### Issue 1726 - Thursday 3rd November, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- PlayStation VR2 announced, goes on sale late-Feb 2023
- TomTom to ditch homegrown map for OpenStreetMap
- Patreon is tanking, Mastodon is growing, Qualcomm is shrinking
- Tumblr eases up nudity ban but porn still not welcome
- Cheap Boost Mobile pre-paid starter kit, Seagate 18TB HDD, AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU, Crucial P3 4TB NVMe M.2 SSD

## The News

### PlayStation VR2 announced, goes on sale late-Feb 2023

Sony has announced PlayStation VR2, an updated virtual reality headset for the PlayStation. It's a big upgrade, featuring an OLED screen, 110-degree FoV, 4K HDR, 120Hz frame rate, eye tracking, 3D audio, vibration motor, single cable for data & power, all-new controllers and is overall slimmer and lighter for increased comfort. There's four external cameras that allow for inside-out tracking so "your movements and the direction you look are reflected in-game without the need for an external camera". Sounds excellent. The bad news is that existing PSVR games don't work with it and it is only for the PlayStation 5. There's 11 games announced for launch (list here). Sony let journos try it out at the Tokyo Games Show and from all accounts it is very good. The PSVR2 will go on sale in Australia Feb 22nd, 2023 with pre-orders kicking off November 15th. The RRP is $879.95.

### TomTom to ditch homegrown map for OpenStreetMap

TomTom is one of those companies that was made largely irrelevant in most people's minds because of the smartphone, but they still exist and today announced the "TomTom Maps Platform". The press release is very buzzwordy, but simply put they're gonna take OpenStreetMap and blend it with their own map, field work and data sources. This is great news as you'd hope TomTom would also be feeding back into OpenStreetMap rather than just being a leech. They even say in the press release that they see themselves "closer to the enthusiast mapmakers that make open map data what it is, rather than the Big Tech companies that often make use of it". They'll make this new map public around Q2-2023. At this point every map is either OSM (Apple, Microsoft, Meta all use it or use someone like Here or TomTom that ultimately use OSM) or Google.

### Patreon is tanking, Mastodon is growing, Qualcomm is shrinking

- Patreon's SVP of finance wrote in a memo to staff that "the company's valuation had dipped significantly – to the tune of 70% over the past year" and that "million-dollar deals to onboard top TikTokers Larray and Lil Huddy fell spectacularly flat – with both raking in around $2,500 during their first months on the platform, far less than the company expected". Oof.
- The Guardian is reporting that Mastodon has had a "flood" of users signing up since Musk's Twitter takeover, "with more than 70,000 users joining Mastodon on the day after his announcement alone". I like the idea of Mastodon but the whole process of picking instances/servers is frustrating. For all its faults I still enjoy Twitter. For how much longer I'll enjoy it under Musk's reign, I don't know.
- Qualcomm's latest earnings contains an interesting guidance update. "Calendar year 2022 3G/4G/5G handset volumes" are gonna drop from a "year-over-year mid-single-digit percentage decline, to a low double-digit percentage decline". Almost every smartphone sold in the west has Qualcomm bits in it, Apple, Samsung, you name it. If there was any question on if we've hit peak smartphone, here's the answer.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Tumblr eases up nudity ban but porn still not welcome

Tumblr has confirmed that it will no longer restrict content featuring "nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes" and have added a way for users to label their content as such. That might sound like porn is back on the menu at Tumblr, but the new guidelines clearly state that "visual depictions of sexually explicit acts remain off-limits on Tumblr". I don't know what's changed over the last 4 years, particularly considering Automattic's CEO's recent (and excellent) post about how difficult it is to legally host adult content in 2022, even if Tumblr wanted to. Good luck to the Tumblr moderators. If anyone can push the limits what is "mature subject matter" it's the lovable freaks on Tumblr.

## Bargains

- Boost Prepaid $200 Starter Kit (unlimited calls & SMS, 260GB data) - $162.50 from Lucky Mobile
- Seagate IronWolf Pro 18TB Enterprise NAS Internal HDD - $523.05 from Amazon USA
- AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU - $329 from Shopping Express
- Crucial P3 4TB PCIe Gen 3 NVMe M.2 (2280) SSD - $504.20 from Amazon UK

## Image Of The Day

Color snapshot of a man throwing his hands up as he sits at a computer in an office (MIT Museum)

## The End

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