### Issue 1802 - Thursday 9th March, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- New installment of ACCC's Digital Platform Services Inquiry
- Humane, a startup stacked with ex-Apple employees gets funding & isn't telling anyone what they're doing
- Students soon able to add up to $23,600 of startup incubator fees to their HECS debt
- Vultr's added a free tier that's actually useful (if you can get it)
- Cheap Sandisk & Samsung SSDs, Romoss powerbank, Google Next Doorbell

## The News

### New installment of ACCC's Digital Platform Services Inquiry

The ACCC is kicking off a new investigation as part of its long-term Digital Platform Services Inquiry. The latest deep dive "examine products and services offered by digital platform service providers across a variety of sectors and will use examples like the expansion into consumer cloud storage and smart home devices to analyse the relationships between digital platform services and various services offered in their digital platform ecosystems". The ACCC wants to "assess how that data can leveraged across products and services within an ecosystem that may prevent businesses from entering and competing". Report is due to land by the 30th of September.

### Humane, a startup stacked with ex-Apple employees gets funding & isn't telling anyone what they're doing

A startup by the name of Humane is getting a chunk of buzz around the internet today after a write up in the Wall Street Journal. This company got US$100m of fresh funding OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, Microsoft and others. It was started by Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, a husband and wife combo that were big deals at Apple and is stacked with former Apple employees. Sounds great, what do they do? According to the article, "The company hasn't disclosed what it plans to sell", but "patents suggest Humane intends to build a wearable device that may be capable of projecting a display with which users could interact". Wake me up when there's something I can buy. Until then it's yet another Silicon Valley circle jerk.

### Students soon able to add up to $23,600 of startup incubator fees to their HECS debt

On the topic of startups, the federal government has put up a bill so uni students can add the cost of enrolling in a startup accelerator program to their HECS debt. The program is called "Startup Year" and allows final-year undergraduate students, post-graduate students and recent graduates "to access up to two loans of up to $11,800 over their lifetime through the HECS-HELP scheme". The education minister said that these loans will "build skills in entrepreneurship and connect students with the support, mentorship and facilities they need to develop their startup ideas". Could be good and find the next Aussie unicorn, but also could just saddle thousands of youngsters with an extra $20k of debt that achieved nothing. At least with an extra year or two of uni you get a Masters out of it.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Vultr's added a free tier that's actually useful (if you can get it)

Vultr, the cloud compute service I use for The Sizzle's forum and my personal blog, has just announced a free tier. For precisely $0 you get 1 vCPU, 512MB RAM, 10GB disk, 2TB of bandwidth and an IPv4/IPv6 address. That is awesome for free. Very usable as a Wireguard exit node. The catch is you need to apply for it, can't just sign up and get it. They use a "weighted score" to determine who gets in, based on a few factors they don't seem to be disclosing. I presume it is to avoid abuse of this offer. Either way, worth signing up for. Never know when a free VPS will come in handy!

## Bargains

- Sandisk 1TB E30 Portable SSD - $99 at Officeworks
- ROMOSS Sense 8+ 18W 30000mAh powerbank - $40.49 from Amazon
- Samsung T7 2TB Portable SSD USB 3.2 (Metallic Red) - $199.33 from Amazon UK
- Google Nest Doorbell (Battery) - $229 from JB Hi-Fi

## Image Of The Day

2005 Dream, r/retrobattlestations (thickener / Reddit, thank you Steve for showing it to me)

## The End

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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.