16 Months for 449 Pages📄🏛️
The big tech investigation is over 🕵️♀️, driverless Waymo rides for everyone*🚗, it's iPhone week 📱 and a shorter format for a scarce news week📉
Trying out a shorter format this week considering the slow news cycle, let me know what you think of it. Also, the iPhone event is on Tuesday, you can watch it here.
Photo by Darren Halstead
After more than a year of investigation, lawmakers finally decreed that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google abused their position as monopolies in the market and used the 400+ page report to recommend changes in existing antitrust laws. These recommendations go from breaking up big tech companies to empowering government agencies that are supposed to police market concentration and harsher conditions when it comes to judging acquisitions made by these giants.
While this kind of commission can do little more than recommend regulatory actions that will later be looked into by legislators and potentially signed into law, looking at the DoJ’s imminent antitrust investigation into Google and the actions against the other three at federal and state levels, it finally feels like something is being done to amend these inequalities.
Now if the two parties could just agree on a path of action and actually follow it…
On Thursday Waymo announced that its service comprising of a 300-strong fleet of fully-driverless cars available for ride-hailing is out of the beta stage and will be opened to anyone in the Phoenix suburb area.
This item has somewhat escaped the radar of big news companies, some small articles were put out here and there, but such a life-altering achievement should be front-page news around the world, twice over. It took Waymo just five years from providing the world’s first driverless ride on a public road to the achievement last week, but now that the road is open and we know this feat is possible, the companies joining the movement in the future will be walking with a lot more confidence on a slightly more traveled path. This will mean faster progress to the finish line on the tech side and a better environment for consumers brought on by the competitive landscape.
The PS5 teardown video provided us with some memorable moments and a rare ball drop from Sony in the form of engrish translations on the closing screen. Overall, it looks like the company was really thoughtful of the serviceability of the console in the design process, most important things are easily accessible, from PCIe slots to BluRay drive, memory slots, the power source and even the processor. The buzzwords of the day were ‘dust catcher’ and ‘liquid metal cooling’, the first allowing gamers to easily vacuum the dust collected inside the console over time, the second is alien technology 👽🎮
At $129 Nest’s thermostat becomes a lot more attractive for a lot of people compared to the two previous versions, but will it offer buyers similar features to the flagship version? Apparently, the company is thinking of adding gesture control via Google’s self-built ‘Soli’ radar tech, but it’s unclear if this will completely replace touchscreen functionality or if it’s added on top. If the rumor is true, my thoughts are towards the former considering the price point and the fact that the price of the ‘Soli’ hardware was considered 'to be ‘too high’ for a smartphone🏡🌡️
Razer is picking up the credit card trend started by Apple with a VISA partnership for a new card and payment system, available for 1337 lucky Singaporean people at first. If you were wondering whether those around you will be able to tell this was a Razer card and not a run-of-the-mill, peasant card—like any respectable Razer fan will—, the answer is yes, the card will have an LED that will light up when you make a payment. With gaming pick as much steam as it did in the past decade, this might become the new ‘black card’ everyone’s talking about💡💳
The design of Amazon’s first electric delivery van built in partnership with Rivian is out, and it’s not bad looking as far as vans go. The round headlights are pretty similar to the ones on the HondaE and combined with the front grill it just gives it a friendly feeling that you would enjoy seeing in your neighborhood. With 100.000 of these already on order, Amazon’s slowly moving towards their climate pledge made earlier this year and you just love to see it 🔋🚘
This SPAC filing trend really needs to chill already. What’s next after Liverpool, the Vatican? On a lighter note, the Billie Bean side of the deal is pretty meta and if you’re not into baseball and want to find out why, you should watch Moneyball ⚽⚾
One more thing…the iPhone event is on Tuesday, you can watch it here
NASA is answering all those burning questions, like ‘What would I see if I flew over Jupiter?’
If I were you, I’d consider subscribing below⤵️⤵️ and check us on Medium or Twitter