While the camera companies have had a rough run through the past decade of phone photography dominance, their technology has progressed in interesting ways. Larger sensors make digital cameras more powerful than ever and the features have expanded to embrace the possibilities of digital without getting in the way of image capture.

But most pleasingly, some brands have embraced a deeply traditional aesthetic and feel to take us back to the roots of a camera just being a camera. With the digital splash behind the scenes adding value where we really need it.

The Fujifilm X-E5, released in mid 2025, is a gorgeous example of this approach to offering a classic compact 'rangefinder' style experience with carefully chosen digital features under the hood and plenty of flexibility to suit any user's preferences.

The camera has a wonderful feeling in the hand, with a very nice grippable form and the retro black and aluminium look I know I want in this kind of model. The X-E5 is sold in its base form comes with a XF 23mm F2.8 pancake lens, but it is interchangeable with the Fujifilm X Mount range of lenses – you can find macro, wide angle, telephoto zooms, all the way up to a 500mm long lens. I count 44 lenses currently available in the range.

I tested the kit in its basic form with the prime lens alone.

Fun, focused photography

The camera features a 40.2Mp APS-C sensor and the body is designed with an in-body stabilisation system (IBIS). The image quality is lovely, with great colour and richness. Better eyes than mine might peep their way to flaws, but I was very satisfied by the photographs I was taking with this camera.

What also felt enjoyable was using the traditional eyepiece viewfinder, which is a tiny little internal screen and it worked nicely. I had not used a similar electronic viewfinder in a very long time and a little wider reading suggests this particular hardware is long in the tooth by today's standards, so it seems it could be more than it is if Fujifilm made the choice to upgrade it. But from my perspective this was still very nice to use and delivered the kind of myopic visual focus that helps you to really hone your shot.

You can shoot JPEG, HEIF, and RAW, as well as video in Full HD, 4K, DCI4K, and 6.2K formats. There's plenty here to play with for whatever your need.

Tactile meets digital

The physical dials also make this a tactile joy to use, with easy control over shutter speed and exposure stops. A third dial also offers access to simulated film styles. It would be uncharitable to call them glorified filters. The integration feels more usable and fun to use than that.

In the tradition of different film stock producing distinct image results, this is a way to bring the joy of exploring these effects in real-time and seeing the quality adjustments while you setup and take your shots. Along with the 20 pre-defined film types you can also tailor a number of custom settings across three additional dial positions. This keeps the focus on the camera on getting your shot while you shoot.

There are also skin smoothing, sharpness, and grain effect options to play with, but these did feel more out of the filter zone where I'd rather avoid messing with the quality of the image I'm trying to capture.

Connected when you want

Of course, you still need to move the pictures to your photo library at some point. The Fujifilm X-E5 offers Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity to help keep the pictures flowing without needing to extract the memory cards to slow things down.

There is a dedicated Fujifilm XApp app, which offers the ability to tell the camera to always drip feed the images to your phone so the images are waiting for you when you switch back to a smartphone. In reality I found this a little fussy to work with, with slow transfer speeds and disconnection common. This could easily have been user error, and when it did work it did mean you just had your images ready before you decided you needed them.

The app also allows for remote control of the camera, which plenty of users who dabble it studio work or just want to set a fixed tripod and not bump the camera will get good value from.

The X-E5 also offers a frame.io Camera to Cloud integration, offering direct connection to the service over Wi-Fi.

One issue I encountered was images not having embedded location data when the camera was not connected to the phone. Some cameras can do this as a built-in feature. But the X-E5 did not. Fair enough that some cameras choose to lean into the live connection to a smartphone to deliver extra data points, but when you factor in the price I would have hoped this would be an inclusion. Speaking of...

Price is no object

"If you have to ask..."

I loved this camera in the hand and my photography loving wife even more so. But the sticker price of $2,699 is quite the shock. You can find it commonly listed for $2,499 at retailers, but even then. Wow.

It's a great experience and it really makes me want to shoot more photos in this active, careful mode than I have in a long time. If this is your go to hobby, it's well worth checking out in store and getting a feel for it yourself. If you can find reasons to have a great dedicated camera for professional purposes that fall short of needing to have a more serious DSLR in hand, take a look too.

There are cheaper DSLRs, but part of the price here is getting so much camera in such a well designed small body. With the rangefinder body and the pancake lens it was easy to roam with the camera tucked away while still taking great pleasure when you're ready to shoot.

If you can avoid choking on that price, this will deliver loads of grass touching pleasure for years to come.

Excellent hardware

The hardware is lovely. Nice in the hand, the triple camera system in the iconic camera bar is first class, and the screen is gorgeous. That Super Actua display (an LTPO) gives us 3300 nits peak brightness for excellent daylight performance with dynamic refresh rate from 1-120Hz which enhances the feel of the phone performance.

The camera system is a 50Mp wide, 48Mp ultrawide, and 48Mp telephoto, with a 42Mp selfie camera that has an ultrawide field for fitting friends in the frame nicely (AI companions need not apply). Optical zoom ranges across 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 5x, and 10x, with optical and electronic stablisation on the wide and telephoto lenses. Then we get Pro Res Zoom out to 100x, which adds some AI to clean up the otherwise messy long range effort by the system. We'll get into the AI more in a minute. But first lets talk some camera features.

Camera cleverness

A smartphone is the most important camera in your life. You can absolutely feel like you can rely on the camera system in your pocket if you choose the Pixel 10 Pro. Alongside its core features, the standard Google camera features are now well established and do an excellent job in all kinds of situations.

Night Sight set a standard for shooting in the dark, Unblur has done wonders for reclaiming otherwise botched shots, and Add Me was a big hit for putting yourself into a group photo with some double frame trickery. Now we also have Auto Best Take for more automated adjustment to get everyone's best smile in a shot.

As for other editing options with an AI touch, we still have Magic Eraser to do that all important trick of removing annoying people from the background of your shots.

One the Pro Res Zoom 100x promise, I'd be careful to stick to shorter ranges if you want a great image. It's very impressive at 30x. But once you really stretch it out you start to get the feeling that what you're seeing is probably more AI than reality.

Then there is Camera Coach. This is my first example of the caveats on this year's phone. I love the idea of AI helping to suggest interesting or alternate framing for how I could take a photo of a scene. It feels like an example of clever multimodal AI that helps us humans do something better with real-time feedback and encouragement. Right now, it's just not quite there. But it's not useless either.

In my tests, Camera Coach told me to change where I was standing, change my height, move for better sunlight, or to think about different angles. However, sometimes the advice contradicted itself to make things confusing. But once you know that's the case? If you want some ideas and you have the time, Camera Coach can give you some suggestions. Just know that the suggestions might put you back where you started. It's not a serious coach. It's just something to play with.

AI is in the future

Probably the biggest ticket sales pitch on the AI front for the Pixel 10 Pro was Magic Cue. And the simple answer in 2025 is that the reality is a long way from the promise.

It's interesting that Apple made similar promises in 2024 – an AI that would know your message and email history so it could contextually give you important information when you needed it. And that is a wonderful idea! It makes sense that, at some point, this kind of personal knowledge index attached to a language model will be a powerful tool.

Apple took the L by walking back the promise and parking the technology until who knows when. But Google has pressed ahead with Magic Cue and it makes for an interesting comparison. Do we want to play with the flawed tool and watch it get better? Or would we prefer to wait for the polished version (if it is ever possible)? It fits the corporate pedigree that Google is the one to press ahead more and, hopefully, learn through feedback to iterate toward something that really works in public.

Do not expect Magic Cue to be the personal assistant you dreamed of. It is genuinely unreliable. But if Google can solve for the hit and miss inaccuracy in future then it will sit wonderfully on this piece of hardware.

Personal AI dilemmas

Of course, even 90% reliability is not good enough if you want to ask an AI for a specific flight number or address or phone number or some other fixed answer to a question that LLMs otherwise like to return probabilistic answers to. That's the next great AI challenge. A little bit of random is not OK in many contexts. Can they put the compute layers in place to solve that issue?

In other areas, AI is showing good value in a smartphone. Voice Translate is showing tremendous promise for ongoing improvement with real utility today. The image editing features are excellent. And pushing to do more local AI instead of relying on the cloud will add to the feeling of these tools being 'personal' and only using up power in ways you directly control. Gemini AI integrations like Gemini Live also offer interesting options for searching and getting real-time feedback on the world around you.

I've said it before, but it's important to flag that I know many wish AI would just crawl back in a hole and disappear. Everyone should feel like they can choose when and where AI appears in their life – and that it should not be anywhere at all. Google is clearly all in with its AI initiatives and the Pixel 10 Pro is for users who want to explore its potential over the years to come. It is far from perfect today. But it's certainly on a journey and Google is going to do what it can to keep making the Pixel experience better through AI tools and services.

Make your Pixel 10 Pro and Google AI choice with that clearly understood.

Hardware ready for the software of the future?

Choosing a Pixel 10 Pro gives you a great piece of hardware for today that has the build quality and the potential to serve you well for years to come. In those years to come, some of the much touted AI features (especially Magic Cue) will evolve and hopefully get closer to the promise.

For most of the Pixel era it's been arguable that the software led the hardware. Perhaps this year the hardware jumped ahead of the software. That's good news if you want to own a phone that feels like it will only get better with age.

As soon as I loaded up my first test game I was wowed by the picture quality. I'm still dreaming about it now that it's gone.

Until testing the Alienware 34-inch Ultra-wide QD-OLED Monitor (AW3425DW) my experience with OLED has been on my (beloved) living room 65-inch TV. I work on a very nice 27-inch 4K IPS monitor as my main screen for desktop work, and it has been perfectly excellent for my needs. Until now.

There really is something about how our brain decides something is 'correct' and once you've crossed that threshold it feels disappointing to step back into the before times. It's been a week since this monitor left the office and I'm slowly getting back into the zone of comfort with my own monitors... but it's one of those times when it feels incredibly disappointing to have said goodbye to that gorgeous screen.

So what's so special? The QD-OLED leap at 3440x1440 is super impressive, with incredible picture quality and a 240Hz refresh rate that keeps it zippy for gaming along with the table stakes sync modes (G-Sync and FreeSync Premium Pro) to make the screen never tear as your GPU makes its adjustments on the fly to keep up with whatever is being processed. The colour depth and accuracy is also worth talking about, with 99.3% DCI-P3 coverage, Delta E ≤ 2 accuracy, and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification.

Specs are good to read, but it really was completely obvious when just sitting in front of this screen. It's stunning. Your eyes can tell when they feel just right.

Notable since I last tested an Alienware gaming monitor is the new stand. The previous V-shaped stand could be very awkward on a desk when desk real estate is so precious – especially for gamers who have a lot of accessories chewing up space. Now the more traditional stand is compact but sturdy. It's a stand you won't have to think about. That's a good stand.

I work in a setup with three screens attached to a Mac mini for my daily work routines, two in landscape and one in portrait mode. So perhaps my saving grace here is knowing I'd need to overhaul my setup significantly to put this 34-inch ultrawide into my life permanently.

If there are ways to get clever with a monitor in a multi computer setup, this monitor isn't really helping. It isn't doing any clever USB hub support options, just a basic set of USB ports (A, B, and C with 15W). No KVM switch, no powered USB-C with DisplayPort to drive a laptop direct. No speakers and no direct audio jack either (though that's not so expected).

It's all worth noting, because if you want an elaborate set of cross computer integrations you're going to struggle here. Which is why, as sad as I was to see it go, I know it just isn't suited to my mixed use setup. But next time I'm adjusting my main desk arrangements this will be firmly in mind when I do.

But in a dedicated workstation cum gaming rig where it can become your immersive main screen for work and play? At $1499 this is an incredibly attractive proposition. And one I strongly recommend.

Lawyers here in Australia are also getting caught out all the time. If they're using ChatGPT it's even worse – local laws are not especially well represented in the American text machine.

I can only hope the clients involved fired their lawyers and found representation elsewhere. But the legal system itself seems to require a more deliberative approach as to whether these errors in judgment are cause to see these representatives of the law disbarred. Wasting the time of the courts because you didn't want to waste your own precious time being diligent is not yet its own reason for facing the kind of penalty that would stop people doing it in future.

Consulting the language models

But what about when a company delivers AI-generated errors to a government in a fancy, expensive report? If you missed the news, Deloitte was paid $440,000 for a report into how to fix IT systems for welfare compliance. An academic noticed the report contained references to non-existent publications, a clear sign the report had allowed AI to write at least some of the work and did not perform thorough checks at the other end of the process.

At first, Deloitte claimed it stood by the report. Later, it conceded the errors, made an apology and gave a "partial refund" of almost $98,000. "Oversight processes were not followed on this occasion."

What is even more important in this Deloitte story is that the republished report may have updated references but errors remain. Not only in the syntax on the page but, more insidiously, some of the work cited, according to the relevant academics, bears little relevance to the report.

"Replacing completely fake footnotes with inaccurate footnotes that don't support the body of the report and have no relevance to it seems like an odd response to me," Macquarie University's Carolyn Adams told the AFR. "You'd fail them if they were a student."

You'd fail them if they were a student.

The same academic pointed to this amazing phrase that the citation of her work was meant to support:

"contemporary regulatory settings ordinarily embed flexibility, proportionality, and procedural fairness in processes that also support individualisation and responsive approaches to compliance, particularly in complex cases."

Adams described this as gobbledegook, typical of AI-generated sentences. "It looks like it should be meaningful, but it isn't."

Who are you writing for?

This seems to be something of a look behind the curtain of these kinds of massive reports. Almost no one reads the detail. Open the front. Read the executive summary. Read the introduction. Scan for the breakout boxes with spotlights and recommendations. Jump to the conclusion and recommendations. Feel the weight of those pages in hand and feel like someone showed their working. Very professional. Very important.

I do work with big clients on big documents from time to time. But at every turn I am writing to be read by people who want to understand what is being addressed. I am writing to be clear and understood not only by experts but by the kinds of people who want to know more than they currently do.

Are you writing to tick a box and meet a brief? Or are you writing to be read and deliver meaning and understanding?

Sloppy business

The business world has allowed a gap – an escape clause – to exist between failing to check the work of AI and being responsible for the work of AI. Pointing over at the AI is a mitigating circumstance for doing shoddy work.

Actually, we have the right word. Sloppy. Sloppy work. It fits the moment.

I absolutely see value in using AI 'deep research' modes that look up real information and help people go from zero to forty percent quickly, pulling together ideas and sources to build momentum on the way to getting good, real work done. But when errors land in the final work it suggests all those checks and balances people claim to take pride in and claim set them apart from lesser mortals are nowhere to be seen.

The old saying that the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time? This should be more tangible than ever in organisations that deploy AI to speed their processes. The check phase, the polish phase, the collation phase. This time where the human is in the loop should be the definitive moment – because you and your organisation should never find itself in a position where they're making excuses about sloppy AI errors.

If you are deploying AI to support human work but running out of time to check the work of AI, you are cheating your clients.

If the checks are taking longer than never having used AI in the first place? Stop using AI.

The work must always be the responsibility of the people behind it. And accountability should follow. Transparency should form part of this approach to responsibility and accountability. If you are found to have breached this line by failing to manage AI inputs, you should have to reveal the work processes that allowed for this error to impact your clients.

In the case of lawyers, shouldn't this be worse than if they delivered these same errors because they were unskilled at the task? That the courts should demand they reveal what they've billed their clients in the process of failing them?

In the case of a major consulting firm, let us see if you had already made your recommendations before you fleshed out the research. Show us how you spent more time making the report bloat out to 400-pages, because that's what a $400,000 report should look like, than on careful review and analysis of the research ahead of reaching your conclusions.

Perhaps transparency would restore confidence? Perhaps it would reveal none of this was the case and it really was just a sloppy error? But when AI errors occur, the onus should be on the people who failed in the act of delivering real human-centred insights to show why they deserve more work in future.

I'm quite sure there are all kinds of business reasons and legal reasons why such foolish demands for transparency in exchange for sloppy work would never become a norm for industry. Feel free to tell me any you think of.

But we do often hear about how AI for business must have transparency and explainability measures in order to manage its risks. Perhaps if our suppliers are found to be using AI not as a support but as a shortcut they too should have a lot more explaining to do than a slap on the wrist or a partial refund?

Before I left CNET, around 2016, I remember pitching the idea for a new podcast with my boss. "The Algorithm Is Broken". They didn't get the idea. (I didn't pitch it with a detailed rundown of the concept, but I felt the title summed it up pretty well.) But it seemed to run counter to an overarching preference for erring on the side of the positive instead of raising questions about the state of the industry and the systems that were becoming embedded in society and culture.

This year, I pitched a panel to SXSW Sydney on the issues we as a society face with the rise of AI slop and how the algorithms have been promoting it in our feeds over real content made by real people. The idea was rejected. (Maybe it was my pitch, but the talent line up was top shelf and it's a topic we need to engage with ASAP.) Looking at the final schedule, it seems there was an overarching preference for boosterism around all things AI.

Maybe I'm just sour grapes guy that no one wanted to let me be more critical of the state of tech. But I don't think I'm the only one trying to find more room for these debates within the tech world. And we really need it.

We need loud and proud nuance at the heart of tech discussions. The hype is dangerous, as is a quiet avoidance of anything that might upset the advertisers and sponsors.

For me, if we don't do more and better to engage with the problems of technology we will fail to gain the benefits of the new. If the drive is only for centrally controlled platforms to demand we buy what they prefer to give us, we'll never push aside the crap we're being shoveled to get to the value hiding behind the easy money options they want to sell.

I have many issues with how AI is being foisted upon us, but I do not believe it is a useless technology. It holds tremendous value across many industries and personal use cases. But like digging up oil to simply burn it, we are being sold this incredibly powerful tool just to write mediocre words and draw serviceable pictures.

Subscribe now to avoid the parts of life that make us human.

The online era has led us to eternal subscriptions, endless feeds, and an assumption that mega business growth will forever point up and to the right. Somehow, achieving trillion dollar market caps is just another stepping stone toward the tens and hundreds of trillions. Up and to the right. Forever.

The further the graph goes, the worse the deal seems to get for users. It's hard to stay positive about the benefits when the price – financial, personal, and social – gets steeper by the day.

I'm in the thick of finalising my research proposal for my PhD candidature where I'm investigating generative AI art platforms and their impact upon online art communities. I'll write longer on this soon, but I find it interesting that many people react to that theme based on their existing love or hate for the tools – and make assumptions about where I probably sit on the love/hate binary to be studying the topic in the first place.

For the event attendees...

I'll be at PAX Australia this weekend in Melbourne and I'll be at some of SXSW Sydney next week (probably more of the games industry events than the tech, though I will look closer to hunt for any signs of critical analysis if I can find them!) If you're at either say hi!

Recently on Byteside

I continue to not send emails about every article that appears on the site. I reserve the emails for bigger thoughts and curated links. Here's a few of the recent posts you may have missed.

Top panel picks for PAX Australia 2025

So many panels it’s hard to know where to start? Here’s 15 to put on your schedule!

BytesideSeamus Byrne

Catan 6th Edition: examining side-by-side with 5th Edition

Our direct compare with 5th Edition to help you get an easy look at what exactly has changed and whether the new set is for you.

BytesideSeamus Byrne

Google Pixel 10: magnets, magic, and mentors await you!

Google Pixel 10 gets the Qi2 I said you should wait for, plus Magic Cue AI that adds contextual insights whenever you might need them.

BytesideSeamus Byrne

Australian tech issues

A lot of local "hmmm..." lately. Here's a few important reads.

Deloitte to pay money back to Albanese government after using AI in $440,000 report

Partial refund to be issued after several errors were found in a report into a department’s compliance framework

The GuardianKrishani Dhanji

Algorithm to be used for NDIS plans

The government is using an ‘instrument’ designed by the University of Melbourne to reassess support payments for disabled people.

The Saturday PaperRick Morton

From zero to neo-Nazis: what under-16s may see under Australia’s social media ban, simply by not logging in

Guardian Australia test finds scrolling shortform videos while logged out of YouTube and TikTok quickly leads to gambling, violent and far-right content

The GuardianJosh Taylor

Loot boxes are still rife in kids’ mobile games, despite ban on ‘gambling-like’ features

Games with ‘loot boxes’ should be classified for over-15s – but a new study shows many of the most popular mobile games completely ignore the rules.

The ConversationBen Egliston

This Discord story is global, but with the social media age restrictions arriving on December 10, here's an example of a Very Big Tech Company screwing up badly when trying to follow age verification rules and exposing government issued ID in the process. The more we demand verification, the more our privacy is under threat.

Discord blames third-party support outfit for data breach

: Outsourcing your helpdesk always seems like a good idea – until someone else’s breach becomes your problem

The RegisterCarly Page

Elsewhere...

Stalker Already Using OpenAI’s Sora 2 to Harass Victim

A journalist claims that her stalker used Sora 2, the latest video app from OpenAI, to churn out videos of her.

FuturismFrank Landymore

Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account

Microsoft is disabling the best local account workarounds

The VergeTom Warren

AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable

AI slop is taking over workplaces. Workers said that they thought of their colleagues who filed low-quality AI work as “less creative, capable, and reliable than they did before receiving the output.”

404 MediaJason Koebler

MrBeast says AI could threaten creators’ livelihoods, calling it ‘scary times’ for the industry | TechCrunch

If MrBeast is openly questioning whether AI is an existential threat to his business and others like it, then it’s fair to say that smaller creators are likely even more worried.

TechCrunchSarah Perez

Can tech make an “AI actress” so fake that male columnists won’t nut while writing about it?

Can tech make an “AI actress” so fake that male columnists won’t nut while writing about it?

AV ClubWilliam Hughes

Further insights

Some deeper thoughts from a more academic perspective. We must demand better fundamental design of large language models as well as how we teach people the hows and whys of engaging with them positively.

ChatGPT is blind to bad science - Impact of Social Sciences

A new study finds ChatGPT fails to take into account retraction notices across a wide range of research.

Impact of Social Sciences - Maximizing the impact of academic researchTaster

Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence

Both the general public and academic communities have raised concerns about sycophancy, the phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI) excessively agreeing with or flattering users. Yet, beyond isolated media reports of severe consequences, like reinforcing delusions, little is known about the extent of sycophancy or how it affects people who use AI. Here we show the pervasiveness and harmful impacts of sycophancy when people seek advice from AI. First, across 11 state-of-the-art AI models, we find that models are highly sycophantic: they affirm users’ actions 50% more than humans do, and they do so even in cases where user queries mention manipulation, deception, or other relational harms. Second, in two preregistered experiments (N = 1604), including a live-interaction study where participants discuss a real interpersonal conflict from their life, we find that interaction with sycophantic AI models significantly reduced participants’ willingness to take actions to repair interpersonal conflict, while increasing their conviction of being in the right. However, participants rated sycophantic responses as higher quality, trusted the sycophantic AI model more, and were more willing to use it again. This suggests that people are drawn to AI that unquestioningly validate, even as that validation risks eroding their judgment and reducing their inclination toward prosocial behavior. These preferences create perverse incentives both for people to increasingly rely on sycophantic AI models and for AI model training to favor sycophancy. Our findings highlight the necessity of explicitly addressing this incentive structure to mitigate the widespread risks of AI sycophancy.

arXiv.orgMyra Cheng

We teach young people to write. In the age of AI, we must teach them how to see

Generative AI changes how we see – and how we decide what’s real.

The ConversationDaniel Pfurtscheller

And my favourite video of the year

Eat your slop, piggies!

Still here?

Let me know you scrolled all the way. Reply. Tell me if you want more curated links, more opining, or me to shut up. Of course, the best way to shut me up is to unsubscribe. (The button is just down there.)

There’s dozens and dozens of games to explore on the main show floor, and ample room to play tabletop games with friends in the freeplay hall. But the soft juicy centre of our love for PAX are the incredible panels running constantly across the many theatres.

There’s so many it can be hard to keep up with the best of the event – but we’ve pulled out 15 of the best panels we’ll be trying to make time for during the show. We've sorted them in chronological order to help you keep track of when you should be heading for the theatres (almost ALL the time - hop to it!)

Friday, October 10

Storytime with Gavin Verhey
12-1PM, Main Theatre
The Principal Designer on Magic: The Gathering is here to share his journey from dreaming of becoming a Magic card designer to actually living that dream. Inspo for making our own dreams come true.

The DM Roundtable: advice from pro dungeon masters
2-3PM, Fruitbat Theatre
You can never get enough tips on how to bring a better game to your table of players. This list of pros will be sure to give great advice - bring your questions!

Back Pocket’s PAX Prime Time
7-8PM, Quokka Theatre
The Back Pocket gang hold a live streamed celebration of what’s on at PAX so everyone else can have FOMO while we have fun in the theatre.

Acquisitions Incorporated
8.30-10.30PM, Main Theatre
The Penny Arcade crew will play their live game once again. But which setting will we get this year? It remains a secret, but it’s always a fun night whatever they serve up.

D&D Court: Lore & Order
8.30-10PM, Owlbear Theatre
Submit the crimes that have been committed by players and GMs at your game tables for the court to decide on. With an interactive twist? If you’ve ever enjoyed NADDPOD’s “Dungeon Court”, this will be a fun one to join live.

Interactive Storytelling 101: Write your first game with the tool behind Night in the Woods and Dredge
10-11PM, Dropbear Theatre
Watching experts on stage walk through the power of using Yarn Spinner to show you how to turn a story idea into an interactive experience feels like an inspiring way to close out day one.

Saturday, October 11

You are more employable than you think! The game dev’s guide to game-adjacent careers
10.30-11.30AM, Dropbear Theatre
It’s been a rough era for jobs in games, but this panel aims to offer advice on finding smart angles for getting your foot in the door. The ‘adjacent’ idea offers ways to think about working elsewhere while you continue to chase the game industry career in a healthy way.

Why doesn’t my mini look like that?! How to up your mini painting game!
12-1PM, Kookaburra Theatre
Domino Jack hosts a panel of expert mini painters who will be painting live while they talk about starting out or getting better as a mini painter.

Ghost hunting IRL vs in game
2-3PM, Fruitbat Theatre
If you’ve been loving the ghost hunting game genre come learn about doing the same thing in the real world? Will they find ghosts live on stage? We can only hope…

Fireside with Ify Nwadiwe
4.30-5.30PM, Quokka Theatre
Actor and Dropout TV regular, Ify is here to have a nerdy chat with Steph Panecasio. Should be a good one!

THE DARK ROOM
9-11PM, Main Theatre
This is unmissable. A live interactive videogame improv comedy experience that defies description. I’ll be there. I’m always there. Worth the price of a PAX ticket alone!

Sunday, October 12

What kind of year has it been
10-11AM, PAX Together Theatre
How has the year treated queer female characters in games and pop culture? We’ll hear the takes from the panel. The PAX Together Theatre has a constant stream of excellent explorations of LGBTQ+ experiences across the nerd culture world, as well as having a room to meet like minded folks and generally chill in comfort. Check it out all weekend.

World building that sticks with you
12.30-1.30PM, Main Theatre
Creative leaders from Obsidian, Gearbox, and 20th Century Games discuss how they strive to build unforgettable worlds for games to live in.

Leveling up: the secrets to becoming the best gamemaster you can be
2.30-3.30PM, Dropbear Theatre
Advice from experts on being a better GM? Don’t mind if I do!

Cosplay Central Crown Championship
3-4PM, Main Theatre
Come see the greatest cosplayers show what they’ve got as they compete to represent Australia at a global grand final. Always incredible to see the characters they bring to life.

Boxing

First up, the box basics show that the 6th Edition is a larger box overall. The art styling pushes out to the edges more seamlessly, and internally we lose the plastic organisation system for cardboard sections. The only plastic is an organiser to use during play for easy access to cards during play.

The new box is slightly larger than the 5th Edition box in all dimensions, with enough extra space that it can accommodate more than you find in the base set. If you buy the expansions, you'll probably fit the extras in here which was simply not possible with the 5th Edition box design.

The 6th Edition also comes with a set of cardboard boxes for keeping each set of coloured parts organised. These sit into the box neatly and they do a good job of making the pack up phase keep you organised so you can start playing faster next time you want a game.

The new box does have an issue with card storage while all packed away, as you see in the last picture. But we did find that putting the second card holder on top of the first meant everything stayed together nicely. Just be sure to not leave them all on top or they'll be all over the box!

My boardgames cupboard is currently running a tight fit, but while the new box is bigger it is mostly accommodated by squaring the box as you see above. This does mean it sits deeper on the shelf – which is fine for me. It's claiming about one centimetre of extra width when shelved which is good when you include storing the expansion content in the same box now.

Art updates

Comparing the card art, we see updates to the styling but also to some of the naming conventions. We lose the flavour on some of the cards as victory point cards move from a range of building names to simply 'Victory Point'. I can see how this can reduce confusion, but others might like the narrative colour of the earlier choice. The new font and colour choices are certainly more readable.

For anyone who already owns expansions, it's important to know that the 6th Edition cards also feature new card back art. It has a more subtle, elegant style, but it also means previous expansion cards cannot be mixed in with the new base game as they'll be all too obvious when the cards are shuffled.

The board also gets the art refresh. I've aligned the boards side-by-side with all terrains matched so you can scan across the two and quickly eyeball the differences. It's interesting that some tiles lose some depth (compare the hills and fields) while others (pastures and desert) get a little more.

Rule books

The new rule book offers a cleaner, easier to read layout. The majority of the old rule book featured an 'almanac' listing rules in alphabetical order as a reference. The new book offers a simpler, more 'front to back' readable instruction set that focuses on introducing first-time players before offering variable rules.

The biggest changes in the rules seem to be a lack of any mention of keeping the red #6 and #8 numbers away from any adjacent spaces. Some players are going to find this a big change given how much emphasis used to be placed on never letting this happen.

Thoughts

If you're yet to Catan, it's a lovely new set design to get in on and it holds your hand out of the gate better than ever before. If you already own a previous edition, your main reason for buying again is probably if your old set is getting a bit worn out. If that's the case you'll enjoy the fresh new design – just be careful with the rules update and be aware that old expansions won't play nice with the new cards.

Google has settled into a solid, confident hardware design standard across its range, with the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold hardware looking beautiful. I saw the latest range hands on ahead of the announcement and the kit feels good in hand with enough colour options to keep both those with muted and poppy preferences happy.

Why not watch Jimmy Fallon host the launch right here?

Ahead of getting to dive deeper with review hardware in the near future, there's three key leaps forward to shout about.

Pixelsnap (MagSafe's cousin)

Google is calling its magnetic wireless charging integration PixelSnap, based on the Qi2 standard which was developed off the back of Apple MagSafe. I spent plenty of time in my previous coverage of Pixel saying that this is the quality of life game changer worth waiting for – and now it's here! With a wealth of existing third party accessories already in market along with Google releasing some new options of its own, this is a great step for how you will use your phone on a daily basis. I'm glad it's here and I bet most users will fall in love quickly if they've never had the experience before.

Magic Cue

Bolted on AI that acts as a clever but flawed search alternative is growing old fast. But AI that runs on your device to silently give you a nudge in the right direction in your specific context? That sounds actually useful. Google is giving us Magic Cue, with the promise of personalised intelligence that knows what's in your Gmail, your past text messages, and your photo library so that if someone asks about an address or if you remember something you discussed last week you can be offered a proactive option just above the keyboard that answers the problem instantly. The proof will be in the pudding, but this could be a personal AI breakthrough.

Camera Coach

Amongst the new suite of Pixel Camera upgrades, the Camera Coach stands out as another practical AI concept that gives you real-time advice on taking better photos. In the examples, the user is encouraged to change their standing position and shooting angle to better capture shadows to create a more interesting view of the subject. I'm very excited to play with this and see what ideas it suggests across a wide range of scenarios.

Will Pixel 10 make phones fun again?

All three are important in giving us real reasons to get back to being excited about a new device and what it makes possible for our lives. It often feels like that phase of consumer tech is a decade in the rear view mirror. But across these hardware and software updates, Pixel 10 phones bring real freshness to what it means to get a new phone out of the box and explore new possibilities.

Google is also upgrading the phones to the latest Gorilla Glass, and even the Pixel Pro 10 Fold is getting IP68 rating with the hinge now having dust resistance rating. Plus across the board it's another seven years of OS, security, and Pixel Drop upgrades from launch. So if you want to cling to a Pixel 10 until 2032 you can do so with confidence (just don't drop it too often!)

There's also more Pixel hardware alongside the phones, including the Pixel Watch 4, which pushes harder into fitness features as well as AI integrations, and the Pixel Buds 2a, which get active noise cancelling for the first time in the 'a' series as well as better battery life – and replaceable batteries.

All in all, Google is making its 10th generation Pixel anniversary quite the celebration. Last year I said the 9 series was great but 'wait for the 10'. What we've seen so far looks like that advice should pay dividends for the patient.

Before we dive in, I'm hosting a live interview with two great Australian journalists, Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson, tomorrow at UNSW.

Update: Thanks to all who came along. It was a great chat. I'll add the podcast link when it goes live.

They've just launched a new book, Conspiracy Nation, looking at the impact of conspiracies in Australia over the past 30 years. It looks at the people, the stories, and the technologies that make conspiracies what they are today and offers insights on how we can better understand what's happening.

On with the readings!

Troublesome

Annie and Lakeesha struggle in school. AI teacher assistants treated them very differently.

A Common Sense Media study found that prominent teacher assistants that use AI generated recommendations that appeared to be rooted in racial stereotypes based on students’ names. About a third of teachers report using AI weekly, according to a recent survey.

ChalkbeatNorah Rami

AI coding tools make developers slower, study finds

: Predicted a 24% boost, but clocked a 19% drag

The RegisterThomas Claburn

Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes

Companies that rushed to replace human labor with AI are now shelling out to have IRL workers to fix the technology’s screwups.

FuturismNoor Al-Sibai

ChatGPT Recommendations Potentially Influenced By Hacked Sites

An investigation by SEO expert James Brockbank shows that ChatGPT may cite hacked websites and expired domains in business recommendations.

Search Engine JournalMatt G. Southern

McDonald’s AI Hiring Bot Exposed Millions of Applicants’ Data to Hackers Who Tried the Password ‘123456’

Basic security flaws left the personal info of tens of millions of McDonald’s job-seekers vulnerable on the “McHire” site built by AI software firm Paradox.ai.

WIREDAndy Greenberg

AI site Perplexity uses “stealth tactics” to flout no-crawl edicts, Cloudflare says

The allegations are the latest to accuse Perplexity of improper web crawling.

Ars TechnicaDan Goodin

Narcissism and other dark personality traits linked to AI cheating in art universities

In many countries, there is an academic cheating crisis with students misusing artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to write essays, dissertations and other assignments. According to new research, certain personality traits make some students more likely to pass off AI-generated work as their own.

Phys.orgPaul Arnold

Deeper thoughts

Understanding the ‘Slopocene’: how the failures of AI can reveal its inner workings

What if instead of trying to detect and avoid AI glitches, we deliberately encouraged them instead?

The ConversationDaniel Binns

The Real Demon Inside ChatGPT

AI chatbots strip language of its historical and cultural context. Sometimes what looks like a satanic bloodletting ritual may actually be lifted from Warhammer 40,000.

WIREDLouise Matsakis

Fine-Tuning LLMs For ‘Good’ Behavior Makes Them More Likely To Say No

Researchers took inspiration from r/AmITheAsshole to find out if chatbots are likely to demonstrate an exaggerated version of human beings’ “bias for inaction.”

404 MediaRosie Thomas

Token Wars

PhD Researcher Kathy Reid (she/her) is an AI Voice researcher investigating speech technologies with a focus on the data that goes into these models. Kathy asks critical questions about these technologies, the people, and the voices they serve. Kathy’s motivation both personally and professionally is the value that knowledge is power and knowledge shared is empowerment. These underlying understandings are core to Kathy’s PhD work and also her keynote talk Token Wars. With these values and a highly open-source background it may come as a surprise to you that Kathy questions if everything should be open not just to anyone but to anything. The continuous scraping and pollution of the internet by AI companies looking to train their latest models is deeply challenging to the ‘everything open’ approach. Kathy and her research ask a lot of great questions about technology and power - who benefits from technologies and what are the costs? These cybernetics questions about unintended consequences underpin Kathy’s Token Wars, a talk that dives into the current technical, legal, and political, resource conflict surrounding AI training ‘tokens’ or data. Kathy’s talk, as many great talks do, comes in three parts: Part 1: Kathy gives us an accessible overview of tokens and transformers, the technologies that together build large language models like ChatGPT and Claude Part 2: Kathy unpacks the value of tokens, why they mean so much to AI companies, and what it means for these tokens to become a scarce resource. Here, Kathy also dives into the actions and intentions of the key actors in these token wars, as well as the damage they are causing. Part 3: Kathy considers tokens and data as a form of treasure or capital – and asks how we might protect and safeguard this treasure. Kathy also speculates on the future of tokens and future protection strategies. The Token Wars: why not all our content should be open Token Wars was first delivered by Kathy Reid at Everything Open and the Melbourne Machine Learning and AI meetup. This version of Token Wars was delivered on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country here at the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics. Current LLMs are trained on nearly all the publicly available data in the world – and globally we’re running out of new human-generated ‘tokens’ to train newer and better models on. Kathy holds that we’ve passed a point in history she terms “Peak Token” - where we have the highest availability of human-generated tokens. As LLMs and synthetics data proliferate, the open web is becoming increasingly filled with low-quality “AI slop”, ushering in the “slopocene” - where rich, diverse, human-generated data is rarer and more valuable. LLM Models: Number of training tokens and parameter size by date. 2025-04-13 https://github.com/KathyReid/token-wars-dataviz. Visit Kathy’s blog for her recent thoughts on the speculative OpenAI hardware device that may come about as a result of these Token Wars and find out more about Kathy’s research on our PhD Spotlight from earlier this year.

ANU School of CyberneticsANU School of Cybernetics

Website owners fight back

Cloudflare will now block AI crawlers by default

Cloudflare wants AI companies to get permission to crawl websites.

The VergeEmma Roth

Anubis: Fighting off the hordes of LLM bot crawlers

Updated: Using proof of work to block the web-crawlers of ‘AI’ companies

The RegisterLiam Proven

New approaches?

YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows | TechCrunch

YouTube’s creator liaison said the change is a “minor” update to YouTube’s longstanding policies.

TechCrunchSarah Perez

Moonvalley Releases Marey, an ‘Ethical’ AI Video Tool Built for Pro Filmmakers

It was trained on licensed data.

PetaPixelMatt Growcoot

But here we are in July and the Pixel 9a 128GB is already available for $697 from JB Hi-Fi ($847 for the 256GB), making it a far more compelling proposition. In fact, the price drop is fairly common in this class and it points to the importance of this really steady 'on ramp' that Google has devised to bring buyers into its impressive hardware ecosystem.

That same JB Hi-Fi check also shows how smooth the ramp is for the Pixel range. If you're willing to go back to 2022 for a Pixel 7 you can buy for just $388. With Google's software updates promise the Pixel 7 will still get new Android updates through to late 2027, so that's plenty of support still ahead at that very low price.

Pixel 9a: value flagship

Back to the Pixel 9a, you get excellent battery performance from its 5100mAh offering (the biggest in an A-series yet), you get a very nice 6.3-inch OLED display with variable refresh up to 120Hz and brightness up to 2700 nits. Plus the Tensor G4 is the same core you find in its bigger 9 series siblings (though this has 8GB RAM).

It feels great to use at launch, it has solid specs, and where it cuts back (cameras, RAM, charge speed) seems reasonable to slot this into the Pixel range in just the right place. The seven year promise of software updates makes this a good investment even with hand-me-down or hand-me-up thinking in mind given it will last until 2030 with receiving software updates.

This over $600 / under $1000 range should be seen as a 'value flagship' range, not a 'budget' zone. When all is said and done it's still very real money to spend on any device, and people should expect quality. I think the Pixel 9a delivers on that idea, particularly when you add in the Google software experience on top.

Google software is the reason to Pixel

If you buy a Pixel phone, you need to be making a commitment to the world of Google services. It's just the strongest reason for choosing this path. Want an Android phone but you're not sure you want to go all in with Google's data and AI systems? There's other Android phones that will do a great job for you. But the Pixel lifestyle is best for those ready to embrace the ecosystem.

Google's AI camera updates, its Pixel Call Assist, and the complete integration with your Google account to personalise your daily routines. It's all very polished and best in class.

Gemini AI has also proven it is equal to the wider AI market over the first half of 2025 too. Again, I know a lot of people are down on AI, and for many, many good reasons. But for those eager to embrace it? Gemini Live, Gemini Assistant, and the advanced search options and cross-app integration on Pixel makes it a reason to buy Google's hardware over others if it is something you want to be using.

Indeed you can look at the performance and camera as areas where the hardware might not stack up on a spec sheet but the quality of the software under the hood means you get a great experience regardless. It's important here to shout out the 'clean' Android experience, which further underpins the smoother experience here. It feels right. I think that is the most important consideration for someone looking to buy in this 'value flagship' zone.

Will it still feel right in 2029 after six years of software updates? It might be getting sluggish on that 8GBs of RAM. But by then you should be feeling like you've gotten pretty solid value out of this one (and put it out to pasture for another job in another family members pocket).

The power of the Google ecosystem

Again, up front, I know some people detest where the big AI push is taking us. It would be far better if a lot more of it was a lot more opt-in than the new default everywhere we turn. And that is definitely a reason for some to look elsewhere for their tech hardware and services. If that's you, Google has been annoying you a lot over the past two years, I'm sure.

For those who are AI curious and are exploring how it can fit into their personal and professional routines, Google is offering a more integrated play than anyone else right now.

Microsoft has been working with OpenAI to deliver its Copilot options, and Apple and Samsung are doing some internal work on AI while also supporting the external foundation model builders. But as an ecosystem that lets you reveal your data to your AI assistant for your own purposes, Google is doing that dance better than almost anyone else so far.

But even beyond the AI discussions, Google Docs, Gmail, Photos, Calendar, Maps, Drive, Chat, Meet, Keep, and more, all do a great job of their specific tasks and if you choose to commit to the Google ecosystem you can have a very comfortable and confident experience within their world as your core personal productivity environment.

Would you like accessories with that?

Google is now doing an excellent hardware accessory experience on top of the software side. Amongst the wearables, we've got the Google Watch 3, the Fitbit range, and Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 to get your health, fitness, and audio on the go sorted. At home, there's the Chromecast, the speaker range, and the Nest cameras, networking and smoke alarms for all the connected home needs. Plus the tablets and smart displays through the Hub options.

I just think you do want to be considering this accessory market as a feature of buying a Google Pixel phone. If you're not looking to setup a well integrated set of hardware, then this isn't a reason for you. But if you are, then keep this in mind!

Google Pixel 9a: are you just buying a new phone?

Once more back to the Google Pixel 9a. If you just want a new Android phone for $700, I'm not sure the reason you buy this one is just for the piece of hardware. Google considers the Pixel 9a an 'on ramp' of sorts and I very much agree. Not just to its hardware. To its world of services.

I'm very excited for what the Google Pixel 10 era will bring to the table. I said in my Pixel 9 series review that it was an excellent device range with just a few niggles (namely no Qi 2 magnetic charging - the quality of life jump is huge) that I think will be perfected in the 10 this year. My fingers are firmly crossed there!

But if you're considering the 9a, you are not waiting for a new device later this year that will cost most of $2,000. You are considering which device will suit your needs and feels like it will last you better than something under $500. On that basis, I think the Pixel 9a at its sub $700 sale price is an excellent choice for anyone who loves Gmail and wants to embrace the Google world more deeply in the new AI era.

You draw a card with a binary concept, spin the dial to find a 'zone' you're aiming for, then think of a way to describe that ballpark to your team. Then it's up to them to try to get on your 'wavelength' and dial in the right area to score points. The opposing team also gets a chance to try and guess if that choice was to the left or right of where the real answer lies.

There are well over 100 binary cards in the box with an 'advanced' section for some curlier splits to try. Every card is double-sided so the person setting the clue can decide which one they feel better about trying to describe. There's the obvious 'Hot-Cold', 'Sandwich-Not A Sandwich', and 'Important-Unimportant' type clues, as well as fun debates like 'Good Movie-Bad Movie' or 'Bad pizza topping-Good pizza topping'. Plus the Advanced clues offer things like 'Weird-Strange', 'Guilty Pleasure-Actually Just Bad', and 'Unsexy Pokémon-Sexy Pokémon'.

While it's probably best with two teams of at least three players to get some good debates going, Wavelength also includes very easy rules for going co-op style when you still want to play with 3-5 players.

Extra points for the fact the game is largely built into its box so it is super fast to setup and get playing. With such simple rules and rapid time to getting the fun started (and packed away) it's a genuinely great and rather unique addition to the party games cupboard.

Wavelength is available from major retailers with an RRP of $49. A great price for something with a LOT of replayability. I can imagine taking this to weekend getaways with friends for playing over drinks.

Flip7 is a fast-paced, risk-reward card game you can play with as many players as you can fit around a table (even over a dozen would be fine). Over the course of a few rounds, the aim is to be the first to accumulate 200 points. Each round is a little like Blackjack, as you decide to stay or hit to earn as many points as possible. But if you get two of the same number card, you bust and you're out of the round.

The trick here is in the deck design. There's only one 0 and one 1, but then two 2s, three 3s, and so on up to twelve 12s. You want big numbers, but you never want to double up. So if you're holding a 12 do you hit again? Or do you bank your points to build toward the ultimate aim of 200?

There's a few special cards, like Second Chance to help you push your luck further or Flip 3 which forces you to take the next three cards drawn. Plus modifier cards to add bonuses to your final tally for the round. But ultimately, you're deciding to hit or stay based on the core number cards and you're watching everyone around you take risks and encourage you to take some too.

The cards themselves are beautifully rendered. Really lovely, joyful vibes that make it all the more fun to play.

Beyond that there's no much else to it! It's really easy to explain and scoring is a breeze. The one tricky question was easily answered by the game's FAQ. (Does a x2 modifier apply before or after a +x modifier? Before. You only x2 the normal number cards.)

This one has an RRP of $29.95 but is already found for between $15-$20 at major retailers. An easy price to pop this in alongside Uno in your card game stash.

Tech platforms

‘Side job, self-employed, high-paid’: behind the AI slop flooding TikTok and Facebook

In places like India, Vietnam and China, churning out weird AI videos is the latest side hustle for students and stay-at-home mothers.

The ConversationJiaru Tang

AI Search Has A Citation Problem

We Compared Eight AI Search Engines. They’re All Bad at Citing News.

Columbia Journalism ReviewKlaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar

AI code suggestions sabotage software supply chain

: Hallucinated package names fuel ‘slopsquatting’

The RegisterThomas Claburn

There Is No AI Revolution

Soundtrack: Mack Glocky - Chasing Cars Last week, I spent a great deal of time and words framing the generative AI industry as a cynical con where OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have used a compliant media and braindead investors to frame unprofitable, unsustainable, environmentally-damaging and mediocre cloud

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed AtEdward Zitron

Culture questions

The Internet of Consent - Anil Dash

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Anil DashAnil Dash

The Money Is In All The Wrong Places | Defector

You can always tell who in Hollywood has family money by their Instagrams. People like Dakota Johnson, who have a Hollywood lineage deeper than the Mariana Trench, post only rarely. They post about social justice causes they care about, or personal announcements. Even someone like actress and musician Maya Hawke mostly posts previews of upcoming […]

Defector homeKelsey McKinney

The hidden world beneath the shadows of YouTube’s algorithm

There’s a secret side of YouTube, just beyond the guiding hand of the algorithm – and it’s nothing like what you know.

BBCThomas Germain

The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians

A handful of gifted young tech people set out to save the world. For years, WIRED has been tracking each twist and turn of their alleged descent into mayhem and death.

WIREDEvan Ratliff

Nemesis | The Umami Theory of Value

Nemesis is a consultancy and creative studio with nodes in Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York.

The Umami Theory of Value

The Good Weird Web

900 People Are Collectively Driving an ‘Internet Roadtrip’ on Google Street View

The new site is a cozy and chaotic successor to ’Twitch plays Pokémon.

404 MediaMatthew Gault

Ghost hunting, pornography and interactive art: the weird afterlife of Xbox Kinect

Fifteen years since Microsoft’s motion-sensing gaming camera was released for the Xbox 360, artists, roboticists and more are still finding new ways to use it

The GuardianGeoffrey Bunting

Recently on Byteside

Which Way Up is full of fresh gravity bending mayhem

Australia’s own Turtle Flip has just released its Galaxy meets Party game and it’s a real treat.

BytesideSeamus Byrne

Can Sunderfolk thread the needle to make RPG strategy fun for the whole family?

It’s pretty, it’s friendly, and you play it with your phone – but not ‘on’ your phone. Sunderfolk is shooting for an interesting Goldilocks zone for couch co-op we haven’t really seen before.

BytesideSeamus Byrne

The 2025 Lego F1 kits give us something for every fan

Lego sets can be very expensive, but the F1 series this year offers options at prices every fan can afford.

BytesideSeamus Byrne

Sonos is upgrading its speech enhancement system

Sadly only on the Arc Ultra, but maybe this is just the start?

BytesideSeamus Byrne

How do you save good links?

My favourite way to save articles to read later, Pocket, is going away after 18 years of service. Mozilla has sadly decided it would rather invest in AI than keep a simple little bookmarking tool that is perfect this one useful task.

Anyone got good suggestions for other tools to do the task? I'm now using Zotero in my PhD research work, but I'm not sure it's right for broader article link management. I also still use Feedly, but I would send from Feedly to Pocket for a nice, simple reading experience.

If you have ideas, hit me a reply.

All ten F1 racing teams are represented this year, letting fans fly their flag with a cute kit they can build and have on their desk or shelf – or sitting under the TV when they're watching the races. And kit prices start from $5.99 for cute little collectible cars in every team design, with further team kits at a range of prices through a list of affordable prices before heading up into the serious enthusiast kits at $150 and beyond.

Here's the list:

• F1 Collectible race cars ($5.99 each)
• McLaren race car ($19.99)
• F1 Williams Racing & Haas F1 race cars ($29.99)
• F1 pit stop and pit crew with Ferrari car ($39.99)
• F1 Grid with VCARB & Sauber race cars ($39.99)
• Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance Pull-Back ($39.99)
• Race cars in every team livery ($39.99)
• F1 Team race cards and drivers set ($69.99)
• NEOM McLaren Formula E race car ($69.99)
• Ayrton Senna McLaren MP4/4 ($99.99)
• F1 Garage & Mercedes-AMG & Alpine cars ($129.99)
• Nigel Mansell Williams FW14B ($129.99)
• F1 Truck with RB20 & AMR24 F1 cars ($149.99)
• McLaren F1 car ($299.99)
• Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance ($299.99)
• Ferrari SF-24 F1 car ($349.99)
• Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 F1 car ($349.99)

What a range! The garage, grid, pit stop, and truck sets bring a whole added world of playability to the list, while the cars at so many price points and build levels just makes it fun for everyone. I can absolutely imagine buying the tiny cars for F1 fan friends (they're blind packs but I bet there are forums telling people how to check codes for specific pulls), or even the very well designed $39.99 kits.

Lego sent me two of these $39.99 sets to play with and at 269 pieces they're a really fun afternoon make and the team liveries (and team drivers) are nicely detailed for every team fan to really enjoy. The $5.99 sets are all 29 piece builds but they're just so nicely designed too. They're tiny but they're definitively cute little F1 cars.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a line up like this, and it's heartening for the thinking that has gone into making every kind of kit in the F1 range so attractive. Lego did say in late 2024 that its new deal with F1 was going to be big, with a multi-year partnership including fan events at Grand Prix events around the world. It's just great to see that it is also a solid "something for everyone" approach to the kits they're offering too.

There's a great full rundown of all the 2025 F1 kits at the Lego site. Most kits are now available while the collectibles drop in June.

The development studio founded by ex Blizzard chief Mike Morhaime has aimed to bring those virtues to a game people won't feel bad for spending time in. Sunderfolk is a turn-based tactical RPG that the company says is "inspired by gathering around a table with friends".

It has the feel of a boardgame, too, as players work together to choose their moves based on decks of digital cards assigned to their character. With six unique creatures for players to choose from, each a 'class' in the classic sense of an RPG, there's plenty of room for strategy and players who come up with clever combination moves will be rewarded.

For example, the Arcanist (a crow) can teleport friends and enemies around the board with its spells, so it can use its turn to put enemies into harms way – usually one of the warrior type characters, like the Berserker (a polar bear). The Bard (a bat) can also boost the abilities of allies with its music, while the Pyromancer (a salamander) can use flames created by enemies to boost its own abilities and clear the flames for friends.

Importantly, the game is controlled through a player's phone instead of using a traditional game controller. For something designed for this "make it feel like a boardgame" target, this makes it so much easier for me to consider not just playing it with my kids but also with my parents. They would never want to mess about with thumbsticks and buttons, but would feel confident if they're told they just need to grab the app and we're ready to go.

And while it's very nicely suited to couch co-op, the main way we've played this at home so far, this app context also makes it viable for playing remotely with friends. One can stream their PC screen while the others are shown QR codes to join the game from wherever they are. I'll be doing this with some D&D night buddies when we find not everyone can make our usual fortnightly online sessions.

Friendly strategy

The experience so far is impressively balanced, giving depth of decision making without becoming overwhelming. As you progress, your characters earn new cards for their decks. They must always have certain kinds of good and bad cards in their draw, but some cards in every slot are better than others. It doesn't take too long to get the chance to remove a -2 damage card from your deck and replace it with a -1, for example, or to get some benefits out of otherwise neutral cards.

Players can also choose the order in which they take their turns themselves, working together to strategically put the right characters in the right places or casting spells at the right moment to maximise their results. Get your timings wrong and enemies can be unforgiving, so you quickly learn that decisions matter.

As a turn-based game it also takes the heat out of couch co-op. Anyone who has played Overcooked knows how some people get a little carried away with running their kitchen. Here the pause between turns gives the armchair generals an easier way to step up and point out where they think a clever strategy might be waiting to help seal a mission victory.

Missions aplenty

The beginnings of Sunderfolk set the scene for a fun story-based adventure, but it can feel a little slow. If you've already played the intro quests and you just want to give some friends a taste of Sunderfolk fun times it isn't as easy as it should be.

Once a campaign has four characters locked in you cannot swap them. So if a friend says "hey, that fire guy looks fun" but you haven't included it in your party you'd have to start a new campaign to let them try it out. Having a 'quick mission' option to jump in and play a random encounter would make for some great added fun to introduce someone to the game who isn't interested in coming back for an ongoing campaign.

But once you're bedded in with a regular crew, Sunderfolk grows and expands in fun ways. Your hometown gets upgrades and players can even romance townfolk in dialogue options. And between story missions you get the chance to play extra side missions (the kind I wish were easily accessed for quick play!) to earn extra equipment for your characters to face the challenges ahead.

Sunderfolk is a highly accomplished start as the first release from Dreamhaven. It has plenty to enjoy on day one and feels like it has a lot of room to spread its wings if it does well enough at launch. Even if it the game is only ever the game it is today, Sunderfolk is a charming and fun adventure that many families should grab and enjoy together.

Sunderfolk is out now on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.

OK, I'll try. Which Way Up: Galaxy Games lets four players compete in a series of challenging mini games set in some kind of asteroid realm in space. The games are all a dizzying gravity-based competition as you fight or race or golf against your opponents. The styling is cute and deliciously colourful and it's just a joy to spend time in this place laughing at how bad you are – or feeling triumphant as you pull off a crazily perfect jump to win.

Watch the trailer. The visuals tell the story of what you're in for here.

The way players are constantly shifting between different planes of gravity is a big part of the unique fun in Which Way Up. It can be a little daunting at first and I was worried I would get frustrated, but it is all so hectic that you just laugh when you mess up and cheer when you start getting things right.

Competitive couch co-op is a lot of fun and this feels fresh. I'm expecting it to stay in high rotation on our couch on weekends alongside a lot of the household Switch regulars of Just Dance, Mario Kart, and Smash Bros.

We've been excited to get this at home since we first met the Turtle Flip team at PAX Australia 2024 and picked them as one of our favourite new indie games to be featured in our video preview series.

Now released, the game has incredible polish and holds true to being inspired by Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Party.

Get Which Way Up Galaxy Games on Steam or Switch now.

The Petbarn pet stores, and associated Greencross vet clinic network, launched their first ever app last week (iOS / Android) and wanted to make it more useful than just a shopping app. So the team worked with Microsoft to develop the PetAI service that puts quick chatbot answers to all your classic questions into the app.

What's great is that the app does not force you to create an account to get access to this useful new feature – and you can test it out on the Petbarn website too. But if you do create an account, you can create pet profiles for your pet shopping and pet AI query needs. This can keep track of your history and help the AI base its answers on your specific pet history.

So why not just search the web for your pet questions? The trick here is that the AI is grounded in the Petbarn and Greencross knowledge base – Australian knowledge about Australian pets and the products you can find in Petbarn stores. It uses Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), a well known method for doing this kind of very specific, carefully grounded style of AI knowledge search.

My pet situation is pretty normal – two cats. But the team at Petbarn says that owners of lizards, fish, or whatever kinds of pets found in Australian homes will get value from using PetAI.

Naturally, you have to ask weird questions to see what this kind of thing is ready for. "Why is my cat such an idiot?" was one question I found that was on the list of questions the app refused to answer. It politely pops a little red box and tells you to refresh the chat to start again.

Questions on cats eating plastic were met with more useful responses, as was my interest in why cats push objects off benches. I also asked about a lizard using a human toilet and received a friendly response that this was very unlikely and that it is important to provide appropriate habitat for lizards at home.

In a world where a lot of people are cramming AI into all sorts of places for little benefit, I really do like seeing PetAI in the Petbarn app. Pet owners have many little quandries and having a trusted little place to ask silly questions seems like a great use of the tech.

There are no affiliate links here. This is purely a fun list of ideas from products I've seen and thought about this year and think would be a high quality gift for yourself or someone you care about.

Gifts that keep on giving

These are the ideas that might not seem amazing on the day you open them, but come next Christmas season they'll be thanking you for how good that gift has been all year since.

USB-C to USB-A combo USB sticks ($25-$80)
This is as basic as it comes and yet it's something constantly overlooked because we always think we have plenty of USB sticks until we need one. This new style of stick that offers a USB-C connector on one end and a USB-A on the other is all someone will ever need to carry them long into the future. Grab a SanDisk 64GB Dual Drive for $26.50 for a nice little stocking stuffer.

Qi 2 portable batteries ($50-$80)
Until this year these have essentially been 'MagSafe' for iPhones but with the arrival of Qi 2 they're now ideal for new Android phones as the wireless charger format is adopted for the future. And it's great. Having a magnetic charger that you can 'clip' onto the back of a phone while you're on the go removes the cable hassle of a power bank and keeps you topped up constantly. The Belkin BoostCharge Pro 5000mAh power bank is a winner at $79.

APC Back-UPS Connect ($85)
Running uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for your home tech can get pretty expensive if you're trying to keep desktop computers or servers up and running. But here's an excellent and cheap option that just does your most important device – the home router. If you lose power isn't the Wi-Fi the most important thing you're missing? I have two because I have two routers and it's been a magical little investment.

Tech toys

It's tech but it's got a fun twist.

Oclean X Ultra S smart toothbrush ($450)
We've just reviewed this one and there is great value in getting a good quality electric toothbrush that is designed to spend a lot of time in a travel case when you're on the go. This one is expensive but is half price in Black Friday sales so they're not afraid of really pushing those price drops if you time it right. And if this one is just too expensive look for other models with travel case options. Give the gift of preventative dental maintenance!

DJI Neo ($300)
I've had a few drones over the years for testing and as exciting as they feel there is a lot of work in getting them running with confidence. It's felt like a category that excites the emotions but requires serious self-training to reach the fun part. With this year's DJI Neo launch we finally see a drone that launches from your hand and does a wide range of easy selfie style tracking options so you can get great results with minimal effort. And it's very affordable! Add the DJI Goggles N3 for $359 for immersive FPV flying too.

For those after a more serious selfie drone option, the HoverAIR X1 Pro and ProMax drones are available in Australia. They cost more and require a little more of that effort, but they have better transmission range, fly at up to 42km/h, and have better wind resistance. But for most people who just want some fun, the DJI Neo is a big leap forward for drones.

Kindle Colorsoft (~$420)
Other ereaders have had colour options for a while now, but for people with an extensive Kindle library this is the one they've been waiting for. Ereaders thankfully last a long, long time and the upgrade cycles don't often offer much that's new. The Kindle Colorsoft is getting great reviews and feels like a fresh new experience. The whole range had a solid refresh this year too, so it's a good time to buy one whether for the first time or for an upgrade on a long loved model if it's getting a bit sad (or, if you're like me, you're desperate to get rid of that last micro-USB charge port in your house).

Creative efficiency

Productivity tech can be a blessing when it's the best tool for the job.

Espresso monitor & Stand+ ($750 + $99)
Espresso is an Australian company making the world's best portable monitors. They really are beautifully designed and sit far ahead of other efforts to make a good second screen when you're working at a cowork space or running client presentations in person. The stand design is a big part of the magic and they've just updated it so your screen can now sit above your laptop monitor – another great little design tweak that shows how well they're thinking this through.

Elgato Prompter (~$310)
One of those "this changed my life" technologies, the Elgato Prompter is so much more than a teleprompter for your home office. With no fuss at all it acts as an additional monitor for your setup, giving you a nice little space for widgets or dashboards... and the perfect screen for taking video calls. Being able to look directly at the other people on a call on a prompter screen means you're also looking directly at the camera that's now sitting behind the glass. I've had so many comments about my setup because people notice there's just something going on that means I seem really present. It supports webcams and proper cameras in behind the glass. I have mine mounted on an Elgato pole mount that clips to the edge of the desk and sits just behind the monitor.

Rode Phone Cage (~$170)
I've played with a few gimble devices for stabilising a smartphone while you use it as a video camera and I finally gave up. Like the drone discussion above, they seem great but are actually very tricky to get working with confidence. Every time you turn it off, you need to reset the Bluetooth link and get everything attached again and stabilised and the fuss can take a good 5 minutes right at the moment you were hoping to just shoot a quick piece of footage. So now the Rode Phone Cage is my go to and I love it. It uses MagSafe to attach an iPhone, which means it should also attach a Qi 2 enabled Android phone. It then has a host of cold shoe attachment points so you can have it setup with lights, microphones, whatever, all there ready at any time. Slap on the phone and you're shooting in seconds.

OK, some actual fun

Sometimes it just has to be fun, right?

Dropout TV subscription (US$60/year)
As a nerdy nerd, there is no streaming entertainment service I get more value from than Dropout. I first signed up for the Dimension 20 live play roleplaying shows, but I've actually hardly watched those at all compared to the fun improv gameshows they run. Studio produced comedy designed for very nerdy people. One of the best is Um, Actually where contestants must pick what's wrong in statements about nerdy TV, movies, anime, games, etc. But you can't forget to say "Umm, actually" as part of your answer.

UNO No Mercy (~$15)
The whole point of UNO is to watch at least one person end up with more cards in hand than they can manage. No Mercy embraces the brutality. Draw 10 anyone? Give in to your dark side and crush your family.

Forbidden Island (~$35)
When UNO gets a little over competitive, Forbidden Island is an excellent cooperative game played on a tile-based board so it changes ever time. It's a tricky game of survival but easy to learn so you can work together to see if you can escape the sinking island while finding treasures. If you love this there's also Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Jungle from the same makers to expand your co-op game library.

Back in that earlier 'side project' era, some of the great Android phones came from the Nexus line. Google partnered with various Android makers to deliver strong but affordable devices that helped drive the market forward. I'd argue it was a great way to encourage hardware partners and consumers to explore what was possible in well designed handsets at a great price.

The Pixel line has progressively moved away from that heavily subsidised hardware approach and this year's prices are in line with last year (which was a 30% jump from the year before). All things Pixel are now firmly in the flagship handset domain, with hardware from the past two years delivering the sub-$1,000 options.

While the prices are steady, the experience is another leap forward. Google is firing on all its flops here and if not for one critical missing feature this would be a very high recommend. For my money, if you don't feel a necessity to upgrade right now I'm thinking the 10 series Pixel will be the ideal moment to go all in.

The Pixel 9 Pro: as slick as you could possibly want

The Pixel 9 Pro is as pure a flagship experience as anyone can ask for and can be found for under $1,500 now. The hardware is impeccable and that camera bar speaks to a massive (by phone standards) lens that proves out in the picture quality. The phone feels better in the hand than any previous Pixel phone and is absolutely on par with every flagship from Apple and Samsung. It's got that 'just right' feeling like never before. Committing to this hardware will never leave you feeling like you made a bad choice.

This is also a year when the smaller Pro and the Pro XL are simply a question of 'which size do I prefer?' You aren't missing out on anything by choosing the 6.3-inch Pro over the 6.8-inch Pro XL.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold: gorgeous, clever, and versatile

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a remarkable device with a remarkable price tag ($2699), but after half a decade of foldable smartphones slowly iterating from 'fun but awkward' to where we are today this is a form factor that is ready for its close up. It's as powerful as all the other Pixel 9 Pro handsets and it works very nicely while closed but then offers a wealth of added power on that larger screen. I'm surprised and impressed by how many games are supporting this square screen mode. But not convinced they're the main reason anyone will want to spend the extra on one of these yet.

My personal folding screen desire is for the clamshell style options that make the phone far smaller than normal to slip into a pocket and then open to 'normal' smartphone size. But I can see good potential here with the big tablet mode mostly for sharing content in a business setting or looking for added productivity on the go. For most fun purposes I'm not sure.

I hear a lot of reports that people who get their Fold absolutely LOVE it. So if this feels like you, then take a good look in a store to feel it for yourself.

Performance

The Pixel 9 Pro series and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold are both built on Google's latest Tensor G4 chip, with a new internal design that improves the heat dissipation so it feels like it is a lot more comfortable when it's being pushed while playing games or sharing its Wi-Fi. It feels snappy and responsive and while I've read benchmarks that complain it's still behind other flagship devices the daily experience feels perfectly speedy to me.

Pixel series also offers seven years of OS updates and that really does make it a wonderful hand my down / hand me up phone that will see yourself or members of your family through to the end of the decade. Think about that. It's a really solid future proofing for a phone with a build quality that feels like it will happily last through its operating life span.

And software is a huge part of the story now. With AI becoming such a big sales pitch for how Google is adding value to the core Android experience, year over year updates will certainly keep refining what it means to have Gemini AI built into your smartphone. We'll dive into this more shortly, but Google is (no surprises) very bullish about what it can do for your life through its AI tools and this will only become a greater part of what their smartphones do in coming years.

Cameras

Before we get into the AI stuff a little more, we should start with the cameras because they feed into the AI as well. For a long time now AI has been a big feature of Google's approach to delivering high quality photography in a small smartphone package. Night Sight was a revelation in processing lowlight imagery back in 2018, which used a lot of AI to know what a scene should look like to build up the colour and clarity someone might expect.

Many cameras also use AI to overcome the limitations of mobile phone lenses and improve the resolution, colour, and exposure. That's true here too but it's important to see that Google is putting some very impressive lenses on the camera to give the sensor as much natural light as possible so they're starting from somewhere good before the AI ever needs to get involved. This is so important - we want to capture as much of what's really there as we can before we start leaning on AI to rewrite what we saw and what the lens could capture.

Now the Pixel camera has some very good enhancement capabilities that can push out the 5x telephoto lens comfortably to 10x without noticeable problems and then you can really go ham with Super Res Zoom to 30x. You can notice the softness when you start looking closely but it's a powerful option when you just need that bit extra range to capture a moment. Using a long zoom up to 20x is also possible with video, and the camera uses the space around where you've cropped into to smooth the movement and keep your video as stable as possible.

Then comes the shenanigans, with clever features like 'Add Me' to let you jump into a photo by taking two shots and combining them automatically, group photos where you can take a burst to get everyone's best smile, and Unblur to clean things up when there's been too much movement.

And there's Magic Editor, which completely changes what it means to take a photo of the actual world. You can adjust the framing of an image and let Pixel add realistic additional imagery into the frame to give you a better composition. You can also just click and move people in a photo to a better position if you'd prefer them to be standing or sitting (or whatever) somewhere else. You can remove objects from the scene just by circling them. And then you can flat out change anything to become anything else. Just ask Pixel to recreate anything in your images and it will casually do so.

What even is a picture anymore?? I kind of feel like this should come with a licensing system that prevents people from using it until they pass an ethics course...

Gemini

So there's a lot of AI in the camera now, but Gemini is also now all over your phone ready to do things at any time you want it to. If you're all in with Google for your email, calendar, contacts, photos, maps, and whatever else, Gemini can be very granular in how it can offer utility to your life through your Pixel.

To start with an additional camera feature, you can now quickly perform visual searches of anything you see in an image. This is part of the multimodal aspect of Gemini AI, going beyond text to identify content of images to make it available for AI insights. So maybe you want to find more info on something you see at a store, or you want recipe ideas after you snap a photo of the pantry or fridge.

But then you can start asking for summaries of important emails you've received recently, or ask for search references, or restaurant suggestions. And you can do it conversationally - which works particularly well wearing Pixel Buds Pro 2 for quick hands-free chit chat with your AI buddy. Your history of AI queries and searches can also all be stored so you don't have to remember that passing thought you had and the answer Gemini found for you.

So the above is the general pitch and the reality is that most people might not get that into using these features. It can be hit and miss, especially the summaries, but it's also evolving quickly. The search queries and conversational aspects feel good when you explore them, but it'll probably take a while to get comfortable talking to yourself in public in the same way that wearing earbuds to take phone calls felt weird for a long time too.

This is generation one technology, but as mentioned above you will get seven years of Android updates that will keep these features growing with you over coming years. But if you are a little unsure, and you want to reserve judgment, then why not wait one more year? If you don't really need it now, there's a very good reason why the Pixel 10 series is likely to be the ideal phone for the next five years of evolution.

Qi 2 is the magic worth waiting for

Earlier this year, Samsung released its 2024 phones and it felt unfortunate but understandable that they didn't quite get the Qi 2 charging standard integrated before launch. But then when the Google Pixel range launched after mid year we saw the same thing. No Qi 2. And that is a real shame.

For the uninitiated, Qi 2 is the magnetic wireless charging standard - first appearing in iPhones as 'MagSafe' and now an open standard as the second generation of Qi. Because iPhone led the way it means there are already a bunch of accessory makers who are ready to serve all Qi 2 phones with clever capabilities. Better magnetic car mounts. Desk stands. Wireless charging pads that align correctly so you know they're charging. It works great and it has a solid ecosystem right now.

I don't doubt many people see this as a relatively minor new feature, but I disagree. MagSafe has made my daily experience with an iPhone much smoother and nicer. Especially using the Cygnett MagDesk 2-in-1 and another Qi 2 charger in my bedroom at night. Plus a Belkin magnetic mount in our older car for GPS while driving. Once you have it, you don't want to go back.

And that's why I think it's a good feature to wait for if you're not desperately in need of a phone update. In 2025 it will be everywhere in the Android ecosystem and it's just such a nice quality of life addition for daily usage.

Integration is a powerful multiplier

Great photography. Excellent hardware. A pinch of AI. All becoming table stakes for any flagship device in 2024. So what's the differentiator? The ecosystem you're buying into. And for Android, I really think Google is building the most powerful ecosystem play on the market. The device range is now excellent and the services layer is everything people love about Google.

The head start Google gave up to OpenAI has closed and with the Pixel range you get an excellent integration of AI alongside all the wider Google services you want from a Pixel phone.

Google now offers Pixel series phones, Pixel Tablet (and its excellent desk stand), Pixel Watch 3, Pixel Buds Pro 2, the new Google TV Streamer 4K, and the Nest range of smart home speakers, smoke alarms, cameras and doorbells. Smart home devices are getting a lot better at working together thanks to Threads and Matter technology standards, but it's a great time to feel confident being 'all in' with Google technologies.

This year while testing Pixel, I've really worked on testing whether all the apps I care about from iOS are now easily replaceable on Android. And that really is the case. The only apps that are not are the Apple ecosystem options that you would swap out for Google options if you were making the full switch.

The camera and the deep ecosystem integrations are the only true differentiators remaining in smartphones today. Google has an incredibly strong pitch here that they are offering the right choice for Android users thanks to the Pixel 9 series devices hitting full stride this year. My only caveat is Qi 2. I love what Qi 2 does for quality of life and I think anyone who can wait should wait for the 10 series in 2025. But if you must move now, Google Pixel 9 series is the right place to spend your money.

At home I do use a fancy Braun electric toothbrush that doesn't have a good enough travel case or battery life to cope with going away on trips. So when Oclean offered to send out its new X Ultra S "WiFi Smart Sonic Electric Toothbrush" with "AI Brushing Navigation" I thought it was worth a test drive.

I hadn't heard of the Oclean brand before but a little research shows it was founded in 2016 and is purely focused on oral hygiene products. Electric toothbrushes, water flossers, and UV sanitisers, and it has won a whole bunch of design awards for its kit. The company has a kids range, a basic range, and the smart range – and this is where the X Ultra S jumps in. Those entry models start at $80 while the X Ultra S is a $450 pack that comes with the toothbrush, three brush heads, the charger stand, a travel case, and a magnetic holder you can attach to the wall (it's very simple and clever and looks great).

The basics

The three brush heads included are like a sample pack for the firm, medium, and soft heads available so you can try them all and then decide which way to go when ordering replacement packs. At two for $49.95 they're more expensive than I would have hoped for compared to other electric brush brands that sell refills at your local supermarket. Every conversation I've ever had with a dentist has said you should always buy the soft brushes because brushing is all about the gums, so here we have the "Ultra Gum Care" option as the path I would recommend.

The X Ultra S claims its Maglev 3.0 motor gives it "3X more plaque removal" and it certainly feels excellent to use. The battery is a big selling point for travellers, claiming 40 days of charge life and it fully recharges in 4.5 hours. Its travel case is also a charger that uses USB-C so you can effectively keep this thing charged forever on the road while stored in its case. It's a very good little setup.

The smarts

So what makes this electric toothbrush so smart? Turns out it is a Bluetooth and WiFi enabled toothbrush with an app for iOS and Android to track your brushing performance. The WiFi notes that it is for 2.4GHz network antennas only, so if you've really tried to drop all older WiFi from your network then this isn't for you. But for most people this isn't going to be a drama.

Download the Oclean Care+ app and you get a personal brushing report, but also feedback directly on the toothbrush itself that scores your brushing and a visual ID on the areas you have missed. It can also deliver audible feedback that tells you if you're going too fast or pressing too hard (the audio uses bone conduction tech so it is clear to you without annoying your housemates). A red light on the end of the brush is also a nice and simple visual reminder if you are pressing too hard.

At setup, the app asks a few questions about your tooth whiteness and if you drink a lot of tea, coffee, smoke, etc. It then offers 3D views of a mouth as it encourages you to brush in just the right way. The brush also ran a few firmware updates because isn't it great to live in a future where our toothbrush has firmware?

I find the visual readout right there on the brush that shows areas you have missed to be a particularly helpful point regardless of using the app. Electric brushes make it easy to reach every corner of your mouth and it can be easy to not notice you've missed one particular section just because of how you hold your brush. So for me this is a solid point of value that doesn't require much setup. It is very likely that most people will use the app for a while and then not bother because they just want to get on with the two minute job of keeping their teeth clean, so it's these direct read out features that feel most likely to become a normal part of your routine.

For iOS users, you can also set up the X Ultra S so that it sends your brushing data to Apple Health, which means you have the track record for reference over time.

The AI (?)

Of course, it wouldn't be a product in 2024 if it didn't write the letters 'AI' somewhere on the box. This is how they're saying the brushing navigation system works, but really, it's the general feedback on mouth position that is a solid win for this toothbrush – whether that's really AI powered or not.

Researching is beginning to suggest that while businesses love writing AI all over everything normal people are getting put off by the term. For this toothbrush, I can happily suggest you just don't worry about it and get on with enjoying the fact it's a good toothbrush.

So in the end, this is a very excellent smart toothbrush. It's a lot of dough to spend but I do think more people would have far better oral health if they were using an electric toothbrush. You can certainly get that by going for a basic model, but if you want the fancy mouthfeel and the tracking that helps you know you've covered everything, this is a good place to get that.

Being that time of year, the Oclean X Ultra S is getting a 50% off sale for Black Friday, so at half price it's a pretty great deal. If you're reading this some other time in the year you can keep this in mind to watch for sales because they're clearly happy to bust out the good pricing when the time is right.

I've stopped trying. After a few explorations and conversations with parents I came to the conclusion that many are, yes, deeply concerned with what their kids do online and how they use tech too much. But the second you start offering suggestions they quickly arrive at the same set of thoughts again and again.

"Oh, it's too hard."
"I can't imagine doing that."
"Do you know how they'd react?"
"It's not worth the argument."

Again and again, I have been shown that parents want to worry but do not want to act.

Now my arguments are generally about doing pretty standard parenting things...

• Set boundaries, like:
  • no phones after 9.00pm
  • no devices in bedrooms
• Chat with your kids about what they've been doing online
• Ask them to tell you about friends they've made online
• Make sure they know they can tell you if something uncomfortable happens online
• Ask them to show you their favourite games and why they love them
• Model good behaviour, like:
  • don't use your own phone while watching TV
  • if you grab your phone in front of them, explain what you are using it for
  • (if there wasn't a good reason, should you be doing it?)

There is nothing in that advice I have not done with our own kids. But the most fundamental is communication. We talk. We listen. We modified rules as our kids offered good reasons for wanting to do things.

It's complicated, but it's parenting.

So now we arrive at this year's sudden rise in political interest in social media's impact on teenagers. And the inexorable slide toward talk of age limits. An effort to pass laws where good parenting would be a lot more helpful.

Many very smart scientists have written great words, offered well researched solutions, and debated the bad takes about this rise in interest, triggered by some pop psychology books that cherry pick data and ignore external forces that could also explain rising anxiety amongst teens.

Climate change? Wildly dangerous political rhetoric? Unaffordable housing? Growing up in a pandemic? No, it's the social media platforms that caused it.

I'm no fan of letting social media platforms algorithmically spam kids and teens with random nonsense. Just as I'm not a fan of them algorithmically nudging our elders toward conspiratorial nonsense. But is anyone wondering if we should ban people over a certain age because they're not very good at discerning reality from fiction on the Internet?

People certainly face risks when encountering any social environment, including social media. This then triggers the next question: Do some people experience harms through social media? Absolutely. But it’s important to acknowledge that most of these harms involve people using social media to harm others. It’s reasonable that they should be held accountable. It’s not reasonable to presume that you can design a system that allows people to interact in a manner where harms will never happen. As every school principal knows, you can’t solve bullying through the design of the physical building. (danah boyd)

I attended a recent talk by a prominent neuroscience researcher who talks a lot about what they see as very real physiological impacts of digital media platforms and video games on young brains. A room full of parents gasped at some of the claims made, and it felt like they were positing these issues as an existential crisis for our next generation.

During Q&A, I asked where the role of parents was in this discussion. What should they be doing to encourage positive digital behaviours at home. Sadly, her answer began by offering parents their excuses once again. It is hard to keep up. They're so busy these days. It's a lot.

Once again... the room was given their comfort zone for being worried but choosing to do nothing about it.

But then... "banning is not the answer." A pleasant surprise. A clear statement that we need to solve the issue with cultural actions and not simple and wildly difficult to enact laws to somehow say 'We did it. We saved the kids'.

"The results are in and the science is settled."

Finally, a politician is speaking up on climate change. [checks notes] Oh, sorry...

It feels unconscionable to hear a politician say this about social media research around its impact on kids and teens. But Peter Malinauskas started his phase of last week's Social Media Summit by undermining the actual Australian researchers in the room who wanted to discuss real options for real improvements to online safety.

I'd buy into schools banning phones in classrooms. Reducing distraction during education seems a grand idea. But we also don't want to force teachers to spend all day policing phones instead of teaching. My kids have plenty of stories of all the ways their classmates dodge doing actual work in favour of goofing off online. Does the phone really make a difference if the laptop is also on the desk?

I have to ask where the parents and caregivers are in this equation. Most kids in our primary schools today are likely to be children of young Gen Xers and Millennials. They kinda know how to use their tech! But it seems like we're basing policy on Baby Boomer mindsets about 'kids these days and their bloody phones'.

Wouldn't creating better tools to support parents in establishing good habits in a digital savvy household be a smart if boring path into the coming decade? There's some great Australian bodies trying to do the hard work on this. Real work, based on real research, talking to kids and teens about their experiences too. Throw them more money so they can scale their work more effectively.

Meanwhile, let's actually hold platforms accountable for the way their algorithms promote harmful misinformation and harmful subcultures. And lets hold the people doing bad things online to account in the same way we try to in the real world.

Sure, maybe the adults will just ignore the tools and prefer to keep worrying. But bad laws won't fix anything in a house where kids do as they please and no one takes the time to care about what they're doing on their screens.

The main Expo Hall is also looking very strong once again, with Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Blizzard, Final Fantasy, SEGA, Square Enix, Steam, The Sims, Ubisoft... plus Devolver and Massive Monster hosting ACTUAL LIVE WEDDINGS at the show in a Cult of the Lamb Temple. Incredible. Plus hands on with great gaming hardware from Asus, LG, Samsung, MSI, Secretlab, and loads more. It's stacked.

But for me, the best of PAX is tucked away in the many theatre spaces all over the convention centre. There are always dozens of incredible sessions where smart and experienced industry talents share their wisdom with the rest of us. Or tell us amazing stories about their journey through the scene. Or just give us all a chance to gather for laughs with friends.

So to help guide the way, I've scoured the schedule for some of the best panel sessions across the three days of PAX Australia. Remember you can download the app and build your own schedule – the app even sends reminders if you want it to so you don't miss anything you planned to see before the rest of the show dazzles your senses.

FRIDAY

Meet the students changing the game: How to go from the classroom to Steam!
Friday, 2.30pm, Kookaburra Theatre
Hear from students who have had success in the Australian STEM Video Game Challenge, with one past winner sharing his journey of taking his concept from the competition all the way to a launch on Steam. This will be huge for anyone, student or beyond, to learn about taking ideas all the way to launch.

How to be a Content Creator without Streaming
Friday, 6.30pm, Dropbear Theatre
There's often a lot about streaming, so this one stands out for those who want to focus on the non-live areas of content – podcasts, YouTube, and other socials. Plenty of folks who are doing it for real will be here to share their knowledge.

But I Can Fix Him: Putting video game villains on trial
Friday, 7.00pm, Fruitbat Theatre
A great crew of journalists / broadcasters / streamers are set to have a lot of fun arguing in defence of the hottest, most charismatic villains. Sounds like a great time, especially after a visit to the pub next door.

SATURDAY

Robert Hartley GM presents D&D Death Roulette
Saturday, 10.30am, GenerOzity Wombat Theatre
A mass of D&D content folks will be live on stage getting killed off by audience donations to the GenerOzity charity. Will the story progress or will it just all fall apart within minutes? As long as we raise money, does it even matter?

So You Want To Be A Voice Actor?
Saturday, 3.00pm, Main Theatre
The line up of voice acting talent looks amazing (like Mark Meer (see Sunday below) popping in here too!). Hear from some of the best around to learn how to get started and carve your path.

Cosplay Iron Chef
Saturday, 5.00pm, Main Theatre
I've watched one of these sessions in past years and it's amazing to see top class cosplayers get forced to speed build while being Q&A'd about their skills and war stories from the industry. Chaos crafting energy in the best possible way.

The Dark Room (MA 15+)
Saturday, 9.00pm, Main Theatre
A live interactive video game choose your adventure comedy action experience where the winner gets cash? But mostly everybody just dies? There is no explaining what John Robertson does. You just have to see it for yourself. This has been a staple Saturday night hit for years now and it is a MUST SEE. You will not regret it... though you could regret sitting close to the stage...

SUNDAY

Gaming While "Old": Being Middle-Aged (and Older) on the Internet
Sunday, 10.30am, Kookaburra Theatre
Feeling a little out of touch with 'the kids' but still love your nerd lifestyle? This seems like a great session that will be both fun and maybe even a little insightful on being "visibly middle-aged on the Internet" for stramers and industry veterans.

Fireside with Mark Meer
Sunday, 12.00pm, Main Theatre
The iconic voice of Commander Shepard, amongst many, many other roles, is here to have a chat about his career in the industry. Should be an amazing session.

Dungeons IN Dragons (MA 15+)
Sunday, 1.00pm, Owlbear Theatre
A comedy session as a party tries to escape a dungeon in the belly of a dragon while slowly being digested? Sounds fun. There's a mass of D&D sessions all weekend in this special Owlbear theatre, so if D&D is your jam check out all the listings for this stage.

One-Shot Wonders: Writing D&D 5e one-shot adventures
Sunday, 4.30pm, Dropbear Theatre
There's a LOT of great panels for D&D nerds this year, and for DMs who want tips on writing great one-shot sessions why not learn from a team that has run "over 400 one-shots" to learn their template for building a great session.

Can you hear a 'but' coming?

In this case, the 'but' is another win for Sennheiser, because its Momentum Sport model delivers the same audio chops plus a whole lot more for just a $30 premium over its sibling. What you lose in the styling department (the woven case, the metallic chassis design) you gain in serious utility with heart rate monitoring direct from your ear canal plus enhanced ear fit options to ensure you can work hard with minimal fear they'll pop out unexpectedly.

When you're first getting them setup, patience is a virtue. I found the out of the box fit impressive for my ears, with a far more comfortable feel during my runs than I honestly expected. They were gentle and light, which was surprising given their size, and I almost forgot they were there which has never really happened with any other sports earbuds I've used. For my daughter, on the other hand, they were really wanted to fall out fast. This 'default' did not use any of the included wingtip options, so once we swapped to the smaller earbuds and a larger wingtip it stayed in place more securely. So be sure to take the time to get them sitting 'just right'.

If you never install the Sennheiser Smart Control app, they'll work nicely enough but will lack all the added smarts you've paid a premium to access. So, again, take the extra few minutes to get it installed, run a firmware update, and get the features set up the way you want. Alongside a five band equaliser (with 'bass boost' and 'podcast' presets for those who don't want to get too fancy) are the basics for how your controls will respond on the earbuds and what style of active noise cancelling you'd prefer.

With the controls designed around simple tap and long press actions, I found them very easy to use without slowing your running pace (all my focus is around running as it's my primary exercise routine, typically running distances from 5K to half marathon). A smart choice here is splitting volume control across the earbuds. I tap and hold the left for volume down and the right for volume up. When earbuds ask you to slide or perform some other move-based action to make adjustments it typically requires a lot more fiddling to get right, but here the choices made for very easy control.

The active noise cancelling options include the obvious – cancel everything or deliver transparency for enhanced hearing of everything around you. But they also offer intelligent cancelling, such as transparency with wind noise reduction for a more comfortable version of staying alert to the environment. You can also adjust the transparency level and have transparency auto activate when you are making phone calls.

Any device that truly gets better with updates scores bonus points in my book, and Sennheiser has delivered very strong support for its Momentum and Accentum wireless earbuds this year. Recent enhancements include storing the last location the earbuds were seen to help relocate them if lost.

Those additional heart and temperature fitness sensors, designed in partnership with Polar, are also managed through the app. Real time insights are visible here as well as options for connecting the data feeds to other health and fitness services. Heart rate is easy to feed through and seems very accurate when compared with my Apple Watch readings. Sennheiser says the heart rate tracking is compatible with a range of watches, fitness equipment and apps, including Strava, Swift, Polar, and Peloton. Temperature tracking is focused on Polar integration so far, and seems more limited in value, but it's also not a bad option if you're checking your temp if you're feeling under the weather? That's not what they're selling it for so don't rely on it for that, of course...

Overall, the Sennheiser Momentum Sport is a really nice set of fitness earbuds. With heart rate tracking a key reason many people shell out for a smart watch as part of their fitness setup, this is a powerful alternative if you always keep your phone with you when exercising anyway. The audio is great, the feature updates are impressive, and while they're amongst the most expensive options on the market ($529) those extra fitness features are worth hundreds if you're the kind of person who wants them and you're getting some of the best audio quality around.

We sat down with Brendan Farrell, Senior Game Designer, and Jeremy Collins, Art Director, to learn about what it takes to devise not just a new mini but a whole new family and what it will do to the meta – with a few strat hints thrown in to get you going.

Why are there even ‘families’ in Warcraft Rumble? Why did you take that approach?

Brendan Farrell: When Rumble first started there was just one family. Just a collection of five or six minis – a bunch are still in the game. So they were just the original family. As we built more of these minis we realised it’d be appropriate to have them in some buckets.

In classic Warcraft there’s Alliance and Horde, but we thought there’s more variety here. More room for strategy and building out these different armies. So that’s where the first five families came from: Alliance, Horde, Blackrock, Undead, and Beast. There’s so much in the Warcraft universe to pull from to put into Rumble. It’s really easy when you have five families to start grabbing things – it frees things up a lot more than being restricted to [Alliance and Horde].

Philosophically, whenever we’re thinking about adding a mini or a family to the game we’re thinking about what’s missing. In terms of World of Warcraft lore – what haven’t we yet represented? And also what does the game need strategically? What family or minis would add to the diversity that’s already there?

Another philosophy is rather than just tuning existing minis, just buffing or nerfing, we’d rather introduce new tools to counter or shake up the meta a little bit. That’s where the idea of Cenarion came from. Cenarion is about sustain, building big pushes, the duality Druid thing. Almost all the Cenarion minis have some sort of utility – they can do more than one thing. Lore wise, that just seemed perfect.

Everyone who joins the Rumble team, immediately when they play a game they’re like “Oh my God, I have so many ideas. You know who’d be great in here?” So we have this massive list that we can pull from. There’s so much to be inspired by. But Cenarion was a pretty common request from a lot of the team and from a lot of players. Even if they didn’t ask for the family by name, they were asking for specific characters that would easily fit into that family.

Talk about your approach to designing the Cenarions?

Jeremy Collins: With the phone you have a limited amount of screen space. I go home and stare at an ultrawide monitor and it’s awesome. We don’t have that luxury on a mobile. So it’s very important for us in art to make sure that, at a glance, you can see a unit and know who that unit is.

The gameplay, we call it ‘joyful chaos’. Something’s happening in this lane, something bad is happening in another lane, you’re constantly jockeying your attention between places. Because of that we were very intentional about making sure characters we designed only had two or three major colour blocks so when I’m in the middle of a fight I see green and red and I know that’s the Warsong Grunt. We didn’t want to overcomplicate the design of things.

As far as Cenarion goes, it’s fun in general. Design and art collaborate very closely when it comes to creating anything new for the game, but any mini too. The designers said we need a tank character but we have this really fun idea where you have to spend all your gold to play it. You could spend a little bit, or spend all of it, and depending on how much you spend the size of the tank gets bigger or smaller. That’s a great idea! But there’s not many characters that fit that tank mold – and you don’t want to see thin, spindly characters in that role because visually it just wouldn’t really work out well. So that’s how we ended up going with the Ancient of War from Warcraft 3. And that’s something that hits the nostalgia for players quite a bit.

We just had so many strong ideas for Cenarion that we very much wanted to pursue them. They all ended up fitting into that kit really well once we got the whole army together. We’ve got two characters from the Cenarion family that came out first – the spell Earth and Moon and then the Faerie Dragon.

What makes you decide between building out existing families versus launching a whole new family?

BF: It comes back to what the player needs and what the game needs. When we came up with Witch Doctor, for example, we saw Horde doesn’t really have a lot of Cycle options. They have Sappers, but it’d be really nice to have a Cycle option for Horde that doesn’t delete itself when you play it. So Witch Doctor was this really fun idea that we’ve been tossing around for a while. I’m a huge fan of Warlocks in general in World of Warcraft and Witch Doctors have a lot of overlap in terms of abilities and talents and stuff. So Witch Doctor fit that need very nicely.

With Chimaera, we saw Beast doesn’t have a lot of flying AoE options and the game in general could probably use more flying AoE. So we came up with this really fun idea for Chimaera and it was super novel because it has two heads and two abilities, so that was really fun.

I think we knew for a long time that eventually we would be adding a family and there was a lot of general discussion around it. The need for Faerie Dragon came up and we thought, well, she has to be Cenarion, but we knew we were eventually going to do Cenarion. So she seemed like a great intro to the Cenarion family for players. Her kit is really good. She can see stealth, which changes a lot of the meta stuff. She’s resistant to a lot of stuff. She’s also really a well known and beloved character. Even if you have no connection to the Warcraft universe, even if Rumble is your first step into the Warcraft universe, she’s so cute and colourful and friendly and approachable. She’s just really adorable. So I think she was a really good introduction to the Cenarion family and all those pieces aligned to building out Cenarion from there.

Rumble has its own art style compared to Warcraft. What’s the thinking and process there?

JC: We affectionately call it Rumble-fying the characters on our team. When we’re having the discussion, “OK, what is this new mini?”, we obviously look at our source material from other games that have been out there. We try to add our own Warcraft Rumble spin on things.

So much of the World of Warcraft art style is based on hand painted, handcrafted art, and that’s something we’re very proud of here at Blizzard. When we were originally making the first family, creating the Orc was the first unit. We are Blizzard Entertainment, What are we good at? Orcs. Orcs is always the answer to that question. So our first unit was the orc and we started down that hand painted road in those early days. But we realised it was great, it looked good, but it doesn’t give us enough of an identity as a game.

The whole point of Warcraft Rumble is to broaden Warcraft. To have great stuff for people that are huge fans already but to bring people in that maybe don’t know anything about Warcraft. A lot of the appeal of the Faerie Dragon that Brendan’s talking about really plays into that. That desire to want to bring in people with an appealing art style, even if you don’t know the 30+ years of lore of the Warcraft universe. It doesn’t matter. You should be able to come in and have a good time either way.

There isn’t really a formula when it comes to choosing. It evolves organically on our team based on the needs of what the game has. It’s really an exercise in patience, because we all have our rock stars that we want to throw into the game and we all have to wait because we can’t drop them all at once. We have to make sure they come out at a regular content cadence, which is also part of the reason why we brought out Earth and Moon and the Faerie Dragon so that it’s not just “here’s everything” and maybe you get overwhelmed and I think that is an easier way to ramp you into enjoying the Cenarion family.

Any you enjoyed Rumble-fying the most?

JC: After the hand painted Orc, the first really Rumble-fied character we ended up making was the Kobold. There’s this magical moment when you’re creating a new mini for me, where we’ve talked about the design, we’ve done a bunch of concept art of what the character looks like, but maybe the character isn’t modelled yet. At that point, somewhere in that pipeline, Brendan and I write the script for the characters and then I’ll go record it in a VO session. That moment is when the mini kind of comes alive.

We had this amazing voice actor, who played Invader Zim, for the Kobold and he just started going “money, money, money” and all this stuff that you hear in the game right now. It was a moment for me where I was like “Oh my God, this character is real now!” and then you pair it up with the model and the animation and the rig. Everybody does their piece of the pipeline and you have this new thing. It’s just a very edifying experience. So probably the Kobold.

But then if you’re asking my favourite? Sappers by far. I animated them so I have a very close relationship to it. I thought it was fun. The whole idea is they have a barrel of explosives strapped to their back and they jump into the towers to explode them. I did a bunch of poses where one’s laying down, one does a swan dive, and it randomly chooses what to pick when it goes in. So that’s awesome.

BF: I really like Whelps. There’s three of them, the eggs look so cool, they’re really spikey. The gradient on the shell and the spikes. And it’s just a really cool mini gameplay wise. It just does something very different that none of our other minis do. It just waits there, and then it gets hit and turns into something else. I think it’s really cool.

JC: I have them in a lot of my armies too. The Whelps actually looked very different from how they looked at the start. We had a different model of them. They weren’t as appealing. So we took it back to the drawing board and did another pass on it and I’m really happy with how they ended up turning out.

So give us the run down everyone we’ve met so far in the Cenarion family!

BF: So there’s already Faerie Dragon and Earth and Moon. Faerie Dragon is a flying mini with a range attack that can see stealth, and she’s immune to poison, burn, and slowing effects, so she’s very tricky.

Earth and Moon is a double spell. You equip it in your army and it’s either Entangling Roots or Starfall and it changes form whenever another Cenarion mini is played, including itself. So if you have no other Cenarion minis in your army it’ll at least rotate every time you play it. But if it’s in your hand and you play a different Cenarion mini it’ll swap right then and there. So you get extra control over it at the cost of having to play a Cenarion mini to toggle it. Starfall is our highest damage spell. It’s expensive gold wise but does a ton of damage in an area. It’s like a supercharged Blizzard.

In Season Seven we introduced two leaders and three minis. We have Cenarius, who the family is named after. He represents what the Cenarion family is supposed to do. He does two things right out of the box. He has this giant aura around him which passively heals allies over time and roots enemies who approach for the first time - after a few seconds they can’t get rooted again. So he’s not the strongest leader, he’s not going to be killing all these enemy minis on his own, but what he does is really supports having a team around him and buys time for them to kill approaching enemies.

We then have Onu. He’s this big tree guy. He’s a super beloved character from World of Warcraft. His whole thing is he’s a mobile deploy zone. So you deploy him, he lanes forward and wherever he is you can deploy other minis near him almost as if they were unbound. And so the great thing with him is, if you can keep him alive and get him to enemy towers or the base, you basically have a portal straight to the thing you’re trying to target.

So you could drop a Gargoyle or Sappers right where he is and do a ton of damage, or another Onu and keep the Onu train going. And his talents all relate to his mobile deploy zone. My favourite one is Petrify - when he dies the mobile deploy zone persists for eight seconds and we have this really cool animation for it. He literally just dies and calcifies. 

There’s Bog Beast, he’s a big swampy guy, a pretty standard tank. He’s a guy with a lot of health and a single melee swing. But he has Resist, which not a lot of tanks have. Most tanks have Armor, so he’s really good if you’re up against a bunch of elemental damage enemies.

Then we have Moonkin, which is super famous from World of Warcraft with a whole Druid spec based around it. Moonkin alternates between a single target Moonfire attack and an AOE Hurricane style attack. So again, it goes into the whole Cenarion idea of duality. You get these two things, but at a cost. He’s not going to do one or the other reliably, you have to wait in between.

And then last is Ancient of War. He has a new trait called Surge. When you play him, he uses all your gold, however much you have. So if you have three gold, it takes three gold. If you have 10, he takes 10. But for every gold spent he is bigger, stronger, and has more health. So he’s really fun. You could start a push with him - here’s 10 gold, deal with that. And then as your gold refills you can supplement behind him. Or you could use him in response to something. There’s a Prowler attacking my base? I only have two gold. Drop an Ancient of War you need in that moment. But he always uses all your gold, so that’s the cost.

So the whole family kind of revolves around this idea of utility at a cost, so they’re really powerful in the right hands. I think there’s so many possible strategies.

One of my favourite things about this game is we put stuff out, we test it, we design it, we think a lot about it, and we come up with our own strategies internally. But inevitably, without fail, players find other ways to surprise us. That’s my favourite thing. Like with Onu, I just told you to do Sappers and Gargoyles. I’m sure players are going to find other crazy stuff that we haven’t even thought of. I love that. I think the Cenarion family is going to open up a lot of potential for that, because each mini does multiple different things.

That whole scaling of the Ancient of War design sounds fun – and hard. Tell us more about making that work.

JC: For Ancient of War’s design the good news is the game tells you what it needs. At 10 gold it has more health than a Molten Giant. So visually we need to make sure that it’s slightly bigger than the Molten Giant when you see it on the screen, because size is really tied very, very closely to overall health pool of a character. If you’re in the raid and you’re fighting Ragnaros, he has a lot of health. He’s gigantic. So in the same way, we use the Molten Giant as a guide for where our 10 is going to be. And then the scale from that point went down. We also wanted to make sure that when you play Ancient of War for one gold it’s more health than a Kobold. It isn’t that tiny, tiny size.

BF: It was a really fun process, because that’s the first mini we have that dynamically changes size. His size is going to be changing different times you play him. It was a really fun conversation to go to the art team and say I want to have 10 different models for Ancient of War, one for each gold cost.

They were like, OK, well, when we animate his feet we need to make sure they’re tracking properly on the ground. What’s happening in the background is we also have all this stuff like a speed modifier for the animators to use. At different sizes based on the size of the model they can adjust his movement speed ever so slightly so his feet don’t slide around. It was a really fun back and forth.

We did the first iteration and the animators came back and the 10 gold one was too huge and taking up way too much space and the one gold one was too tiny. So we just took the entire scale and kind of squashed it back towards the middle a little bit. It took a few tries, but we got it in a good spot.

JC: My background is in character animation. The foot sliding thing is something I have to put my foot down on. Tying the size of the character to the speed just looks so much more like a mobile tree that way as opposed to if he was just ice skating across the ground.

Adapting beloved Warcraft characters, how do you give them talents and abilities?

BC: That’s my favourite design thing that I do. There are certain characters where we’re spoiled and we have too much. Jaina is a Frost Mage, so there’s so much to pull from. There’s an entire talent tree. There’s all this lore around Jaina specifically.

But then you get a character like Bog Beast who isn’t playable by players, there’s lore through quests but Bog Beast as an identity hasn’t really existed. Bog Beast certainly doesn’t have a talent tree. So it’s fun. There’s so much to pull from in World of Warcraft so we knew what we wanted Bog Beast to be functionally in the game. Then it’s a matter of, OK, he’s going to be a tank for the Cenarion family, and he’s going to be resist themed. OK, he’s covered in these vines and swamp water. What do we want him to do? If he’s negating enemy magic or resistant, maybe his talent should be that he’s more receptive to ally magic. Like that old ability mages had that was amplify magic or dampen magic. He’s got the right version of both of those. So for his talents maybe he could have a talent where he receives more healing because Cenarion is all about sustain.

So then we go, OK, what in the World of Warcraft universe exists that kind of implies that something would receive more healing and would fit a Bog Beast. So we have amplify magic for mages, but it doesn’t really fit with the kit of Bog Beast. So we start reading through all the lore and the druid tree and we start pulling themes and language from there. And that’s where Flourish, the name of his talent, where he receives more healing, comes from.

So that process repeats for all these other sorts of characters that don’t necessarily have a fully fleshed out talent tree or identity. There’s still so much to pull from and be inspired by.

JC: We’re designing really thinking of gameplay moments. When you’re playing a game that’s really what you’re playing - a string of moments. With something like Sylvanas, she’s a badass undead night elf archer and shoots stuff. But at the end of the day we’re like ‘what makes Sylvanas?’ That moment in the cinematic where she just becomes a banshee. That defines the Sylvanas experience. So that’s how we knew. We already have a banshee in the game. We can do possession. Then it all started to click into place.

Talk about the new Moonglade missions?

BF: Five new missions for Moonglade. I don’t want to spoil the details of every single one, but my favourite is Brumeran, which is the Chimaera boss. The Chimaera is constantly laying eggs you have to deal with. If you don’t deal with them they’re going to hatch into baby Chimaeras.

What I really love about the mission is when you pause and take a moment – I know there’s a lot going on when you’re fighting – but if you stop and look, you’re actually on the top of a mountain and it’s so cool. I don’t think we have any other missions like that right now. There’s this really lovely fog around it. You just get the sense that you climbed to the top of this mountain in Moonglade and you’re doing battle with this Chimaera. It’s really visually cool and distinct. Every time we come out with something new it’s like there’s a whole new visual language we get to use. I think the art team did a really good job with it.

JC: Anytime we come up with a new zone we’ll do this thing we call virtual tourism, where we basically get on a mount and fly around the zone in classic WoW and also in retail WoW if they exist in both places. Just to get a sense of the design choices that were made.

One of the things we found in the art team that really contributes to the overall feel of a zone is actually the environment fog which in the old days of WoW was necessary because you didn’t want to have the computing power to render stuff in the background. That tone contributes so much to the zones in generally. You’ll actually notice it shift as you go from zone to zone to zone. We took that blue-green of Moonglade and made sure all the maps had that variety. We actually have our own version of environment fog that we throw into all the maps.

My favourite is Brightwing’s because she’s got this secret garden set up and we had a lot of fun designing her. We knew she was going to have a talent that teleports her and we thought what would be really funny is if she sneezed and when she sneezed she teleports to a new place - like she can’t control it. Then the animators went, oh, well what if she had a really ugly face right before she sneezed. So we baked that into the character and it all just fell into place. Now when you play on that map it just feels like you’re in her domain in a lot of ways. It’s very cool.

BF: I think you said the voice actor for Brightwing ended up doing like nine takes for sneezes?

JC: It was like 40 minutes of sneezes.

Lots of anniversaries at the moment at Blizzard, with Hearthstone turning 10 and World of Warcraft turning 20. What do you hope people will think about at the 10th anniversary of Rumble?

BF: If we hit 10 years and people are still playing it and having a great time? What I would love is to meet someone who played for all 10 years and ask what they enjoy. We love feedback from players. We’re always listening. There’s so many channels and it’s all valuable.

Even if a player comes to us and is just ‘oh, I hate this mini’. They’re not asking you to remove the mini from the game. There’s some reason they don’t like it. Either they don’t find it useful or they’re playing against it and it’s kicking their butt. It’s all valuable. In that case we give them a different tool or something or we give them a mini that helps build a new strategy around that. I love that our players care as much about the game as we do.

So for 10 years from now, if I could talk to someone who’s been there for 10 years and say what do you think? What’s your journey been like? What have you been up to? Obviously you’re max level. What are you working on now?

I’d also want to talk to someone who just joined. Something really nice about Rumble and something we’re always talking about on the design side is, even if the game has been out for a year or two years or five or whatever, there’s going to be new people who join in. We want the game to be welcoming and gentle to them as well.

I’m sure we all have the experience of jumping into a game that’s pre-existing and your friends are all ‘oh, come try this game’ and you jump in and there’s just so much to process. One of our goals with Rumble is to make sure there’s a ramp into it. Then both your collection and when you learn how to play and all these fun new systems and features, we want players to gain that stuff over time and get used to it. So I’d be very curious to talk to both people 10 years down the road, both types of players, and see what they feel.

JC: Fun is your measure of success in video games. I would just want people to still be having fun in 10 years with the game. It’s been a real privilege to develop it. I use this analogy a lot. We got tossed the keys to Warcraft and they were like “make a really cool Warcraft mobile game”. We’re all just bound together by our love of Warcraft anyway. So it was a really wonderful privilege to be able to make the game and I hope it’s still fun in 10 years.

I've generally encountered two kinds of 'power station' style devices over the years. The office uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to keep devices running if power cuts out temporarily, or to help shut down gracefully if the power doesn't come back quickly. And then industrial power station aimed at tradies and serious campers who need hours of power on demand.

So far just a few brands have started offering these more tech-focused power stations that look comfortable in a regular car boot and not on the back of a ute. So for DJI, the famed drone maker, this is squarely aimed at their own audience when they want to keep topping up their drones in the field without just buying an army of pre-charged batteries to keep swapping in. With a few batteries, a drone, and a DJI Power 500 you can be flying all day long.

The 500 stands for 500W of power delivery, while its bigger sibling is the 1000. It's actually 512W, but who's counting. The battery itself is based on LFP technology for high powered work that is also much longer lasting that the Lithium-ion battery you carry in your bag.

You get seven power outputs total: 2x USB-C, 2x USB-A, 2x mains power, and 1x SDC lite port. Fast charge times for drone batteries and phones are around 30 minutes range, and you'll get about 28 full phone charges off the Power 500 so it could keep you running for weeks without going near a mains plug. For a laptop you'll get around four full charges.

That last one, SDC, is a special DJI port that offers bidirectional charge support for a range of their products. It has a fast charge delivery for some of its Intelligent Flight batteries, but also lets you recharge the Power 500 using DJI solar panel adapter module. Keep that in mind – you can pack a solar kit with the Power 500 and run truly off grid for extended periods for all your main tech needs.

It's also worth a mention that the cutover speed is 0.02-seconds if you're using the Power 500 to run devices all day while plugged into mains, acting as a true UPS. But it feels like a waste of a far more versatile product to make it be a full-time UPS.

For usage out and about, the read out is clear and readable in bright daylight. So you always know how much is left in the bank, and it even gives a time estimate so you have a clear sense of what the percentage means based on what you've been charging on it.

The whole Power 500 can be charged to full in 70 minutes, and if you somehow forget your mains cable for charging it you can charge it over USB-C at 100W. Slower, more like three hours with both USB-C cables feeding in, but better than being totally screwed.

I always weigh overall design heavily, so I'm really impressed by the comfort of the grip and the aesthetic of the battery. Seeing this sit alongside my telescope feels 'right'. It's an impressive piece of hardware that gives people who love their tech but want to be out and about enjoying wide open spaces the comfort to go enjoy themselves without worrying about the lack of power. It's a really nice feeling to have.

The DJI Power 500 retails at $729 and the bigger Power 1000 is $1369. For DJI drone lovers, it's a very compelling option. For people who want to sneak a bunch of tech with them on a long weekend camping trip, it's probably even more exciting.

Earbuds have become a big focal point for mobile listening – I'm certainly a big AirPods user – there's plenty of reasons they are not ideal when you're pounding the pavement or flying down a hill on a bike. I do plenty of running with a pair of AirPods, but those runs include a lot of little moments of adjustment to make sure they don't fall out. They've only fallen out once or twice ever, but that's enough to keep me checking them.

The Shokz OpenRun Pro is a bone conduction headphone with a wrap around design that sits comfortably around the ear. They feel snug with just a very gentle hug in front of the ear and they never feel like they're in the way or going to fall off.

Most importantly, bone conduction headphones are fundamentally transparent. By sitting on the bone just in front of your ear, the sound is transmitted through your body to the ear. (There's a very slight tickle you feel when wearing bone conduction headphones. Once upon a time this felt more like a weird irritation, but the tech is in a really good place now. Just a pleasant fuzz that you only notice if you focus on it.)

Compare this with noise cancelling headphones that have adopted very useful transparency modes to help you hear the world around you. It's important when out and about, but it also feeds into battery drain with all that extra real-time audio analysis. With the Shokz, you can confidently hear the world around you all day long on a marathon run or riding the Bowral Classic and still have battery to spare.

It can also seem confusing as to whether or not other people can hear what you're hearing because it's so loud and clear. But lift them off your skin for a moment and you realise it's relatively quiet – but definitely louder than earbuds or a full set of headphones. Just worth keeping in mind if you're in a quiet area and want to keep what you're listening to private.

The usability of the Shokz OpenRun Pro is also very simple. Power on the right, along with volume control. Long press the power to go into pairing mode, which worked very easily. The play / pause button is on the left, which also accepts and ends phone calls. Easy. No fuss.

As for negatives, the nature of the tech – the wrap around neck design – means two inconveniences. One is the size of the carry case, which is far larger than an earbud case you can slip into your pocket. The other is the charging cable, which is proprietary at the headphones end into a full-size USB cable at the other end. Right now it is the only device on my desk that still avoids USB-C. Lose that one cable and you're in trouble.

These are also something of a luxury, because you would not want to make these your every day wear headphones. The audio quality is not amazing. If you really want to enjoy music and have even the slightest audiophile tendencies you are not going to be impressed. But for me, I'm a big audiobook and podcast listener when I'm running or at the gym, and so the Shokz suit this listening format just fine.

But that's exactly how you should see these. The Shokz OpenRun Pro is a $269 dedicated sports headset that does this job in a way that puts safety and the ability to focus on exercising above all else. If you're getting sweaty they will keep you fully aware of the world around you and are very easy to wipe down afterward.

Shokz also sells an OpenSwim Pro for $299 that will keep you listening even in the pool, including not only Bluetooth connectivity but also MP3 mode so you can load up your listening directly.

If you're curious about bone conduction headphones for any sporty situation, you'd do well to look at the full Shokz product range to see what might suit your niche.

Saying 'a long time' is probably not really fair. Laptops took a long time before they were small enough and powerful enough to make second screens viable with the right kind of ports to make it easy to both power and interface.

But for this 'long time' it seemed like display makers simply didn't bother giving this category much thought. I've tested a few over the years from specialists in monitors and they always lacked the build quality I want from something that will get bounced around in my bag for most of their existence. Likewise the efforts usually included a built-in stand of some kind that felt flimsy or tacked on. Never something that felt 'right' sitting beside a premium laptop on the desk.

Comparing dedicated portable displays with tablet devices through the same era, there was a distinct quality gap. But tablets do not perform that job of being a slick, happy, confident 'second laptop screen' the way a dedicated display can. So it's just floated along as a niche within a niche...

The issue, of course, is whether there is a big market for second laptop screens. Which raises the chicken and egg question – is the issue the market or the lack of a good option to buy that would trigger a bigger market?

To confuse the metaphor, Espresso Displays has laid the egg. A truly excellent portable display range that will prove whether this market has just been waiting for a great product. It is an outstanding product, well thought through to serve the niche in a way that makes me think anyone who sees one in a cowork space or elsewhere in public will be asking "where did you get that?"

Smart choices for a solid second screen

I've been testing the 15-inch model for a few months and the build quality is rock solid. Options include a base 1080p 13-inch non-touch model, 1080p 13-inch and 15-inch touch models, and a 4K 17-inch touch model.

The construction feels as premium as a MacBook, and the screen clarity is excellent. Again, those earlier portables I've tested always felt like a low quality display. This looks accurate and crisp with good viewing angles.

But the clincher is the magnetic stand. It collapses into a very tidy puck that will slide nicely into your bag, while having plenty of weight to confidently hold your screen in vertical or horizontal orientation to suit your preference. Most models seem to be bundled with the stand now, which is great. This feels like a must have option, even if you do choose the microfibre case for some needs.

There's also a Pro stand that offers a low incline option when you want to use it like a drawing tablet.

In practice, it does take a little getting used to aligning the screen just right with the magnetic plate. The positioning is quite flexible, it's just a question of getting the weight distribution right. But it doesn't take long to get your eye in.

Connectivity runs over a single USB-C, with cable options to use HDMI or DisplayPort if you need (those two cables sold separately).

Espresso works best with the free EspressoFlow software that adds screen management features to your laptop (Mac, Windows, or Linux), letting you arrange app windows easily and arrange multiple desktop windows. Plus for Mac users this is where you can confidently enjoy all the touch features of the display within your typical macOS workflows.

Tablets versus Espresso

The most obvious question is why you would want a dedicated display instead of just having a second screen that is a tablet.

The issue I've found is that tablets aren't happy just relaxing and letting themselves be nothing but a display for your laptop. Even if they have that mode, it tries to either be too clever or it allows interruptions which break the 'dedicated' need of being a two-screen laptop user.

I've also encountered another problem from time to time – just forgetting my tablet because I was watching TV in bed. Or that same issue means it isn't charged up and ready for the next day.

These displays from Espresso are beautifully made in a way that makes you feel like the commitment to a dedicated second screen is worth it. Checking the relative weights, these are also very similar to any tablet with a keyboard case being in your bag. But they're also far bigger in screen size, delivering something often bigger than your actual laptop – they almost become your 'main' screen alongside your laptop and not just something off to the side.

Beyond portable: put it on your desk too?

Espresso also makes a VESA mount option that turns any traditional monitor arm into a magnetic home for your screen. This elevates (OK, literally... but metaphorically) the display from just for portable work to be your second screen at all times in all places.

The value add here is big – if you've ever swapped a laptop between multiple multi-screen setups, your computer tries its best to remember which monitor is where and which app windows are where, but it gets messy quickly. Having the exact same second screen in all places means your apps will always be exactly where you left them. You're back in your flow wherever you go.

Pens and jots

Espresso also offers a pen for their touchscreens and special Jot software for marking up almost anything on your screen and sharing notes collaboratively with others, as well as a version dedicated to PDF work. The pen costs $119, the Jot software is free.

They seem to be building a solid community online for Jot and are actively developing the features they offer around these ideas. It didn't really blend into my workflows, but it's nice to see them not leaving the whole idea of what can make these touchscreens even more useful up to other people to decide.

Verdict: I need two

After a few months of having this display in my home, it has been hijacked by my wife as her permanent second screen. It has a place on her desk and when she needs to move elsewhere to work she knows exactly how she does her alternate desk setup to keep working without skipping a beat.

So as I now consider buying more, I do think the 15-inch is a sweet spot for the portability factor and will probably end up with two of them. The 4K 17-inch is tempting, especially thinking about the VESA mount option. But right now I have the big 4K screen I need when I'm at my desk. So it's the perfect dual screen roadwork setup I'm looking for and that's probably the 15-inch option.

I've really been looking at Espresso measured against the best monitors I've ever used. I've ignored the fact it happens to be a homegrown Australian company that saw the need for great, thin, high quality portable displays. They've nailed it.

Every highly mobile laptop user who wishes they had a second screen on the road should buy an Espresso display. It's a massive boost to road productivity or just general satisfaction and pleasure. It makes your laptop better.

Sonos, well known for its networked home audio speaker system, has joined the headphone scene with the Sonos Ace. And it's a confident, polished arrival that places itself firmly alongside the great offerings from Sony.

Having spent a few weeks with the headphones, what stands out is a very comfortable wear over long periods with a very nice sound stage that proves the value of real speakers over earbud inserts. There is a difference when done well – and these are done well.

Physical features

The most immediate thing that makes you enjoy the Sonos Ace is its simple use of physical buttons to drive its key features. On the left there is one button to turn them on and off (or long press for Bluetooth connection adjustment). On the right is a large up-down toggle. Press it to Play/Pause or Answer/End a call, slide up or down for volume, double tap for Next and triple tap to Previous. One more button on the right switches noise cancelling on and off. It works very well and there's nothing confusing about it.

The headphones make it simple to see which way around you are meant to wear them. Not always the case. There is an 'L' and 'R' printed inside the cans, but you quickly notice the difference between them is also indicated by a slight colour variation. At a glance it becomes very fast to know you're popping them on the right way around.

The fit is easy to find, too, with a smooth but well controlled adjustment that is hidden inside the head strap. No notches, but a firm squeeze or pull to shift the fit to the right place for you.

The ear cups pop off magnetically to make them easily replaceable. I've had hassles in the past with companies not maintaining a spare parts range beyond the first few years for ear cups, but I have a lot of faith in Sonos to do this better than most given its long term support for its speaker hardware.

The biggest physical disappointment is the carry case. It is admirably made of post-consumer recycled plastics, but it has a fibrous fabric finish that quickly captures dust, hairs, and general detritus. Living in a house with two fluffy cats, I now take a lot of their fluff with me wherever I go with this case.

But overall, the simplicity of the headset and its physical controls are a refreshing design choice.

Battery life is definitely solid, with comfortable performance that lasts a few days of listening if you wear them through most of business hours with noise cancelling switched on. The recharge rate gives 3 hours of listening in just 3 minutes, so they top up very nicely to keep you going. A full charge from 0% is a three hour cruise.

Wear Detection is also a nice quality of life feature, pausing what you're listening to when you lift the headphones off your ears. I've fumbled about often enough trying to pause a podcast to hear what someone is telling me without losing my place. It's not a unique feature, but it's a very useful one.

Sound quality

Going along with the nice hardware choices comes an excellent audio experience. Honestly, it'd been a while for me between times wearing full size wireless headphones, with earbuds having taken over most of my general listening needs. It was great to be reminded of the broader presence here, and why the convenience of earbuds isn't always best if you really want to disappear into great sound.

Along with running over Bluetooth 5.4 with support for connection to two devices for fast switching, the USB-C port will let you use a wired connection if you're on a flight or somewhere else that needs you to jack in. The box comes with the USB-C to USB-C cable suited to both charging and wired connectivity, as well as a USB-C to 3.5mm connector.

The Sonos Ace supports immersive audio formats like Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos. It offers positional Spatial Audio for all listening, which I found more distracting than immersive when I'm just listening to a podcast or normal music, so I switched it off in most contexts. But if it's your thing, it's there.

These are also very good active noise cancelling headphones, with a good microphone array working hard to dull the outside world. Of course, noise cancelling headphones also need to offer an option to hear the world around you to compete with best in class these days, and the Sonos Ace has that too. Dubbed 'Aware' mode here, it's actually one of the best and clearest I've heard.

There are some rudimentary EQ options in the Sonos app, but overall the out of the box experience didn't feel like it needed tweaking to feel like it was in the right zone for me.

At $699 these would be a hard sell to anyone who has invested in a good set of wireless noise cancellers in the past five years. They're great, an excellent next purchase, but not something to compel an upgrade for anyone happy with their current headphones. Unless...

Sonos integration

Perhaps the biggest reason someone might be considering the Sonos Ace is because they're headphones and they're part of the Sonos ecosystem. If you're keen on that idea because you've made Sonos a big part of your household lifestyle, then there are indeed good reasons to make the leap.

The Sonos app has copped a fair amount of grief in recent times, and not without merit. The big overhaul it received earlier this year made some confusing choices and harder to use in many cases. So we're not saying the Sonos Ace gets an amazing app that sets it apart from the rest.

The number one win for Sonos soundbar users is the ability to very simply switch your TV listening from the soundbar to the Ace within the app. One tap and it switches. Over the years I've used a few headphones with my TV to enjoy movies and shows while the kids were asleep. The Sonos Ace is the easiest and best performing option I've ever used for this task.

My big wishlist feature for Sonos is to let you use two pairs of Sonos Ace on the same soundbar. It's something no one has done before, but for parents of young kids? To sit together and watch TV with full Dolby Atmos support while the house remains silent? It would be a dream option.

I'm always bullish about Sonos adding these kinds of features after it launches a product. It has a grand history of firmware updates that makes its hardware better over time. You don't want to bank on it, but you can expect long-term support for the performance quality of hardware you buy from the company.

Overall

As I alluded to above, the Sonos Ace confidently joins the ranks of high-end consumer noise cancelling wireless headphones right out of the gate. Comfortable, highly usable, and nice audio performance sets them right alongside the offerings from Sony, Apple, Bose, and Sennheiser.

At $699, if you're not a Sonos user and don't plan on buying a Sonos soundbar, I'd steer you toward the Sony or Bose offerings for $200 less. And I'd choose these over the Airpods Max which are $200 more.

But if you have been thinking you might want a Sonos soundbar in your living room, then I'd say "yes, definitely do that" and also suggest that these headphones will give you some great bonus use cases in your home when you do.

In 2016 I really wanted an HTC Vive VR system, but it wasn't available in Australia. So when I headed over to Computex in Taiwan that year, I found a store that had the unit in stock and bought one to bring home with me.

Turns out the box fit just right in my suitcase. I may have abandoned a few clothes to make it fit – but worth it.

We installed the light boxes in our living room and have enjoyed room scale fun times pretty regularly ever since. We've had phases where we fade out of using it, but then someone gets the itch again and myself and my now teenage kids dives back in. It's been a zero regrets purchase as a 'living in the future' form of family entertainment.

We still use that original HTC Vive, but the technology has iterated many times since. When I've tested other units over the years I can see where the improvements have been but they've never quite been enough of a leap forward to make me want to pony up and replace our existing kit with a newer setup.

So here we are in 2024. For a few months, HTC loaned me an HTC Vive XR Elite to spend some time with. It's a stand alone VR/AR unit with its own app store, though it can also stream games from our existing Steam VR games library.

I was a little confused about how the parts worked together when I unboxed it, but then realised it can operate in two ways: as a very light pair of goggles while tethered to power at your desk, or as a full headset with a battery pack for free flowing use.

When you pop on the headset it needs you to set the usage area, which is a pretty easy process. I moved regularly between my office and living room. It was easy enough to redefine the space each time, though it would be cool if it had a memory system for areas it has been used in before.

If you want all the technicals, some people have done the deep dive on this better than I can. As I said earlier, I've used many headsets over the years and while the tech specs were always better than my OG Vive, the experience was never so much better I was sad to give it back. This time was different.

The Vive XR Elite felt like the step up in resolution and experience I hadn't had before. From the launch hub where you can see the room around you alongside the menus, it feels more integrated with life instead of a separate 'place' you disappear into.

You can also control navigation without using the physical controllers. It's far from perfect, but being able to point and pinch to activate options is a comfortable and fast way to just get on with the things you want to do.

Overall, the HTC Vive XR Elite is a more comfortable and more capable experience eight years on from where it all began. But have we come far enough?

Ever since that first Vive, we have talked about how close VR has been to 'prime time'. And every year that passes, we seemed to never quite get there.

It's not the only technology that lives in that "in five years we'll all be doing this" zone. But it's certainly one of the most consistent to have been regularly sitting in that window since I first got to play Dactyl Nightmare at the Powerhouse Museum back in '91 or '92.

What is consistent is the feeling that whenever I jump back into a VR headset I'm so pleased I have this experience in my life. I love that HTC has continued to support the category and has found some solid niche markets to serve across industrial and business sectors alongside still giving people like me a tool that lets me explore virtual worlds for fun, drama, and sheer fascination.

I always tell people that it is an amazing experience. But I still struggle to recommend it as a purchase to people who don't seem deeply interested in this sense of exploration. You still need to really want to do it, not just be curious about it.

What the HTC Vive XR Elite shows me is that VR devices are definitely getting easier to use, and the quality of experience has dramatically improved. But they remain far harder to use than a smartphone or a smart TV, and that really is too much for most people who don't want to fuss about with the technicalities of mapping their VR space – as easy as it has now become.

With Meta pushing harder for consumer VR success with the Quest range and Apple now offering its Apple Vision Pro, we see similar struggles continue for the effort to make this technology go 'mainstream' no matter which company is driving.

Perhaps the road ahead has its answer: wearing anything larger than a pair of glasses that requires more than 10 seconds of effort to operate is just too much for most people – regardless of how incredible the experiences are that lurk behind that headset.

Virtual Reality headsets are one of the most incredible pieces of technology ever achieved. The tracking, the optics, the engineering in putting a headset together. Utterly remarkable to the point where it belies the marvels within.

The XR Elite is a great example of something so well engineered we struggle to comprehend what it is and instead nitpick over the wished for future it hasn't quite achieved yet.

I can understand why many remain reluctant. VR is not as simple as watching TV or playing a game on a phone or PC. I can implore people to try it out when they have a chance because it really is incredible what's possible in VR today.

How far have we come? As a technical device, a very long way. We no longer need the lighthouses I have for tracking my old headset, with simple and elegant tracking that is very intuitive to use. We have high quality pass through cameras that keep you connected to the outside world. We have displays that are far better than they used to be – but in the ideal future will be sharper and brighter and wider.

At an experience level, VR maybe hasn't come very far at all? In that people like me love it, but others are yet to be convinced it's worth the effort (regardless of how simple the 'effort' has now become). We put on a headset, we navigate menus to launch applications, and after a period of time usually measured in minutes we feel like it's time to exit and get back to the real world.

Solving that second part is far from simple. And I doubt it sits on the "five years from now" timeline. But for now, for people like me, devices like the XR Elite are excellent and very much something I want to keep spending time in whether the 'mainstream' shift happens anytime soon or not.

The concept was simple. Play cards until you 'explode' but you also have cards that help you not explode. Last one not exploded wins.

The magic of Exploding Kittens was always the art and the card text, making the whole experience a fun time with genuine laughs that is family friendly without being bland. It is family friendly in a way that embraces that everyone can laugh at a fart joke.

There's a lot of credit for the style being so successful thanks to Matthew Inman, the brains behind one of the greatest online comics, The Oatmeal. For 15 years it has been beloved by terminally online people of all ages, and Inman brings that same sense of dark, weird humour and intellectual curiosity to Exploding Kittens.

The other big credit is Elan Lee, a former Xbox Game Designer who also created some of the most successful Alternate Reality Games (ARG) to life when the concept first emerged. We're talking right back in 2001 for a deep conceptual experience around the launch of the film Artificial Intelligence. And the 'I Love Bees' ARG for the launch of Halo 2.

Between them, they are two exceptionally talented designers who instilled fun game ideas built on great concepts and uncomplicated play that really are suited to family fun – or the same game played drunkenly with adult friends will also deliver a good time.

The first card game was so successful Inman and Lee were able to launch a whole games company under the same name, and now Exploding Kittens releases more games each year. The local distribution team sent me copies of their most physical releases plus a spin-off of the original, Zombie Kittens, to check out in the midst of this 'Toy Catalogue Season' to take a look.

The simple review is that they're all proof that the Exploding Kittens team knows how to thread that 'family' needle just right to make things fun, silly, and approachable to anyone who turns up at your table.

Throw Throw Burrito and Let's Hit Each Other With Fake Swords are both in a very different category to Exploding Kittens but demonstrate how the aesthetic and approach to game design work so well. The cute-with-bite style is endearing, and the physicality of games that let you throw stuff at each other or hit each other are hard to beat.

All the games are built around stacking and collecting cards and you are forced to jump up and do the throwing (super soft toy burritos) and hitting (soft but durable cute mini swords) to entertain yourselves and everyone else who is playing. Rules are designed with family vibes in mind, like giving advantages to the shorter sword fighter to keep things fair.

Our teenagers were pretty quick to get excited about bringing friends over to whack with swords or lob burritos at. How many games say it's OK to literally throw toys or hit each other? Especially doing it in a way that doesn't feel like it's going to cost anyone an eye?

Zombie Kittens is a recent addition to a growing list of Exploding Kittens variants. In this one the new idea is that some players will not simply stop themselves exploding but actually bring themselves back from the dead — and bring other players back alongside themselves.

Plus every Exploding Kittens variant is also made so you can combine them up with the others and play on a bigger scale – more players, more ways to explode, more ways to avoid being exploded.

All these games are listed as ages 7+ and I'd agree with that framing. They're all also rapid-fire experiences that won't take hours to setup, teach, and play. These are the kinds of games where you play a few quick rounds over half an hour and might find you just keep playing for the fun of it for longer.

There's a very online kind of personality these days, living with a head full of memes and digital touchstones that they bring into the rest of their offline lives. You can taste that deeply online sensibility in all the Exploding Kittens games, and if you have people in your household who are that kind of person these are perfect games for some quick silly fun.

There's sale prices on during this toy catalogue window until July 10. Over at JB Hi-Fi you can get Zombie Kittens for $8 off its usual $40 price. Throw Throw Burrito has the same price and discount, while Let's Hit Each Other With Fake Swords is usually $45 but gets a $9 discount right now.

Terminally online folks in search of a bit of offline fun would do well to have these in the cupboard.

Sonos Ace is a full over ear headphone that promises all-day battery (and a 3 hour charge in 3 minutes) and active noise cancelling that includes an 'Aware' mode so you can hear the world around you when you need to know what's going on. You can also use Wear Detection to pause music automatically when you take them off instead of trying to find the pause button. Plus they're promising a big focus on comfort for all day wear.

The real Sonos advantage is the in-home experience. Sonos Ace is targeting features like easy takeover of your Sonos living room soundbar so your TV output goes direct to the headphones instead to watch with big sound without waking the family. Plus this also delivers a full Dolby Atmos experience that maps against the room so when you move your head the sound stays where it's meant to be.

I've also noted they're selling two pairs at a slight discount and pointing out you can both watch TV together with immersive sound, which is a feature I'm not sure you can get from other wireless headphones that can connect to a TV. So that's a big win for quiet listening with a friend.

Sonos also announced a Roam update, with the Roam 2 portable speaker offering 'easier controls and quicker setup'. And it says they're now doing 10 hours of continuous playback on one charge. There's also a new range of colours (orange, green, and blue arrive to hang out with the white and black) to have more fun on the move.

The Sonos Ace is listed at $699 and the Roam 2 is $299.

The Pixel 8a might be the right answer for most people, with Google starting to flex its AI credentials throughout the Pixel handset in ways that make fans of the Google ecosystem feel completely at home here.

Apple has been the master of unifying hardware and software in its devices. With the past two years of AI shifting into the spotlight, Google's emphasis on AI in the 8-series Pixel phones made plenty of sense. With the Pixel 8a receiving the same G3 processor as the Pixel 8 Pro, we see that they mean it. AI demands processing power, and getting the same chip here means we get all the same AI capabilities at less than half the price.

There's not much to say about the hardware this time around. Very similar to its predecessor, ever so slight adjustments, feels good in the hand and the OLED screen looks great. Phones are slabs of glass and aluminium differentiated by what they do more than what they look like. Though if you want the colour pop option, I think the 7a 'Sea' was better than the 8a 'Bay' (both are blue, but Sea was a softer lighter blue).

This camera is not exactly a camera anymore

The camera does a great job but this is where AI has been doing a lot of work for many years before ChatGPT got everyone excited / scared for the future. Google is a master of taking what the image sensor captured and improving it so much it is a wonderful image that represents reality but wasn't exactly what the sensor captured on its own.

I don't want to debate this right now, but smartphone cameras aren't really just 'cameras' anymore. And to that end the Pixel 8a is one of the best not-quite-cameras you can get in a smartphone, and it doesn't get carried away with the oversaturation or image 'boosting' you can sometimes see in these AI processing systems. It's subtle and feels accurate to what you saw with your eyes. That's all we can ask for without buying a serious camera with a very large sensor and very big piece of glass on the lens to capture reality as it was in the moment.

This is especially the case with the new Magic Editor features, which not only give you the Magic Eraser to remove things you don't want. You can even reposition your subject in the frame for a more pleasing finished image – but that wasn't what happened in the real world. Audio Magic Eraser is a big win for video too, helping to remove background noise like noise cancelling headphones after the fact.

Add the incredible Night Sight photography, Best Take to capture everyone's best smile over a series of shots, correcting for blur even if it's pretty bad, and Super Res Zoom for long range photos that look as clear as if you had an optical zoom lens? Smartphone cameras are doing magic tricks now and all the Pixel 8 devices have some of the best tricks around.

AI superpowers

Pixel 8a gets access to a lot of new AI capabilities built on Google's Gemini. There's the new Circle to Search option, whether it's text, an image, or a video, and there's summary tools for all your email and Google Docs use cases.

The 'Assistant' features here are better than any other phone, working across anything from quick voice typing efforts to full fledged Ask Gemini helpfulness. And the Call Screen feature is a massive win given how many spam calls we get these days. I'm often dealing with a dozen a week so I've just stopped answering my phone. Call Screen helps give me my calls back.

Choosing a phone is choosing an ecosystem

The Pixel 8a really feels like the clearest picture yet that when you choose a smartphone you are choosing an ecosystem. Not just the iOS vs Android difference anymore, but one where the hardware maker is aiming to integrate a layer of AI-powered services to elevate the device for this new era.

Google has a distinct advantage here. Open AI got the jump on them with ChatGPT, but Gemini has been closing the gap and no one has better infrastructure than Google for delivering real-time cloud processing to a device at global scale.

Google holds the greatest capacity to continue to accelerate its AI features and roll them out to every Pixel owner at a pace few others could follow. Samsung? Apple? They have the money, but they don't have the infrastructure in place today. As for the wider market of Android manufacturers, they largely have to hope that Google lets more AI features flow through to core Android functions. That does happen, of course, but Google is clearly on a path to making its hardware the home of a uniquely Google experience.

And there's a promise here of seven years of security, operating system and feature updates that will keep things in great shape until the end of the decade. I doubt every future feature will be able to run on the G3 chip, but it's good to know you'll be running a device that will get appropriate updates for many years to come.

'a' isn't for entry anymore

The a series used to be an on ramp to Pixel phones, but at $849 this is not exactly a budget handset compared to many other Android phones.

But it doesn't seem like Google is worried about what the wider market options look like. It's $850 less than the Pixel 8 Pro and $350 less than the Pixel 8, making its own line up split up nicely across price points.

Clicking around the Pixel 8a search results, there are more than a few "$200 gift card" or other deal sweeteners to make this price look better out of the gate.

If you are someone who wants to be all in on Google's AI features across its cameras, organisation, assistant, cloud storage, and call management services, Pixel is your hub device for the future. With the G3 chip and all those software features, the Pixel 8a is a new kind of flagship for getting all the features you need without spending big to get them.

'DockKit' is an Apple standard that means the dock can offer its tracking utility to all your iOS video apps. And to make it extra versatile it also features a battery for up to 5 hours operation away from the desk (or dropped on an office table if you need to take a call in the next room). Plus the base includes a tripod thread so you can turn every tripod into a mobile live video tracking system.

The fact there is no third-party messing about needed makes this a huge step forward. So many 'auto' mounts before this require using a specific app which often lacks features people really want from their favourite video apps. DockKit means you get the good app and the fancy tracking all at once.

At $299 this is an absolute winner. Now I'm annoyed I bought a new MagSafe desk charger a few weeks ago that just sits there like a sad chump.

The big reveal was the new iPad Pro getting the next-gen 3nm M4 processor before any of the Mac range, which Apple says has allowed for the thinnest design ever. Not of any iPad, but they're claiming it is the thinnest device Apple has ever made – even thinner than the iPod nano from back in the day. (The Apple Pencil is thicker, and so is the USB-C cable connector).

The iPad Pro and the iPad Air are now both available in 11-inch and 13-inch variants, which is a big win for those who don't feel they need all the grunt of a Pro but still want that bigger 13-inch size. I'm betting there will be plenty of those selling fast.

The iPad Air moves to the M2 processor, which the old Pro was using, while the new iPad Pro gets the M4. Apple says it sees 1.5x CPU performance over the M2, plus it enables hardware support for the AV1 video codec and a range of new features like a very slick Final Cut Pro multicam system using four iPhones wirelessly linked in via a new Final Cut Camera app. Can't wait to hear what the mobile event pros think of that one.

iPad Pro also gets a new Tandem OLED screen, which uses two OLED panels stacked to deliver enhanced brightness. With all their extra screen tech in the mix Apple is calling this an Ultra Retina XDR display which is starting to become quite a mouthful. There is also a nanotexture option now, which seems like a big plus for serious pros who want to reduce glare while working in any environment.

There's also a new iPad Pro keyboard that Apple says feels "just like using a MacBook". I used to really like the old Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro but the keys were not ideal for writing for long periods – so this seems a very good step forward. It also includes function keys like a MacBook too.

The new Apple Pencil Pro is a nice update, offering new features based on squeezing the grip to bring up new menus, plus haptic feedback on board. Brushes on a canvas can also follow the rotation of the pencil to create more natural brush strokes and the hover can reveal the exact orientation of the brush before you press down.

For those after the tried and true base level iPad, there's no new offering here but the price is now starting from $599 for 64GB or $849 for 256GB. Given how many people just want an iPad to watch videos, that entry model is a pretty good little interactive TV screen.

The Interview PRO

A new broadcast-quality handheld condenser mic that works with the RODE Series IV Wireless system. That means you can use it with your Wireless PRO, Wireless ME, or Wireless GO II systems. I've been using a mic-style mount for a wireless unit so this feels a lot more fit for purpose (though the other setup has worked great so far). It also pairs directly with a RODECaster Pro II, Duo, or Streamer X setup.

Rode says the mic will deliver 200m line of sight range plus 32GB of onboard storage and a dedicated start/stop button to offer 40 hours of recording directly on the mic. I'm always a bit wary of using condenser mics in uncontrolled environments as they can pick up a lot of background noise, but if you know what you're doing you know when you want condenser over dynamic. The Interview PRO is $399.

The Phone Cage

You might have seen these kinds of mounting systems for smartphones before, but here we have a cage that attaches via the Apple MagSafe system which is also now the Qi2 system for the wider smartphone ecosystem. You get a dazzling 33 mounting thread points and five cold shoe slots so you can setup your mobile video rig just right. The Phone Cage is $199.

Magnetic Mount

The Magnetic Mount is a smaller, more modular cold shoe mounting system for MagSafe / Qi2 than the Phone Cage, and I think it's my favourite. Just magnetically attached the mount and you can then attach whatever accessories you need to the phone so you carry all your key tools with minimum fuss.

It has a modular set of three removable arms with handles, 1/4-inch thread, and tripod mounting options so you can setup just the way you want with light, microphone, wireless receiver, or whatever you need. The Magnetic Mount is $149 and I'm getting this one right away.

All up it's another really nice accessory line up from Rode, which keeps delivering great audio hardware that has a solid understanding of what people need in the field.

I've been a long-time user of rechargeables for traditional batteries, with a swag of Panasonic Eneloops serving my needs for over a decade. They're amazing and I'd hate to think how many batteries I'd have had to bin if I wasn't using these.

The big issue I've never managed to deal with in my Eneloop era is still needing a bunch to be always ready to go. If I'm on the road for an event it's a struggle to keep those Eneloops recharged, so I end up with about 16 of them filling a chunk of bag space.

Enter Paleblue and its USB-C rechargeable AA, AAA, C, D and 9V batteries. A pack (four AA/AAA, two C/D/9V)) comes with a single USB-C cable that splits to charge all batteries at once, and the recharge time is pretty much right on one hour. Having two sets and a good USB-C powerbank will keep a device up and running all day long without the added fuss of loads of charged and uncharged batteries rummaging around your bag.

Each Paleblue battery also includes an LED light at the top of the battery that turns green when it is back at a full charge.

This is a category that seemed like it might have hit the end of its evolution. But it's great to see a product like Paleblue come along and give us one of those "it's obvious" updates that makes rechargeable AA and AAA batteries so much easier to use on the go.

Standard packs are 4x AA or AAA batteries or 2x C, D, or 9V, and all are priced at $49.95. There's also some nice bulk kit options at a discount if you're keen to swap out all your existing battery usage at once.

Given they're good for 1000 battery cycles, that's far, far cheaper than always buying standard batteries – and far better for the environment too.

Jabra has long been a business audio leader. The question of what it means to be a 'business' audio company in a hybrid world has been up for grabs, but both of these units offer the high performance of business blended with the flexibility of working whenever and wherever you want.

The Evolve2 65 Flex is a nice, superlight active noise cancelling Bluetooth headset with a foldable design that makes it a breeze to keep in your bag. It also has a nice little wireless charging stand option so it's always at the ready.

But my favourite was the Speak2 75 Bluetooth speakerphone that makes any coworking meeting room into a solid conference call space. 4x beamforming microphones mean you can drop this hockey puck on a table and gather around, getting excellent speaker output and microphone performance for remote attendees. There are guide lights that also glow green or red to flag if the unit thinks it's getting a good audio signal or not. And with 32 hours active use battery life it'll outlast a busy road trip.

Not every business accessory maker is getting this hybrid work era right, but it's great to see Jabra is adapting its line up very nicely to the new era.

It feels like a lot of money for a very specific device far more limited in scope than those brilliant new portable PC gaming devices. But then I think about how often someone wants to play a game in our house but can't take over the TV for long enough to go deep for a solid session of fun in a big RPG or a group shooter online with their friends.

Should we buy a second console for another room in the house? Or would a Portal let someone curl up on the couch and have a great time while they also keep their eye on whatever TV show everyone else is enjoying too?

And it's roughly a third of the price of one of those portable PC handhelds...

One console controller these days costs around $100. Adding a nice 8-inch screen to the middle of a solid DualSense controller for an extra $229? Starts to make plenty of sense for anyone who knows they don't get enough access to the big TV for game time.

Just look at that picture. What the hell are they doing? But this is the kind of thing you just can't capture in a photograph. It's like taking a photo of a nightclub dance floor with a flash – the difference between an image of it and doing it are chalk and cheese.

Turns out, Immersive Gamebox is a genuinely good time.

The concept has rolled out in many locations around the world, so it arrives in Australia with some level of polish in place. And the list of games you can choose from offers plenty to suit whatever age group you fall into.

There's Paw Patrol for kids as young as 3, Angry Birds and Shaun the Sheep for 5+ (though I'm a big fan of Shaun myself), and for the teens and adults you get themes like Squid Game and Psychadelic Mansion. Most of the younger kid targeted sessions run for 30 minutes so they don't get bored before it's over (Paw Patrol is longer), and for everyone else sessions last 60 minutes.

The 'budget VR' crack earlier does make sense when you see a group of people standing in a room big enough for six people to move around each other very comfortably and interact with the walls. No goggles required but you are all wearing special hats that track where you are in the room. The interactions with the projections are based on your movement and some pretty precise tracking of how, when and where you touch the walls.

With the teens I had in tow, they wanted to do the Squid Game experience. And through the course of an hour we played many of the games featured in the Netflix series redesigned for Immersive Gamebox fun times.

For example, the Dalgona game (the cutting honeycomb shapes one) required you to move your whole body around the room to cut a large version of the shape out projected on the wall. And the time limit meant you were really pressed for time. The sound effects, the timer, the friends screaming at you to 'be careful' and 'go faster' made for a very entertaining pressure cooker.

This is a common theme: finesse plus time limits that feel very well tested against the task at hand to hit a pressure sweet spot. Other game formats included memory tasks which you need teamwork to solve, and the classic Red Light, Green Light game that was impressively unforgiving if you were not standing still enough.

60 minutes felt like a very nicely timed experience for our teens and myself, with the fun feeling solid throughout and the design giving you a sense of being warmed into activities that grew more challenging and varied nicely along the way.

All four of our teens said they would definitely want to come again with friends to try out other games – there's seven 60 minute experiences to choose from – and that it felt like a more social alternative to a trip to the movies or going to a classic game arcade. Almost all experiences are a collaborative event, with Temple of Coins the main 'competition' game option.

And while there are the incredible Zero Latency options out there for room scale VR as a group activity, (we've chatted to their CEO on our podcast) this has plenty of positives as an alternative option for an immersive good time that is a little less intensive and reduces plenty of fuss. It's also right there next to the city in Darling Harbour. Easy to get to, easy to play.

PRICE UPDATE (Oct 2024): At launch we acknowledged that the prices seemed too steep if you're a parent paying for a group of 5 to play, "but if they can nudge that closer to $30 it's definitely a fun way to spend an afternoon". Well, they've listened. Pricing is now $21 per person for 30-minute games and $30 per person for 60-minute games.

That really brings the experience in line with most other per head entertainment experiences out there. If you are big on the wider Merlin Entertainment venues it gets even cheaper with their annual pass. Great to see they've made an adjustment to make this an easy recommendation for a very fun and unique space to explore.

What's been particularly great with the Lab is how it has continued to up the game, adding not just new colours but also whole new finishes and aesthetics to give us plenty of reasons to go custom instead of buying off the rack.

We've seen Pride, Camo, and Shift colour options added to the Lab, and now Vapor has arrived. This is a particularly nice option, with a wash of colour and translucency that give a subtle but entirely extra finish to your controller.

My fave body styles? For a long time my top pick would be Astral Shift, but if I was buying today Stormcloud Vapour and Fire Vapour are very tempting.

And if you just have to have the coolest, there's a pre-order for this Dream Vapor Special Edition which adds purple rubberised side grips and soft pink ABXY buttons that you just can't get via the DIY Design Lab. Get it for $99.95.

Xbox Wireless Controller – Dream Vapor Special Edition | Xbox

Vaporise your competition with the Xbox Wireless Controller – Dream Vapor featuring a dynamic pink and purple colour swirl that’s unique to each controller.

Xbox.com

It'll also get you a Dynamic Background for your console home screen to make everything matchy matchy in a good way.

Didn't we all just remember we forgot to buy ourselves something special last Christmas? Treat yourself!

The new hybrid wall charger is a very smart addition to the ranks, offering a 5K Power Bank built into the wall charger so you have power with you all the time without having separate devices to stay topped up before you get to where you're going.

You get dual USB-C / USB-A ports with fast charging on USB-C, and you get interchangeable power plugs to suit US, EU, UK and AU power points.

The device I wish this had updated is my Belkin international travel charger that offers two USB-A ports and two Australian power points. I'd pay serious money if that had evolved to have USB-C fast chargers and a power bank inside. A boy can dream...

But my actual complaint is Belkin's refusal to give this thing a proper name. Having to call it the BoostCharge Hybrid Wall Charger + Power Bank 5K with Travel Adapter Kit is ridiculous. It's faster to ask for "that new Belkin hybrid charger power bank thing". It's $119.95.

ZenScreen Fold

Use it as two 12.5-inch 1080p screens, or one 17.3-inch 2560x1920 screen. Landscape or panorama, with a stand option to make it work as a triple screen setup for your laptop.

There's so many ways to use it – check out the official ZenScreen Fold page to learn all its tricks. It's perfectly happy being a stand alone portable screen for game consoles, cameras, or whatever else you need to hook up and use.

ZenBook DUO (2024)

Asus has been playing with similar designs in the past, and this latest ZenBook DUO does the best job yet of maintaining a sleek laptop for compact use and then easily switch up to dual screen modes in a range of layouts.

Thankfully, Asus offers up this graphic to show all the ways it can be used instead of making me describe them. Check it out.

Laptops have a lot of competition from tablets and phones these days. Both the ZenScreen Fold and the ZenBook DUO add so much versatility – which is exactly where laptops shine above other device formats.

As is the CES way, these will all launch later in 2024.

You can dive into all the big details at the Gemini page on Deep Mind, and there's been some complaints about how overly polished Google has made the demo reels. But strip that away and we do see a tool that is a big jump forward from where Bard was in October.

I've used ChatGPT for experimentation all year and it's great to see Google starting to take us somewhere that offers increasingly valid competition. There's still a way to go in terms of experience and the 'feel' of getting what you wanted, but the gap has well and truly closed.

Its biggest trick? A true 'multimodal' model that doesn't separate the tasks of text, image, audio, video and code. It's a new approach and, again, while we're not perfectly wowed on day one, this could be a big new angle for rapid progress into more seamless task requests that have inherent multimodal complexity.

It's still the earliest stages of the new generative AI era of computing. The next two years will see significant changes in how we engage with these new tools and the way they enhance life and business. But it's true OpenAI and Microsoft got a big headstart – now it's up to Google to flex its data muscle and see what it can deliver.

Remember: the future of your family videos is in so many ways for future generations. How much do we wish we had more photos and footage of our own ancestors? We cling to the handful we have from the first half of the 20th Century.

We now have the chance to make videos that add depth and a truer sense of 'being there' than ever. Don't ignore it as something that might be useful down the track. Capture the now so we build a better opportunity to look back on today tomorrow.

All reports suggest that we should do the same for landscape photography too. Apple Vision Pro turns landscapes into immersive photos that wrap around us. It's a powerful way to take yourself back to a time and place. Or for your great grandkids to go see where you were in their far distant past.

Embrace these opportunities. If you have the technology, use it.

Does charity give you a better win/win – you know, other than helping to cure cancer whether you win a prize or not?

Get in on the action here: Great Game On Cancer Giveaway

And if you're thinking 'well, I don't want to donate $100 and then get a $50 prize' I'll tell you you need to stop doing those kinds of maths on CHARITY but then I'd also tell you that they're giving out a prize for every $50 donated so if you give $200 you get FOUR PRIZES.

So what kinds of prizes? Big sponsors of the event include Xbox, EA, Logitech G, Turtle Beach, Nanoleaf, Bethesda, Twelve South, Satechi, PLAION ANZ, PAX Australia, Bungie, and heaps more. Big prizes in the pool include Xbox Series X and S consoles and an Outlaw Tek PC worth $2,000.

The target is to raise $50,000 and there's over 1,000 prizes on offer worth $74,000. Do the maths. You're a winner. Remember, Christmas is a time for GIVING. And if you happen to receive while you give – bonus!

And yes, there's a price tag to match.

The headset comes in black and white but has a very stylish design – understated but impactful. The headset runs on 40mm graphene diaphragms which Logitech calls a 'breakthrough' material for clarity and detail. The microphone runs at 16-bit 48kHz throughput for a high resolution clarity.

The base station is a real feature here, giving magnetic click in charging so you're always topped up and ready to go without the charge cable fuss. This is also where you connect your consoles and PC for quick switching to whatever you want to play, with both HDMI 2.1 and USB-C connectivity. PLUS there's simultaneous Bluetooth so you can mix Discord chat with game audio or whatever else you want to blend in - maybe keep an ear on your phone?

The Logitech G Astro A50X drops first half of 2024 and will retail for $749.95.

Now add other players blowing you up while you're just trying to get the hang of things and it becomes the kind of game that is very easy to bounce off when it feels like it's all a little too much.

Rare has noticed an opportunity to make the game a bit friendlier for both new players keen to learn the ropes and for veterans who just want to relax with a few friends from time to time. Thus, Safer Seas is born.

Looks great that they're including a range of questing options within Safer Seas, so you can still go adventuring – just without the other human players to mess with whatever pace you want to sail at. That includes the recent Pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island adventures, which look like a lot of fun.

It's one of those times when you can honestly say "there's never been a better time" for new players to give Sea of Thieves a test drive. Remember, it's free on Xbox Game Pass. Easy money.

There's a lot of big, big tech news right now. Here's some of the best writing I've seen on a lot of the subjects I think will define much of 2023 and beyond.

'Enshittification'

It's only January, but we need to make this a contender for 2023's Word of the Year. Brought to us by the team behind the new book Chokepoint Capitalism, it describes that journey many online platforms take from being amazingly fun and useful, which grows the audience, but then shifts the experience to serve corporate interests instead of users.

It's a concept we've all seen in action over the past 15 years of socials.

The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok

Or how, exactly, platforms die.

WIREDCondé Nast

TikTok confirms that its own employees can decide what goes viral

Your For You page isn’t entirely automated.

The VergeMitchell Clark

Taste a good metaverse experience this weekend

Every Fortnite concert experience is incredible. If you have any interest in the future of entertainment experiences that blend art, music, and 3D worlds, these events are the perfect example for what's possible.

This weekend The Kid LAROI is the star. Usually these events last just a few days at most, but this time you have until April. But don't wait. Just install Fortnite (it's free) and check it out. Get a kid to help if you're scared of games for some reason.

The Kid LAROI announces ‘Fortnite’ experience featuring unreleased songs

The Kid LAROI has confirmed details of his Wild Dreams ‘Fortnite’ experience, which will include unreleased music

NMEAli Shutler

Media and AI on a collision course

CNET copped a lot of flack over the use of AI in producing finance articles for its money section. And rightly so in some regards. I don't hate the idea of using AI to do heavy lifting work in repetitive writing. But you really, really, REALLY need to get your disclosure right AND be carefully copyediting and verifying the output. That did not happen to an appropriate degree. There's a valid path to take here, but when you sit on the Journalism side of writing it feels like shaky ground to fail to carefully monitor what you publish.

CNET’s AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism

CNET’s AI-generated articles appear to show deep structural similarities, amounting to plagiarism, with previously published work elsewhere.

FuturismJon Christian

But then we have BuzzFeed talking about using AI to generate quizzes and this makes so much more sense. Cannon fodder content that is pure fun? I don't care who wrote it. Get the process right and it sounds fine to me.

BuzzFeed will start using AI to write quizzes and other content

Nothing like a spokesperson issuing assurances that BuzzFeed “remains focused on human-generated journalism” to make you feel good about the future of the news industry, right? The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on a staff memo at BuzzFeed that laid out plans for the digital med…

Nieman LabLaura Hazard Owen

Humans vs AI

Here's a few more fun stories on the battle between AI and humanity.

The Chess World’s New Villain: A Cat Named Mittens

A ruthless bot with an innocuous avatar is driving chess players crazy.

The Wall Street JournalAndrew Beaton and Joshua Robinson

Flamboyant Italian clothes defeat facial recognition without masks

They may be a little brutal on the eye, but Capable says its visually confusing and extremely pricey cotton knits are designed to throw off AI facial recognition systems, by fooling machine learning systems into thinking you’re an animal and not a human.

New AtlasCap_able

Wi-Fi Routers Used to Detect Human Locations, Poses Within a Room

Wireframe images generated by AI look pretty accurate compared to ground truth video feeds.

Tom's HardwareMark Tyson

Google taking fire on two fronts

Google has a lot to lose when it comes to its dominance in the search industry. This first piece puts things very clearly on what's been feeling wrong with Google Search for a long time and why the likes of ChatGPT can change our experience of hunting for answers online.

Google vs. ChatGPT told by aglio e olio

I hate monopolies and welcome our AI overlords

Margins by Ranjan Roy and Can DurukCan Duruk

With search ads being Google's digital version of the 'rivers of gold' from the newspaper classifieds era, it's interesting that they're now being sued over their dominance of the category.

Sometimes it feels like these lawsuits arrive at moments that feel like an inflection point – when maybe the scales were about to tip in a new direction anyway.

Google sued by US Dept of Justice over web ad monopoly

I’m feeling yucky

The RegisterThomas Claburn

Facebook is still a mess

Elon Musk has been doing Twitter plenty of favours to pull attention away from Facebook's track record on being a good and positive platform. But...

Facebook approved ads calling for murder of Brazilian president’s children | Boing Boing

Facebook’s gol’ durn algorithm is acting up again, say humans working at Meta, who apparently have no control over the automated system that approved ads calling for the murder of Brazi…

Boing BoingMark Frauenfelder

For Facebook addicts, clicking is more important than facts or ideology

Once clicking “share” becomes habitual, the content of what’s shared matters less.

Ars TechnicaJohn Timmer

This also leads into other interesting thinking on the question of misinformation.

Good news: Misinformation isn’t as powerful as feared! Bad news: Neither is information.

To people who publish facts, it’s appealing to think of them as powerful. But people’s belief systems go a lot deeper than facts.

Nieman LabJoshua Benton

And Finland has great lessons for us all on how to build media literacy into education from an early age – and why it's so important to do so.

How Finland Is Teaching a Generation to Spot Misinformation

The Nordic country is testing new ways to teach students about propaganda. Here’s what other countries can learn from its success.

NYTimesBy

Speaking of Twitter...

I check it now and then, but very rarely anymore. My daily drive is very much Mastodon now, with the arrival of Ivory by Tapbots really making it a pleasure in the way Twitter once was for me.

This story is a great piece looking at how the arrival of viewcounts does the opposite of what Musk thought it would do.

Twitter Tumbleweed Watch

The “view” count reveals a different story than Elon intended

The Future, Now and ThenDave Karpf

What the kids are up to??

I kept thinking Samsung's new Fold would be the next big thing in phones. Turns out an older kind of flip phone is back in fashion!

Gen Z has a new ‘vintage’ technology to obsess over | CNN Business

First, it was disposable cameras. Then it was low-rise jeans. Now, Gen-Z’s latest “vintage” obsession is the flip phone -- that mid-1990s era phone that has suddenly become oh so popular with millennials.

CNNRamishah Maruf

Let me know if you want more of these curated posts more often. Replies and reacts are great, but paid subs are best of all for helping me carve out more time to hunt down the most insightful and interesting coverage on what's next in digital.

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Saw an article headlined "AI is the end of writing". I'd argue it's the end of BAD writing. AI will deliver better than bad, and human writers will need to be great to be worth the premium over AI. (LinkedIn link)

The more I think on it the more I see a future where we do end 'bad' writing but we also see a surplus of deeply average work that starts to become highly identifiable and becomes the new white noise.

Canva has been a wonder for raising the baseline of DIY design. Good designers were as worried about it as some writers are now about what happens in an AI copy world. It automates a lot of basic design work so you can present an idea, social post or flyer with above average quality. But it hasn't and doesn't deliver the end of great, premium design.

Every industry has its practitioners who overcharge and underdeliver and both graphic design and copywriting have more than their fair share. Seeing these people pushed aside by smart tools that help people get more of the basics without spending big is a good thing.

But it's also true that you can quickly start to see Canva templates across the web. There's now a broad base of good-but-similar designs that do the job required but don't cause a beautiful friction in the mind to make you pay attention that great design achieves.

The thing is, plenty of great work is also being achieved through Canva. It just takes a little more time and more thought to use a good tool to achieve great results. Spending time to refine a design and set it apart from the stock templates can make all the difference.

I don't doubt the same path is ahead for AI copywriting. Lots of words that start to feel like a template. People who learn to use these tools to push for deeper quality and then refine and edit the first drafts will see better results.

Above that, there remains room for a tier of great work that is carefully crafted to capture attention and engage a reader with careful thought and useful provocation.

We still have craftspeople even as furniture has been industrialised. It's a very different business today. It's a smaller business today (hello media industry). But great craftspeople still shine bright.

We're just a few years past the 200th anniversary of the Luddites smashing looms over the industrialisation of textile work. Manual jobs have certainly been lost through industrialisation again and again. But the new processes also create new opportunities for great minds to explore.

(A gross simplification of the issues of the Luddites – the problem wasn't the tools so much as the shift toward a system where the people were no longer respected as experts and were now treated as menial machine workers as factory owners took all the profits for themselves...)

If you can think of past skills that have all but disappeared due to automation I'd love to hear them. Cobblers? Milliners? Are these due to automation? Or globalisation and disposable clothing standards? As ever, the line between whether an issue lies in the technologies or in the social systems is a tricky one.

Hit me with your own thoughts.

It was 1999, and I had just heard about the Sony Memory Stick. At sizes from 4MB to 128MB at launch, I just couldn't see how this little card would be able to handle the memory needs of the future.

That version of my brain spent a lot of time thinking about how many you would need to carry around, or keep in storage with your backups. It was right around the time we were moving on from 100MB Iomega Zip drives and writeable CDs and DVDs were making fixed storage relatively easy to have Gigabytes at your fingertips. What use was a few megs in a tiny plastic shell?

Obviously, the problem I had was failing to conceive of how quickly flash memory would double and double and double its way into the gigs, making the need to ever take one out of a device practically unnecessary for all but the most serious professional use cases. Flash read/write speeds are far better than optical media, and far more robust in rugged conditions.

In a nutshell, flash memory cards rule. But in 1999 I just couldn't see how that nascent storage format would find its place in the world.

In some ways there was some awkward marketing that pitched the Memory Stick to a variety of uses. I did get distracted by those ideas of using these relatively expensive cards as archival storage, which seemed crazy – and certainly didn't play out over the long run.

Many technologies and platforms face that challenge. A great solution in search of the right problem. The marketing team needs to fire a few flares until the right market fit embraces its full potential.

The potential of the New Thing

If you like playing the New Thing game, it's important to consider which features make something special and which drawbacks could evolve over time to either fade into the background or become the extra features that push the New Thing over the top.

I really do come back to my Memory Stick error a lot. If I'm ever in the process of dismissing something new very quickly I try to step back and think about what aspects of the idea would be great if its shortcomings got out of the way. What does the version 4 look like?

It certainly means I try to take an optimistic view on a lot of new tech. Aiming to see potential is certainly a lot more fun – and a better mental exercise. I've kept a view since the early days that there is long-term potential in blockchain as an immutable ledger of tokens – not as a replacement for currency and speculative money making. Independently verified scarcity in a digital world can become a feature, but probably only after the era of HODL insanity is left behind.

By aiming for the longer view, it also helps to see past short-term hype. For mine, it helped me see Clubhouse was just a feature, not a product. (Slack Huddles is my favourite professional implementation of the feature). And why I have always maintained that 8K televisions are a joke under all but the most extreme circumstances.

Virtual Reality hasn't quite played out as I had hoped. Mass adoption is hard for a tech that has failed to scale its hardware to something cheaper and easier to use, and for social features we're still a long way from the install base that makes it come to life for the average user. But for those who love VR, the experience right now is great – it hasn't failed as a user experience for enthusiasts, in the same way that Linux serves its core audience perfectly well.

Comparing VR to Linux might sting a little – on either side of that line.

AI right now is in that space where there is so much potential that it can be hard to see the long future. The 21st Century calculator for language and art? A plagiarism service? A knowledge engine? All can be true. But I do feel baffled when I see some folks describing it as little more than a clever trick.

Of all the technologies today that speak to a very different future in coming years, the arrival of powerful new AI models holds the greatest revolutionary potential. That doesn't mean entirely good. It can mean wonderful and terrible things all at once. Just like the Internet itself. Just like social networks.

As each aspect grows and emerges, it's important to consider the long view on how they are managed and regulated and integrated into our work and our lives.

This book is designed to deliver self-directed learning that adapts to the girl's existing knowledge and take her on a journey to become a powerful and independent woman.

“If the item of stolen property had been anything other than a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is different—it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society.”

If AI language models were a band, the past few months have been one of those "overnight success" moments. Years in the making, indeed two years since the GPT-3 model first emerged, the arrival of the simple ChatGPT user interface has made Open AI's work a revelation.

Interface is everything, though. So it's a perfect time to think about what a just right interface applied to a Large Language Model (LLM) AI can achieve in the years ahead.

There's a lot of talk about its potential to destroy jobs, ruin education, and overwhelm the Internet with misinformation. All this and more is possible. I believe this is a true 'next era' turning point, set to be remembered alongside the arrival of the internet and then smartphones. And like those other technologies, it's the 'when' of significant change that remains the big question.

What excites my noodle so much is how a shift in our search paradigm can create a new 'knowledge engine' experience that has been held back by the existing revenue model at the biggest search company in the world.

Engaging a Knowledge Engine

Today, when we ask a question in the world's biggest search engine we get a list of links. The top few links have paid to be there, and it's up to us as users to scan the titles and snippets to see if a click will lead us to the information we seek.

In some cases, Google also offers a very short answer to our question, drawn from a partner website. These short answers have arguably been bad for the rest of the web. Google saves the user a click, delivering less traffic to the source it was drawn from, but making the user happier on that occasion that they learned what they needed with a minimum of fuss.

But Google also knows that delivering nothing but answers would kill its revenue. It only gets paid when people click on an advertiser link. If Google became a one-stop shop for answers... where would it make its money?

People have been wowed by ChatGPT's ability to generate high school quality essays on seemingly limitless topics. And a focus of this capacity has been on what it means for users to be able to quickly 'cheat' their way to paragraphs of text that they can reuse instead of writing their own from scratch. I'll dig into that theme another day, but it's this assumption about generating copy to be used elsewhere that I want to deflect today.

The ability to reveal useful, readable knowledge in an instant holds amazing potential for quickly cribbing information to build our own understanding of a topic – without sifting through lists of links and websites to hopefully find someone who knows what they're talking about.

This capacity for distilling collective knowledge into succinct, digestible information is what excites me the most. Do you prefer a 1,000 word essay or a three paragraph summary? Would you prefer a list of bullet points or information displayed in a table format? Ask and you will receive.

Of course, right now the scariest problem is ChatGPT's ability to sound incredibly authoritative even as it fabricates lies or gets its facts mixed up. It isn't really a knowledge engine. It's an expert at guessing which words belong near each other when asked about a given idea. But it has no expertise in validating what it's producing.

Not yet.

Learning how to learn

One of the concerns I keep mulling over is on how the next generation of junior staffers in many fields will get their chance to climb the ladder as LLMs start performing a lot of junior-level work. Drafting copy. Outlining plans. Suggesting potential strategies.

But as I come back to this Knowledge Engine idea I think the most important skill in an AI-powered future is to enhance our ability to learn. To use these very same tools to not just generate words but to read what it generates, to keep asking questions and to keep building our own knowledge. If used effectively, we should be able to accelerate what it means to be a 'junior' and raise the baseline for the work we can perform and the creativity we can apply to the elevated basics made possible by a language model.

In The Diamond Age, the book – an incredibly powerful knowledge engine – adapts to the girl's needs to meet her where she is in order to carry her toward the kind of person it can help her to be.

In our world, we know AI is filled with inherent biases and lacks a great deal of nuance and is very unlikely to lead us to where we need to go. But by learning how to ask the right questions, how to verify the knowledge it reveals, and how to go beyond regurgitation of what it said and truly retain the insights offered, there is a path toward knowledge AI is about to make possible that could be so much better than anything we've seen before.

I'd forgotten some of the details of what exactly happened in The Diamond Age, so I asked ChatGPT for a three par summary. Within seconds it triggered the memories I was looking for. Better than scouring a search engine for a page that might have offered something remotely similar.

But, for me and many others, Greg Tito and Shelley Mazzanoble come to the show with the same sense of creative energy.

As the co-hosts of Dragon Talk, the official Dungeons & Dragons podcast, they do a lot more than just talk about the latest news and new release updates about the game.

They have spent 7 years and 350+ episodes becoming part of the heartbeat of D&D, interviewing the team behind the scenes and introducing us to guests from across the worldwide to deepen our shared love of the game and its community.

The podcast has been so wonderful they are just about to release a book about the Dragon Talk podcast and the lessons they've learned about the game but also life, the universe and everything else.

Our conversation with Greg and Shelly is a fun chat about their history with the show, as well as why the podcast has come to be a lot more than just a game marketing exercise.

Also... if they could invite anyone to a D&D game - who would it be?

We had been planning this sponsored episode for many months, but when it fell into place this turned out to be an excellent time to talk to Chris Hockings, APAC CTO at IBM Security about the state of security and trust in Australia today.

This episode is sponsored by IBM.

From Mad Max Fury Road to The Crown, World of Warcraft to The Boys, Trackdown has been involved with making some of the world's biggest productions sound their very best.

But after the first full week of Elon's Twitter is there any better description than 'shitshow'?

The chaos engine he has installed has done nothing but burn through the good will of top users and precious advertisers. It's one thing to reset management, it's another to reset every stakeholder relationship established over the past 17 years.

The stories pile up around the treatment of staff and advertising agencies, all in the midst of non-stop Elon meme tweets and on the fly public decision making. If you've been struggling to keep up, here's some key news:

• Musk brought trusted Tesla engineers to Twitter to help
• Blue checkmarks are 'bullshit' and every subscriber can have one
• But the Twitter Blue subscription won't get free articles from publishers anymore
• Musk spread homophobic disinformation about the Pelosi attack
• The maths on Twitter verification monetisation doesn't look good
• Musk never communicated with staff in the entire week before firing approximately half the team on Friday
• Those who kept their jobs don't know who else did and are scrambling to find out who still works there and what to do next
• Musk blames 'activists' for a massive drop in advertising revenue since he took over
• They realised they fired too many key staff and are now asking some if they would please be unfired
• Musk tweets that any account 'impersonating' another account without saying 'parody' will be permanently suspended without warning

It's impossible to keep up right now, or to find the right moment to try to encapsulate a clear theory of how things are being run. The way Musk has treated the very real humans who build and run Twitter has been appalling. And his inability to grasp that if he tweets trollish commentary on 'what advertisers should really want' then he might be responsible for many of them pausing their big value ad campaigns.

In the latest instalment, today's rapid pivot away from "comedy is legal" Twitter to "parody accounts will be permanently banned" Twitter has been really something.

Love the free speech. Love the comedy. Except if it's people mocking me.

That's an important factor that can't be stated too lightly. The entire decision to start suspending accounts – accounts of verified users, often comedians – was because they changed their profile name (not username) to Elon Musk as a joke.

It's not to protect democracy or Wall St or human rights. It's a decision via tweet to protect his ego.

Dave Karpf's poker analogy is very well placed.

One thing you sometimes see at the card table is a pretty good player who, once they’ve lost a good chunk of money, starts trying too hard to win their money back very fast. Bad luck early begets bad decisions late.

This was always meant to be a fun lark for Musk. But the market turned, he wished he could quit the deal then realised there was no chance. Not even a billionaire can escape Delaware corporate law.

It is absolutely true that Musk loves Twitter. Really loves it. Loves to post on it. Would love to make it a great business.

But right now he's chasing the pot. There's a lot on the table. He still finds time to tweet memes. But it doesn't look like he's having fun anymore.

In all my time on Twitter (I joined April 2006) I've never seen as many friends and colleagues, who have loved it in spite of its flaws, exploring alternatives. But the fact is there will never be another Twitter. Whether the alternatives can be 'enough' is the big question.

We were already living in this weird time when social media platforms were having a rough time of things. But it does seem like we're arriving at a decoupling of social media and the spaces most users send most of their attention. And that's a critical thought for business and society. What comes next?

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In the first few days he has overseen a chaotic spaghetti on the wall approach to coming up with the next era for the social media platform beloved by media professionals and misinformation specialists alike.

Twitter's history is a litany of disappointments for both shareholders and fans of the platform. It holds incredible sway because of its intensive media industry usage, but it has eternally struggled to work out how to make money.

It's also the One True Real-time platform. The 'Home' feed might be algorithmic like all the others, but it has still foregrounded an emphasis on what is happening right at this moment. Go to Facebook or LinkedIn and you can find yourself replying to week old updates because of how they reheat posts over a much longer window than Twitter shows any interest in.

You don't 'live Facebook' something you're watching over a series of posts. But Twitter is designed to encourage and reward such serialised tweeting.

So Twitter is differentiated. It just isn't that interesting to more people than its core user base of 200 million. A number that it first reached in 2013 before climbing to over 300 million but then stagnating and falling backwards.

The Twitter board was full of people who didn't really use Twitter. The company has tested ideas and pivoted from new feature to new feature like a basketball player trapped in a corner, searching for anyone to pass the ball to.

No platform has faced such a delta between its cultural impact and its economic success.

All that is to say... Elon Musk is probably right to move swiftly to clear house and rapidly iterate on solutions to build real revenue on the platform.

It's also fair to say the manner in which he has conducted his first few days there will result in significant harm to the teams that work there and the final shreds of trust anyone has had in the platform and its commitment to fighting disinformation and harmful behaviours.

This really is the biggest test of Elon Musk as a business leader to date.

Tesla was a huge win but has struggled to deliver on its bullish views on self-driving features, and Musk's public persona has started to tarnish the reputation of that company. SpaceX has been his real success story, delivering incredibly successful space transport vehicles that has helped push new opportunities forward for government and private sectors. Add in The Boring Company and the incredibly narrow tunnels it has created to little real benefit and his reputation as a modern industrialist hangs in the balance.

Twitter will be his most visible win or fail. The entire media world is watching. All those power users who generate the tweets people want to read are watching. When even small changes make people scream about how much they hate it (but they don't stop using), what's going to happen when big changes land?

Chasing down a recurring revenue model makes lots of sense. Twitter Blue has always felt like a half-hearted attempt at asking people to pay while not really offering much value to the kinds of users who love Twitter enough to pay for it. But with everything from Verification to less ads to longer video posts – to flat out 'priority' visibility of posts – there could be a lot of reasons for people to part with their US$8/month.

At very least, I don't doubt Musk will keep tweaking and pivoting what he's offering to power users if that's what it takes to bring money in the door.

It's just a question of whether his love of acting like a petulant billionaire on the platform can be replaced by an even greater love of creating a stable and powerful new era for Twitter that balances trust and safety with the free speech he loves so much.

In some ways it is a sad occasion, though, as Byteside's fab Content Producer, Chris Button, is off on a new adventure next week. Huge thanks to Chris for all his work published on the site, his work behind the scenes, and his dulcet tones on this year's edition of the High Resolution podcast.

Here's what we've found interesting around the web this week.

Byteside latest

PAX Australia 2022 looked different, but does it hurt the show’s future?

The biggest platforms and developers weren’t on the show floor in 2022. But does the spirit of PAX protect it against the changing nature of games marketing?

BytesideSeamus Byrne

Google Pixel 7 & Pixel 7 Pro review: because you love Google’s brains

The same price in an inflationary market and some solid updates in camera and features makes it a good year to upgrade if you’ve been waiting for a few years.

BytesideSeamus Byrne

Brain food

Is Spotify’s podcast exclusivity strategy working?

The open podcast ecosystem isn’t dead yet.

Simon Owens's Media NewsletterSimon Owens

Good analysis of what's gone right and wrong when Spotify has bought successful podcast companies and then forced their existing shows into platform exclusives.

AI tools fail to reduce recruitment bias - study

Artificially intelligent analysis of job applications or videos is “pseudoscience”, researchers say.

BBC NewsChris Vallance

Shout it again for those up the back. AI is not bias-free!

The Hottest App Right Now? One Where Teens Have to Say Nice Things About Each Other

Gas is topping Apple’s App Store charts even though it’s live in fewer than a dozen states.

The Wall Street JournalAnn-Marie Alcántara

Always interesting to see where new social apps are finding cut through. Can positivity win? Or will the kids always find a way to turn good vibes into a new vector for bullying or ostracism?

YouTube more likely to recommend conservative vidoes to all

There goes Woke Big Tech again, downplaying traditional liberal views

The RegisterKatyanna Quach

No matter your preferences, all roads seem to lead to conservative videos.

Everyone Wants to Be a Hot, Anxious Girl on Twitter

We’re more predictable than we thought.

The AtlanticKaitlyn Tiffany

A very interesting look at the Twitter accounts that rehash videos, quotes and trends and mine attention for follows.

Big news

What we know about the Medibank cyber attack and what to do if you’re a customer

Medibank, which has more than 3.7 million customers, says a hacker claims to have stolen 200GB of data and given 100 policies as proof. Here’s what we know.

ABC News

I was on ABC with Richard Glover discussing this one yesterday. Maybe there's a little less identity theft at stake here, but there's also a much deeper level of private information that the attackers are threatening to exploit. The potential to reveal private medical insights about high profile individuals is a very nasty threat to make. And it's the kind of data we should be able to trust an insurance provider to hold on our behalf as needed.

Inquiry ‘absolutely necessary’ after Optus breach: Dominello

A national inquiry into identity and data sharing is “absolutely necessary” in the wake of the Optus data breach, according to New South Wales Minister for Customer Service and Digital Government Victor Dominello. With investigations into Australia’s largest data breach since 2018 now underway by pr…

InnovationAus.comJustin Hendry

Tied together with the above, there really should be audits and investigations that are triggered automatically against companies that are holding critical personal information and are hit by a breach. It feels like the news cycle is ready to leave the Optus situation in the past and everyone just shrugs and moves on. We need real transparency and real accountability when big companies fail at security.

Your ads, your choice

Today, Google is starting to roll out My Ad Center, a new way for users to control the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Discover.

GoogleJerry Dischler

New tools are going to make it easier to control ad tracking without having to shut off other useful features within the Google experience. Progress.

Chrome for Android Gets Some Tablet-Friendly Touches

The update brings abilities like tabs and a drag-and-drop mode, but it’s for Android tablets only.

GizmodoThe A.V. Club

In other Google news, these new tablet-friendly features are another win for the Android ecosystem. With the Pixel tablet on the way too, delivering a better experience that embraces larger and wider screen formats will help people to see the value on choosing such devices.

Jack Dorsey-Founded Bluesky Unveils Roadmap for Decentralized Social Networks - Decrypt

The group, formed within Twitter, is building a decentralized protocol that limits corporate and governmental influence on social media platforms.

DecryptSander Lutz

I hadn't read much into Bluesky before, but this latest update does speak to a social protocol that holds great potential as a truly open platform. 'Decentralised' doesn't have to mean crypto. Email is a wonderful decentralised, federated means of communication everyone can use. Getting it right in a similar fashion for social could be great.

Meta gives up fight to get $400m Giphy buy approved

Facebook to dump GIF super-gallery after just enough pestering from UK

The RegisterPaul Kunert

"OK, you can have Instagram, but a searchable index of GIFs is a bridge too far."

Secret agents targeting drug cartels in Australia exposed in data hack

A massive leak of classified government documents has exposed the identities and methods of secret agents working to stop major drug importations to Australia.

The Sydney Morning HeraldNigel Gladstone

A leak in Columbia has put Australian feds at risk. The ripple effects of cybersecurity cross the world.

USB 4 Version 2 Doubles Transfer Speed to 80Gbps -- even 120Gbps if You Push It

The new data transfer tech could arrive in late 2023, but you’ll only get top speeds when you upgrade all cables, peripherals and PCs.

CNETStephen Shankland

Think about the timeline from here to 2030. A few more generations of USB, all based on the same USB-C port. It seems like we'll 'save on cables', but there will absolutely be some cables that are more USB-C than others, and knowing which is which will get harder by the year.

The show has always pitched itself as being about a sense of community. It isn't about the latest games, it's about the people who love games. And not just videogames either. Card games, boardgames, roleplaying games, miniatures wargaming, retro games, pinball... if it's a game, it has a place at PAX.

Coming back together after three years apart, the community story felt as strong as ever. An atmosphere of friendship pervades all areas of the show and it makes you feel good just walking the halls and seeing random encounters, broad smiles, and a sense of joy to be together again.

But what we saw in those halls, the big booths and experiences on offer across the show floor, had changed a lot since 2019. And it speaks to significant changes in how the games industry is sold and marketed.

AAA for absent

In years past, PAX was a great opportunity for fans to get hands on with major new games from the world's biggest developers. Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo would have the biggest booths at the show, with Ubisoft the other 'biggest booth' contender over the years.

All were missing from the show floor in 2022.

It may be four booths out of many dozens, but these were the gravitational booths where fans would queue for hours to get 10 minutes hands on with game previews months ahead of their final release.

In 2022, there were long queues at a new Sega booth to try out Sonic Frontiers, but elsewhere the biggest queue was for the PAX Merch booth, not any other games.

Looking back at maps from 2017 and 2019, the wider mix of booths is very similar to what we see in 2022. Lots of PC technology booths from the likes of Intel, AMD, Lenovo, Asus, Logitech, HyperX, and other peripherals makers.

It's those big "latest game" booths that had disappeared, replaced by the likes of Aussie Broadband who put out a big arcade of fun machines like air hockey and other social arcade games that were busy all weekend. People were here to get together and play whatever they could play.

Overall, this was likely a great year for the indie developer zone of the show. Gamers want to game, and in the absence of Big New Titles to queue for, many attendees probably had more time available to go check out the brilliant indie titles on show instead.

The Direct effect

What changed in the past three years? You know, apart from a global pandemic keeping us apart for so long?

The most significant shift in the games industry has been toward the big publishers and platforms creating highly produced video updates where they speak directly to fans via Twitch, YouTube, and the wider social media universe. It's far cheaper than paying five-figure sums to just rent a booth space – and then the same again to make that booth space worthy of attention.

Nintendo blazed the trail with its Nintendo Direct events, and the other big platforms have followed suit. These kinds of video events also hit the E3 industry trade show hard – that same question of what's worth the investment making the direct approach making far more sense in a deeply digital world.

Add in the new push from PlayStation and Xbox to build recurring revenue models through their Plus and Gamepass subscriptions and the industry is moving away from trying to win your pre-order dollars for the next big tentpole. It becomes about that ongoing relationship with every 'member' of the service, where those constant conversations through digital channels become the most meaningful place to connect.

A few clever big ticket developers were still in town for Melbourne International Games Week, inviting fans to come to bars or other events to catch up with their communities. Putting money behind a bar instead of into a booth seemed a smart play for some when they knew their fans would be in town anyway.

But does the change hurt PAX?

Shifting trends in how the industry operates may have brought E3 to its knees, but does the disappearance of the biggest brands really do the same to PAX?

As I said at the top, PAX has always foregrounded community. The games are what unifies people who love the show, but it isn't the only reason they come. They come to hang out, and to attend panels where people discuss games of all kinds, or to meet up with diverse communities. People come to be with their kind of people.

It's also a well diversified event for the kinds of games people come to play. In 2022, there seemed to be more tabletop games stands than ever before, with a lot of games designed right here in Australia. That indie scene isn't only for videogames anymore!

From opening to closing late at night, the board game, miniatures and card game areas were always packed. In the middle of the day, in a gigantic hall in the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, you can struggle to find a table if you want to grab a game and play.

PAX always foregrounded the people who come together through their love of games. In the absence of the biggest games of the year, the vibe may be different when looking at the biggest stands on the show floor, but what makes PAX PAX is still deeply present.

The trends in the industry might hurt for the most laser focused videogame fans, and the events that are entirely about these things. But for PAX, it feels like its welcoming idea for what games are really about will keep it in a good place for years to come.

Where Apple and its iPhone are all about hardware and software on a journey toward adding more services (and the related recurring revenue win that brings), Google has always been about the services, with its journey through Android hardware having had its ups and downs.

Android was led by HTC handsets in the early days, then Samsung came to dominate this side of the phone wars. But Samsung always needs to put its own spin on Android to find those extra ways to connect with the user as a brand. It doesn't want to be a commodity piece of kit sold on behalf of Google and its services. That works great for many users, clearly – Samsung dominates the Android world.

My preference has always been for a cleaner stock Android experience because I do want it to serve me up the most direct path possible to the world of Google's apps and services.

Computational photography

With the Pixel 6, Google kicked off an era with its own chip design driving the hardware. With a focus on complex tasks that benefit from machine learning systems – a lot of which applies to making photos look great – it has helped the Pixel line of phones stand out as a leader in computational photography. Samsung and Apple might do more with lenses and camera hardware, but Google knows how to get software to refine images and give us the most amazing low-light photography through its Night Sight mode.

This isn't to say the Tensor chips are suddenly supercomputers in your pocket. The trick with machine learning models is to refine them through rapid iteration on those hyperscale server farms in the Googleplex, then distill the essence of the model into algorithms that run beautifully on a chip that's designed for the task.

With that in mind, the Pixel 7 series of devices has a second generation Tensor G2 processor, and all those clever photography features happen faster than ever now. Night photography used to require you to hold steady for a 'few' seconds, now it feels like it's just a very slight moment of holding steady before you get the amazing results Pixel phones are known for.

In daylight images are also looking fabulous, and I'll leave it to the serious pixel (small p) afficionadoes to debate which smartphone has the most perfect image performance. I find the Pixel 7 delivers a 'natural' feel that I like in most circumstances, while others might feel it's a little muted compared to what you get from an iPhone 14. Sometimes phones can feel like they're getting too 'computational' in the way they boost an image by default, so I quite like the style Pixel 7 delivers.

The new Super Res Zoom feature can also enhance the image quality across a wider range of zoom lengths. Through a mixture of using sections of the image sensor along with the other lenses all blended with those Tensor smarts means you can get better images at 2.5x zoom or 10x zoom (on the Pro) and even out to 30x with less image degradation when you're outside the perfect scale of each image sensor.

Lastly, the new Unblur feature feels like a very cheeky move to take something Google could easily offer via the Google Photos service on a web browser and make it an exclusive feature of the Pixel 7 phones. Surely the algorithms to do this would run even better in the cloud than on the phone? Regardless, it's a great feature you'll get a lot of value from if you steadily work through your archives and tidy up any old pics that were taken on a big night out or of fast moving kids and animals. It can't work miracles, but it is pretty incredible how sharp and natural it does make many blurred images.

There's also a Magic Eraser mode to cut out people or features in a photo you don't want to keep, video mode gets HDR-10 for superior colour accuracy, and a new Real Tone upgrade to Google image processing to better reflect people's true skin tones in all light levels.

Finally, a shout out to the new Guided Frame feature for vision impaired users. It's a great unlock for many folks who want to enjoy taking selfies anywhere, anytime and every step forward for accessibility of cool features should be encouraged. (Note that iPhone has a similar feature available through the VoiceOver accessibility tools in iOS).

Beyond the cameras

These machine learning centred features do go beyond just the camera tech. There's new features on offer like Audio Message Transcription, so you can have your voice messages converted to text, plus a Recorder mode that now transcribes what you're recording in real time.

Google also announced that the Pixel 7 series will soon get a new VPN by Google One feature – a truly anonymised VPN to keep you safe and secure online.

A new bedtime mode options lets you track your sleep quality by listening for coughs and snores. A nice alternative to needing to wear a tracker (though I do use the very excellent Withings Sleep Monitor which sits under the mattress and provides wonderfully detailed sleep reports – but that's a different investment).

There are also new battery saving settings including Adaptive Battery Saver to more intelligently manage battery life, plus an Extreme Battery Saver option where you can select specific apps that you want to allow if you are trying to eek out that last few percentage points of power late in the day.

The ecosystem era for Pixel

If you've been sitting on a Pixel 4 or earlier, this is a very good year to upgrade. The features are strong, the hardware is crisp, and you'll be well set with a good new baseline for the next 3-5 years of your smartphone lifestyle.

With the arrival of the Pixel Watch alongside the Pixel 7 series, we also see Google eager to build a truly unified hardware environment.

Its acquisition of Fitbit suddenly makes more sense, and this first Pixel Watch is a really nice piece of hardware. Sadly, this version one product isn't that great with battery life, which is a problem and probably makes it worth a skip until the Pixel Watch 2, but it speaks to a big step toward a full integration across its hardware and its services.

Add in the Nest side of Google's smart home and how it is all so easily controlled from your Pixel phone and the ecosystem is stronger than ever.

Pixel 7 is a top recommendation

As of today, when I'm recommending a new smartphone I'll ask someone two questions.

1. Do you like to use Apple or Android?
2. Do you like the idea of the return of the flip phone?

If the answers are 'Android' and 'not really' then the Pixel 7 series is the way to go*. They're well priced, they're well made, and they are the best expression of living in and loving the Google ecosystem.

Big kudos to Google for also maintaining the same price for the Pixel 7 launch as for the Pixel 6 launch last year (from $999 for Pixel 7 and $1299 for Pixel 7 Pro). It's been a big year for inflation, especially in technology components. In real terms this acts as a price drop – and the USD to AUD price conversion is very fair in current exchange (+GST).

Buying the 7 Pro is all about that upgraded camera hardware. If you can spare the extra $300 then that 5x optical lens is a powerful upgrade. If you're not too concerned with that extra lens, the Pixel 7 is an excellent phone at an excellent price.

* I think the Samsung Galaxy Flip 4 is a wonderful new form factor that more people are going to fall in love with the more they see them in the wild.

Back to a usual routine next week!

Brain Food

The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time

An obscure software system synchronizes the network’s clocks. Who will keep it running?

The New YorkerCondé Nast

AI music generators could be a boon for artists -- but also problematic

Stability AI is funding an effort to create a music-generating system using the same AI techniques behind Stable Diffusion.

TechCrunchKyle Wiggers

Big News

Facebook’s Legs Video Was A Lie

A subsequent statement from Meta says ‘the segment featured animations created from motion capture’

KotakuThe A.V. Club

Matter inches closer to its formal debut, as 1.0 standard launches and certification opens

The next generation of the smart home is coming to a head, as Matter 1.0 has launched its final spec today with certification for devices.

9to5GoogleBen Schoon

Social media firms ‘monetising misery’, says Molly Russell’s father after inquest

Coroner finds harmful online content likely to have contributed to Molly’s death ‘in a more than minimal way’

The GuardianDan Milmo

No, Bruce Willis has not sold his “digital likeness rights” to a deepfake company

A rep for Willis has denied that a “digital twin” of the actor is about to start starring in movies on his behalf

The A.V. ClubThe A.V. Club

The computer errors from outer space

The Earth is subjected to a hail of subatomic particles from the Sun and beyond our solar system which could be the cause of glitches that afflict our phones and computers.

.st0{fill:#FFFFFF;}Chris Baraniuk

Trends

Instagram Food Is Having a Vibe Shift

The food blogger aesthetic has given way to something more realistic and DIY: Laissez-faire Instagram food is here

EaterBettina Makalintal

Glut of Fake LinkedIn Profiles Pits HR Against the Bots

A recent proliferation of phony executive profiles on LinkedIn is creating something of an identity crisis for the business networking site, and for companies that rely on it to hire and screen prospective employees. The fabricated LinkedIn identities — which…

Krebs on SecuritySkip to content

How Bots Corrupted Advertising

Botmasters have created a Kafkaesque system where companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots. And everyone is fine with this.

WIREDCondé Nast

The GIF Is on Its Deathbed

The internet’s file format has been diagnosed as “cringe,” but there are other threats to its existence.

The AtlanticKaitlyn Tiffany

Analysis

AI Data Laundering: How Academic and Nonprofit Researchers Shield Tech Companies from Accountability - Waxy.org

Tech companies working with AI are outsourcing data collection and training to academic/nonprofit research groups, shielding them from potential accountability and legal liability.

Waxy.orgAndy Baio

Stadia died because no one trusts Google

No one trusts Google. It has exhibited such poor understanding of what people want, need and will pay for that at this point, people are wary of investing in even its more popular products.

TechCrunchDevin Coldewey

What happened to the virtual reality gaming revolution?

VR hasn’t taken over the world, but that doesn’t mean it has failed.

Ars TechnicaSteve Haske

Good tweets

High Resolution podcast

Xbox’s brilliant accessibility strategy explained

Learn what drives the Xbox team’s passion for accessibility in an interview with Anita Mortaloni, Director of Accessibility.

BytesideChris Button

A great chat by Chris for the High Resolution podcast with Anita Mortaloni, Director of Accessibility at Xbox. Really insightful on the way Xbox has been approaching accessibility within its platform and the extended benefits of serving those who can really use the extra features.

Brain Food

Darth Vader’s Voice Emanated From War-Torn Ukraine

As the conflict raged, Ukrainian tech workers at Respeecher hurried to bring back James Earl Jones’s legendary voice for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Vanity FairCondé Nast

This Controversial Artist Matches Influencer Photos With Surveillance Footage

‘The Followers’ uses artificial intelligence and facial-recognition technology to comment on the surveillance state

Smithsonian MagazineSmithsonian Magazine

Flooded with AI-generated images, some art communities ban them completely

Smaller art communities are banning image synthesis amid a wider art ethics debate.

Ars TechnicaBenj Edwards

New toys

Amazon Official: Introducing Halo Rise - Bedside Sleep Tracker with Wake-up Light and Smart Alarm

Amazon.com: Introducing Halo Rise - Bedside Sleep Tracker with Wake-up Light and Smart Alarm : Sports & Outdoors

Bedside Sleep Tracker with Wake-up Light and Smart Alarm

Introducing Kindle Scribe (16 GB), the first Kindle for reading and writing, with a 10.2” 300 ppi Paperwhite display, includes Basic Pen : Amazon.com.au

Introducing Kindle Scribe (16 GB), the first Kindle for reading and writing, with a 10.2” 300 ppi Paperwhite display, includes Basic Pen : Amazon.com.au

Amazon released a bunch of new gear this week. The Halo and Scribe really stood out for me as the most interesting. Smarter sleep tracking with a nice light-based alarm feels great. And a Kindle that is also a note-taking tablet? Yes, please.

Big news

Optus cyber-attack: company opposed changes to privacy laws to give customers more rights over their data

In its submission to Privacy Act review telco said giving people right to erase personal data would involve ‘significant’ hurdles and costs

The GuardianJosh Taylor

There's so much we still don't know, but there's a lot of problems at both a government and corporate level around how much data is sitting around due to retention mandates and/or companies arguing that it's just too hard to clean up user data.

It's been a mixture of understatement and hyperbole from many angles around this breach. But knowing which is which yet is still awfully difficult.

DALL·E Now Available Without Waitlist

New users can start creating straight away. Lessons learned from deployment and improvements to our safety systems make wider availability possible. Sign up Starting today, we are removing the waitlist for the DALL·E beta so users can sign up and start using it immediately. More than 1.5M use…

OpenAIOpenAI

Podcasters Are Buying Millions of Listeners, Raising Questions About Marketing Tactics

The podcast networks that are actively mining downloads in the mobile game space are doing so through an intermediary company, called Jun Group

TimeAshley Carman / Bloomberg

This is a massive scandal for the podcast industry. Feels like it's on the wrong side of the fine line between 'clever new paths to discovery' and 'pump those numbers'.

A message about Stadia and our long term streaming strategy

We’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.

GooglePhil Harrison

One of those deeply euphemistic headlines that buries the fact Google is closing Stadia. The fact they're refunding all software and hardware bought through Google Store is a solid way to maintain confidence that you can go on the journey and not be left in the lurch if things don't work out.

Google has definitely gained a lot of valuable new tech through building this game streaming project. Stadia might be dead but the tech will appear in many different places in the years to come.

Brave browser to start blocking annoying cookie consent banners

The Brave browser will soon allows users to block annoying and potentially privacy-harming cookie consent banners on all websites they visit.

BleepingComputerBill Toulas

Cookie consent banners are a mess of dark patterns and obnoxious interruptions. But they're also a helpful step forward compared to 'cookies everywhere'. If Brave can get the balance right here to essentially say yes/no on your behalf to the right cookies that let websites work without the interruptions it's a path forward for letting users set defaults for wherever they go online.

Call on Meta to provide reparations to the Rohingya community

Inspiring people against injustice to bring the world closer to human rights & dignity enjoyed by all.

Amnesty International

"The Rohingya community are determined that Meta be held accountable. Showkutara, a 22-year-old living in Cox’s Bazar, says “Facebook must pay. If they do not, we will go to every court in the world. We will never give up in our struggle.”

Announcing the all-new Substack Reader for web

Revenge of RSS

On SubstackOn Substack

Obviously we've left Substack, but it offers a great reading experience and now it also lets you add RSS feeds. So if you miss Byteside on Substack, you can add us to your Substack Reader!

(I still love Feedly as my RSS reader of choice, but more options is a win for all.)

Good tweets

Many of the company's recent initiatives have made significant strides towards making accessible experiences for all. From the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines for developers, to accessibility feature tags on the Xbox store helping people make informed decisions, there are plenty of great things happening at Microsoft.

Anita Mortaloni, Director of Accessibility Xbox, joined the latest episode of High Resolution to help explain what drives the push for accessibility at Xbox. Much of the discussion boils down to the importance of listening to the needs of your community – an important takeaway regardless of industry.

We also chatted about what Xbox did during Disability Pride Month, which took place in July, highlighting games made and curated by the disability and neurodiversity community.

Game accessibility is constantly evolving, with new initiatives regularly taking place. You'll want to tune in to find out how accessibility drives game development forward.

It's as the Xbox team says: when everybody plays, we all win.

You can check out the full discussion on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This week on Premium

We've kicked off Byteside Premium this week. You can add the Premium newsletter to your subscription whether you pay or not, with previews and occasional free full posts sent out through each week.

Slack, Canva, and a reset on where we spend our workday

In a year where every business is looking for an excuse to reduce costs, adding a few more ‘essential’ features to a subscription service can keep you off the cut list.

BytesideSeamus Byrne

‘In the style of’: why AI art needs to address named artists as prompts

If you ask an AI art tool to be inspired by a specific artist, should the artist be compensated?

BytesideSeamus Byrne

More on AI art

I expect I'll dig into this some more next week after some conversations with art experts in response to my piece above. This really is a fascinating area and it's heating up very quickly.

This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it.

Greg Rutkowski is a more popular prompt than Picasso.

MIT Technology ReviewMelissa Heikkilä

Fearing copyright issues, Getty Images bans AI-generated artwork

Getty sidesteps potential legal problems from unresolved rights and ethics issues.

Ars TechnicaBenj Edwards

Brain Food

Chess Is Just Poker Now

A cheating controversy involving two grandmasters shows how computers have transformed the game.

The AtlanticMatteo Wong

Social Media and News Fact Sheet

Digital news has become an important part of Americans’ news media diets, with social media playing a crucial role in news consumption. Today, half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media. When it comes to where Americans regularly get news on social media, Facebook outpaces all…

Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

The comparison of total usage and users who get their news from a source is very interesting. Every platform changes the shape and meaning of a lot of what we consume. So it really matters how and where people get their news.

Big news

Optus says customer information compromised in cyber attack

Optus is hit by a cyber attack that compromises customer information. Customers’ names, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses have been exposed.

ABC News

The media has a habit of hyperbole. But this Optus hack is big. A lot of customers, current and past, will need to be very careful with identity fraud and phishing attacks. Watch for unexpected emails and messages.

And if Optus gets in touch with a weird request, it might not be Optus...

Transparency matters to rebuild trust, so I hope we hear a lot more about what went wrong, when it happened, and how their security failed.

Australians Made 80,000 Complaints About Telcos Last Year, Which Is a Huge Improvement

In 2021-2022, Australians made 79,534 complaints about telcos to the TIO. That’s quite a lot, yes, but it’s a 33.4 per cent decrease over the year prior.

Gizmodo AustraliaEmail

DHS to Spend Almost $700,000 Investigating ‘Radicalization in Gaming’

Several groups are coming together to study the little understood phenomenon.

VICEMatthew Gault

Fantastic and important research investment. An awful lot of kids can easily end up on a conveyer belt toward white supremacy through online game communities.

Google app starts rolling out ‘Results about you’ to help remove personal information

Announced at I/O 2022 in May, Google announced a new tool to streamline the process of removing Search results that contain your...

9to5GoogleAbner Li

Really useful tool is starting to go live.

Google wants to take on Dolby with new open media formats

The company wants to establish an open, royalty-free alternative to Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. The project is known internally as Project Caviar.

ProtocolJanko Roettgers

Even if it all starts from a place where Google just wants to save money, it's still great that a company with the resources to develop new royalty-free media formats is trying to make it happen.

Twitch’s Biggest Streamers Are Asking the Platform to Get Rid of Gambling

The #TwitchStopGambling hashtag has caught on after streamers like Pokimane and Hasan Piker discovered that a fellow streamer suffers from a gambling addiction.

VICEGita Jackson

Any time I've seen a 'slots' or other crappy gambling stream in the top streams, I've definitely been left wondering WTF is going on over there. Thankfully getting called out / threatened with action by other top streamers got them to do something about it and ban gambling streams.

Microsoft confirms its recent Series X update lets Xbox One discs be played offline | Engadget

Many Xbox One disc games can be played offline thanks to a new update..

Engadget

Good tweets

Going to PAX Aus?

For the nerds out there heading to PAX Aus, I'll be heading to Melbourne too!

I'm moderating a panel on "How to pitch for paid work in games journalism" at 4pm Friday 7th, and on the "PAX Geek Parenting Gathering" panel at 11am Sunday 9th. The full schedule is in the PAX app – you can find it here.

I'll also be wandering the floor and attending other panels all weekend in search of stories, so if you see me – say hi!

As a user of both platforms, it feels like we're arriving at a place where I may not only go to these tools for short bursts of activity but instead stay there for half a day of focused work. And until these announcements that's generally been the domain of two specific companies – Google and Microsoft.

Actually, there's a third for some. Adobe. And Adobe also made its own big announcement this past week, buying Figma for US$20 billion. Undoubtedly most of you know who Adobe is but Figma could be a headscratcher. But for app and web developers and designers, Figma has fast become its own place where they spend most of their time at work. It's a wonderfully usable web-based collaboration service for designers. Adobe files slot into it nicely enough, but Figma was fast becoming the heartbeat of a designer's day. Adobe was becoming 'just another tool'.

For Adobe, maintaining its place at the centre of design must have seemed existential. Adding Figma to its business ensures that it can more deeply integrate its tools into Figma by default, maintaining its place in that new 'home' for a lot of modern design work. Figma didn't need Adobe as much as Adobe needed Figma. That's why it paid SOOO much money for it. An offer it couldn't refuse.

Back in day to day work land, Google and Microsoft have dominated these spaces for decades. The 'upstart' Google Docs launched in 2006, and has had enough time to have most users know that it's a nice place to type words or crunch numbers, but – like Microsoft Office – it isn't great at making things look pretty.

That's where Canva steps in. What if our documents could look nice as soon as we start working on them? What if it was easy to drop in a really nicely designed chart? These are pretty good questions to offer an answer to, right alongside the place many small businesses already go to make the graphics and posters they need.

Website building has also been one of those tasks most people hate but know they need to do. Canva offering a solution there too suddenly makes it the home for the public face of your entire business. Socials, sites, presentations, and now documents. All in one place.

In a year where every business is looking for an excuse to reduce costs, adding a few more 'essential' features to a subscription service can keep you off the cut list.

I'm a long-time Slack user, and I'll admit I have been thinking about it amongst a few tools on whether I can integrate my workplace chat needs elsewhere. It's really good at what it does, but if all I need is chat is there another way to get that?

With Canvas – which sadly won't launch until early 2023 – we get a very big upgrade to what kind of 'digital HQ' Slack can be. I've integrated Trello notifications and other tools into Slack before, but just having more messages in a chronological stream isn't all that helpful. With Canvas, we get ways to create a structured space for key links and even buttons to trigger functions in other services. There's a lot of potential to make it a real hub, not just a chat service with hub-like features.

Canvas feels like the leap toward Slack becoming more indispensible for people who really love using it. It's got a big mission to hold back the Microsoft Teams juggernaut in this space. But like Canva, if it can deliver an alternative set of services in a way that offers the elegance and power many users crave, it can maintain its place as the virtual HQ for those who seek more than a default for years to come.

I like using tools that make me think "wow, someone really thought about this!" I get that from both Slack and Canva, so I'm excited to explore all these new features and see how they change my thinking about day-to-day work. We should never get lost in 'trying things', but new tools that change up how we experience our workday can help us to remember what we want out of our working lives.

It's fascinating to think on how quickly things are moving. It's only been five months since we first encountered Dall-E 2. And OpenAI's approach to such tools, whether these image models or the language model, GPT-3, has been to try and control access carefully to slow down any potential risky usage. But now with so many options now available, OpenAI has announced users can upload faces to include in AI images – a concept many feel is ripe for abuse.

I've spent most of my time playing with Midjourney, as its Discord interface has been an exciting way to not only test your own ideas but watch others exploring other styles and prompts that helps you learn how to 'tell' the Midjourney AI what you want to create.

One aspect of this access to the collective wisdom is seeing keywords being used to trigger stylistic choices that aren't directly associated with your prompt. It's one thing to ask for a "money tree", for a deeply simple example. It's another to add colour suggestions or exclusions, art styles, aspect ratios, and more to guide the AI to a specific look and feel you're hoping for.

In some ways this is quickly becoming a new creative coding language. Yes, any phrase will get a result, but to achieve a specific result you can picture in your mind you'll need to iterate on an idea to get the output you want to see.

This leads to the use of style prompts that could cause a major legal conflict for these tools: artist names. If you ask an AI to draw you a picture "in the style of" a specific artist, are you entering the realm of infringement?

Taking my simple 'money tree' example, I offered up the simple two words to Midjourney and got the following result:

Seriously, how pretty are those trees? I really love this tool.

Then I asked for two more versions 'in the style of' two famous artists.

Here's upscaled versions of two of these trees, showing that added power of selecting from the options and getting it to go a little deeper.

So how does the AI know how to be 'inspired by' any given artist? Through the corpus of artworks that were fed into the AI to teach it about art. And that's where it gets very troubling, as one particular artist is arguing as they find their name has become a very popular prompt – far more popular than Picasso.

This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it.

Greg Rutkowski is a more popular prompt than Picasso.

MIT Technology ReviewMelissa Heikkilä

Greg Rutkowski has a gorgeous fantasy art style that nerdy AI art users would love to be able to use as a style guide. And whether you know the artist directly or not, that Midjourney process of watching other people's prompts can lead to learning new keywords that get great results.

But if his work was scraped from 'public' image sources that taught an AI how to let people pay $10/month to a service that will produce work that is 80% as good as his real work when you use his name as a prompt? It doesn't seem like this will take long to be tested in court – it'll just take the right artist with the right financial resources to be able to test it.

The use of an artist's name feels like you're telling the AI to put a laser focus onto a specific subset of the hundreds of millions of images it was trained on. If this subset is not just a style, but an actual name, the granularity might achieve stronger results – but that's because the AI knows exactly what you're asking for.

Looking again at that Monet-inspired work even seems to feature an attempt at a Money signature in the lower right corner. That's how closely trained the AI is to the specific artworks of each artist. It knows he signed his work in a certain way and follows the form closely.

It is far more than inspiration. It is a new kind of mechanical inspiration. A digital forgery – and one that will only get better by the hour.

I really love these tools and I do expect to use then to illustrate more work on Byteside in future. It absolutely elevates my ability to use compelling imagery on a limited budget. But with these issues in mind, I'll be avoiding the use of named artists in my efforts. If I want a named artist, I should have to pay for the human to do the work for me.

A significant news week in tech that was certainly overshadowed in the mainstream by the passing of the Queen. But a lot of tectonic shifts have been underway out there. Here's the links that help paint the picture.

Tools evolving

The Zoom Evolution: From Video App to Communications Platform

From video meeting app to comprehensive collaboration platform, Zoom is evolving to meet your modern business needs. Read on to learn more.

Zoom BlogJanine Pelosi

Zoom has always had features like chat and voice calling alongside the video conferencing that made it a household name. Its latest efforts are trying to emphasise its full suite of tools before video becomes just another feature.

Canva targets business teams, takes a swipe at Google with new visual worksuite tools

Australian graphic design giant Canva launched its new range of tools on Wednesday, as it aims to grow adoption among business users.

SmartCompanyDavid Adams

Aussie tech darling Canva is also evolving, adding a compelling new document tool that can look pretty with little effort - unlike the drab standards we've put up with from Google Docs and Microsoft Word. Alongside new website and video tools, Canva is offering a lot of value to people who want an easy path to make pretty things online.

Tools selling

A New Collaboration with Adobe

Today, we’re announcing the exciting news that Figma has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Adobe.

FigmaDylan FieldCo-founder & CEO, Figma

Why Figma is Worth $20B And Other Observations From The Adobe Acquisition

Hint: The Answer Doesn’t Involve a Spreadsheet

MediumHunter Walk

Designers have been falling in love with Figma over the past few years. So much so that Adobe is paying a massive sum to head it off before it challenges the throne. It's certainly been eating Adobe XD for breakfast. I wonder if this will get any anti-trust scrutiny or if 'creatives' are too small a category for regulators to think about.

Ethereum succeeds in going green

Ether Price Trades Flat After Successful Ethereum Merge

Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake system was successfully completed just after 2:30 a.m. ET, or 5:30 a.m. GMT at block 15537391.

CoinDeskSam Reynolds

Ethereum activates The Merge as it shifts to proof of stake

The Merge has officially been triggered, marking Ethereum’s transition from proof of work to proof of stake.

The BlockI attended The Merge and all I got was this lousy POAP

‘No One Is Profitable’: GPU Mining Faces Dark Days After Ethereum Merge

Crypto-miners are shutting off their rigs and mulling selling their GPUs since few, if any, cryptocurrencies are currently profitable if you try to mine them, following the Ethereum merge.

PCMag AustraliaMichael Kan

The greatest feature of Ethereum's shift away from proof-of-work is the fact that almost nothing changed in the days that followed. Except massively reduced power consumption to operate its platform. The fact that GPU mining faces 'dark days' is a massive win for the environment and finding real potential in blockchains for the long-term.

Meta's privacy shift

Deterring Scraping By Protecting Facebook Identifiers | Meta

We created unique identifiers within URLs on Facebook to prevent the unauthorized scraping of people’s data.

MetaMatthew S. Burriesci, Product Manager

Credit where it's due. This move to use time-rotating identifiers is both an improvement to privacy and a deterent to anyone trying to scrape data for dodgy purposes.

Alleged Quest Pro Unboxing Video Apparently Leaks Meta’s Next VR Headset

As rumored over the past few months, Meta’s upcoming high-end VR headset Project Cambria seems to be named Quest Pro. And an apparent unboxing video has leaked too, which gives us a good look at the company’s next VR headset and controllers. We saw the exterior box of Meta Quest Pro pop up on Reddit…

Road to VRScott Hayden

File this under the leak category of 'forgetful engineers leaving important things behind'.

How wiki works

Wikipedia ‘Deaditors’ Sprang Into Action After Queen Elizabeth’s Death

There was so much to do. Tenses to change, pictures to choose. And what would they call Charles?

GizmodoThe A.V. Club

If you've ever wondered how the collective wisdom of Wikipedia works, this is a great insight.

Other news

UNSW pushes ahead with new AI research institute

A new artificial intelligence institute at the University of NSW is set to forge interdisciplinary connections between researchers and improve commercialisation opportunities. The UNSW AI Institute launched on Tuesday to bring together the more than 300 academics working in AI across the university’…

InnovationAus.comJustin Hendry

IHG hack: ‘Vindictive’ couple deleted hotel chain data for fun

The pair, who say they are from Vietnam, wiped out IHG group data after a foiled ransomware attack.

BBC NewsJoe Tidy

5th Circuit Rewrites A Century Of 1st Amendment Law To Argue Internet Companies Have No Right To Moderate

As far as I can tell, in the area the 5th Circuit appeals court has jurisdiction, websites no longer have any 1st Amendment editorial rights. That’s the result of what appears to me to be the…

TechdirtMike Masnick

This is a very good write up on a very bad legal decision.

Took a little longer than expected to get everything migrated correctly, but we're now setup in our new home for all things Byteside. The newsletter you've been signed up to for as long as three years for some of you is now the Byteside Weekly Edition, going back to the roots and sharing great links curated each Friday.

If you're after the columns they will now move to a Premium second newsletter. But you'll still find commentary around each week's links here!

I'll be sending out a special explainer edition next week along with a discount code to thank everyone who's already been following and supporting Byteside newsletters to date.

Latest on Byteside

Cult of the Lamb developer reveals how the creepy hit was made

Cult of the Lamb is yet another Aussie game dev success story. Creative Director Julian Winton explains how much work went into refining the game’s satisfying systems.

BytesideChris Button

This week's High Resolution podcast talks to the team behind this cute-and-creepy hit game.

Australian News

Tech giants rally against data localisation in Australia

Global tech giants and their industry associations have rallied against the federal government introducing localisation requirements for data storage, arguing that there is no inherent benefit to cybersecurity and such a regime could impede the economy. But several others have called for the governm…

InnovationAus.comJustin Hendry

Telstra, Optus push back on data localisation

Like government’s Global Switch exit project, only more expensive.

iTnewsRichard Chirgwin

How important is local data for the future of sovereignty? It certainly costs more, so it makes all of the sense that the big players, both global and local, want to avoid having to do it. But if they're forced to, wouldn't that help reduce costs for all the smaller players too?

NBN Co looks to build a digital twin

Two people being hired to construct and maintain it.

iTnewsKate Weber

'Digital twins' is one of those terms you probably want to start grappling with if you want to see where the melding of IoT, AI/ML and infrastructure management are heading.

InnovationAus Awards 2022: Meet our outstanding finalists

There is a fresh wave of optimism breezing through the industry right now, hard on the heels of the Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra. Last week was arguably the first time that tech and innovation leaders have been welcomed into the mainstream conversation of a Prime Minister-convened national sum…

InnovationAus.comJames Riley

Awarding the innovation sector is a good thing to spotlight great ideas and work out there. Good on InnovationAus for running this one.

Brain Food

An AI-Generated Artwork Won First Place at a State Fair Fine Arts Competition, and Artists Are Pissed

Jason Allen’s AI-generated work “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” took first place in the digital category at the Colorado State Fair.

VICEMatthew Gault

This has felt like an 'only a matter of time' scenario. There's going to be a very big debate over whether these AI tools are a cheat or a tool. I'm in the latter camp. Once you start playing with these you realise that it takes a lot of testing and tweaking your requests to get a good result. Was it cheating to move from the dark room to digitally processed photography – that now uses AI to improve low light and colour and sharpness? If you learn how to 'code' an AI art tool, the result is yours. But maybe we need new art competition categories to accommodate...

Kids Yell “Poop” At Alexa, And These Musicians Profit

“Alexa, play ‘Poopy Stupid Butt’ again.”

BuzzFeed NewsKatie NotopoulosBuzzFeed News Reporter

What does GPT-3 “know” about me?

Large language models are trained on troves of personal data hoovered from the internet. So I wanted to know: What does it have on me?

MIT Technology ReviewMelissa Heikkilä

How a Twitter plan to counter extremism fell apart

A research team was midway through a project to help troubled users. Then Elon Musk bought the company

PlatformerCasey Newton

Just a Few People Crowned Some of YouTube’s Earliest Hits

How “coolhunters” helped make YouTube into an internet sensation before the algorithms took over.

The AtlanticMark Bergen

News Rounds

USB-C naming to somehow get worse with USB4 Version 2.0

USB-C is getting yet another specification.

Ars TechnicaScharon Harding

The USB Consortium needs to be really careful they don't make that 'ideal single cable' a new confusing mess of differing standards that can't be distinguished by looking at the cable but will have a 'works / doesn't work' problem when you stick in the cable.

The EU wants to enforce better phone battery life and spare parts

The proposals will force spare parts for five years.

The VergeTom Warren

Initiatives like this will make a big difference to the rest of us getting better access to long term service and support systems because Australia rarely has the drive to enforce this kind of thing on its own but it sure could piggyback once these rules exist elsewhere.

Apple Removes SIM Card Tray on All iPhone 14 Models in U.S.

Apple today announced that all iPhone 14 models sold in the U.S. do not have a built-in SIM card tray and instead rely entirely on eSIM technology. ...

MacRumorsJoe Rossignol

I feel like there's some deeper thinking to do on the end of physical SIM cards. The iPhone played a big role in ending the 'lock in' of buying a device from a phone company and having to play by their rules. I wonder if exclusive eSIM usage puts more power back in the hands of telcos. Maybe it's all the same, but there's something about having price competition on a shelf in a store versus needing to find providers digitally. On a long enough timeline, maybe it's all the same?

Laurene Powell Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook, and others team up to launch the ‘Steve Jobs Archive’

CodeCon 2022 held an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, former design chief Jony Ive, and Laurene Powell Jobs on Wednesday. Together they talked about the legacy of Steve Jobs and the impact he had on many people’s lives. Now they’ve all teamed up to launch the “Steve Jobs Archive” with important me…

9to5MacFilipe Espósito

Looking forward to watching the Code Conference session with Tim Cook, Jony Ive, and Laurene Powell Jobs talking to Kara Swisher from earlier this week. The Steve Jobs Archive is a lovely tribute to his thinking and his ambitions.

Meta dissolves team responsible for discovering ‘potential harms to society’ in its own products | Engadget

Meta’s “Responsible Innovation Team,” a group meant to address “potential harms to society” is no more..

Engadget

You can't fix what you don't measure.

As a cutesy little lamb, you're tasked with managing a cult and taking down those who oppose you. It requires a deft mix of simulation and action-roguelike gameplay that quickly hooks you in. Although the genre combination seems odd at first, it doesn't take long for the mashup to reveal itself as a recipe for chaotic fun.

Julian Winton, the Creative Director of the game, shares how Cult of the Lamb went through multiple iterations before settling on the satisfying gameplay we see today.

On the latest episode of High Resolution, the Byteside videogame industry podcast, Winton explains how his early experience making Flash games led to forming Massive Monster and making commercial games.

Join us for an entertaining chat about the highs and lows of game development - no sacrifice required! You can listen via your favourite podcast app, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Having had a chance to go hands on with the new units, it feels like a watershed moment for the viability of bendable screen smartphones.

After the first few generations of ironing out the rough edges, these new devices feel like the “oh, of course” versions that will turn heads when someone notices what you just did with your new smartphone.

Smartphone fashion stasis

The device we carry everywhere has been refined amazingly over the past 15 years. A true revolution took root. What a time in the history of communications this has been!

While you can tell the physical differences once you spend a few seconds observing, at a distance and a quick glance a smartphone is like a laptop today. A form that has followed the function of giving us a nice slab of hand-sized screen to live a great deal of our lives through.

But on the fashion front? Afficionados notice the details but it’s mostly become a pretty subtle adjustment year over year.

And that’s fine! Unless you are one of those who craves ‘newness’ in a device.

Many do.

For years we saw that in new model updates when a new chip in the same chassis would not sell as well as the same chip in a new chassis. Many buyers want to see they own ‘the new one’, and would time their purchase to align with the new hot hardware.

Before the functionality of a large flat screen became the essence of a mobile phone, before the true ‘smartphone’ era arrived, there were some wildly different phones on the market. When the screen was just a very small part of the chassis, there was a lot more room to get creative with how the device itself looked.

Is the Flip ready to reign once more?

Through the ‘90s and ‘00s, the most practical and stylish dumb phones were the flip phones.

No doubt you can argue that the Nokia devices that spawned stores full of swappable covers were definitive of a big slice of that history. But the flip balanced those two factors – form and function – best of all.

Over the past ten years we’ve been shown at lot of prototypes at events like Mobile World Congress. Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE, Motorola, and Samsung have all been talking about them for a good few years. Flexible OLED panels have been evolving alongside the split cell batteries to make all the bits and pieces fit where they’re needed.

The prototypes always had that ‘wow, this is cool’ factor but were always clearly prototypes. Whether that’s because they were hidden behind a glass panel because touching would break the illusion, or that the hinges creaked and shifted awkwardly like you wouldn’t want to think about how it would hold up after thousands of open/shut movements over the course of a year.

Even the earlier Galaxy Z devices were in that ‘not quite’ stage. Close. But not quite.

Holding the Galaxy Z Flip 4 in hand feels like that form and function balance is here again.

The hingeing feels good.
The screen looks great.
The camera is spot on.
The subtle line where the screen folds doesn’t feel weird or obtrusive anymore.

This thing is ready. It’s just a question of whether your wallet is.

Off the top of my head, I was going to guess it’s been five years since Samsung first launched its Galaxy Z folding phone series. Turns out it was only 2019 with the first Fold and 2020 with the Flip. That’s some really fast-paced iteration to get to this stage.

The Flip 3 and Fold 3 showed great signs for the adoption of this form factor last year. Hundreds of thousands were sold in Korea on day one. The kind of numbers that suggest the ‘early adopter’ phase may be ending and a lot more besides are starting to take notice.

Walk down the street using one of these, a lot of other people are going to start to notice as well. And it looks like a very real ‘new thing’ to be using out there.

Flip or Fold? Flip!

For me, it’s all about the Flip. I don’t really ‘get’ the Fold. It’s a skinny normal-sized smartphone that turns into an almost-square tablet-thing.

Options are great. Yay options. Keep playing with those form factors.

But for me, the Galaxy Z Fold shape doesn’t solve enough of a problem compared to a regular smartphone.

But the Flip? It’s gorgeous.

That’s why I think the Galaxy Z Flip 4 will be one of those iconic devices people remember in future. It’s hit the sweet spot and I’m sure Samsung is about to blitz the marketing on these things to make sure everyone takes notice.

Advantage Samsung

In many ways I feel the iPhone vs Android thing is a dead debate. We use a platform of choice with all our important apps and services set up just the way we like them, and ‘switching’ is not just a nuisance but a bit of a language shift.

So when I say ‘Advantage Samsung’ I’m really thinking about the other Android makers out there. Differentiation has gotten really tough there. The Pixel devices from Google have been my easy go-to recommendation for most buyers for a long time.

But the Flip 4 is a device you can fall in love with again. It has surprises that bring a smile to the face. The taps and gestures to use the camera for selfies when the Flip is closed are a joy to discover. The Samsung case designs have thoughtful features to really make the use experience better for having them.

I think about Motorola’s attempt to launch the RAZR again as its folding screen smartphone. The RAZR was the pinnacle in flip phones in the pre-smart era. It’s a great name to bring back. But that first version was just not ready. I often wonder if Moto should have parked that name until it was truly ready like the Flip 4 is today.

That said, Motorola has a new RAZR hitting the market real soon. It launches in China this week. Maybe it’s going to be the ideal competitor to the Flip 4? Having held the Samsung in my hand, it needs to be pretty great.

The return of joy

I remember a few big moments in mobile phones as a user and a journalist.

Having my first phone and the freedom it offered.
Getting a red cover for it. Nice.
Getting a Kyocera Slider. It was cool.
Having a Motorola Razr. It was really cool.
Using a Blackberry and sending email on the go.
Watching Steve Jobs blow our minds with a touchscreen device to put in our pockets.

It’s been a lot of VERY IMPRESSIVE iteration since then, but iteration nonetheless.

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 feels fun again. I hope at the very least it shakes up the status quo in a big way.

Upright is a company that has focused on doing one thing well, it seems. Helping us reduce stress and strain on our backs. And the Upright Go S is a pretty simple yet effective device for giving you a nudge when you need a reminder to sit up straight and get your core doing its job.

For anyone eager to rebuild good habits with their posture, the Upright Go S works really well. It's just a question of how hard you're willing to work with it.

There's two ways to wear the Upright Go S – as a stick-on or with a necklace style strap. Both position the lozenge-shaped device near the top of your back and the necklace option is relatively unobtrusive. My wife wore it regularly to work and it tucked away with enough subtlety to not worry about how it looked with any given outfit.

You set up the device with the Upright app, which walks you through how to use it and lets you set the range of angles you want to allow for before you receive an alert. You also adjust the device feedback setting here in the app, choosing the delay before an alert is triggered, the duration of the alert and intensity of the vibration when it politely tells you off for going into the red zone.

We found the minimum vibration was enough to give the reminder you need without making an audible noise that would make others nearby wonder what the hell was going on.

Depending on the type of work you do during the day, this might not suit your needs. It is really ideal for desk workers or workers who spend a lot of the day on their feet, or a mix of these two. If you're a gardener, hanging a show at an art gallery, or doing a lot of other work that requires bending and moving at odd angles, this might end up spamming you with alerts that don't quite match the intention.

One of the pitches from Upright is that the device can reset bad habits in two weeks. We'd have to say we agree with that assessment based on our experience, and that's what people should think about when exploring the Upright Go S as an option.

You don't have to wear it every day forever to find great value in this device. Even if you simply put it on using the necklace when you sit down at a desk it can serve that purpose of correcting poor posture just for this part of your day. The app also gives you a percentage score for how long you've spent in the ideal zone you set for yourself, so however long you wear it you'll have a percentage 'score' to motivate you to do the right thing.

The biggest part of fixing a posture habit is that it is actually quite tiring! Slouching isn't just 'laziness'. It takes real work and requires retraining some of your muscles to better support your sitting position. Your core muscles need to get some match fitness. Just as weight loss takes a good diet and regular exercise to achieve effective targets, Upright needs you to actually want to do the work of fixing your posture.

To that end, the Upright app also includes a range of 1-3 minute exercise, many of which are focused on seated stretches, twists other flexibility and core strength building moves. It wants to help you achieve results – you just have to be ready to be part of your own solution.

My wife tested the Upright Go S as well and has already recommended the device to a number of friends and colleagues. She found it was an ideal partner alongside taking pilates and seeing a physiotherapist, and felt that notifications from the app reminding her to use it more often were also well written – they felt encouraging, not like a guilt trip.

If you're on a reset journey after the past few years or you're trying to get serious about core and back strength for the first time, the Upright Go S is an effective device to help set you on a good path to success.

It’s what users want.
It’s what the data says.

It’s not me, it’s the algorithm.

Here’s Mosseri explaining his position on Twitter.

Whether you care about Instagram or not, this is one of the fundamental problems with the media world today. The idea that the people in charge aren’t responsible for ‘what users want’. They’re just following the data.

But what data is Instagram measuring to decide ‘what users want’? He says it in the video.

“Even if we change nothing. We see this even if you just look at chronological feed. If you look at what people share on Instagram, that’s shifting more and more to videos over time. If you look at what people like and consume and view on Instagram, it’s also shifting more and more to video.”

It’s right there in the middle. Likes. Consumption. Views. It’s the measurements that Instagram and Meta care about most. Time spent in the app. And, of course, you have to slow down to watch a video. It inherently takes longer to consume than a photo.

If time is the metric, video wins every time.

The answer from mega stars of Instagram like the Kardashians, Chrissy Tegan and James Charles is that they don’t want to be posting videos, but they’ve seen the visibility of photo posts decline.

From James Charles in an Instagram comment on Mosseri’s video:

“The reason there’s so much growth for video is because we are being FORCED to post video. The performance of our photos has tanked more than 90% so creators are switching to video not because they want to, but because we’re being told that it’s the only chance to grow. The shift to video is not industry wide, it’s TikTok-wide. I understand that every business has to evolve, compete, and please investors, but Instagram is losing the competition and has lost its identity along the way.”

This wraps up the issue nicely. Chronological feed only exists to appease old school users (and it doesn’t even seem to load properly anymore), but what appears there is based on what people are experiencing with visibility of reaching people who chose to follow them.

Behind the scenes, these services have teams who talk to major creators and tell them about the ‘trends’ they’re seeing and, ultimately, what they want to push more. When they tell a creator what is ‘growing’ they’re telling them what to post more of in future.

Anyone in media will remember Facebook’s first big push into video. Big promises of big audience reach, ultimately leading to some messy discoveries about numbers that just didn’t stack up.

Now they’re all chasing TikTok, with its success through pure algorithms and almost zero interest in who you’re friends with and who you follow. It’s a probablistic algorithm, learning from how you view whatever it throws at you.

Just be careful not to linger.

Instagram doesn’t want to be the next Twitter – incapable of evolution because a core noisy base of users want it to stay the same forever.

Twitter is both critically important in the news cycle and terrible at growing its users or working out how to earn revenue. Instagram worked out the revenue thing, but it could easily become ‘the photo thing’ that keeps a stagnant user base happy while other services eat its lunch.

But the fact is that TikTok is eating it. And they hate admitting that some changes are made through fear. Every service can decide how it measure what is important, but it should be a lot more careful declaring that its own favourite metrics are a true representation of ‘what users want’.

I didn’t say that ‘what users want’ excuse is just a social media problem. It’s a media problem. And it’s been a media problem before social and search algorithms delivered traffic to articles. A debate over video versus photos is far less harmful to society than the promotion of divisive lies and blatant fakery, and these continue to be driven by both algorithms and news organisations based on that same idea.

What do people want from social media? They’ll usually say they want a nice place to share things with friends and catch up on what their friends have been up to. And most social media hasn’t been focused on that in a long, long while.

If only happiness was something they were measuring.

A reminder that TikTok really isn’t social media, even though it gets lumped into that group of apps all the time in media discussions. It’s an entertainment app. It exists to amuse and entertain with a constant stream of videos from anyone and everyone.

It *has* recently started to do more with making friends with other users and giving users a Following page, kind of performing a reverse park into the idea of being social.

Meanwhile, you know where to find me.

If you’ve made it this far, you may be amused to learn we’re moving again.

After five months at Substack we’re consolidating the entire operation under a new CMS called Ghost so that all things Byteside will be published as both a website and a newsletter.

We find the newsletter format to be the best way to build and engage with Byteside readers, so a move to a new platform that works seamlessly for both general publishing and newsletter publishing feels like the best step forward.

Soon you’ll receive our next newsletter from our new byteside.com, which for the tech inclined (most of you) will no longer be on Wordpress but on Ghost CMS.

See you there.

Some critics have bemoaned the slower rate of new releases in recent years, largely thanks to the global pandemic. Regardless, there are still plenty of brilliant triple-A and indie games launching at regular intervals. Our best games of 2021 list was 30 entries long, for goodness sake!

Just this year alone, we've seen Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, and a new Fire Emblem game leading the triple-A space alongside great indies like Poinpy, Rogue Legacy 2, and Citizen Sleeper. That's without looking ahead to the highly-anticipated games due in the coming months.

GamesHub recently published a comprehensive look at the best games of 2022 so far, so we asked the team to join High Resolution, the Byteside videogames industry podcast to talk us through the year to date. GamesHub editor Edmond Tran and staff writer Emily Spindler share why 2022 has already been a year to remember.

As it turns out, there are too many games to fit into a single podcast.

You can check out the full discussion wherever you get podcasts from, including some of our favourite platforms:

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And, if you feel so inclined, please leave a review and share the episode with your friends. Any games we missed you strongly believe are GOTY contenders? Let us know!

The Pixel 6A offers one of the clearest answers to that question. Are you all in on all things Google? If so, there's a very good chance this is everything you need, with just a couple of trade offs to deliver a very good phone for $749.

My personal bias in Android remains a love for stock Android. I've never really enjoyed all the extras that some manufacturers layer onto Android in the name of looking 'unique'. I love stock standard Android, especially in the Android 12 'Material You' era. It's sexy, it's simple, it's elegant.

I like that Nokia phones have embraced Android One and it makes their budget line a great choice, but with Google cheekily saving a few features for its own Pixel phones it makes this series of hardware a very strong pick for Android purist affections.

Google Tensor smarts

The big ticket item here is that the Pixel 6A has the same chip you find in last year's Pixel 6 Pro, Google's own Tensor processor, in a smaller 6.1-inch body. That's half an inch smaller than the 6 Pro and a quarter-inch smaller than the 6. Of the three, this really does feel like an ideal size of the three for anyone who wants to use their phone one-handed more often.

In the bells and whistles department, it's 5G, it's Wi-Fi 6, it's Bluetooth 5.2, it's got the in-screen fingerprint reader… it's got all the key features for doing all the latest things people like doing with their phones.

Being a Pixel, you also get some great Google exclusive features like Live Translate and Google's suite of crazy camera features like Face Unblur, Magic Eraser, Night Sight, and Real Tone. All powered by that same Tensor chip and Google AI smarts you find in the Pixel 6 Pro without paying the extra $550.

Trade offs with benefits

Of course, this is where the trade offs start to come in. There's two lenses, both delivering 12 megapixels of wide and ultrawide imaging. The camera smarts are better than ever, but the camera sensor is the same Sony IMX 363 chip Google has used in the previous 4 years of Pixel phones. That's a long time in smartphone years… but the thing is, it's a rock solid sensor!

On the spec sheet it's a lot less than the 50 megapixels of the 6 and 6 pro, but coupled with Tensor and clever algorithms, you have to be hardcore about your phone camera and love pixel peeping to really notice you're missing anything. Likewise, the 8 megapixel front camera delivers the goods for anyone who isn't desperately seeking flaws to fuss over.

Testing against an iPhone 13 Pro, the Pixel 6A's biggest issues are more related to its lens options than its ability to take a nice picture. Hover to see which is which.

The screen is FHD+ (which means a longer 20:9 ratio Full HD, at 2400x1080) and runs 60Hz, making it a slower screen than its fancier high-end friends. Overall, the phone runs just fine, but if you have ever used a faster screen you will notice the occasional dropped frames and delays. I hate using a word like 'delay' because it's really almost nothing. And if you are upgrading from a phone that's got a few years of age on it, this will feel great.

If there's one element that might cause occasional moments of sluggishness, it might be the Pixel 6A having 6GB RAM compared with 8GB in the Pixel 6 and 12GB in the Pixel 6 Pro. It's always hard to blame any specific factor, but it's one of the only stand out specs that might explain the rare moments when things aren't perfectly smooth with the performance given the chips are all the same.

But this also feels like it lands in the worthy trade offs category, because in spite of having the same Tensor chip in a smaller body with a smaller 4410mAh battery, the Pixel 6A maintains a solid battery life that never delivered any scary moments, even when using the Always On screen mode.

Trade offs you notice

There are, however, two trade offs in the Pixel 6A that did feel annoying. One was the sluggish performance of the in screen fingerprint reader, which occasionally took more than a second to register or didn't register correctly at all. Still faster than typing a PIN, but as the first stop in your experience opening your phone umpteen times a day - it matters.

The second is wireless charging. It isn't here. Not every mid-range phone has it, but many now do, and it was one of those things that felt weird when I put it onto the Belkin wireless dock on my desk and nothing happened.

Great vibes, good price

In its own way, that 'surprise' lack of wireless charging also reminded me that the Pixel 6A might be a phone that feels in the hand and looks to the eye like a gorgeous, high-end device, but it isn't. It's a great full flavoured Google phone that manages to cut a few corners right where you're least likely to notice them (until you do).

I always like to have a go-to Android option that I can recommend to non-enthusiast users that ask me what they should buy. With a $250 saving over the Pixel 6, with a few well chosen trade offs, the Pixel 6A is my new top of mind suggestion to throw at those kinds of users. I can see this phone doing a fine job for most people through its three years of updates.

You can pre-order the Google Pixel 6A now ahead of its release on Thursday, July 28.

What's more, Google and AFL made a web app last year to help teach footy skills: the Footy Skills Lab. It's an AI-based tool that uses your camera to provide feedback on fundamentals like marking a ball and decision making.

Google just launched a major update to Footy Skills Lab aimed at improving accessibility. The major tech company collaborated with the AFL's Disability Inclusion team to introduce features for people with vision needs, hearing needs, and athletes who use wheelchairs as well.

When launching the web app, you're prompted to choose from several accessibility options, including captions, video playback speed, and AFL Wheelchair mode.

Video footage from experts guides you through each session, ranging from AFLW 2020 Best and Fairest winner Maddy Prespakis, Melbourne forward Tayla Harris, to new Hawthorn recruit Akec Makur Chuot and more.

Added in the new update are sessions from Victorian Wheelchair Football League Captains, Louis Roe and Chris Henderson, alongside AFL umpire Nathan Williamson.

Sport is for everyone, so I absolutely love these additions to the Footy Skills Lab. Anything that promotes inclusion and encourages people to get involved is a winner in my eyes.

The SteelSeries Stratus+ is the latest entry from the renowned peripheral company – we're noted fans of the gear from SteelSeries – to give you another option in the increasingly popular mobile controller space. Built primarily for Android devices, it's also a decent PC gamepad, albeit with one potentially divisive design quirk.

SteelSeries Stratus+ does plenty of good stuff…

Some controllers have what I like to call a 'good pickup feel'. As in, you grab the thing out of the box and it immediately feels satisfying to hold. The SteelSeries Stratus+ absolutely nails the good pickup feel test.

It has a strong, hefty build quality without being uncomfortably heavy. Think of it as a Goldilocks controller: not too light, flimsy, and overly plasticky, but not obscenely weighty to the point where dropping it on your toe will result in a visit to the emergency department.

This satisfying balance extends to the Stratus+'s control sticks. They have a good amount of tension, so every movement feels precise. However, clicking in the sticks for the R3 and L3 inputs (or whatever you call them) makes an unpleasant crunch sound, far louder than any controller I recall using.

Imagine my relief when first realising the Stratus+ has analogue triggers. It's a standard feature among premium controllers like the DualSense and Xbox gamepads, but the otherwise brilliant Nintendo Switch Pro Controller is marred by its binary input digital triggers. This means the Stratus+ is an excellent option for racing games like Forza Horizon 5, which I streamed on PC and the Lenovo Duet 5 Chromebook via Xbox Game Pass.

Speaking of which, pairing the controller with a Chromebook via Bluetooth was utterly effortless. After holding the Stratus+ home button to activate pairing mode, it immediately appeared as a discoverable device. No arcane rituals are needed to sync a controller here.

Another winning factor for the Stratus+ is its ridiculously long battery life, rivalling the legendary endurance of the aforementioned Switch Pro Controller. SteelSeries quotes 90+ hours of mobile gameplay on a single battery charge, which is pretty damn good. I didn't measure my usage but had no battery issues whatsoever. You can even press a button to check how much juice remains via the controller's four-light indicator, which is a nifty feature other manufacturers should emulate.

Although the Stratus+ only supports a wired connection to PC, using an included USB-C to USB-A cable, it's a great gamepad to leave on your desk to save you from continually pairing and unpairing your dedicated console controllers.

Also, a quick mention for Android phone users: it comes with a dedicated mount so you don't have to prop your phone up. Although I used the Stratus+ with an Android-compatible tablet, I didn't have a phone to test the mount on.

…and some not-so-good stuff

At this point, it probably seems like the Stratus+ is the ultimate controller for Android and PC players, right? Let's just say it's not without some faults that warrant mentioning.

Aside from the unpleasantly crunchy control stick presses, I also took umbrage with some of the button inputs. While the main face buttons are perfectly responsive, trying to access some of the middle buttons is trickier than it should be.

There are two buttons – one on either side of the home input – designed to function as the 'start' and 'select' inputs. At least, that's what they were called back in the early Nintendo days – each console calls them something different, so I've bloody lost track of what people call them now. Regardless of title, these two buttons are too small and sit too deeply in their respective cavities to be accessed easily.

It's particularly annoying when you need to quickly pause a game because it's excessively fiddly to press down on the button in question. That, and I found the sticks got in the way due to the angle I needed to adjust my thumbs to reach the start button. I would've preferred the start/select buttons to protrude slightly further out from the controller or be closer to the four-light indicator for easier access.

Another design quirk I clashed with was the way the grips on the Stratus+ connected with the controller body. As the grips meet the rest of the controller, there's a well-defined groove that dips down towards the controller's face.

I found this highly noticeable and occasionally annoying due to how I use a controller. When pressing buttons, I alternate between the tip of my thumb and the part close to the first joint. This allows me to quickly press different buttons or easily press two buttons simultaneously when required.

However, the Stratus+'s pronounced groove runs too close to the 'B' button and the left D-pad for comfort. There were plenty of times when I'd go to press one of those inputs, only for this groove to get in the way, causing me to mistime a button press, or not press it at all. This happened semi-frequently when I played Card Shark on PC – a clever minigame caper reliant on timing. After a while, I adjusted my grip and encountered this specific issue fewer times, although it felt like I was wearing my pants backwards.

What I would like to stress is that this may be an issue hyper-localised to my specific method of using controllers. Everyone holds gamepads differently, so what might be a hangup for me could be totally null and void for you. In any case, it's worth holding a Stratus+ in your hands to see if it suits your style.

In all other facets, the Stratus+ is a strong controller for Android and PC use, backed by its good build quality and extraordinary battery life. Just check how you hold a controller first to ensure its quirky design doesn't generate any unintended barriers along the way.

During the pandemic, Rosie founded the Engineering With Rosie YouTube channel to share her knowledge and help people better understand what a clean energy future looks like. Nearly 50,000 subscribers later, she's also learned plenty along the way.

Rosie joins Seamus on the Byteside podcast to discuss her career, building a community, and the unique skills required to communicate niche knowledge online. Not to mention the challenges of navigating a male-dominated field!

You can check out the highly informative chat via your favourite podcast platform, including a video version on YouTube.

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If you enjoy the episode, please share and let us know on social media or leave a review!

Byteside's Seamus Byrne enlists fellow tech enthusiast and ABC Western Plains presenter Nic Healey to try and make some sense of all the noise in the latest Byteside podcast.

Meta's VR Visual Turing Test is a big discussion point, as is the controversial mobile RPG Diablo Immortal; is it really as predatory as people have made it out to be? Plus, in-person Metaverse shops are now a thing, apparently?

It wouldn't be an episode of Byteside without some D&D love, with the recent Critical Role Exandria Unlimited: Calamity campaign receiving high praise.

It's also the first time we're trying video podcasts! You can now tune in via YouTube or your favourite pod platform.

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Once you've watched, listened, and downloaded the show, let us know what you think by leaving a review and saying g'day on social media.

There’s been quite a scramble over the past few years to re-engineer business systems. And the results have been incredible. Did anyone really think we would all so seamlessly go home and keep the wheels turning thanks to remote digital collaboration tools? That we would all get comfortable with video conferencing? And who thought ‘supply chain management’ was going to become a dinner table topic across the world?

Of course, there are many challenges we’re still working on to find the right hybrid world for the future. But one of the hallmarks of success from the last three years feeds into adjusting to the future: trust.

Exploring a 2022 trend report from IBM’s Institute of Business Value, two themes speak to this concept from both a human and digital perspective. Let’s dig a little deeper:

Human capital is precious and scarce

Whatever you think of the ‘Great Resignation’ discussion, the statistics speak to a real crisis of human capital. According to the IBM report, in a survey of almost 10,000 workers across nine countries, 30% of employees have either changed employers in 2021 or planned to do so, with another 15% to do the same in 2022. That’s almost half the workforce.

Of those that have changed jobs voluntarily, 56% said it was for flexibility and almost one-third said it was to work for a company that better aligned with their values. One in four don’t believe their employer looks out for their mental and physical wellbeing.

So many of these reasons have trust at the heart of the concern. The pandemic, and how long it lasted (and yes, it’s still here), encouraged so many people to think about what they truly care about and how they want to align their work with their values. And many businesses showed their true colours on how much they really care about the people they employ.

Unemployment is low and the need for highly skilled workers is extremely high right now. The IBM report suggests the decade ahead could see 85M+ skilled jobs go unfilled, with hundreds of billions in revenue opportunity lost. Technology is only as helpful as the human talent we hand it to to develop and create and explore what’s next.

Corporate leaders need to be more ‘real’ than ever before. It’s not enough to apply the language of big ideas and expect staff to feel included in the journey. Building rapport with employees matters more at a time when we see each other in person less. The best moments of pandemic business are when real life leaks in around the edges. It feels more human than many of us had in a long time.

Trust is hard earned and easily broken. And while we work harder than ever to build trust with employees, there’s the digital side of the equation that needs great talent to ensure we stay ahead of the bad actors.

Trust and security underpin sustained innovation

Digital security has become more critical to business than ever in the remote and hybrid world. And trust has many meanings in a digital context. Zero Trust is one of the big aims of modern network security, shifting every interaction into a state where authentication is required at all times to ensure nothing is trusted for too long to get access beyond strict limits in each given moment.

Think about that difference between being inside an office building for all your work versus wandering between cafes to get things done on a laptop. What we feel comfortable leaving on our desk in the office is very different from where we leave our phone when we’re in a public place.

The need to move data between servers we own and cloud architectures has created a trust problem for when and who can access essential data that can only be solved by treating every data request like it’s a random stranger walking past your cafe table.

In the IBM trend report, seven in ten organisations are struggling to secure data as it moves across multicloud and on-premise environments, and 90% of cyber incidents are originating in cloud environments. For those on the path to zero trust solutions, three in five say it’s enabled the digital transformation they’ve been working toward – almost twice the number of non zero trust movers.

Fundamentally, as the maturity of cloud security grows, the ability to trust the environment grows and so do the opportunities to create new digital business links across internal and external partners. Zero trust might be confusing to some because this digital removal of inherent ‘trust’ enables far more trust in the system itself, and the humans who rely on it.

Trust is everything

It’s interesting to think about how essential trust has become to every aspect of driving workplaces forward. Trusted digital systems allow for more agility of ideas and execution. And a workforce that trusts the company direction and leadership’s support for the team will have more confidence in putting their all toward company success.

As digital transformation continues, there is no destination where we will eventually declare “finished”. Trust is now essential to the process of effective change. We need to make it part of the entire idea of innovating and evolving as a business.

With good leadership that sets a clear path and clear people-centric values, we set ourselves up to win the trust of staff and develop the right technologies to enable a smarter future.

In 2022, your options for a good set of headphones are nearly endless. Technology has evolved to the point where the best headphones for most uses are wireless, providing you with great sound quality and eliminating messy cables.

Using our decades of tech journalism knowledge combined with expert reviews from major publications, we've put together a list of the best headphones you can get right now in 2022. Whether you want something for everyday listening, workouts, gaming, or you're shopping on a budget, we've got you covered.

Where possible, see if you can try a set of headphones before you buy them. Everyone has different tastes, especially when it comes to individual audio preferences. Although many current headphones let you tweak EQ settings, some are built to be more bass-heavy, while others feature a more neutral sound. Another reason to try a pair on is to determine the fit. What might be snug to you could be skull-crushingly tight to someone else.

Of course, going hands-on (or ears-on) isn't always possible, which is why we've put in the work to recommend a list of the best headphones on the market.

The best headphones

The best headphones overall: Sony WH-1000XM5

The best wireless headphones: Sennheiser Momentum 3

The best headphones for sports and workouts: Jabra Elite Active 75t

The best headphones for gaming: HyperX Cloud Alpha

The best budget headphones: Jabra Elite 45h

The best headphones if you've got money to burn: Apple AirPods Max

The best headphones overall: Sony WH-1000XM5

Previous iterations of Sony's popular headphones remain fantastic, although the latest and greatest – the WH-1000XM5 – is the one to beat. It improves upon the already brilliant sound and microphone quality, active noise cancellation, and impressive battery life to make an essential piece of audio kit.

Although slightly more expensive than its predecessor, the Sony WH-1000XM5 is absolutely worth it, according to the folks at Digital Trends in a five-star review. It also garnered significant praise from the Tom's Guide review team, with special mention going towards the WH-1000XM5's updated design.

You could certainly walk away happy getting either the older WH-1000XM3 or WH-1000XM4 models, but the Sony WH-1000XM5 are the best headphones you can buy right now.

The best wireless headphones: Sennheiser Momentum 3 Wireless

Of course, the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones are just about the best at everything, major audio brand Sennheiser has a strong competitor in the Momentum 3 Wireless.

The third generation of Sennheiser's consumer-level headphones has been around for a few years now, but they still stand out as providing great audio quality and noise cancellation. CNET sang its praises but – arguably more impressive – Crinacle, an audiophile highly respected in online circles, deemed the Sennheiser Momentum 3 Wireless worth the money.

Recommendations don't come much better than that.

Feature-wise, the Sennheisers do exactly what you'd expect from the best headphones: noise cancellation, good sound, and can connect to your phone for making calls. The fact it does all of these things (and more) at a consistently high standard is what earns the Momentum 3 Wireless a place on this list.

The best headphones for sports and workouts: Jabra Elite Active 75t

In 2022, the best headphones for wearing while being active aren't headphones at all. At least not in the traditional sense. Earphones, earbuds, in-ear headphones – whatever you want to call them – are the audio companion you want when getting all hot and sweaty. They have a low profile, are less prone to falling off, and don't add unwanted sweat buildup where a headband would be.

Jabra is well known for making good portable audio tech and commonly come up in discussion when the topic turns to earphones. For working out, the Jabra Elite Active 75t is the gold standard. They pack a strong audio punch, fit well, and are built to last – including a 1m depth waterproof rating.

The audio gurus from Wirecutter rate the Jabra Elite Active 75t as the best headphones for working out, with kudos going towards the earphones' ease of use. When you're mid-run, the last thing you want is to slow down and fiddle with clunky controls. Expert reviewers from PC Mag and Tom's Guide also give the sporty Jabra buds credit for being the ultimate workout accompaniment.

With three different ear tip sizes included, the Jabra Elite Active 75t should fit most people, which is better than many of the alleged one-size-fits-all models out there.

If you take listening to music while working out seriously, you need a set of Active 75t earphones. They're currently the best headphones for an active lifestyle.

The best headphones for gaming: HyperX Cloud Alpha

When buying a set of gaming headphones, two factors stand out as being the most important: good directional audio so you can pick up on opponents' audio cues, and a clear microphone for communicating with teammates during online play. A little while ago, we tested a wide range of gaming headsets, which illustrated how tricky it is to find the best headphones for the gamer in your life.

HyperX has stood out among the crowded gaming headphones market in recent years. Too often when choosing a headset, you have to put up with either a sub-par mic or flimsy build quality. With the HyperX Cloud Alpha, you get the best of everything: a brilliant sound mix, a decent mic, and some of the strongest build quality you'll encounter in the gaming peripherals space. And it's affordable, too.

The HyperX Cloud Alphas got the nod from PC World when it first launched, and it's been a mainstay ever since. Features such as removable cabling, a detachable mic, and superb comfort are just some of the reasons it's such a popular headset. A 3.5mm audio jack means you can use it with pretty much any gaming device, which we'd highly recommend you do. Wirecutter also considers the HyperX Cloud Alpha as the best headphones for gaming, just in case you didn't take our word for it.

If wireless is more your style, a cable-free version is also available, rated to last a whopping 300 hours between charges. Whichever one you choose, you'll love the Cloud Alpha.

The best budget headphones: Jabra Elite 45h

Depending on your budget, you can get a decent pair of headphones at a pretty reasonable price. For something that deftly balances performance, features and price, we lean towards the Jabra Elite 45h.

Strong, bassy audio, Bluetooth connectivity, and a comfy fit all make the Jabra Elite 45h a standout contender for the best budget headphones available. While they don't include some extras like noise cancellation, the headphones really nail the fundamentals of a good listening experience. The Jabra Elite 45h does include app functionality to tweak equalisation to your liking and is compatible with smart assistants like Siri or Google Assistant.

It's for reasons such as these that warranted a glowing review from PC Mag, and the headphones' affordability was integral to the positive words on Wirecutter. They're just great wireless headphones at an affordable price. What's not to like?

If you want some other options at varying budget prices, we've also heard good things about the Anker Soundcore Life Q20 and Sennheiser HD 450BT headphones. They both offer cost-effective wireless options with different features to suit a range of preferences.

For most people, however, the Jabra Elite 45h hits that sweet spot of price and performance, so it takes out our best budget headphones category.

The best headphones if you've got money to burn: Apple AirPods Max

Look, you can spend a lot of money on headphones. A lot. There are plenty more expensive headphones available than the Apple AirPods Max, but they're usually aimed at music industry types who need the level of granular quality a ridiculous amount of money buys. For the average consumer with cash to splurge or an Apple enthusiast, the AirPods Max is legitimately one of the best headphones.

Firstly, they're genuinely great headphones. In Alice Clarke's first-week impressions on Byteside, she mentioned there wasn't a type of music that didn't sound good on the AirPods Max. If you can get past the silly-looking travel case, there's a lot to like about Apple's over-ear headphones.

Widely regarded as providing best-in-class noise cancellation, the Apple AirPods Max impressed many reviewers with its overall performance. CNET, Tom's Guide, and Digital Trends were among the publications labelling them among the best luxury headphones money could buy. As expected of a product from Apple, the AirPods Max excels in overall quality.

You could reasonably argue that with how much they cost, the headphones would damn well want to be good. However, price is no guarantee of performance, so credit where credit is due.

Expensive but extremely good, the Apple AirPods Max definitely earns a place on the best headphones list.

Huddles is now being extended with new features to make it even more useful for quick creative brainstorms and catch ups that help end the game of hunting people's calendars for 30 minute timeslots.

We're chatting to Rob Seaman, Vice President of Product at Slack, to learn more about what's new in Huddles and how Slack has learned about its value to customers during the pandemic.

Transformation in the business world is a constant. The events of the past few years have made this abundantly clear, with technology driving a rapid shift in priorities across employers, employees, and customers alike.

Even if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic, transforming products, processes, and ways of working has become vital to staying ahead of the competition.

Keeping up with competitors and evolving consumer demands is essential to making it at the top of any field. While the pandemic has been widely disruptive, and you’d never wish the past two years upon the world, it has presented opportunities to accelerate digital adoption.

So what’s the buzzword for the next phase of business? Adaptability. This means being flexible, trying new technology, and fully embracing digital transformation.

A recent trend report from the IBM Institute of Business Value explains that transformation is happening full-steam ahead, and how it must integrate with day-to-day business operations.

Transformation continues at pace

Digital transformation is not so much a target as a way of life. It was happening before the pandemic but is now moving at a significantly greater pace as we all adapt to a nebulous 'new normal'.

One major finding from the IBM COVID-19 and the future of business report was that 60% of organisations accelerated investments in digital transformation during the pandemic. Additionally, 55% of organisations permanently adjusted strategies in light of these changes.

So, what does this mean?

It suggests the majority of businesses recognised the need to transform and adapt to a changing world. Investing in hybrid work solutions to enable employees to work from anywhere. Attending virtual meetings occasionally interrupted by enthusiastic children or personal space-defying household pets became a daily routine.

Organisations investing in digital began to understand that having a brick-and-mortar shopfront or a cushy office environment was no longer enough. Ensuring people can interact with you digitally is the new expectation. A strong digital presence is simply good business.

So what transformation initiatives are top of mind for executives? According to the IBM report, 79% of CEOs believe smart-connected tech driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) will be the number one technology to deliver business results, followed closely by cloud and AI solutions. It all points to data directed toward smart systems as being seen as a big enabler in the years ahead.

Much of this transformation involves streamlining the way we process data, empowering people to make more informed decisions and businesses to offer better products to consumers.

A lot of the tech executives want to use going forward already exists. But unshackled from old ways of thinking, organisations can better realise their potential.

With positive results from recent digital transformations on the scoreboard, including hybrid working models and faster uptake of new tech, organisations need to prepare for further change ahead. Leaders must ensure employees feel well supported and properly equipped for ongoing transformation.

There's no point in using the shiniest and fanciest tools available if no one knows how to use them!

Tech adoption should reshape business operations

Considering 97% of businesses have started adopting cloud technologies, with nearly 80% implementing some level of AI, merely using technology isn't enough to lead the pack. What counts is how you use it.

Organisations that holistically integrate tech adoption within business strategies and company culture are those best primed for success. Combined with a readiness to commit to ongoing innovation, businesses have every chance to fully benefit from digital transformation and maximise return on investment.

From start to finish, technology must be involved in transforming towards the new way of doing business IBM refers to as the 'Virtual Enterprise'.

One of the most important factors regarding the Virtual Enterprise model is investing in ecosystems and innovation.

According to IBM’s Institute for Business Value, high technology adopters who do this can see revenue growth premium over competitors:

• 40% investing in ecosystems
• 40% investing in open innovation
• 20% through more efficient user-centric design processes
• 20% through more efficient systems for moving data
• 15% through reskilling staff

Essentially, organisations that educate teams and ensure digital systems are easy to use will see the greatest benefits. High levels of technology adoption paired with holistic business and culture transformation are likely to outperform organisations that solely focus on adopting the latest tech, dust their hands and walk away.

In many ways, the ‘new normal’ is an ongoing and constant era of digital transformation. Those who approach it intelligently and bring their people along for the ride will be well-positioned to stand out from the rest.

So much of tech today can be too much sizzle with very little sausage. Meta’s own presentation when changing its name last year was an example of exactly that – big ideas, light on detail.

This latest look at the layers and layers of research going into VR headsets was a great example of bringing enthusiasts on a journey so we all know which ‘future’ Meta is striving for. All underpinned by a grand ambition to beat a “Visual Turing Test” where the world inside VR looks as real as the world outside.

The demo constantly reminded viewers how far these products are from the market, and by showing how much progress (or sometimes how little progress) has been made over the past five years it helped paint a better picture of what the next 5-10 years could look like in VR and AR technology.

One impressive aspect was the isolated paths within the research teams. Some working on achieving a readable eye chart. Other discussions on the need to boost brightness and HDR. How lenses and optics are being advanced to slim down the size of headsets. And some very advanced eye tracking to keep images in focus wherever the wearer wanted to look.

Is winning a Visual Turing Test what we want from VR? Is that the ideal visual space? I’m happy to say that’s a separate debate. Simply by giving us a clear goal, Meta helped us to understand how these various research efforts would eventually come together to achieve a far better VR experience than what is achievable today.

Tech can be so guarded. Companies can worry about reducing sales of today’s products if they show too much excitement for tomorrow’s. But VR is a space where enthusiasts are going to enthusiast. They’ll keep exploring new gear as it arrives. And very few outside the hardcore are interested in buying VR right now.

This kind of ‘sneak preview’ of tech gets people excited for what will eventually be possible. It reminds us technology is HARD. That solving big challenges is what drives the extremely smart people who make this stuff.

As a fan of what VR makes possible today – and the even bigger potential for the future – I’ve felt a bit disappointed by how slowly the tech has evolved over the past five years. But a session like this restored some confidence that the boffins are in the midst of solving some really tough problems.

Even if you decide that whatever Meta metaverse of ads and microtransactions may await, the research their teams are doing will undoubtedly feed into the research being done at places like Apple and HTC and Google and PlayStation to push this space forward.

That’s a win for whatever may be possible when we hit the 2030s, and the era when I’ll probably be sent to some VR retirement home. Just hook old man Seamus up to VR World of Warcraft and don’t tell me when I died. Thanks.

More on that…

Zuckerberg wants Meta headsets to pass the Visual Turing Test (UploadVR) :: A run down from one of the best sites following the evolution of VR out there. Plus more details from UploadVR here and here.

Brain food

10 years on, a requiem for the Zune (Fast Company) :: Microsoft’s effort to break through iPod dominance in the Noughties. A nice stroll down flash memory lane.

How eBay showed us how to build a business online (The Guardian) :: Did you know eBay started as AuctionWeb in 1995? I’d missed that nugget of history, but will now file that away in the trivia databank for future reference.

Newsworthy

Some Aussie retailers have been using facial recognition tech in stores without any clear warnings for customers (Byteside) :: A great bit of investigation from CHOICE (as usual) has uncovered a few major retails – including Bunnings, Kmart and The Good Guys – have been quietly using facial recognition tech in their store surveillance systems.

Next gen fast charging tech for EVs could see you gone in 600 seconds (Byteside) :: Range anxiety is slowly fading in the EV space, but the time to refill is still a friction point. But as the research keeps rolling onward faster and faster charging becomes a thing.

Percy just found garbage on Mars (Mashable) :: Some foil from Perseverance rover’s final rocket stage heat shielding has been spotted by the rover lodged in a tiny crevice while hunting for signs of life. It’s a tricky situation. Sad to see some NASA garbage but we wouldn’t see ANYTHING there without sending rovers that are dropped off in a precision ballet of rockets and parachutes and shielding devices.

Apple Pay Later will be funded by Apple itself, not a bank (Ars Technica) :: I was very curious about the fine print on Apple’s Pay Later scheme. It turns out it has created a wholly owned subsidiary to finance the product – and in the process maintain a lot of privacy for customers who use it.

Border Force searched more than 40,000 devices in five years (iTnews) :: That’s a lot of warrantless searches. Apparently ABF officers are not obliged to tell you that you are not obliged to unlock a device for them. So consider yourself reminded of your rights.

Also:

• Instagram has a Family Centre to help manage the experience for teens. And please, parents, take an active role in your child’s online life already.
• WhatsApp users can finally migrate message history from Android to iPhone. This could easily have been a dealbreaker for many WhatsApp users, so it’s great that migration is now possible whichever phone OS you want to use.

From Canadian studio Cellar Door Games, the Rogue Legacy series sees you fight through a castle, where upon death, you assume the role of the protagonist's heir. Bequeathed loot accumulated during each run, you spend gold to upgrade each subsequent character so you're a bit more powerful for the next attempt. It's a compelling loop filled with homages to classic 2D adventure games like Metroid and Castlevania.

On the latest episode of High Resolution, the Byteside videogames industry podcast, Cellar Door Games co-founder and designer Teddy Lee details the tricky path to capturing success a second time.

From finding popularity with Rogue Legacy, the commercial struggles of the studio's follow-up in Full Metal Furies, to the surprisingly emotional Early Access journey of Rogue Legacy 2, Lee explains it all.

Also, there's a little discussion about the studio's early Flash games, including Don't Shit Your Pants, a game we've all played IRL at some point in our lives.

Tune into the full chat wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

To keep up to date with High Resolution, follow the podcast and subscribe to Byteside’s twice-weekly newsletter examining all things tech, digital culture, and video games.

E3 will supposedly return next year, but why would major game companies want to? In lieu of a physical exhibition, the major players such as Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and more have happily done their own thing. Instead of awkward and stilted on-stage interactions, they can produce slick sizzle reels anyone can watch from home.

Love or loathe him, Geoff Keighley — the Energizer Bunny of videogame presenting — has filled the E3 void in recent years with the Summer Game Fest and its countless publication-specific spin-offs. The formula hasn’t changed much: lots of trailers and game announcements mixed with a few weird celebrity cameos.

Once you throw in a State of Play here, an Xbox Showcase there, and a few others along the way, it’s as if E3 never existed. Videogame companies get full control over messaging and don’t have to pay out the wazoo for precious show floor space.

One downside from a journalistic perspective is there are fewer opportunities to preview in-development games, ask questions, and critically engage with each announcement. Not that the game companies would complain, mind you.

From a consumer perspective, it’s easier than ever to stay up to date with your favourite developers and succumb to the hype machine. Speaking of which, make sure you watch the latest Devolver Digital presentation — they’ve really outdone themselves this year with their ongoing industry satire series.

If you think I’m salty that I never experienced an E3 at its peak: you’d be partially correct. The event’s cultural impact will last forever, but its relevance has dwindled — even before a global pandemic sparked a digital revolution.

If E3 does, in fact, return in 2023, its presence will be far smaller. When all the major participants can comfortably whip fans into a frenzy in-house, there’s little need to look elsewhere.

It’s not personal: it’s simply business.

More on that…

Devolver Direct 2022 - a videogame singularity

I won’t try and cover all the not-E3 news in this newsletter. Instead, I’ll point out what you may have missed in between.

Brain food

Taika Watiti wants to focus on new characters for his Star Wars story, not old legacies (Gizmodo) :: Encouraging words from the talented director. Star Wars is at its best when trying new things or twisting familiar narratives.

Inside the $100K+ forgery scandal that’s roiling PC game collecting (Ars Technica) :: No community is free from scandal, it seems. Check out what’s rocking the world of game collecting.

Starfield has more ‘handcrafted’ content than any previous Bethesda game (Polygon) :: People got nervous hearing about Starfield having 1,000 planets. Would it all just be procedurally generated? The folks from Bethesda explain their approach.

Diablo Immortal: A Curious Case Of Hellish Hyperbole (WellPlayed) :: Diablo Immortal’s in-game monetisation has ruffled feathers. Here’s one take from someone who hasn’t spent a cent and thinks many of the headlines oversell concerns.

Play

Why is the vampire survival RPG V Rising such a hit in Early Access? (Sifter) :: V Rising has smashed through the Steam charts lately, but what has attracted so many people to it? Who better to answer that question than the developer Stunlock Studios!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Shredder’s Revenge is nostalgia done right (Polygon) :: Lots of people really dig the latest 80s-styled beat-’em-up, so here’s a good explainer about what works so well.

Xbox continues its cloud gaming future with Samsung TVs (Mashable) :: By the end of June, several recent Samsung TVs will get an Xbox app for console-free gaming.

This Vincent Gogh Lego set is incredible (Open Culture) :: Wow. Recreate Starry Night with a Lego set and be amazed.

• Acclaimed Fire Emblem and Persona voice actor Billy Kametz passes away.
• Aussies can finally use Xbox Design Lab to order official custom controllers.
• Assassin’s Creed goes roguelike for its 15th anniversary, Origins gets a free weekend.
• Diablo is coming to tattoo shops around the world.
• 65,000 unique versions of the original Pokemon games? Ya joking!
• Ex-Blizzard devs reveal free-to-play RTS Stormgate.
• Turns out the Steam Deck is perfect for playing games perfect for Nintendo Switch.
• An unofficial Daggerfall release adds updated controls and graphics.
• Do you want this cursed-looking D&D statue on your shelf?

Watch

Netflix Is Turning 'Squid Game' Into a Real-Life Competition With a $4.56M Prize (CNET) :: Sure, it sounds fun, but isn’t it missing the point of the show?

Nope is Jordan Peele’s next spooky project.

HBO has cancelled Raised By Wolves, what some believe to be the best sci-fi currently on TV (Forbes) :: Yet another show on my to-watch list. Here’s an impassioned plea for another platform to pick up the show.

Cyberpunk goes anime with Edgerunners (AusGamers) :: Looks stylish! It’ll be a standalone 10-episode series coming to Netflix. Notably, it’s from Studio Trigger, the folks behind the ridiculously over-the-top anime Kill la Kill.

• Star Wars writers haven’t forgotten about Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra from Solo.
• ‘Glass Onion’ is the next ‘Knives Out’ mystery from Rian Johnson.
• TIL David Bowie and Brian Eno made a Twin Peaks-inspired album.
• Take a look at the teaser for Tim Burton’s Wednesday.
• What sci-fi classic Aliens would look like with a modern trailer.

Thanks for reading Byteside! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Ubisoft is making a big deal out of the occasion, too, with a bunch of announcements and fresh content to celebrate.

Of the many things coming soon, I'm looking forward to The Forgotten Saga, a new game mode available to all Assassin's Creed Valhalla players for free. Following Odin once more, the roguelite-inspired mode will take place in the hellish Nordic setting of Niflheim.

For anyone who gets confused by the mention of anything prefixed by "rogue", roguelite generally refers to a gameplay loop where some form of meta progression carries over between attempts. Think of games like Hades and Rogue Legacy. Meanwhile, roguelike is when you start fresh each time, like Spelunky.

The Forgotten Saga continues Ubisoft's experimentation with genre-flipping its popular franchise. Far Cry 6 had multiple standalone DLC episodes starring previous villains from the series, housed within a roguelite structure. They were interesting departures from the main game in addition to being an encouraging sign of the developers' willingness to try something different.

Expect to see The Forgotten Saga sometime during the Australian spring/summer. In the meantime, the Ancient Egypt-set Assassin's Creed Origins is free to play this weekend starting today through to 20 June. It coincides with an update to support 60 fps on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles. Valhalla looks incredible on my Series X, so I'm looking forward to Origins running just as buttery smooth.

That's just a taste of what Ubisoft has in store for the series' 15th anniversary. For the full rundown, including all of the free content on the way, check out the official website for the celebration spanning multiple months.

Assassin's Creed II's soundtrack also received some love recently, cracking the top 200 in the recent Classic 100 poll hosted by ABC. Ezio Auditore's legacy lives on.

The consumer advocacy crew (full disclosure: I have contributed to CHOICE in the recent past) decided to do some asking around of 25 major retailers along with analysing their privacy policies and noticed three stood out from the rest when it came to what they have been doing with facial recognition tech in their stores.

"Most of these privacy policies you have to search for online, and they're often not easy to find," says CHOICE consumer data advocate Kate Bower. "But because we're talking about in-person retail shops, it's likely that no one is reading a privacy policy before they go into a store."

In one example from Kmart, CHOICE noticed a 'Conditions of entry' sign tucked away in a corner of the entrance did mention facial recognition. Mentioned in the final three words of the notice, after all the usual fine print about checking bags and general CCTV.

Not something most of us even think about these days. But thankfully, CHOICE noticed.

The research shows we're in desperate need for some real regulation around the use of this kind of technology, especially in the storage of biometric data and the need for clearly informed consent before they use it on us for no particularly important reason in stores.

If they asked to take our fingerprints on each visit, do they really think we'd say yes?

While Kmart and The Good Guys (lol) didn't respond to CHOICE's queries, at least Bunnings offered comments on why it feels this is a legit approach to store security.

"It's really important to us that we do everything we can to discourage poor behaviour in our stores, and we believe this technology is an important measure that helps us to maintain a safe and secure environment for our team and customers," said Simon McDowell, Bunnings COO.

As today has progress and coverage of the CHOICE report has spread through local media, it seems these companies have been peppered with complaints. A good sign that people do not appreciate this surprise and that the lack of consent has certainly troubled a lot of Aussie shoppers.

It’s exciting and fun to have these milestone moments in society. The act of even discussing this idea feels like ‘THE FUTURE’ is here. Click that headline!!

Of course, it’s really just a case of an engineer getting rather carried away with the act of conversing with a chatbot. A really, really, REALLY good chatbot. But a chatbot nonetheless.

Pareidolia: our uncanny human ability to see patterns. The face on Mars. Pictures in clouds. Humanity in machines. We’re wired to find life where there is none.

Here’s a similar recent story.

Yes, it’s great to be excited by the future and I love the very concept that an engineer got a little too excited about his chatty digital friend. But at a media propogation level for these things, let’s make sure we focus on how cool the tech is, not whether there’s a ghost inside the machine.

More on that…

You can read the chat transcript the engineer released to the public here. Does this really make you think it’s alive? I’ve given it a good read. It’s very good language processing, but it isn’t doing anything that truly screams ‘ALIVE!!!’

Labelling LaMDA as sentient is fanciful. But it’s very human. (The Guardian) :: Australian AI specialist Toby Walsh wrote this nice take about it all.

Nonsense on stilts (Gary Marcus) :: Another good take on the topic.

Newsworthy

Spotify just acquired a company that can make anyone say anything (Tubefilter) :: Sonantic helped to give Val Kilmer his old voice again in Top Gun: Maverick. That’s good. Or it can do the same thing to put words in anyone else’s mouth. That’s bad. But it’s a fascinating tech and interesting to think about what Spotify wants it for. Automated ad reads?

Deep fake Elon Musk is scamming folks on YouTube (PetaPixel) :: This is, sadly, suck an easy target right now. Stay careful, stay incredulous…

The end of librarians at the ABC is bad for the future of journalism (The Conversation) :: Having sub-editors at CNET long after most outlets had done away with them was a huge help to assuring our work was high quality and fact checked. Having research staff who know their way around an archive is undoubtedly a powerful tool for time poor journalists, and seeing that as a place to cut budgets hurts us all.

Brain food

Content Authenticity Initiative :: It’s worth taking note of this effort, backed by Adobe alongside major publishers and photo agencies around the world. Building tools of provenance are essential to a viable ‘reality’ in future. There’s an open source toolkit to help creators incorporate new metadata as well.

Ten years after Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else (Science) :: Great headline. The LHC is switching back on after upgrades, so there’s hope in here too.

Instagram has stopped caring about its users (Mashable) :: Go count how many items in the first twenty of your Instagram feed are not ads. Or not a weird flood of just one or two accounts. Is it Reels or nothing over there now?

How science helps fuel a culture of disinformation (Niemen Lab) :: Is the drive to publish early and often about research feeding an environment of disinfo? An interesting look at the media environment for science and how it relates to broader disinformation problems.

Shiny and new

Marc Newson has a new task chair (Fast Company) :: An interesting design with a distinctive look. And I love hearing Newson talk big about difficult design problems. (Ten years ago I got great quotes from him about the iPhone.)

Dell XPS 13 Plus laptop has landed (Dell) :: There’s a new design language here that makes this look very interesting, and new keycaps that have me concerned that they’re too flat for comfortable typing - but that’s all in the taste test.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 (Microsoft) :: Another nice new laptop design that starts at $1,099, which feels like a very good build quality for a very good price.

Apple Continuity Cam vs Camo Pro (Pro Video Coalition) :: Answering my big questions around the existing solution for using an iPhone as a webcam and the shiny new seamless version coming in iOS 16.

Meet Passkeys (Apple) :: If you want to understand what’s coming soon with the ‘end of passwords’, this developer video explaining Passkeys (which sits within a universal login standard across the industry) is really insightful and shows why this is a great step into the future of authentication.

Thanks for reading Byteside! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Our friends in science over at New Atlas pointed out that technology company ABB claims to have the world's fastest electric vehicle charger, capable of fully charging an EV within 15 minutes. New developments from Enovix will potentially reduce that to 10.

This is thanks to a new silicon-based battery design, while many of today's batteries use graphite for anodes, which isn't quite as beefy as the recent silicon developments.

Enovix claims its battery can go from fully depleted to 80% in roughly five minutes, and upwards of 98% in under 10 minutes. Although not quite as swift as fuelling a petrol-guzzling car, it's still impressively quick.

Recently, the NSW state government and MG Motor Australia announced plans to install electric vehicle infrastructure throughout regional areas, ready for more battery-powered cars to hit the road.

It's probably still a while until we see such fast charging technology rolled out more widely, let alone in Australia, but it's still cool to see what experts are doing to make electric vehicles more viable.

The Hell's Ink tattoo shop takeover begins in July and spreads across the world until September. Each store will have a featured artist delivering their own take on the Diablo experience, with free tattoos on offer for those keen to queue up on the day.

If the luck of the queue isn't your thing, you can enter a competition to win an appointment for a custom tattoo. All you have to do is tell them why Diablo means so much to you. Sound easy? Then it's probably your thing!

Australia will have a Sydney and Melbourne stop in the final stages of the tour, on September 3 and September 10 respectively at Little Tokyo Tattoo in Surry Hills and Oculus Tattoo in Thornbury.

All the detaisl on how to enter and where to find out more specifics are on the Diablo Hell's Ink page.

With the latest update drop revealing the Necromancer as the fifth and final class for Diablo IV at launch, there's never been a better time to ink yourself up so you're ready for your next journey to Sanctuary.

Born in Lancaster, South Central Pennsylvania, Kametz got his acting break working with the Disney cruise team before starring as Aladdin in Disneyland’s Musical Spectacular. He then landed several major roles as a voice actor, including Josuke Higashikata in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable, and Rui in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Kametz won a Crunchyroll Anime Awards trophy in 2020 for portraying Naofumi Iwatani in The Rising of the Shield Hero. He also starred in various roles across Attack on Titan, Pokemon Masters EX, and the brilliant RTS adventure game 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.

He was widely loved by many, as the obituary reads:

"Anyone who has met Billy will tell you he is one of the most sincere, humble and loving people they have ever met. His infectious personality and smile always lit up a room with so much joy and happiness. Billy always left a positive impression on anyone he came in contact with. His love for his family, friends and girlfriend was always most important to him and that love will carry on forever."

Prior to his passing, a GoFundMe arranged by his agent, Jinnie McManus, raised over US$180,000 to help with medical costs, and hosted many messages of support from family, friends, and fans. On Twitter, many of his voice actor colleagues shared their sentiments, including Matt Mercer, Joe Zieja, and Erika Harlacher-Stone. Fellow voice actor and Kametz's girlfriend Erica Lindbeck wrote "I will be in love with you for the rest of my life" alongside a picture of the couple.

It's sad news to lose such a talented and respected individual a such a young age. His turn as Dr Maruki in Persona 5 Royal was a beautifully poignant performance, and his portrayal of uppity noble Ferdinand von Aegir in Fire Emblem: Three Houses and the upcoming Fire Emblem: Three Hopes was a fan favourite.

Rest in peace, Billy.

Billed as "a Knives Out mystery", Glass Onion follows Blanc to Greece, where a new cast of characters and another whodunnit awaits him. According to the title announcement trailer (yes, that's a thing now), Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odon Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, and Dave Bautista headline a star-studded cast.

In a series of tweets, Johnson teased out his inspirations for Knives Out, including Agatha Christie's work.

I think there’s a misperception that [Christie's] books use the same formula over and over, but fans know the opposite is true. It wasn’t just settings or murder methods, she was constantly stretching the genre conceptually. Under the umbrella of the whodunnit she wrote spy thrillers, proto-slasher horrors, serial killer hunts, gothic romances, psychological character studies, glam travelogues. When I made Knives Out, that’s what excited me about the prospect of making more mysteries with Daniel as Benoit Blanc - to emulate Christie and have every film be like a whole new book, with its own tone, ambition, reason for being… and (ta dah) title.Rian Johnson, director of Knives Out and Glass Onion.

The best part is that we don't have to wait long for Glass Onion. A "holiday season" Netflix release, in fact, so expect to see the film hit the streaming service around December this year.

As a Rian Johnson stan, I'm thrilled about the news. Let's get ready to find the donut within the donut once again.

There's a grand history of amazing music for film and television, but videogame fans know how good many game soundtracks can be. Symphonies often hold videogame soundtrack events to showcase this music and fans love to debate how game music holds its own – but did they turn out to vote in this poll?

In the final countdown, six game soundtracks made the top 100. Highest ranked amongst them was The Legend of Zelda at #23, with Halo at #29 the only other videogame soundtrack to crack the top 50. They were followed by Super Mario, Minecraft, Final Fantasy, and Pokémon as the game soundtracks to make the cut.

The videogame soundtracks that made the list

#23: Legend of Zelda
#29: Halo
#52: Super Mario
#54: Minecraft
#64: Final Fantasy
#75: Pokémon

Most voting was based on 'series' and not specific pieces, with a few exceptions.

As for the rest of the list, Star Wars won the top spot, followed by The Lord of the Rings and The Mission. John Williams took four spots in the top 10, with Harry Potter, Schindler's List and Jurassic Park all there (plus Indiana Jones just outside at #11). The top places TV soundtrack? Game of Thrones at #10.

My personal shockers were seeing Doctor Who only make it to #12 and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly to #14. Both top five material in my book! And it's noteworthy that Daft Punk made an appearance on a Classic 100 for their Tron: Legacy soundtrack at #89.

The station also published the 101-200 list for those wondering what just missed out... and The Witcher 3 came in at 101. There were a lot more games in this slice of the list: The Last Of Us (122), Civilization (136), Hollow Knight (146), Fallout (155), Assassin's Creed 2 (159), Age of Empires (172), Journey (175), Witness (176), Kingdom Hearts (178), Untitled Goose Game (187), Mass Effect (197), World of Warcraft (198), and Elden Ring (200).

I saw a bad take out there today about Apple MagSafe on the new MacBook Air (I’m loving that Midnight colour option - hngh) where someone said it was Apple saying screw you to EU universal adapter policies. It’s a bad take because MagSafe laptops still happily charge over USB-C whenever you want to use that option.

I had a few people mention they hadn’t realised that was the case and were excited to know that MagSafe didn’t mean an end to power over USB-C. And that’s a bunch of people who have knowledge they wouldn’t have had yet if I hadn’t mentioned it.

There’s been many times when I’ve seen the biggest stories are simple ideas explained well that helps other people have a quality ‘aha’ moment. That was always a very big part of the Lifehacker genre. A great simple tip can deliver amazing article traffic and it feels good because it isn’t clickbait but an actual helpful piece of information being shared far and wide.

Two big fights come up a lot in newsrooms.

One: if many other news outlets have already covered a news item a day before you, is it worth covering? Many news bosses say ‘no, old news now, move on’. But that can be a disservice to your most loyal readers. If they don’t read All The Sites to keep up, aren’t you letting them down?

Two: when you’ve run a highly successful evergreen story, how often should you refresh the post and send it back to the front door of your site like it’s new again? A lot of places will almost never reshare old stories. But what about all the people who didn’t see it the first time? When a story is genuinely great or has really helpful information, it’s a real service to readers to share it again.

More on that…

Given the Apple WWDC day, here’s a classic iPad cover that is an all-time great but I’m sure it’ll turn out some readers have never seen it and will instantly fall in love with it.

I had one of these on my OG iPad way back when, and I love that they still make these lovely leather book covers for iPads, MacBooks and iPhones.

We are cleaning our email list at the end of June. You need to click a link to confirm you’re still reading. If you don’t we’ll delete you from our list. Here’s an easy one to confirm you’re paying attention.

Brain food

Solid-State Batteries are coming soon. How can we make enough of them? (Wired) :: Any deeply eletric future needs lots and lots and lots of batteries. Wired explores the trouble in getting out to that kind of scale.

Portable hydrogen cartridges are almost a thing (New Atlas) :: I’ve heard mixed opinions on the future of hydrogen fuel, but with the above thoughts around solving battery scaling this could have a big role to play.

The Cynic’s Guide to Desktop Linux (The Register) :: If you’ve ever been Linux curious, this is an excellent gateway to considering your options.

10 lovely places on the Internet (Mashable) :: These are some links to bookmark (done that lately? It’s still a thing!) when you want nice vibes only.

Newsworthy

Apple Design Award 2022 winners - Aussies show up strong (Apple) :: Wylde Flowers and Procreate feature on this year’s winner list, but it’s a list of great apps of many different stripes. If you haven’t downloaded a new app lately, here’s some great options.

Don’t forget we interviewed the devs behind Wylde Flowers recently!

Use your iPhone as a webcam (PetaPixel) :: There are apps to do this, but this is a great addition for seamless ‘just works’ style usage, especially with the hardware partnerships to make it easy to attach it to your laptop.

Apple CarPlay previews concepts for whole of dash displays (The Verge) :: the video of Apple showing what a deep integration into your car instruments panel could look like in a CarPlay style mode where colours and fonts could be customised does look fun and interesting… and you can’t help wonder what an Apple Car might be one day.

Volvo is playing with ‘photorealistic’ displays with Unreal Engine (ExtremeTech) :: a very different path to the Apple CarPlay one above, but that’s great because what we want right now is concepts galore to help find options that really do take us somewhere new with car interface design.

Also in the news:

• British four-day work week experiment has begun (Boing Boing)
• Ed Husic wants to show up for science (InnovationAus)
• Here’s why the new Cyber Security Minister is imporant (InnovationAus)
• ACT 100% renewables will shield it from spiking power prices elsewhere (Renew Economy)

Shiny and new

Lynk & Co is making sexy EV concept cards (SlashGear) :: The concept’s always look cooler than any final product, but if a final model was half as cool as this it would still be extremely cool.

Flying speeder bike prototypes look outrageous (New Atlas) :: And we thought quad bikes were dangerous…

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If an open world is too big and sparse, it feels like it only exists to arbitrarily pad out playtime. Fill an open world with too much, and every in-game action becomes tedious busywork. Games that deftly balance scale and purpose in their open worlds are rare.

2017’s Nintendo Switch launch title The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is highly regarded for its grand setting, one that invites and rewards exploration in equal measure. It also cleverly ties into the minimalist story, leaving you to piece together remnants of a long-dilapidated civilisation.

Despite Halo Infinite garnering criticism over its scarce content offering at launch late last year, I genuinely enjoyed its single-player campaign. Featuring a compact open world setting, Halo Infinite made traversal fun through a combination of signature vehicles from the series and Master Chief’s shiny new grappling hook. It didn’t hurt that there were plenty of tightly designed linear missions to properly pace the exploration and combat sections, either.

Many games since Breath of the Wild have attempted to emulate its open world philosophy with varying levels of success. Pokemon Legends: Arceus is one of the better recent examples, adopting a historical approach in justifying the minimalist open plains. Akin to Halo Infinite, Pokemon Legends: Arceus executed its vision effectively because it didn’t go full open world; it varied its pacing through a Monster Hunter-like hub structure, where you explored discrete areas directed by missions.

I’m fascinated to see how the Pokemon series iterates on this approach with Pokemon Scarlet and Violet later this year. A fresh trailer showcased its version of an open world, with subsequent information revealing you can explore anywhere unbound by story constraints.

Conversely, there are many open world games better suited to a more linear approach. IGN debuted footage of the upcoming Sonic Frontiers game and the reception has been tepid at best. Sonic games are about speed, and Sonic Frontiers appears to be… not that. It’s tricky to fairly assess a game without playing it, but early signs aren’t encouraging.

In this morning’s PlayStation State of Play presentation, a surprise open world entrant emerged: Street Fighter VI. Its first gameplay footage revealed the World Tour mode, seemingly including city exploration elements in between belting the crap out of each other. Keep an eye out for that one.

For most announcements of games with open worlds, I commonly wonder “okay, does this actually need an open world?” Few games are made more interesting by virtue of having one. I’d argue most games are actively hampered by adopting an open world as a core element. When it fits the gameplay loop and narratively makes sense? Sure, go right ahead.

If you need me, I’ll just be over here waiting for Breath of the Wild 2.

We’re cleaning our email list at the end of June. Clicking any link will confirm you’re still interested. Here’s an easy one to confirm you’re paying attention.

Brain food

Character diversity is more involved than just ticking boxes (GamesHub) :: Great article from Percy Ranson analysing the fallout from Activision Blizzard’s controversial in-house diversity tools. If you want a better understanding of intersectionality and why AB’s methodologies were flawed, give it a read.

Parlez-vous français? French language watchdog cracks down on English gaming slang (The Guardian) :: New jargon pops up what seems like daily thanks to social media, which creates a divide between those in the know and others on the outside looking in. The Académie Française is going as far as banning anglicised gaming phrases within government organisations, replacing them with new French versions. How do you say esports under the new guidelines, I hear you ask? Repeat after me: “jeu video de competition”.

Play

There was lots of good stuff in the latest PlayStation State of Play stream. Resident Evil, Street Fighter VI, upcoming PSVR 2 games, and a fresh look at Final Fantasy XVI. Most importantly, cat exploration game Stray launches on 19 July. I can’t bloody wait.

Microsoft continues to iterate on console-less cloud streaming dongle (Windows Central) :: It’s no secret the Xbox team is striving for a platform-agnostic future. What is remarkable, however, is Microsoft providing public comment on a yet-unfinished device. Will a dongle still be required if most smart TVs already support native cloud streaming?

Diablo Immortal not launching in Belgium and the Netherlands due to “current operating environment” (Eurogamer) :: Intriguing to see Activision Blizzard’s major mobile game not launching in countries with strict loot box regulations. Byteside founder Seamus said he hadn’t encountered any loot boxes in his pre-release sessions, although there could be other monetisation elements at play.

• Aussie-made apps Wylde Flowers and Procreate are up for multiple Apple Design Awards. Congrats to all involved! Don’t forget to check out our Wylde Flowers interview.
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order sequel titled Survivor will be out in 2023.
• No Man’s Sky ‘Leviathan’ update brings roguelike action to the epic spacefaring game.
• Apple Arcade gets a new shoot-em-up from legendary Shenmue creator, plus fresh Cooking Mama and Frogger entries.
• Assassin’s Creed and Chorus feature among upcoming Xbox Game Pass additions. Don’t sleep on Disc Room, either!
• God of War (the 2018 angry dad one) headlines this month’s PlayStation Plus monthly games.

Watch

Learn about the legendary Star Wars VFX studio Industrial Light and Magic in an upcoming doco (Gizmodo) :: Called Light & Magic, the six-part Disney+ doco will look at what makes the production house so special. Directed by longtime Star Wars contributor Lawrence Kasdan, it will no doubt be special viewing for fans come 27 July.

Bo Burnham drops an hour of cut Inside content for free on YouTube (CNET) :: Inside was a compelling reflection of our collective lockdown psyche in 2021, filled with witty and poignant songs and sketches. Now there’s more from Burnham’s Inside sessions. One clip I’ve seen doing the rounds includes a searing takedown of edgy podcasters. I wonder who fits the bill?

Rejoice, for Our Flag Means Death gets a second season! (Vanity Fair) :: About damn time. The HBO pirate rom-com, starring Taika Watiti and Rhys Darby, is a gorgeous story about love in unexpected places. With the first season ending on a brutal cliffhanger, and not knowing if the show was going to continue, this is very welcome news. Happy Pride Month, folks.

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In many ways it wasn’t because of a traditonal Labor / Coalition sense of who had a better plan based on left-wing / right-wing approaches to running the show. It was absolutely one of feeling like there’s a clarity to building a platform of certainty for people trying to carve a path into the future.

It wasn’t about specifics. I’m sure it will eventually be about specifics, and many lobbying efforts will smell the new direction and try to nudge specific policy decisions in favour of their project du jour.

But it was very much a question of forward momentum. To just know there wasn’t going to be Yet Another Rugpull that actively harms efforts to create new economic opportunities built on future technologies.

That’s a nice sentiment to hear in an industry that has actually been doing relatively well in this country in spite of the way the Coalition government treated the innovation sector.

A platform of certainty can be as simple as saying:

“We will stay out of the way - go for it.”

The idea that we’ve had a decade where it wasn’t even that simple is just sad. Too many silly games being played by our so-called leaders. But now, seeing the sense of excitement that it is finally at-least-that-simple for the next term of government is exhilirating.

I’m excited to have a lot of great chats with smart people in coming months about how big their plans can get in this new environment.

But I also hope we see some of that certainty directed toward the academic realm too. So much funding cut, so many casualised jobs, all leading to researchers not being able to actually research with any comfort they’ll still have a job next semester.

Fingers crossed we fall back in love with letting big brains chase big ideas.

Newsworthy

Edtech vendors invaded student privacy: Human Rights Watch (iTNews) :: It’s really, really important for school IT to do better at protecting student information from the services they force them to use. Everything from cookies to keyloggers? Education Perfect’s Science is the keylogger culprit there…

DuckDockGo browser allows Microsoft trackers (quietly) because of Bing search partnership (BleepingComputer) :: This is just so distasteful to see the privacy-first search engine think it would be OK to not tell users of its relatively new browser that when it says it blocks tracking it only means for anyone except Microsoft.

Google has its own text-to-image AI now (The Verge) :: It wasn’t long since we fell in love with DALL-E 2, and now Google is showing off its Imagen text-to-image generator. Amazing stuff.

Google Maps Street View offers historic view mode (MacRumors) :: Last week Street View turned 15 years old. And while there’s ways to look back now, they’ve got new tricks for the future too.

Ikea overhauls smart home tech to become Matter ready (Verge) :: Eventually it won’t matter if you know what Matter is, but it’s an important moment in the evolution of truly universal smart home gear. Ikea has a new Dirigera hub coming later this year to make its smart home gear Matter ready.

ProtonMail gets a nicer name and email domain (Engadget) :: ProtonMail is an excellent secure email service and now the company is reducing its name to a slick ‘Proton’ and offering alternate email domains so you can be reached at @proton.me or @pm.me instead of @protonmail.com. Elegance is nice.

Evidence of iPad floating app windows appear in WebKit (Cult of Mac) :: We’ll learn a lot more next week at WWDC, no doubt, but it’s exciting to think of ‘true’ multitasking in a windowed format on iPad. That’s a significant vibe shift incoming for iPads. For good or bad? We’ll see.

Both Samsung and Motorola are playing with 200megapixel phone sensors (Verge (Motorola) and Gizmodo (Samsung)) :: The cat on a giant billboard is a clever way to show off the massive new sensor they might be playing with, but it’s also a bit of a furphy given the viewing distance to a giant billboard is a long way back. Apple has run ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaigns in giant billboards too? Still, always good to see new territory being explored in smartphone camera sensor technology.

Brain food

Tim Sweeney talks fighting Apple and building an open metaverse (FT) :: Very good interview by Patrick McGee about pretty much everything Tim Sweeney has fascinating opinions on. I’ve often wished to get a shot at a good chat with Sweeney. This here is a good chat with Sweeney.

A year with the Elgato Stream Deck (Six Colors) :: I love my Stream Deck but I know I’m guilty of failing to truly push its limits and see how clever I can get with it. So it’s great to read the always excellent Jason Snell explore it more deeply so I can get the motivation I need to get back into making it be as clever and powerful as it can be.

Solving what went wrong for LUNA/UST (Nansen) :: One of the good things about crypto is how transparent it all is. This ‘on-chain’ investigation of what exactly happened to cause the collapse of Terra a few weeks ago is a good example of that.

Cool things

Ex-Nike designer builds a boot that could prevent 80,000 amputations a year (Fast Company) :: A stylish boot for people with foot wounds that have trouble healing. Good design is good.

Italian teacher and photographer captures 10 years of lunar images (PetaPixel) :: 48 beautifully different images of the moon. All together in a fascinating formation.

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Dice rolls, whether on a physical board or as a behind-the-scenes skill check in a videogame, generate so much storytelling power. It can be the difference between taking down the final boss or falling perilously short.

Some videogames take the concept quite literally, including Australian-made digital tabletop games like Armello and Hand of Fate, where rolling dice and drawing cards are baked into the design.

Many tabletop games also have digital adaptations, too, which is great for when you can’t meet in person, although they’re rarely as compelling as their physical counterparts. There are some exceptions to the rule, with birdkeeping game Wingspan being equally as delightful across both tabletop and videogame formats.

I’m not an advocate for padding out games with arbitrary RPG mechanics, like the ongoing infestation of skill trees in many modern action games. Conversely, I love games that emulate the narrative potential of tabletop RPGs, where numbers and statistics don’t necessarily dictate success but help guide the storytelling process.

Games like Disco Elysium stand out due to offering branching narrative threads based on your actions, with a side of number-crunching. Where getting surprised by dice rolls isn’t a barrier to progress, it’s an opportunity for storytelling and organic dramatic tension.

One recent example I’ve enjoyed recently is Citizen Sleeper, a cyberpunk dystopia that plays part-visual novel, part-tabletop RPG.

These games aren’t using brand new gameplay mechanics or the fanciest technology going around. Instead, they’re employing classic tabletop conventions in cool ways to tell engaging stories. To channel my inner Marge Simpson: I just think they’re neat.

- Chris

More on that…

On Citizen Sleeper and precarious survival in a capitalist world (GamesHub) :: This analysis from Aussie games veteran David Wildgoose really hit home. With dice rolls dictating your actions — or your chance of success, at least — Citizen Sleeper cleverly uses tabletop RPG mechanics to replicate the feeling of doing the best with what you have.

Citizen Sleeper developer Gareth Damien Martin likens the game system to their own experience with clinical depression. As someone who has struggled with anxiety and depression for years, I believe it’s an extremely apt analogy. Some days you wake up having rolled a bunch of sixes, and you feel ready to take on the world. Other days, through no fault of your own: snake eyes. In these instances, the simplest of tasks feels like a herculean effort and you try to get through, hoping the next day will be better.

It’s incredible how much storytelling potential and life analogies a bunch of numbered polyhedrons can yield.

Brain food

Is Tom Cruise’s 57-year-old Maverick in the new Top Gun too old to be a fighter pilot? (The Conversation) :: A fascinating insight into what it takes to be a fighter pilot. It turns out that age isn’t a significant barrier, although a risk-taking lifestyle is.

Perhaps it’s time to start playing Genshin Impact? (Polygon) :: Content droughts in live-service games usually ring alarm bells for rusted-on players. However, as Polygon writer Ana Diaz argues, it’s these gaps between major updates that present the perfect window for new players to jump in and catch up without getting overwhelmed by a neverending quest log.

Play

Aussies spent a whopping $4 billion on games in 2021 (GamesHub) :: Mobile game spending led the way, totalling $1.51 billion. Unsurprisingly, digital game purchases continues to surge past traditional retail. What’s particularly interesting is the breakdown of how much we spend on digital games — in-game purchases easily beating purchases of full games.

Xbox continues to make positive ground with accessibility (Xbox) :: Xbox, under the Microsoft banner, has done wonders for game accessibility and including diverse communities. One of the coolest new features now widely rolled out is Accessibility Feature Tags, which makes it easier to find games including specific accessibility features.

Local game dev combats piracy with intentional glitches (Kotaku) :: Cheeky brilliance from Big Ant Studios. Pirates of Cricket 22 are dobbing themselves in by reporting endless rain ruining their innings, white screens between matches, and so on. It’s not the first time the Melbourne-based team has toyed with people illegally downloading their games, either.

TikTok is about to crack into games and livestreaming (The Verge) :: Reports indicate TikTok is looking at interactive games users can play with each other on the platform. This also feeds into the app’s Live Subscription launch this week, giving creators monetisation opportunities.

Free Top Gun expansion soars into Microsoft Flight Simulator (Eurogamer) :: If you’ve ever wanted to launch 150,000 feet into the air flying a jet at hypersonic speed, this might be your best bet. BYO Kenny Loggins soundtrack.

PlayStation’s annual State of Play sale is on right now with some pretty sweet deals (Press Start) :: I’m mighty tempted to pick up one of the fancy-coloured DualSense controllers for $79…

• Ubisoft’s roller derby-em-up Roller Champions is out now and free-to-play.
• 2022 Gran Turismo World Series begins in Gran Turismo 7 today. Race fast enough online and you might make it to the World Finals.
• Former Hearthstone devs’ new game is Marvel Snap, a collectible card game.
• New SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro headsets promise the future of gaming audio. From what colleagues are saying, this is some seriously high-quality audio gear.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi joins the Fortnite fray. The game does encourage you to use the higher ground, after all.
• Game music festival Save & Sound, featuring music from Unpacking and Chicory: A Colorful Tale, airs on streaming services between 20-23 June.
• Pokemon-like MMO Temtem launches across consoles on 6 September. Exits Steam Early Access, too.
• Corsair enters the gaming laptop market with a touch panel for Elgato Stream Deck functionality.
• PlayStation VR 2 to have over 20 games at launch, including third-party support.

Watch

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One gets its first trailer. Ever since Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (the fourth one), the franchise has become the premier blockbuster spy caper going around. Intelligent, thrilling, and loaded with ridiculous stunts, I can’t wait for more Mission: Impossible.

Stranger Things’ fragmented fourth season structure has fans in suspense (AV Club) :: Hour-long episodes, and a couple of feature-length episodes that won’t air until July — it sure is a way to build tension. AV Club’s review of what’s aired so far seems pretty positive overall.

Prime Video doco Kick Like Tayla reveals the athlete behind the iconic kick (Pedestrian.tv) :: One of the most recognisable individuals in the AFLW, Tayla Harris has done plenty to elevate the profile of women’s sport. She’s had plenty of critics along the way, so the doco will be interesting to see how she responds to naysayers.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series starts airing on Disney+ this week! More Ewan McGregor? Yes, please.

A stolen Bored Ape NFT throws status of Seth Green show up in the air (The Mary Sue) :: Real weird areas, this one. Actor Seth Green has been working on an animated series starring a character based on an NFT he owns. Well, used to own. It’s a strange new world.

The Mandalorian season three airs on February 2023 via Disney+ (Polygon) :: One of many Star Wars series airing in the next 12 months.

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He quotes Walt Whitman: “Be curious, not judgmental”

It’s a great lesson for anyone. But it’s especially critical after watching the state of journalism during this past federal election cycle.

A focus on trivia questions and haranguing more than querying the opposition leader spoke to a ‘blood in the water’ attitude filled with pre-judgment of where a journalist could or could not get a juicy headline. Mixed in with the “we have it all figured out” approach from most Murdoch outlets and Sky News and there was a narrative they had already decided upon to be the frame of reference for how to tell the public about what was going on.

As the results are showing, these journalists lacked the curiousity to wonder whether the public was more concerned with bigger issues than whether Anthony Albanese stumbled on a few statistics.

That all that bluster continued even after Adam Bandt so successfully told a press club journalist to “Google it, mate” speaks to a void in journalistic leadership. Zero self-reflection. A clear decision to stay the course because they thought they knew better than the public about what was important in what they all too often treat as a horse race.

To toot my own horn a moment, it’s only recently that I started to acknowledge that one of my strengths as a journalist has been to ask better questions. How many minutes do I have with a contact? How do I help them to express something original and interesting in that amount of time? Which basic questions will everyone else ask that I can ignore in favour of digging deeper right at the start?

As I shift toward more corporate work where interviewing is at the heart of the task, being able to help a subject tease out the best parts of their thinking and help them show off the best of what they know is a very valuable skill.

The overly media trained era of political and corporate leadership has led to a place where many struggle to say anything meaningful anymore. The effort to basically ignore actual questions and just stay on message has broken the fundamental ‘good faith’ aspect of asking meritworthy questions and having them answered. No doubt that’s part of the problem that has led journalists toward a combative stance.

But the answer always lies in the quality of our questions.

If the politician has stopped answering with value, stop asking them questions.

Go speak to people in the fire ravaged communities about how they feel to still be living in caravans three years on.

Go ask staff at one of the worst COVID-hit aged care facilities how they feel about the future of aged care.

I’m amazed we didn’t see more on the failings of government from throughout this past term. If Morrison is too ‘clever’ to answer, go ask those impacted and centre them in the story.

Perhaps one of the biggest shifts in this election was where voters sourced their information. There’s a good chance a majority of voters hardly saw a 6.00pm news bulletin and couldn’t care less who a Chris Uhlmann thinks ‘won’ the cut and thrust of the daily quotables, let alone what a Rowan Dean has to say.

Like Twitter being called a bubble, there’s a dynamic in media to contextualise what’s happening only through the lens of other journalists and the politicians themselves. And while they live in that space, many voters now get their analysis from a growing band of voices on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

These voices don’t get access to the election media buses – and that’s probably a good thing. They’re watching with enough distance to stay curious about the bigger picture.

– Seamus

More on that…

Just in case you’re yet to have the Ted Lasso experience. (Spoilers)

Newsworthy

You can opt out of the legacy Google Suite shutdown if your account is for personal use (Ars Technica) :: Great news for those struggling to work out where to move a custom email address they’ve been using on Gmail for 15 years.

US Homeland Security pauses Disinformation Board initiative (Gizmodo) :: And you’ll never believe that it’s partly due to a massive troll campaign against it by some people notorious for spreading disinformation…

US Dept of Justice won’t prosecute white hat security researchers anymore (Vice) :: A very big announcement for global security research and welcomed widely by digital civil liberties folks – we need researchers to identify where our wider privacy and security is at risk! There’s usually a clear ‘good faith’ hacking distinction and this supports those operating to find problems for the right reasons.

• China is 3D printing a 180-metre tall dam without any humans involved.
• Simulating the humble fruit fly has awesome potential for AI.
• Are we learning more about Apple’s Mixed Reality headset?

Brain food

Two interesting stories on the future of cars – some we own, some we don’t. I’ve often wondered if my kids would grow up to be the last generation to learn to drive or the first to never need to. One now has a driver’s license so the changes are coming slower than we thought they might ten years ago.

As people change the way they buy cars, some dealerships are changing too (Wired)

The era of cheap Uber may be coming to an end (Slate)

Shiny and new

The Rodecaster Pro II has been announced (Rode) :: The original Rodecaster has been a massive part of my professional life since the start of the pandemic, replacing my Zoom recorder (from when they were the ‘real’ Zoom, not the video conferencing Zoom) as everything went remote. This feels like a very nicely timed upgrade five years after the original launched.

It’s evolved to become a studio, with inputs accepting instruments as well as microphones, and additional USB inputs and a wideband voice calls over Bluetooth for a wealth of input options and loads more customisation on the desk.

And they’re Aussies creating some of the best audio equipment in the world. Win.

LG DualUp monitor is an ultrawidescreen alternative (LG) :: I’ve been considering a jump to an ultrawide monitor setup for quite a while now. All that extra real estate on a single connector is a very good idea. But this LG option might win me over, effectively stacking two 2560x1440 monitors on top of each other. It feels more space efficient and that glance up/down feeling seems more helpful than going wide.

I’ve used rotated monitors regularly to have a big ‘reading’ screen and it’s good, but this seems to take that form factor and make it even more flexible.

Sonos Ray is a sexy entry level soundbar (Sonos) :: Big fans in this house, so great to see a new Sonos soundbar to give many more households a chance to dive into the Sonos streaming world. With their auto tuning system to get the sound ‘just right’ for the room it’s in, I’m betting this will outperform the old Playbar that used to cost 2.5x the price. (It’s $399). And you can add two Sonos One SL speakers to get an excellent surround sound setup for $977.

• Canon R7 and R10 cameras look nice.
• Razer launches Tensorbook Linux laptops for AI research.
• Nokia G21 smartphones are just $199.
• Asus 2022 laptop range looks very nice indeed.
• HyperX Cloud Alpha wireless headset goes up to 300 hours.

Sometimes — and I’m prepared to make a hypocrite of myself — pretty pictures maketh the videogame.

To illustrate my point, I recently played Trek to Yomi on Xbox Game Pass. In it, you play as budding samurai Hiroki tasked with fighting off bandits and protecting his community.

Inspired by classic Japanese cinema, Trek to Yomi is immaculately presented entirely in black-and-white. I love how each screen is beautifully composed, with the camera tracking Hiroki’s movements to reveal grand vistas. The cinematography is exquisite, with foreground and background elements thoughtfully placed to create a great sense of depth with every shot.

Although the combat in Trek to Yomi is completely serviceable, making for some tense and bloody encounters alongside the occasionally frustrating boss fight, it plays a supporting role to the visuals. Trek to Yomi is an experiential game, combining meticulous visuals with evocative sound design to terrific effect. Even if you’re not an action game fan, it’s worth checking out for the experience alone. At only a handful of hours long, your time is fully respected, too.

My partner even commented that she enjoyed watching Trek to Yomi as much as I did playing it. Many individual elements make up the modern videogame, so even when the gameplay isn’t the most compelling aspect, there are still plenty of reasons to enjoy the experience. Especially with a cinematic, narrative-centric game like Trek to Yomi.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a big folder of screenshots to sort through…

— Chris

Brain food

The 21 Absolute Best Sci-Fi Films of the 1990s (Gamespot) :: Look, there’s an egregious omission of Strange Days and it’s a questionable ranking, but there’s no reason not to watch everything on this list.

The Land of Boggs gave up on YouTube. Then they hit 300M views (Tubefilter) :: An interesting look at an animation team’s efforts to win at YouTube, and that it only worked out when they’d given up. All hail the algorithm?

The ABC Classic 100 is “music for the screen”, including videogames (ABC) :: It’s not too long since they last made ‘film music’ a focus, so this is a big deal to specifically return to the idea and open the door to all screen music – film, TV and videogames. You can vote for your top 10!

Play

PlayStation’s new subscription service launches 23 June locally, included games revealed (GamesHub) :: Three different tiers of PlayStation Plus will be here soon, along with access to various PS1, PS2, PS4, and PS5 games. No PS3 games because we don’t have streaming service PlayStation Now. As an added bonus, some Ubisoft+ games will be available to PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers.

Fall Guys goes free-to-play, bounces onto Xbox and Nintendo Switch 21 June :: Pandemic party sensation Fall Guys, the Takeshi’s Castle-inspired battle royale from 2020, is finally coming to all consoles after an initial Steam and PS4 release. Interesting to note that with the move to free-to-play, Fall Guys is leaving Steam (Epic Games bought developers Mediatonic last year).

• Now would have been a great time for a Batman Arkham game (Kotaku) :: Agreed.
• Jurassic World Evolution 2, Cricket 22, and Her Story headline the latest Xbox Game Pass additions :: Definitely check out the locally-made Umurangi Generation, it’s a fascinating, deeply political photography game worthy of your time.
• How to find the perfect tabletop RPG group (GamesHub) :: Finding the right group of people to play tabletop games with can be tricky, so here are some handy tips.
• Deathloop gets third major game update, adding more accessibility options and a photo mode :: Accessibility for the win. And I will always shout out great games with photo modes.
• Devolver Digital-published Card Shark to swindle players 2 June :: From developer Nerial, known for the excellent Tinder-like kingdom management Reigns series, Card Shark sees you cheat your way to victory on Steam and Nintendo Switch.
• PlayStation building a game preservation team (IGN) :: Good to hear. Game preservation will only become more difficult as gaming pushes further towards a digital-first future.
• NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU expected to arrive July (The Verge) :: My aging GTX 1060 cowers in fear…
• Tracking the pioneering developer of Wabbit, a groundbreaking woman-led game (GamesHub) :: A cool read about Van Mai working on what’s thought to be the first videogame to star a female protagonist.

Watch

Dear Lucasfilm: ask Bryce Dallas Howard to make a Star Wars movie (Gizmodo) :: Hell yes.

She-Hulk smashes onto Disney+ from 17 August (Gizmodo Australia) :: I too would like to be cradled by She-Hulk.

A new series of Black Mirror is on the way to mess with our minds once more (Variety) :: It’ll be the sixth season of the Netflix tech dystopia drama. Apparently, this upcoming series will be more cinematic in scope.

Next Pixar film, Elementals, announced for 16 June 2023 release (Polygon) :: Inspired by multiculturalism in New York, Elementals features anthropomorphised elements, not Avatar benders.

Local Disney+ content announced: drama, sport, lifestyle and more! (ScreenHub) :: Lots of cool Australian-made series to look forward to, including a Toy Story-themed creativity show hosted by Rove McManus, What’s Your Toy Story? I’ll definitely tune into the sports docu-series capturing behind-the-scenes looks into the AFLW and Matildas national women’s soccer team.

Quality tweets

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OK, that’s kind of like saying I’ve been breathing a lot lately…

But this latest rabbit hole of thoughts has been around the ways in which we can work within the tools we’ve been given to craft better results for ourselves. The places where we feel the friction of the algorithm making errors might be somewhere we can manipulate them to our advantage.

It came up after my recent reduction in Twitter usage in the midst of also working on a project for The Guardian which meant I needed to monitor Twitter more! What a tangled social web we weave (for ourselves sometimes).

I’ve started using Twitter Lists in a more focused way, and in the process realised just how different my experience becomes when I’ve filtered what I want to see to a certain slice of the community.

We always know this is the nature of social media – that it’s a thousand different things to a thousand different people. But we don’t often go out of our way to change our core experience to see the difference for ourselves.

I’ve often felt annoyed at how rarely I notice upcoming tech industry event schedules on social media, but you sure notice when everyone is tweeting about the event you didn’t realise was happening. My new ‘Oz Tech Industry’ list has suddenly revealed all those tweets about great events I’m now trying to find the time to attend. Good timing as we start pretending Covid is over and heading back out into the world…

As for that Netflix hacking headline, it’s a thought bubble I had a while ago that I’ve shared with a few friends and heard they’ve had great results. So here it is:

• Make new profiles on your account.

• Don’t give them people names, give them vibes.

  • Action, Inspo, Laughs, Stylish… whatever vibes you think you want in your Netflix browsing life.

• Rebuild your watchlists and/or some thumbs up/down to fit each vibe.

• Delete those useless name profiles for members of the family.

• Now when you settle in, pick the vibe you’re feeling and explore to meet that aim.

Instead of seeing those same rows of recommendations based on all the myriad things you like to watch, you now have highly differentiated profiles to explore and wildly different recommendations across each of your new profiles.

You also solve the classic “where were we up to?” problem if you accidentally start a series on one profile but then pick up again on a partner’s account. Oops. Now you know where you’re watching a show because the vibe leads the way.

Of course, this works across any streaming service that tries to build an algorithmic profile of your likes and dislikes. Go nuts.

Maybe it won’t work for you. Maybe you need to go get the SuperCategory browser addon to dig deeper and find more than Netflix shows you. But we absolutely need to take more control over what the programmers think their machines should do to ‘give us what we want’.

Let me know how it goes for you? There’s comments here on Substack so give it try.

- Seamus

More on that…

Speaking of algorithmically tracking “you”, how about the ethics of a bot version of you after you’re gone? (The Conversation) :: Makes you think. Kind of...

You know what? I’m all for it. Why not? I won’t be around to worry about the parts of me it doesn’t quite get right. But maybe we should have to sign off on whether we approve such bots before we’re gone?

Newsworthy

This portable 3D printer turns trash into treasure (Wired) :: If you’re not living in the kinds of industries that are now talking about a ‘circular economy’, this is the kind of tech that really will close the loop in exciting ways.

Microsoft Adaptive Mouse is just brilliant (Engadget) :: Not their headline. But massive congratulations to Microsoft on building this kind of tech. Their adaptive Xbox controller is also part of this journey of creating high-quality products that really can be customised to give anyone the exact kind of interface they need. Just great.

Apple previews new accessibility features (Apple) :: Speaking of accessibility, we’ve also just had this news land that delivers a wealth of new features to iOS and watchOS users. Features like ‘door detection’ seem like a wonderful opportunity for enhancing mobility for low vision folks out there. And there’s plenty more besides.

Global chip shortage to continue longer than first thought (GadgetGuy) :: Not the late 2022 or early 2023 window as originally anticipated.

MG offering free EV chargers to regional NSW businesses (Gizmodo AU) :: Combining with some NSW government grants for building regional EV chargers, MG is pushing hard to get its chargers out there (and these days most chargers play nice with most EV cars, so it’s a win for everyone).

Brain food

Nietzsche had an information diet we could learn from today (Ars Technica) :: This new book looks like an interesting read but there’s plenty of food for thought in this article about it to take with you in the rest of your week.

Solving digital scarcity for artists – without a blockchain (Molly White) :: A very well explained look at how the underlying in cryptography in ‘crypto’ could be applied through PGP keys to ‘sign’ artwork without the need for blockchains and all the other issues associated with them.

Think deepfakes won’t fool you? Think again (TNW) :: You’ve probably already seen a good deepfake somewhere and didn’t even realise it was was it was.

Shiny and new

New Lenovo Yoga Slim laptops are sleek content creation machines (GadgetGuy) :: For creatives on the go, the latest line from Lenovo looks pretty swish, especially the Yoga Slim 7 Pro X models for media editing needs.

Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook review: a great Google experience (Byteside) :: If you’ve ever wanted a highly versatile Chromebook with a big honkin’ OLED screen, look no further.

Western Digital building thicc 26TB hard drives (Ars Technica) :: I always play the old man game, thinking back to my first ever PC hard drive with a whopping 110MB…

Just plain cool

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Launched back in March, the Duet 5 went bigger in two aspects: its physical size and the display. Measuring 13.3 inches, it completely dwarfs the previous Duet's 10.1-inch design. Additionally, the Duet 5 features what Lenovo claims is the world's first Chromebook with an OLED display.

In short, it's a very different beast to the Duet we've recommended in our best laptops and best budget laptops lists.

As my first Chromebook experience, the Duet 5 is a tantalising piece of tech for a heavy Google Workspace user such as myself, although I did encounter some hangups along the way.

Duet 5 Chromebook first impressions

Most of my day-to-day work involves using Google Drive and various Google apps, so I'm fairly familiar with the ecosystem. This certainly made for an efficient startup process with the Duet 5, which runs on Chrome OS, because all you need is a Google account and the Chromebook takes care of the rest.

With native support for Google Drive, Gmail, Google Docs – the works – getting up and running was quick and breezy. The only real adjustment I had to make was navigating the Google Play Store for downloading apps. Although I'm a Windows PC user, all of my mobile tech is Apple, meaning I have limited familiarity with the Google storefront.

One important thing to note is that the laptop-tablet hybrid Duet 5 running on Chrome OS means it should theoretically be able to run most Android apps, which I had a mixed experience with. However, I'll discuss this in greater detail later on.

Aside from a seamless startup experience, one of the first things you notice when unboxing the Duet 5 is how big it feels. 13 inches is pretty standard as far as laptops go – small, even – but here it almost seems slightly too big. Especially before you connect the tablet component to the included keyboard attachment.

Holding the tablet on its own is not something you'd want to do for long periods of time unless you've got swole arms and wrists. It's a real chonker. When connected to the ultraslim keyboard in a laptop configuration, however, it looks and feels far more natural.

On the included keyboard, despite its wafer-thin appearance, it provides a surprisingly pleasant typing experience. It's responsive, tactile, and incredibly easy to connect or disconnect to the Duet 5's tablet component.

When in laptop mode, a fabric kickstand holds everything steady so you can comfortably type away whether at a desk or on your lap. All in all, the Duet 5 Chromebook is a pretty slick package.

How does the Duet 5 Chromebook handle entertainment?

One of the main reasons I was keen to check out the Duet 5 was to see how it went as a multimedia device. Surely an OLED screen would make TV shows, movies, and games pop, right?

To put this to the test, I streamed a variety of things, including YouTube videos, a bit of TV, and even tried some Xbox Cloud Gaming. Overall, I was happy with the picture quality across different content; details came through clearly, colours looked accurately represented, and things looked good in motion.

At a peak brightness of 400 nits, the Duet 5 Chromebook display makes for reasonable watching, even in sunlight. While waiting in the car for my partner to have an appointment, I watched Barry on Binge, a show often featuring dimly lit scenes. After cranking the screen's brightness to the max, I could comfortably watch without straining to see details, even with sunlight filtering through the car windows.

The other main test for the display was how Xbox games streamed via the cloud looked. After connecting a SteelSeries Stratus+ Android-compatible controller via Bluetooth, I loaded up Xbox Game Pass and hoped for the best,

While Forza Horizon 5 ran smoothly and the screen was perfectly fine for viewing the action, it was the Xbox servers that let me down with a less than ideal connection, streaming at what looked to be a highly compressed 720p. Ain't nothing Lenovo can do about that.

A disappointing Xbox streaming experience aside, the Duet 5 Chromebook has a pretty damn impressive screen great for multimedia entertainment.

Who is the Duet 5 Chromebook for?

Remember earlier when I mentioned a mixed experience with the Android app experience on Chrome OS? It turns out some things are better without the app. By this, I mean several apps I downloaded from the Google Play Store resulted in a significantly worse outcome than just using the Chrome browser.

For example, the Binge app was a nightmare to use. Its UI didn't scale properly with the display, making text and icons ridiculously tiny, and the overall experience was occasionally laggy and unresponsive. Meanwhile, visiting Binge directly in-browser was a far superior experience, navigation and performance-wise.

This trend of poorly-optimised Android apps continued across several other instances. Evernote was dreadful in comparison to its in-browser counterpart. Xbox Game Pass didn't display games in full-screen mode using the app, while the reportedly unsupported browser-based version did.

Of course, this isn't the fault of Lenovo or the Duet 5 Chromebook. It is, however, something to be aware of, that just because the device supports Android apps, doesn't mean you'll get the best experience using said apps.

This serves as an argument for the closed ecosystem of Apple and the App Store ahead of the comparative wild west of Android. In which case, it's best to view the Duet 5 as a Chromebook first, Android 2-in-1 tablet second.

So, who is the Duet 5 for? Anyone working primarily within the Google system, whether through work, school or otherwise will find a reliable and sturdy device here. If you've used Chromebooks before and wished for a bigger and better screen, it's an easy recommendation.

There is a roughly $300 difference between the previous model and this one, though. The base model Duet 5 with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage retails for $799, but I have already seen significant discounts since its March release.

During a sale at either Amazon or JB Hi-Fi, expect to pay closer to $599, which is a more attractive proposition. That's a helluva lot cheaper for a 2-in-1 hybrid device than forking out for an iPad and matching keyboard. What the Duet 5 lacks in onboard power, it makes up for in versatility and build quality.

I'm even considering buying one as a secondary device considering how much I use Google Workspace and everything Chrome. The only hesitation is my long investment in the App Store, although this isn't much of a dealbreaker given my previous statement about the Chromebook/Android hierarchy.

Most importantly, the Duet 5 Chromebook is easy to use straight out of the box and fits seamlessly into your life. As cloud software continues to become the norm, the viability of devices like these soars.