Byteside: tech + digital culture

The Byteside podcast is back, and it's got a familiar ring to it. We catch up on the first half of 2021 and what we've been watching and playing, then we look at some of the most interesting updates out of WWDC and wonder whether Fastly outage was a big deal or a small one.  

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This week it's a WandaVision deep dive, with spoilers galore now that the series has wrapped. The first Marvel series at Disney+ became the most watched show ever on streaming (so far), so how do we feel about it all now it's done? What does it say about the future of Marvel TV? And is it more 'comic book' in style than the movies can be?

We went live on Twitter Spaces while recording to get Byteside listener input, which brought in some extra perspectives from some superfans too.

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Byteside episode 55

This week we've caught up on the latest news from Nintendo Direct and Sony's State of Play to talk about what's looking good on the gaming horizon. And will digitally packaged 'event' drops like this become the norm with yet another year of no E3?

Plus we look at some of the news from Microsoft Ignite and how the company is aiming to push AR and XR technologies forward, from the fun of Pokemon Go to making remote virtual meetings better than staring at our webcams.

All that as well as a rant about the Online Safety Act from Seamus and a shout out to our favourite Aussie tradie turned global superstar game streamer, Lazarbeam.

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With the addition of Star to Disney+ this week, Alice, Chris and Seamus take stock of the state of the video streaming scene today. The services we use personally, the ones we love best, how we juggle getting the best value, and whether it's good or bad to have so so many services out there these days.

Plus wins and fails this week cover LastPass, MQFF, and Daft Punk.

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Seamus, Alice and Hope discuss their own experiences with smart home technology – across lights, doors, appliances, sound and more. We look at the pros and cons, both technical and social, and even end up with some stories of where the tech gets horror movie creepy when it goes wrong. We promise we mostly won't trigger your voice assistants while you listen (at least, we hope not... until near the end when we kinda do it on purpose...)

Plus new diverse emoji, playing Hades, and Disney saying 'seeya' to bad people.

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An all-new, all-different Byteside as Alice and Chris join Seamus for the start of a new era.

This week all three have spent time with Apple’s Fitness+ service during the summer, so all have opinions to share on the value of having fitnesses classes on tap through your Apple Watch. What’s good? What could be better? And will they stick with it?

And Magic The Gathering’s new expansion, Kaldheim, has been bringing the Norse mythological noise to the game. Alice and Seamus have been playing it a chunk so how are they feeling? This is less an analysis of expert strats and more about style and art and the vibe of the new fun on offer.

Plus Batwoman, JRPGs and Hearthstone all get a mention in this weeks wins and fails.

Listen here, or get it in your fave podcast apps.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the last episode for 2020, Nic and Seamus deliver a full dose of "tech, gaming and digital culture" angles. We talk NBN upgrade pricing, the government's new plan to deal with spam and scam calls, and whether we really will miss something now that console games have ridiculously short loading times. Plus we look at the weird Instagram fraud issues Byteside faced while running the recent Xbox Series X giveaway and those weird monoliths and our hopes for what they turn out to be (or maybe that we should never find out what the deal was at all?)

We've now launched a Byteside supporter membership system! Head over to byteside.com/membership/ to directly support our effort to run a paid team of writers, a cool network of podcasts, and our weekly newsletter. You can become a monthly contributor or just give us a one-off donation. Every month we'll have prize packs to draw for our supporters, and the first pack is a pack of SteelSeries gaming hardware, including:

• Arctis 1 Wireless gaming headset
• Aerox 3 gaming mouse
• Apex 5 gaming keyboard
• Dune Haggar SteelSeries QcK large mousepad
• SteelSeries x Dune Haggar hoodie
• SteelSeries x Dune Haggar cap

Join the Byteside supporter crew to get in the draw!

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This week we're looking at a bit of spy agency "incidental" capture of some COVIDSafe data and what that means, as well as what we're subscribing too for our entertainment and how YouTube has big plans to take over the full range of what anyone might want from a music service (musicians included?). Plus a little bit of fleeting follow up and why Seamus is still in love with World of Warcraft.

Don't forget to enter the Byteside Xbox Series X giveaway! All the details at the Byteside website.

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