The US House of Representatives has put up five new antitrust laws aimed at "Big Tech" companies like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook. One law "forbids platforms from favoring their own products and services" and tries to "stop companies from using private data to get a leg-up on the competition". Another would prevent platforms with at least "50 million monthly active US users and a market cap of $600 billion or more from owning or operating businesses that would cause them to advantage their own products and services or disadvantage those of their competitors". Sounds good in theory, but the laws haven't been passed yet so don't get too excited.
E3 happened and I'm not a gamer so this won't be a very comprehensive overview of the event, but some of it was still of interest to me. Diablo II: Resurrected has a launch date - September 23rd. There's gonna be an Outer Worlds 2, but we don't know anything more than that at this stage. There's a new Far Cry 6 trailer with Giancarlo Esposito taking a trip through uncanny valley. Developers of the popular game (that I am yet to play) Among Us have released a road map of future updates. Microsoft showed off heaps of stuff, including a new sci-fi RPG from Bethesda called Starfield, the all new Age of Empires 4 (coming in October!) and 11 new games for Game Pass.
Google is bringing a bunch of stuff from Workspace (aka the paid stuff formerly known as G-Suite) to lowly consumer accounts. Gmail is turning into a "single, integrated experience" where you could send email, chat, work on a Google Doc, and make video calls, all from one browser-based super-app. It'll also bring Google Chat and Meet to consumer accounts, baked right in to Gmail. A new part of that fresh interface is "Spaces", that kinda looks like an attempt to have a chat room that supports collaborating on Google Docs? Fucks sake, all this Google Workspaces shit is so confusing. Just get Microsoft Office 365, way easier to understand what's going on.
I really like Caleb Pike's one box YouTube studio. The dude has turned a Pelican case into a portable all-in-one high quality studio he can take on the road and record himself talking to a camera. Apparently setups like this are popular with TV crews who can just drop one off to some talent who can self-produce their videos and get way better footage than using the selfie camera on a smartphone. No need to send a crew out to do all the work. Slap a Teradek unit with 4G in there for live streaming and it's a damn nifty setup.
📻 Hold On to Your Genre - Les Savy Fav
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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.