @mysti21.
Welcome @steve12523 to giffgaff over here.
Photo Of The Week
by brulaw
This week's featured photo is Hauxley Nature Reserve by @yvonnearmstrong. Some of the comments included:
"The bridge arch is almost submerged. Once the arch is completely submerged and the water starts pressing on the body of the bridge, things can get ugly." (djreynolds), "Stunning photo - not going to lie almost looks like a painting with how far the laptop is away from me and with my glasses on (and with them off) - amazing detail captured." (guy_ow community giff-staffer), "Sooner you than me out there in the rain today, mind you that's someone who's just got in from the match... And a bit wet." (themrbarso), "Really beautiful picture, must say you have got the weather effects in the picture spot on too with the clouds trees & all the greenery that is surrounded by the high water also which really is excellent work & yes worthy of praise." (the_bookie), "Great landscape. We are holidaying in wet Cumbria. The River Derwebt was at bank full stage this afternoon & it’s raining hard this evening." (jeanlk), "Stunningly beautiful yvonnearmstrong, I agree with guy it almost looks like a painting. No rain here this morning let's hope it stays that way for a while." (anth006), "Thanks for posting, it is a wonderful picture! Have a great day." (spiritquest).
Well, we've had even more rain, what's new for the British summer... But you're all finding opportunities to grab some great pictures, thank you all for sharing, please keep them coming.
On This Day In History
by jammydodge
1930 The first Commonwealth Game (then known as the British Empire Games) took place at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
2012 Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks is granted political asylum by Ecuador. However, in 2019, it was revoked and he was forcibly removed facing charges of failure to appear in court on US extradition charges.
2018 The world’s highest-paid actress of the year, earning $40.5 million was Scarlett Johansson topping Emma Stone as best-paid actress of 2017 earning an estimated $26 million.
Thanks for reading
Brought to you by The gaff team:
@revilo10.
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