Epic finally has their wish - the Epic Game Store is now on iOS (in the EU only). Right now it just has three games, Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and Fall Guys, but yeah, it's now a thing. Epic still has to adhere to Apple's archaic rules for 3rd party app stores, and still has to have their apps notarised by Apple. Epic also said they plan to release these games on other non-Apple App Stores, like AltStore PAL, which recently dropped the annual subscription fee thanks to a sponsorship/grant from Epic. It sucks that the rest of us can't have alternative app stores on iOS, kinda jealous of our European friends.
It should be common knowledge that you can't trust influencers online to be independent of the companies that feed them gear to "review", but Google's latest drop of Pixel 9 phones to the social media puppets explicitly said they're "not allowed to feature Pixel products alongside competitors, and those who showed a preference for competing phones risked being kicked out of the program". If they did do any sort of fair comparison or decide that they liked a different phone to the Pixel, they would be kicked out of the "Team Pixel" program. Not long after this happened Google told The Verge that "we missed the mark with this new language that appeared in the #TeamPixel form yesterday, and it has been removed". The fact they were even comfortable trying to do this just shows how corrupt the entire tech influencer scene is.
Tesla's got a new residential Powerwall battery. Version 3 of the big hunk of lithium now uses more robust LFP cells storing up to 13.5kWh of energy, has a built-in 20kW solar inverter with 3x MPPTs (so you plug the panels directly into the Powerall) and can discharge at a max of 11kW compared to 5kW in the previous model. If you don't already have solar and want a battery to go with your new solar setup, the Powerwall 3 is hard to beat, even if it does cost more than ever at $13,600 plus installation. Tesla is also planning "Energy Expansions" for the new Powerwall, so if you want more than 13.5kWh you can slap these expansions together. Dunno how much or when, but they're coming.
Computer centre, John Holland Constructions, Melbourne, Victoria 1977 [picture] / Wolfgang Sievers (National Library of Australia)
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