Delicious Digest #23 - Retro Futuristic Space Comics

A tasty newsletter of what I’ve seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: Retro Futuristic Space Comics.

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😳 Must reads of the week

◼ Epic’s Unreal 5 engine demo on the PS5 sure looks yummy. Link

◼ Facebook would like to acquire Giphy, the Internet’s quintessential GIF search engine powering every animated joke in anything from iMessage to Twitter to Slack, for $400m. This might cause some anti-trust headaches. Link

🗞 News

◼ According to The Wall Street Journal, the US Justice Department plans to sue Google for monopolizing online ads. Link

◼ The pandemic is accelerating the switch to AI chatbots from call centers, accelerating job losses. Link

◼ Sony’s got a new imaging sensor that integrates dedicated AI circuits on the same die. This only makes sense as we move from sensors that take photos to computers that see. AI is everywhere. Link

◼ Speaking of AI: astronomers are now using deep-learning to analyze very large astronomical data sets to identify and classify all of the galaxies and stars. Billions of them. AI is everywhere, including science itself. Link

◼ France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech content within 24 hours. Link

◼ “Elon Musk’s battle to reopen Tesla’s Fremont plant may shape his legacy”. Some of his recent takes to Twitter have been somewhat controversial. He’s definitely lost some street cred with his early adopter audience. Link

◼ TSMC, one of the largest chip foundries in the world, is planning to produce 5nm chips in a factory in the US. This is significant: TSMC is making Apple’s ARM chips for iPhone. Link

🕹 Games

◼ Game spending in the US reached an all-time high of $10.9b in Q1-2020. Quarantine’s game of “some win, many lose”. Link

◼ “BioWare says Anthem’s overhaul will be a long process”. Game as a service is hard and major changes when you’re live are even harder. Link

◼ Fortnite’s has passed $1b in lifetime player spending – just on mobile and just on iOS and on Google Play, where Epic only recently started to distribute the game. Link
See also: Fornite, unsurprisingly, will be a launch title on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Link

◼ Nintendo has announced a new Mario title: “Paper Mario: The Origami King” looks delicious. Link

◼ Sensortower’s top mobile game by worldwide downloads and revenue. I cannot remember the last time I saw a list like this without a single Supercell game on it. Downloads | Revenue

◼ “Google Stadia is a lonely place”. Link

◼ “Respawn leaders launch a AAA studio without an office”. Link

😋 Tasty Tidbits

◼ Powerful photos of our new reality with the coronavirus. Link

◼ Manila-based artist Patrick Cabral is creating insanely detailed wildlife sculptures out of paper. Link

◼ “Retro Futuristic Space Comics of the 1950s and 60s”. Link

◼ Some amazing photos from the 2020 BigPicture Natural World Photography competition. Link

◼ “Why the porn industry has a lot to teach us about safety in the Covid-19 era”. Link

◼ The Dutch Rijksmuseum has created a 44.8 Gigapixel (!) image of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch”. Link

◼ Flat earthers listening to Daft Punk. Link (Video)

I work for King. All views in this newsletter are personal and my own. They do not represent the views of King or ActivisionBlizzard. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only and no investment advice. This newsletter links to other websites and information obtained from third-party sources and I cannot ensure nor verify accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.