The News

Google’s new phones, accessories, and, of course, AI features

Google held its annual “Made By Google” event. This year it featured US talk show host Jimmy Fallon, famous Call Her Daddy podcaster Alex Cooper, a guy who makes Subway TikTok videos … oh, and there were some Google execs announcing new stuff. My top line is that the things Made By Google that it wants to show most aren’t physical devices, but AI. The Verge has a good liveblog of the event, but here’s what I noticed:

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Canva is going to the moooooon 🚀

Australia’s own Canva has been valued at $65 billion and is carrying out what is likely to be their last staff shares sale before they go public. (AFR, $). Staff have been able to sell up to $3 million of their shares on secondary markets. All indications are that the company will float on the US market next year. Canva says it has 240 million monthly active users, and 27 million paying subscribers.

The Sizzle: Looks like it’s full steam ahead for Canva going public. Given the fact that some of these general AI companies are starting to creep onto Canva’s territory — producing graphics, doing office stuff — I bet there’s a few nervous Canvanauts who are sweating the delay to IPO.

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Livestreamer dies after abuse on an Australian platform

A French livestreamer has died in his sleep while broadcasting live on Kick, an Australian-owned platform (BBC). Raphaël Graven was known for doing “abuse-for-entertainment” content, and had been subjected to violence and sleep deprivation online before he died. French and EU authorities are looking into it.

The Sizzle: For those not familiar, Kick is owned by crypto gambling platform Stake and launched shortly after Twitch banned people from livestreaming themselves gambling. Kick has notoriously lax rules (Crikey, $). I don’t think Kick is responsible for this guy’s death, but it’s disgusting that this platform — made so streamers would have a place to advertise gambling to kids — facilitated the kind of behaviour that contributed to it.

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Leftovers

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Oh, Also

Be part of the Internet Archive’s trillion page milestone

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is getting ready to celebrate a trillion web pages archived. They’re calling for people to share how the Wayback Machine helped them “remember a moment, recover a lost page, or research something important.” (Google Docs). I have used Wayback Machine a lot for work — most recently to uncover the deleted abusive Twitter account that belonged to a Foxtel exec (Crikey, $) — but I’m sure some of you have some more heartwarming examples.

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Bargains

Electronic & electrical

Computing

Mobile

The End

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