### Issue 1966 - Thursday 2nd November, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- YouTube increaes price of Premium while fighting with ad-blockers
- NBN announces price cuts for high speed FTTP plans
- ACMA fines Kmart $1.3m for spamming
- Plex adds more social features that nobody asked for
- Cheap 4TB SSD, LED & OLED TVs, ThinkPad E16, noise cancelling earbuds, Boost Mobile SIM, Sony A7 III camera, Anko USB-C charger, Telstra 24m 300GB data phone plan

## The News

### YouTube increaes price of Premium while fighting with ad-blockers

There's been a bit of banter the last few weeks between YouTube and people using adblockers. YouTube puts up a little warning with "oi fucko buy premium or disable the ad blocker" and the ad blockers figure out a way to evade YouTube's detection, so YouTube tweaks something to bring the message back and the cycle continues. Today, YouTube upped the monthly price of Premium to A$16.99 or A$32.99 for a family plan, ironically driving more people to use ad blockers or a VPN to get a cheaper subscription overseas. I like the fact YouTube lets me pay to get rid of ads, so I put my money where my mouth is and do that. Great value even at twice price.

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### NBN announces price cuts for high speed FTTP plans

NBN published its three year pricing plan and to everyone's surprise, it's slashing the wholesale price on high-end speed tiers currently designed for business customers. As of July 2024, the 250/100Mbps, 500/200Mbps and 1000/400Mbps plans will have a wholesale cost of $75, $100 and $125 respectively. Slap on your ISP's margin (which appears to be around 50% for a decent ISP) and that means it's quite possible that next year, those of us who love a fat pipe and are blessed with FTTP could get a 1000/400 plan for under $250/m, or a 250/100 plan for just a little bit more or the same price as a 1000/50 plan, but with double the upload speed. That said, our friends in NZ are still laughing at us while enjoying 8000/8000 internet for around A$260/m.

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### ACMA fines Kmart $1.3m for spamming

Kmart's been slugged $1,303,500 by ACMA for breaching Australian spam laws. After an investigation following consumer complaints, ACMA found that "Kmart sent 212,471 messages to customers between July 2022 and May 2023 who had previously unsubscribed. The investigation found that the breaches occurred due to a combination of technology, system and procedural failures". ACMA also said that "Kmart's case is particularly concerning as it went on for such a significant period" and that "Kmart was given more than enough notice it may have a compliance issue, and it should have done more to address its problems before we had to step in and investigate". I'm loving ACMA's no mercy policy when it comes to spam and big companies that really should know better.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Plex adds more social features that nobody asked for

Plex has introduced a new feature called "Discover Together" and it's essentially Plex trying to make a social network. You can add friends, there's a feed of what those friends are watching, rating, added to their watchlist and "discussing" and user profiles that show what you've been up to on Plex. Look, I get it, Plex really wants to pretend people aren't using it for watching media they pirated elsewhere and sharing that media with their friends who don't know how to pirate media themselves - but all these features just piss me off, particularly while the real reason we use Plex could be better, such as transcoding and media library sharing. There's never been a better time to give Jellyfin a shot.

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## Bargains

- Fanxiang S770 4TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD with heatsink - $249.59 from Fanxiang's eBay store
- LG OLED77C3PSA 77" OLED TV - $4880 + delivery from Appliance Central
- ThinkPad E16 Gen 1 (16" 1080p, Ryzen 7530U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) - $847 from Lenovo
- 14% cashback from Lenovo via Cashrewards
- Sony KD65X80L 65" TV - $975 from Sony's eBay store
- Beyerdynamic Free BYRD Wireless In-Ear ANC Headphones - $99 + delivery from PC Case Gear
- Boost Mobile 365-day SIM with 260GB data, unlimited calls & SMS - $232 from Auditech's eBay store
- Sony A7 III camera - $1,669.10 after price match & cash back from Sony
- Anko 100W USB-C 4-port wall charger - $39 at Kmart
- Port to Telstra's $99/m plan with 300GB data on a 24m contract and get either a free TCL P745 85" TV & Fetch Mini 4K, or a $1400 gift card for The Good Guys or JB Hi-Fi

## Image Of The Day

A range of early-2000s button badge pins I found in a box while cleaning my study recently

## The End

📻 Falling Up - Superbloom

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