### Issue 1989 - Wednesday 6th December, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Beeper Mini reverse engineered iMessage, Android app now available
- ACMA tired of Telstra's crap billing system
- Consumers to pay for Windows 10 security updates, Amazon gets Aussie cricket broadcast rights, League of Geeks sacks half of game studio
- Fewer people are using Firefox than ever before
- Cheap Super Mario RPG, Xbox Series S, Samsung microSDs, Sony cashback, Anbernic RG35XX handheld game console

## The News

### Beeper Mini reverse engineered iMessage, Android app now available

Beeper Mini managed to reverse engineer iMessage so you can send and receive iMessages on an Android device without a Mac server in the middle to forward the messages. It works pretty damn well according to The Verge - "messages sent from Beeper Mini on my Pixel 8 appear as blue bubbles on the iPhones of my friends and family members. Group chats I'm on automatically switched over to iMessage as soon as someone fired off a meme. Reactions, threads, photos, and videos (without the messy text message compression) all came through. The best thing I can say about Beeper Mini is that almost no one noticed I was using it: blue bubbles just started appearing — no lost messages to speak of". Sounds almost too good to be true, but it's real and you can grab it now from the Google Play Store for US$1.99/m.

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### ACMA tired of Telstra's crap billing system

Once again Telstra has been fined by ACMA for fucking up people's bills. This time it's a $3m penalty plus over $20m in refunds to thousands of customers after "charging them for inactive internet services over an 11-year period". Telstra claims "the billing issues were caused by the company failing to follow a series of steps in its ADSL internet service deactivation process". Commenting on the fine, ACMA said "Telstra has a history of incorrectly billing customers and it's just not good enough" and that "Telstra is a major player in the Australian telco sector and it needs to continue to prioritise its billing compliance and get its systems in order". You keep saying that, but nothing changes! It's almost as if Telstra doesn't give a shit and will pay these speeding fines as it's cheaper than fixing their rotten billing systems.

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### Consumers to pay for Windows 10 security updates, Amazon gets Aussie cricket broadcast rights, League of Geeks sacks half of game studio

- Windows 10 has support until October 14th, 2025 but Microsoft is already announcing Extended Security Updates. No new features, just "critical and/or important security updates" in return for a yearly subscription. Unlike the Windows 7 ESU program, Microsoft will make the program available for "individual consumers", not just businesses. More details "as we approach availability".
- Amazon's snagged the Australian broadcast rights for all International Cricket Council (ICC) events until 2027. This includes the ODI & T20 World Cups and the World Test Championship Final - which are not on the anti-siphoning list. Dunno if Amazon will make it so you have to pay to watch, but the FTA lobby group is cranky regardless.
- League of Geeks, Australia's largest indie game studio, has sacked half its staff and paused development on its upcoming game Jumplight Odyssey. According to this post on the Steam Community for Jumplight Odyssey, it looks like they simply ran out of cash and have to downscale to stay alive with the money they do have from their other games. Never heard of em or their games but it sucks to see.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Fewer people are using Firefox than ever before

Bryce Wray highlights a sad fact that Firefox's usage is close to falling under 2% in US government web browser analytics. This would trigger a downward spiral for Firefox support not just in the US government (which has a rule of only officially supporting browsers above 2% usage), but more widely in the web development community. Why bother to support a browser with less than 2% usage when 84% of your users are on Chrome or Safari and the other 10% are derivatives of either Chrome or Safari anyways? Sad to see Firefox atrophy like this. I assume the bulk of usage is from smartphones/tablets where Chrome and Safari are the defaults. It's tough to compete with the default.

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## Bargains

- Super Mario RPG for Nintendo Switch - $64 from Amazon
- Xbox Series S 512GB Console Starter Bundle (includes 3m sub to Game Pass Ultimate) - $392.95 from The Gamesmen's eBay store
- Samsung Pro Endurance 128GB MicroSD - $20.02 from Amazon USA
- Samsung PRO Plus 512GB MicroSD - $48.41 from Amazon USA
- 10% cashback from Sony's online store (capped at $250 per transaction, PlayStation not included) via Cashrewards
- Anbernic RG35XX Mini Retro Handheld Game Console - $63 from Aliexpress

## Image Of The Day

Thin film magnetic recording head at wafer level, 40x magnification. Joe de Lellis, Eastman Kodak, Inc., San Diego Laboratories (1995 Nikon Photomicrography Competition)

## The End

📻 Phaser - Superdrag

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