Gloss Staff

I was obsessed with the ASTRO's Playroom 3D platformer game that Sony bundled with the PS5. And it sounds like PlayStation has once again remembered how much of an impact its legacy can have.

Astro Bot, a full title with the same cute robot star and reverence for PlayStation, is currently at a 94 on Metacritic. From playing it this morning, the game deserves all the praise it's getting.

Astro Bot – The Cheapest Australian Day One Bargains

Astro Bot – The Cheapest Australian Day One Bargains

Press Start AustraliaKieron Verbrugge

An important update on Concord

Concord fans -- we’ve been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who has joined the journey aboard the Northstar. Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us. However, while many qualities [...]

PlayStation.BlogRyan Ellis

Concord is being removed from sale and Sony is refunding customers on PC and PS5. The interesting part of this post though is this:

However, while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended. Therefore, at this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.

I really wonder if they'll be bothered to rework it as a free-to-play / PlayStation Plus title? It feels like that would have been the obvious option after the lacklustre free beta player counts.

Meanwhile at Nintendo some great timing:

“This migration rests on Vox Media’s front-end platform, Duet — first seen on The Verge, and then Vox.com — coupled with a new, more flexible backend in WordPress VIP,” says Polygon publisher Chris Grant. “Beyond just a redesign, this new site represents a fundamental shift in our product strategy, and our continued investment and confidence in websites and loyal audiences.”

Powered by its migration to WordPress VIP and Vox Media’s front end platform, Duet, Polygon will continue to build out its homepage and website, with new community tools aimed at boosting user experience to follow the redesign.

Polygon Unveils Redesign Aimed at Making Its Homepage a Destination for Gaming Culture Consumers

Powered by its migration to WordPress VIP and Vox Media’s front-end platform, Duet, Polygon’s new homepage will unveil new editorial rubrics, with recommendations curated by staff and special guests.

Vox MediaVox Media

Read about how it was made here, or try it above.

“I shoot politics for a living, man. Every single photo I take people are going to argue about,” Vucci said with a laugh. “I spend my life around a very highly polarized part of our society, so no matter what I do, people are gonna hate it. People are gonna love it. Listen, as long as everyone hates me equally, I’m doing the job.”

AP Photographer Spills on Viral Trump Rally Shooting Pic

Evan Vucci told The Daily Beast how he managed to capture one of the most compelling images from the shocking event.

The Daily BeastTrumpland

You can see a lot of the talks from Figma's Config 2024 conference here on YouTube.

John Gruber, noted Apple access journalist, is back defending the company after its launch of Applebot-powered Apple Intelligence. There's some interesting treatment of Apple Intelligence and more specifically Applebot crawling the 'public web' and then 'transforming' that crawled content, via this post from Louie Mantia:

From John Gruber today:

It’s fair for public data to be excluded on an opt-out basis, rather than included on an opt-in one [...]

No, no it’s not. This is a critical thing about ownership and copyright in the world. We own what we make the moment we make it. Publishing text or images on the web does not make it fair game to train AI on. The “public” in “public web” means free to access; it does not mean it's free to use.

The idea that being on the public web means that content can be actually taken and recreated with no human contribution is bizarre. If a music video is published on YouTube, does that suddenly mean it is no longer a Copyrighted piece of work? Absolutely not. Does a paywall on a site, like Netflix for example, suddenly mean that the content is different? No.

It's insulting that Apple now claims its crawler is opt-out, after already training its AI on content without warning.

I guess Gloss republishing a quote from Mantia's blog above is also a recreation, maybe some might even say theft or copyright infringement. But I'm adding to it, linking back, and the original article is still its own viable piece. You might want to read the rest, in which case the original creator can receive pageviews.

Training AI