Automattic has spent US$125m on Beeper - you know, the people who tried to make iMessage cross platform but ran into Apple's stubborn arse - to go alongside its menagerie of internet businesses. Beeper started off as an inoffensive cross platform app to get all your instant messaging stuff into a single spot and did a pretty good job of it. The Beeper team is now acquihired and co-founder Eric Migicovsky will be Automattic's "head of messaging", which will combine Beeper's team with the Text's team - another all-in-one messaging app Automattic purchased recently. Beeper joins Tumblr, PocketCasts, Day One, Simplenote along with Wordpress and a shitload of Wordpress related businesses in the Automattic house.
Google has added a new app to its Workspace suite - Vids. As The Verge explains, "it appears to be roughly what you'd get if you transformed Google Slides into a video app. You collect assets from Drive and elsewhere and assemble them in order — but unlike the column of slides in the Slides sidebar, you're putting together a left-to-right timeline for a video. Then, you can add voiceover or film yourself and edit it all into a finished video". Of course, Google jammed Gemini in here. It can be used to "make a first draft of the video for you" and "build a storyboard; it can write a script; it can read your script aloud with text-to-speech; it can create images for you to use in the video". This is what happens when you have a generation of children weaned on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram Stories that are now entering the workforce. I hate it.
A bunch of Tesla news for ya on this otherwise slow news day. They've opened their first body shop/collision repair centre in Australia. It's in Sydney and they plan to open some in Melbourne and Brisbane eventually. Maybe this will get repair costs down so insurance isn't so fucking expensive! Reuters is reporting that Tesla's cheap car "for the masses" - the Model 2 - has been cancelled. Sounds bad, but don't worry Tesla shareholders, Elon tweeted "Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8". Who will be brave enough to take a ride in a Tesla Robotaxi (if it ever really happens)?! Not me, based on the feedback people have given the latest version of "Full Self Driving" Tesla recently enabled on everyone's cars for a month, even if they didn't ask for it.
Cory Doctorow is a fan of Kagi. "I tried it. It was magic. No, seriously. All those things Google couldn't find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and over again. That was before I started playing with Kagi's lenses and other bells and whistles, which elevated the search experience from 'magic' to sorcerous". I also like Kagi enough to spend US$108/yr on, at least until the inevitable enshittification takes place.
Technopolis Volume 1 - August 1982 (RevengeOfTheHubz / Internet Archive)
📻 Total Trash (Album Version) - Sonic Youth
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