Rivian drops not one, but two "one more thing" bombshells at launch event

It's so refreshing to watch an EV launch event where the company's CEO has a modicum of public speaking skills and doesn't throw steel balls at their car's windows. Instead Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe ran a tight ship whilst revealing the new R2 SUV. A physically smaller version than its predecessor the R1S the R2 looks like a concept Land Rover and comes in 1, 2 & 3 drive versions. Each is capable of a 480km+ range and the flagship punches out 0-100km in < 3 seconds. Scaringe didn't stop there though unveiling the unexpected R3, the smaller soccer-mum version of the R2. It's biggest differentiator beyond size was it's boot being able to open in two different ways. Then for the another surprise reveal they trotted out the R3X, a sort of off-road adventurer version that looked like it was straight out of a 1987 Russian Lada catalogue. The new R2 is US$45k and wont be available until 2026, meanwhile the R3 & R3X didn't have pricing or availability attached. None of that really matters for Australian's though, we're yet to see Rivian enter the market here (and those prices triple like most EV manufacturers). The nearest they've got is some stunt with the R1T ute being used by a mining company here.

Nikon is buying RED

Mark this one down as "things I didn't except to see today". Japan based Nikon has announced that it will be acquiring US based RED Digital Cinema. That in its own right isn't particularly interesting, Nikon make cameras, but can't crack the film market, RED make film cameras and are pretty crap at anything else (remember the RED Hydrogen smartphone?). No, the interesting part of this is that less than a year ago RED was suing Nikon for patent infringement. RED claimed Nikon had copied some of their video compression and shoved it in their cameras, but Nikon rebuked this by saying "piss off, it wasn't a real patent anyway" (I'm paraphrasing here). Ultimately the case was thrown out and nothing came of it... or did it? RED's president Jarred Land announced the news on his Instagram with a slapped together shot of the two company logos and a caption "Heh heh heh...". Take that as you will.

The US takes another step towards banning TikTok

When is a ban not a ban? When the US House Commerce Committee votes 50-0 to approve a bill saying that TikTok owner ByteDance must sell the company within 180 days or lose access to the US market. The bill will now proceed to the House & the Senate before old-man-Biden could then sign it into law, but it's a large step forward in the US' persistent battle with what they believe to be a front for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The bill isn't TikTok specific either, although it does call out ByteDance as an example, meaning that the US could effectively force the sale/ban of any application in the future should they deem them as being owned by a "foreign adversary". TikTok aren't super happy with this and asked their users to share their displeasure with their local reps, which has led to many phones ringing non-stop since the bill was announced on Tuesday. They're calling it a ban, anyone that endorsed the bill is saying it's not a ban if you sell. Tomatoes, tomatoes champ.

Returning to Monkey Island the documentary

I freaking loved The Secret to Monkey Island. It was the catalyst behind me falling in love with video games. True story, in order for me to play the game I had to upgrade the RAM in my Atari ST to 1MB, which meant sending it to Adelaide on a bus to get picked up by a shop that soldered in a new chip before sending it back to me on the bus again. Nuts. I'm that old. Anyway, Noclip have created an incredible doco about the series interviewing its creator Ron Gilbert and why he decided to embark on a return to the series, resurrecting it from a licensing limbo and updating its graphical style. Check it out!