Epic is taking the fight against Apple's and Google's app stores onto our golden soil, suing Google in the Federal Court of Australia. Epic reckons that Google's "contravening conduct hinders or prevents the ability of Epic (and other app developers) from distributing its software applications" and that "these restrictions have provided Google - through its control of the Google Play Store - with a near-monopoly in the market". They're also upset with being forced to used Google's in-app payments service that takes a 30% cut. Epic is now suing Apple and Google in the UK, USA and EU, along with Australia.
OVH, Europe's largest (but small compared to the USA's Microsoft, Google and Amazon) cloud hosting company had one of its French datacentres burn down last night. Check out the pics in the linked article. Anyone with stuff located in the SBG2 zone is shit outta luck as all the equipment located in there has been burnt to a crisp. Other SBG zones are also down due to a lack of power or other damaged infrastructure. Apparently 2% of websites in the .FR domain are impacted. I look forward to reading a report on what the hell happened here.
Atlassian, AirTasker, Culture Amp and StartupAus have written to the ATO asking to help them update the R&D Tax Incentive (aka RDTI) program to be more suitable for software related activities. Right now it's a bit of a stretch for most software projects to claim the RDTI, which for years the ATO turned a blind eye to, but is now ordering some companies to pay it back as most software "research and development" really wasn't anything of the sort. The authors of the letter want to "work closely" with the ATO to "better understand and define the nature of software-enabled innovation" in a "collaborative day-long workshop" under "Chatham House rules, with Atlassian to play a coordinating role".
📻 Satan Said Dance - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.