In This Issue

News

Hey look, itโ€™s the PlayStation 5, cool

Heads up gamers, we now know what the PlayStation 5 will look like and what games will be available for the new console when it launches. It'll come in two variants, one with a 4K Blu-Ray drive and one without and there will be a bunch of matching accessories like a media remote, "PULSE 3D Wireless Headset" and a stereoscopic HD camera. I think the console looks cool. Games wise, Sony showed off 9 first-party and 20 third-party games. They all look like a lot of fun with fancy graphics. Press Start has links to YouTube videos of all the trailers. There's no pricing and no exact launch date, but it will come out some time in 2020 - presumably in time for Christmas.

YouTube & Apple will drop US$100m each on various initiatives to support Black Lives Matter

Apple and YouTube have thrown US$100m each at various initiatives spurred on my the Black Lives Matter movement. Apple's Racial Equity and Justice Initiative will spend their $100m on "financing initiatives that address education, economic equality and criminal justice reform" and will try and spend more money with Black-owned businesses and suppliers. YouTube is gonna spend its $100m to "amplify Black voices and perspectives" by funding more content from Black creators and artists. YouTube also said it will "examine how our policies and products are working for everyone โ - but specifically for the Black community - and close any gaps". Just a reminder that Alphabet and Apple's combined market cap is over US$2.5 trillion and their combined 2019 net income was US$90b.

DTA received over 20,000 emails offering feedback about COVIDSafe

Digital Transformation Agency boss Randall Brugeaud gave a talk at the Virtual Australian Public Sector Innovation Show and said that they received over 20,000 emails offering feedback about COVIDSafe, which they've applied to the four updates released to date. The linked article also has a fascinating chart of "COVIDSafe Bluetooth Encounter Logging Results", where they show how the app logs an encounter depending on the device and state (active, background, locked etc) its running on. As expected, iOS is still hopeless with running COVIDSafe in the background compared to Android. I guess this means the DTA isn't employing the special features Apple implemented in iOS 13.5?

Not News

Pay $20 for a Zero SIM then watch ads and get 1GB of free data every month

There's a new Telstra MVNO called Zero Mobile who claim to offer "free" data plans. You pay $20 up front for the SIM, then get 1GB/m for free indefinitely in return for watching ads. I'm going to guess you need to have their app installed on your device and if you don't watch the ads your SIM is paused until you watch the ad. If you need calls & SMS to go with your 1GB of data, that's an extra $8/m. When $9-$10/m plans on other networks (Optus MVNOs mainly, like Moose, Amaysim and Exetel) I don't know if suffering through ads to save $2/m is worth it. Still, I'm curious how this works so might grab a SIM when they launch on Monday.

Bargains

๐ŸŽถ PDA - Interpol

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