ACCC Digital Platforms Inquiry makes 23 recommendations
Apple to buy Intel’s smartphone modem division
New report finds that most of YouTube is kids watching kids do stuff
Live coding music performances are mesmerising
Cheap Bose QC25, Kogan mech keyboard, FIFA 19 for Switch, GL.iNet travel router, Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones, Synology DS218+ NAS, AirPods with charging case, Huawei P30 Pro
The ACCC's Digital Platforms Inquiry has made its report public, coming to the conclusion that "Facebook and Google in particular have amassed so great a user base, and are so far ahead of the market, that extraordinary barriers to entry now exist for would-be competitors". The report includes 23 recommendations like the ACCC requesting a new branch dedicated to digital platforms to further investigate the digital advertising market and forcing Google to offer Australian Android users alternative search engines. Here's the full 600-page PDF and a 38-page executive summary.
Apple has confirmed its gonna buy most of Intel's smartphone modem business for US$1b. For its US$1b, Apple gains 2,200 employees and 17,000 wireless technology patents. Apple was pretty much Intel's only customer and most people believe Apple only bothered persisting with Intel’s arguably substandard modems in order to wedge Qualcomm into giving Apple a better deal on one of the most crucial parts of an iPhone. Now Apple will likely do what it probably should have done 5 years ago and make its own modem designs like it does with the A-series ARM SoCs. Will be interesting if Apple can make a better modem than Qualcomm as many have tried, but failed.
A Pew Research Center report has found that YouTube videos "featuring children under 13 netted three times as many views as others, on average" and videos that "starred and attracted kids - measured, in the report, by the presence of nursery rhymes, singalongs, toys and other traits - were also more popular". Videos about gaming are the most popular category on YouTube and videos with the tags "Fortnight", "prank" and "worst" snagging five times as many views as those without. Looks like kids really wanna watch other kids pranking each other playing Fortnight.
The ABC has a fun article about people that do live coding to make music. It's hard to explain, but once you watch someone doing it, the concept of live coding to music makes a lot more sense. They're not simply coding to music, they're literally writing code on the fly, which makes different sounds and they're writing specific code to make noises that sound good. If you'd like to give it a crack yourself, try out Sonic Pi (which runs on the Raspberry Pi, as well as Windows and macOS). I like seeing people use computers for stuff that isn't specifically dedicated to making some rich fucker more rich, so this is pretty cool.
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Kogan mechanical keyboard (red, blue or brown Outemu switches) with RGB backlighting - $39 delivered
FIFA 19 for the Switch - $19 delivered from Kogan with the code THREEPEAT
GL.inet GL-MT300N-V2 travel router - $25.95 from Amazon AU
There's an eBay Plus members only sale using the code PASTA15:
Sony WH-1000XM3 noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones - $330.65
Synology DS218+ NAS - $381.65
Huawei P30 Pro (dual SIM, 256GB storage, 8GB RAM) - $1,104.15
🎶 Hello Kitty Kat - Smashing Pumpkins
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