Today's newsletter comes with a more accurate prediction of the big Samsung event -- even if there's probably already another Galaxy device leaked before it starts -- and 100 percent more working links. After all the teases and photos, there shouldn't be many surprises, but if you want to know exactly what the next Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Note are like, then you'll find out in a few hours. With 57.5 million customers from Disney, 8.5 million from ESPN (up from 2.5 million a year ago) and 35.5 million from Hulu (up from 27.9 million), Disney now counts over 100 million direct customers. However, it's bringing in less money per user than other streamers, due to discounts, all while the pandemic has closed movie theaters and kept people away from theme parks. Disney did manage a hit when it released Hamilton direct to Disney, and it's following up with something bigger.

Google Play Music is currently the best streaming music service for people who have their own music collections. The service lets users upload 50,000 of their own music files, then access the audio on a wide range of streaming devices. It's a great way to access your own music files from anywhere, and it doesn't cost a dime. Unfortunately, the free ride is just about over. At the end of this year, Google will discontinue Google Play Music and push users over to YouTube Music as a replacement.

The JBL Link Music is a smart speaker in both design and market positioning. It's a great value for the person who doesn't want to pay a lot for a good-sounding smart speaker. Be forewarned, however; JBL's app is clunky and startup can be sluggish. Hey: you give, you get. The Link Music is the entry-level model in JBL's smart speaker line, but it doesn't compromise much in terms of sonic performance.

Amazon Echo can do seven things that Google Home can't. Amazon and Google have long competed for the No. 1 smart speaker spot. And while Google Home has features that Echo doesn't, like listening to multiple commands at a time, Amazon still has a set of unique skills that Google can't yet do. Only Amazon Echo ($100 at Amazon) can guard your house and alert you if it hears something suspicious while you're gone. It also lets you know when your packages are out for delivery.

During a session at Google's I/O 2015 conference headlined by the Advanced Technologies and Projects Group (ATAP), engineers demoed what they called Project Soli, a novel gesture-recognition technology bound for handheld devices. The promise of the tech was that you could interact with things without actually touching them, which ostensibly would open up all manner of new ways of performing tasks. After a little over four years in development, it emerged in the Pixel 4 series as the gesture-detecting Motion Sense. So was it worth the wait? We used the Pixel 4 for a week to put Motion Sense through its paces.

Get used to people in your house saying "What?" a lot. If you just got a new smart speaker from Amazon or Google, you'll be barking commands out loud, and people around you may wonder what's going on. You'll be engaging in the next step of computing, voice style, using Google or Amazon speakers (or perhaps Siri in Apple's HomePod or Microsoft's Cortana in Invoke from Harman Kardon) to ask for a specific music selection or playlist, the weather, latest news or podcast, the answer to a math problem or how to spell a word. The smart speaker market is dominated by Amazon and Google, so we'll focus here on those two. They were among the most heavily marketed during the holidays, with massive discounts for the entry-level Echo Dot and Google Home Mini at under $25, so we expect them to be under many trees.

This week's hardware IRL is timely, as Google is about to showcase what's coming next at its annual developer conference. It's the perfect occasion to hear Timothy J. Seppala's thoughts on the Google Home Mini, the company's entry-level smart speaker. He ended up buying two, but they haven't quite delivered on everything he was hoping for. My relationship with a pair of Google Home Mini speakers started out great. I bought them during the holidays as cheap Christmas gifts to myself, hoping to eventually place one in every room of my apartment.

Apple may have gotten a head start on virtual assistants when Siri arrived on the iPhone 4s back in 2011. But rivals Amazon and Google have a big lead when it comes to smart assistants for your home, thanks to their Amazon Echo and Google Home devices. Not to be left out, Apple is entering the voice-activated home assistant arena with the HomePod, a Siri-enabled smart speaker that's available now for $349. Apple is hoping to make the HomePod stand out by positioning it as high-end audio gear with artificial intelligence, rather than a simple home assistant. The HomePod largely succeeds in that regard, but it's not without a few drawbacks.

Music fans keen to get the name of that catchy song playing in the background have a new tool to help them out. Google has extended a facility launched with their flagship Pixel 2 smartphones that lets the firm's Assistant find out for you. Any device equipped with the smart voice activated aide will soon be able to take advantage of the feature, which is similar to the popular Shazam app. Music fans keen to get the name of that catchy song playing in the background have a new tool to help them out. Google has extended a facility launched with their flagship Pixel 2 smartphones that lets the firm's Assistant find out for you To activate the feature, users first need to trigger the assistant by saying'OK Google' or'Hey Google'.

Google Home's built-in speaker is merely passable, and the smart-home device doesn't have a display at all. But you can use voice commands to stream music to better speakers and to stream video to your TV. The keys are Google's Google Cast and Android TV technologies. Google Cast is a media-streaming protocol that can be found in Google's own Chromecast (audio and video), Chromecast Audio (audio only), and numerous third-party products. Android TV is a smart TV platform present in various media-streaming boxes and TVs, including models from Nvidia, Xiaomi, Sony, Sharp, and Philips.