From Space Daks to Afterlife Pranks

Great seeing a bunch of you at PAX Australia last weekend!

It was my first time with the family and it changed my perspective in amazing ways. The kids loved it on the ‘life changing’ end of the scale. I felt like they really felt more validated in their love of nerdy things, and after two days had built more confidence while there – on Sunday one played in their first esports comp, the other wore cosplay.

You’ll find the Byteside PAX Australia special from there is live in your favourite podcast apps, so go grab it and hear Nic Healey and I talk about our highlights from the show and a few other tangents. The show is also now on Spotify if you listen there.

Byteside!

A gift for esports: do you have what it takes? (PAX Aus panel podcast)

I moderated a panel with a trio of experts on esports and psychology to explore how to shift gears toward pursuing esports without throwing your life away. A great discussion for young gamers and adults alike!

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My lovely car limiter proves why cruise control sucks

My new(-ish) car has a limiter alongside having cruise control and I think the limiter is one of the best things I’ve ever found in a car for helping me drive well and keep my eyes on the road.

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Great Reads

The boy behind the biggest coin-op conversion of the '80s

A wonderful look back at the pressure placed on one 17-year-old to complete the C64 conversion of the biggest arcade of that year. Great insight into a very different era in game development.

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What does PewDiePie really believe?

Great profile of the biggest man on YouTube. He’s won a lot of fans by being a nasty piece of work at times. So can he reform his image? Or himself?

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Virgin Galactic spacesuits revealed, designed by Under Armour

The space tourism company partnered with Under Armour to create the suits private astronauts will wear on Virgin Galactic flights.

www.cnet.com  •  Share

Tech Talk

Google Pixel 4 buyers won’t get unlimited photo uploads at original quality

This baffles me! The free backups felt like one of the great features that cost Google almost nothing but was a huge feature for users. To take it away feels cheap and punishes upgraders.

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How Apple's Screen Time is outsmarted by kids, frustrating parents

Kids seeking workarounds is the way of the world, but if the response is too slow to deal with easy-to-fix loopholes, are they really taking it seriously?

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Facebook said politicians can lie. But it's taking down ads for other reasons.

Lying is OK. But swearing is not? Plus some other weird reasons for taking ads down here… How about we just ban the lying too, yeah?

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Future History

Yahoo Groups is winding down and all content will be permanently removed

Bye, byte, Yahoo Groups! Another case of digital history being wiped away because corporations own the servers. It’s a hard slog for the future history of information when things like this happen.

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2,500 more MS-DOS games playable at Archive.org

Meanwhile, Archive.org keeps doing amazing work. If you haven’t checked it lately, here’s a great example. Games, music, and the wider history of the web being collated as best they can.

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Clever!

Coca-Cola using recycled marine plastic waste in it’s latest bottle!

Recycling marine plastics seems like a pretty great concept to pursue. If it can be put to use it gives greater incentive to clean it out of the ocean!

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Meet Analogue Pocket

This is just so clever. Analogue’s new handheld will be a Game Boy, Atari Lynx, Game Gear and Neo Geo Pocket killer!

www.ausretrogamer.com  •  Share

Pranks From The Afterlife

Irishman asks to be let out of his coffin in recording played at funeral

Dubliner gets the last laugh as he pranks his mourners with a recording. Way to make everyone laugh and cry all at once.

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Games

Protestors are trying to get Overwatch banned in China, using memes of popular hero Mei

After the big Blizzard issues around Hong Kong protests last week, things are not slowing down. Now one of its Chinese characters is being turned into a pro democracy symbol.

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Dragon Age writer David Gaider is penning musical adventure Chorus

David Gaider is trying to create gaming’s first Adventure-Musical with, and he’s got some serious audio talent already on board. I have an interview with Gaider that will appear soon on an upcoming new podcast!

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Only Fortnite could pull off a total blackout

The end of Fortnite Season 10 was marked with a black hole that sucked the map into its event horizon. This is Epic Game’s latest marketing scheme to get people talking about the game, and it’s genius.

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