According to David Crowe at Nine, the "national broadband network will be kept in public ownership under a new federal law to be put to federal parliament this week". The plan was always to sell it off once the network is complete (most likely to Telstra), but the last few years has seen the ALP load up the NBN with debt to build more fibre to the premises connections, basically overbuilding the shitty FTTN and FTTC networks. I don't know if the NBN will ever be profitable, so until that happens there's probably no point privatising it as the government would be losing billions.
A judge in the USA has demanded Google "open up the Google Play app store to competition for three whole years. Google will have to distribute rival third-party app stores within Google Play, and it must give rival third-party app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps, unless developers opt out individually". There's also a long list of stuff Google can and can't do to ensure an even playing field for 3rd party app stores and the Google Play Store on Android devices in the US. Pretty wild how Epic comprehensively got what it wanted out of Google but barely made a dent on Apple's App Store.
Apple's released a trailer for its first "scripted immersive video for the Vision Pro". Submerged is written and directed by Edward Berger, is set inside a WWII submarine as its crew deals with a torpedo attack. Same bloke that directed the rather good All Quiet on the Western Front. The full short film will available October 10th, for free, for those of you lucky enough to own an Apple Vision Pro.
One of the oldest bookmarks in my collection is the story of Maxis Business Simulations, an off-shoot of the Maxis we know and love for SimCity. They made a game called Sim Refinery for Chevron (the oil company) and was paid $75,000 for it. There were plans for more games, like SimEnvironment "designed to show the spread of pollution and the challenges of toxic waste site cleanup", SimSite "a simulation for managing the closure of a military base", SimPower "a game modeling the operation of a power grid, developed jointly for the Pacific Gas & Electric Company and the Electric Power Research Institute" and SimHealth, which "wasn't meant to accurately simulate the health care system. But instead, it was a way to see what could happen if you rewrote the laws of health care – and then question if that's what you really wanted". I would like to play all these.
Winter 1983 catalog of gifts, gadgets and candy from Sweet Gum, a candy store in North Miami, Florida. Includes computer-shaped candy, whacky computer t-shirts, ties, desk toys, and even a couple electronics (notably, a Wico joystick). Contains what appears to be doubled pages, but in fact there was an extra page folded into the catalog with a slight "remix" of some of the items and a different form to fill out. (Internet Archive / Jason Scott)
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