### Issue 1988 - Tuesday 5th December, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Official 90-second GTA6 trailer is here
- Spotify made a profit, but is firing 1500 staff to keep that profit going
- Government to create copyright and artificial intelligence reference group
- Gaming on Linux is just as good, if not better, than on Windows if Valve's Proton supports it
- Cheap Glorious Forge Series One Pro mouse, TCN & Twitch gift cards, Valve Steam Deck, Lenovo micro PC, FIre TV Lite, TCL C845 TV

## The News

### Official 90-second GTA6 trailer is here

Our first look at Grand Theft Auto VI arrived early this morning. The 90 second trailer has already clocked up 35m views in just 5 hours! It shows the main protagonist, Lucia, on a crime spree across Vice City (aka Miami) with an unnamed guy in a Bonne-and-Clyde style setup, along with plenty of scantily clad women and dudes with guns. There's no game play and the graphics are all pre-rendered (I doubt the actual game will look that good?) but it does contain the usual Rockstar cynical commentary on American life. We will be able to play it in 2025, probably late-2025 knowing how these giant game projects go. I love the GTA franchise and can't wait to see how Rockstar does it without Dan Houser leading the development.

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### Spotify made a profit, but is firing 1500 staff to keep that profit going

Spotify turned its first quarterly profit since 2021, squeaking out a modest 32 million euro profit out of 226m subscribers and 574m monthly users, claiming around 30% of the market for music streaming against some stiff competition in Apple who have huge advantages Spotify never will. The bad news is Spotify will sack 17% of its workforce (around 1500 people), the third round of mass lay-offs this year, as investors want a return after years of funnelling low-interest money into this thing. Here's an easy way to get more money out of me - high resolution audio! It's likely a placebo but damn it, it's a placebo I want. Where's Spotify Hi-Fi at Mr. Ek!?

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### Government to create copyright and artificial intelligence reference group

The federal government is setting up a "copyright and artificial intelligence (AI) reference group". It will be a way for "stakeholders across a wide range of sectors, including the creative, media and technology sectors" to discuss "a number of important copyright issues, including the material used to train AI models, transparency of inputs and outputs, the use of AI to create imitative works, and whether and when AI-generated works should receive copyright protection". Dunno when it will start, who will be part of the group or when/if it will release a report. Further info will be "available on the Attorney-General's Department's website in the near future".

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Gaming on Linux is just as good, if not better, than on Windows if Valve's Proton supports it

German website ComputerBase benchmarked Arch Linux, Pop!_OS and Nobara OS against Windows 11 and found that all the Linux distros were able to outperform Windows 11 in games that are supported by Valve's Proton compatibility layer. The games tested were Cyberpunk 2077, Forspoken, Rachet & Clank, Starfield and The Talos Principle II, whcih don't have native Linux versions, so all used Proton. It's a modest victory for the Linux distros (just a handful of frames per second), but it's impressive this even works in the first place, let alone performing slightly better than Windows! The list of titles that support Proton keeps growing too as they want to work on Valve's popular Steam Deck console.

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## Bargains

- Glorious Forge Series One Pro Wireless Mouse - $79 from PC Case Gear
- $50 TCN "Gift" (aka JB Hi-Fi, eBay & Good Guys) gift card - $45 from 7-11
- Valve Steam Deck 64GB - $628 from Mobileciti's eBay store
- Lenovo M920q micro PC (i5-8500T, 256GB SSD, 12GB RAM) - $219.99 from Bufferstock's eBay store
- Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite - $27 from Amazon
- 15% off Twitch gift cards from Amazon
- TCL 50" C845 mini LED 4K TV - $999 from The Appliance Guys

## Image Of The Day

The Telecom Exchange building, 625 Wellington Street, Perth, 30 October 1978 (State Library of Western Australia)

## The End

📻 Time Bomb - Dismemberment Plan

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