Aussie game developers will be very pleased to learn that the Digital Games Tax Offset (DGTO) bill has enetered Parliament. It will provide "a 30% tax rebate for game development projects that reach an expenditure threshold of AUD $500,000". The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association reckons the DGTO is "one of the best game development incentives anywhere in the world", and when combined with Screen Australia's "Games: Expansion Pack" funding initiative and various state based incentives, Australia will be "among the best places in the world to make video games" and "many multinational companies expand their operations to Australia and contribute to a thriving and sustainable game development ecosystem". The DGTO isn't law yet, but should sail through Parliament quickly as nobody's really against it.
Microsoft's US$69b plan to acquire the massive game publisher Activision Blizzard King might have shit the bed. Politico is reporting that "three people with knowledge of the matter" reckon staffers at the USA's Federal Trade Commission "are skeptical of the companies' arguments" that the deal will not be anti-competitive and are concerned over how Microsoft "could leverage future, unannounced titles to boost its gaming business". Meanwhile in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority is carrying out a market investigation on how "Apple and Google dominate the mobile browser market and how Apple restricts cloud gaming through its App Store". It wouldn't shock me at all if it came out that Apple deliberately limits Safari on iOS so web apps are shit compared to native apps, entrenching their App Store monopoly.
In what sounds like it was pulled right out of a Neal Stephenson or William Gibson book, the San Francisco Police Department is seeking approval to "explicitly authorize San Francisco police to kill suspects using robots". In a draft policy put to the Board of Supervisors ("a governmental body that oversees the operation of county government" in various US states), the SFPD struck out a suggestion from the committee's chair that "robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person" and replaced it with "Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to SFPD". The policy is still a draft so with some luck Rococop will remain a fictional movie instead of a documentary.
One of my new favourite hobbies is browsing the vast collections of various libraries, archives and museums around the world and stockpiling high resolution computer/tech/science related images. It's so much fun to trawl these huge collections and seeing what comes up. There's so much content just sitting there waiting to be discovered! I find so many cool pictures that I created a Make scenario that goes through my OneDrive folder of image files at 8:45am every day and shares a random image for everyone to enjoy. They're different images than the ones I share in this email, so if you like those, you should follow @thesizzle.iotd on Instagram or @sizzle_iotd on Twitter to get even more technology related image based content.
AUSSAT Satellite in Orbit 1986 (Colnect)
📻 Evol (Demo) - PJ Harvey
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