
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said that the reason some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) hadn't been chosen in the first round of ISP filtering was that they had greedily tried to get the department to pay for upgrades to their own equipment.
"Some of them, cheaply, took the opportunity to try and get the Commonwealth to fund an upgrade in their own equipment," he said, speaking at the Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) conference. "Some of them came to us and said look, we can do this no problem, zero dollar costs. So obviously we were able to start with them."
The million dollar costs which some parties had brought to the table were veiled attempts to try and get the government to upgrade their boxes, Conroy said
"There were a few try-ons in the process, but we had to work our way through it," he said.
That was the reason the first six ISPs were chosen, Conroy said. "It was actually a function of the applications which came in. No great conspiracy theory. We're still actively engaged in conversation with a number of applicants," he assured Blue Coat's country manager Wayne Neich who had brought up the subject.
Neich had said that his company had reached no understanding or insight as to why the six companies had been chosen, a concern after his company had invested a significant amount in the ISP filtering process.
Conroy also stuck the boot into those who were proclaiming the filter as the Australian equivalent to the Great Wall of China, saying that he only wanted to remove "refuse classification (RC) material" - material that includes child sexual abuse imagery; bestiality; sexual violence; detailed instructions in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
Omar writes: "With the Horizon Festival coming to breathtaking Japan, you’ll need the essential gear to prove you’ve got what it takes to become a Horizon Legend as you cruise, drift and explore an open world full of spectacular driving experiences. That’s why we’re happy to announce the newest Limited Edition Xbox Wireless Controller and Wireless Headset collection, featuring inspired designs from Forza Horizon 6. The bright cyan and lime colorways celebrate the Horizon Festival’s recognition of iconic cars and hit music, with special features that are sure to impress any collector."

You can get Hall effect controllers slightly cheaper, but you'd struggle to find as feature-rich a package without some heavy, heavy sales.

Pascal Gilcher calls DLSS 5 impressive but shares the "AI slop" sentiment, explaining the likely tech behind it and why he dislikes it.
I fail to see how this is AI shhhhlllloooop. Looking at the different games they showed, this has made many of them look far better.
If you don’t like it, just don’t enable it. Personally I think it looks great from the videos I have seen.
Making characters look more realistic not ok because we want the developer to decide on how the game was intended to look. - Internet
Change entire game through mods thus changing how the developers intended the game to be is ok. - Internet
All the comments I see are reminding me of how we got to the current state of gaming when microtransactions were first introduced: "It's completely optional guys, we promise! If you don't like it just don't buy it!"
I think we all know how that ended up.
Biggest Scam. Overrides lighting and shadow. So why keep Ray tracing? It's all a scam to raise graphic card. We now see Nvidia with Microsoft downturn anything against them. Sony is next!