### Issue 1968 - Monday 6th November, 2023

No Sizzle tomorrow (7th Nov) as it is a public holiday for the Melbourne Cup. I'll be back Wednesday.

## In Today's Issue

- Grok is a new LLM made by X and trained on trained on X user posts
- Apple tried to skirt around EU's DMA by saying Safari isn't a single browser
- OAIC finally sues a company for a data breach
- I had to learn about obituary pirates, so now you do too
- Cheap speakers, 16TB HDD, iPhone 15, 34" & 27" monitors, Telstra 5G home broadband, refurb Dell laptop, Ducky One mech keeb, 4TB PCIe SSD

## The News

### Grok is a new LLM made by X and trained on trained on X user posts

Grok is, I quote, "an AI modeled after the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask!" - yeah it's yet another LLM, but this one has "real-time knowledge of the world via the X platform" and will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems". An AI trained on the cesspool that is Twitter/X, controlled by the shameless Elon Musk, with a disclaimer to "please don't use it if you hate humor!". What could go wrong? It is currently in a private beta and will eventually be made available to X Premium+ subscribers, but there's no ETA on that.

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### Apple tried to skirt around EU's DMA by saying Safari isn't a single browser

Apple has tried to argue that there's three different versions of Safari in order to get around the EU's Digital Markets Act. By classifying the iOS, Mac and iPadOS versions of Safari as their own browser rather than a single "Safari", it wouldn't meet the threshold as a "gatekeeper platform". The EU isn't taking the bait however, even going as far as to quote Apple's own marketing material for the Continuity feature where Apple claim "Same Safari. Different device". This means that Apple has to allow non-WebKit-based browsers on iOS/iPadOS sooner or later. I am super keen for it as Mozilla just last week announced that extensions for the Android version of Firefox are coming soon. I want that for Firefox on iOS and allowing non-WebKit browsers is the first step according to Mozilla.

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### OAIC finally sues a company for a data breach

breach, despite having the legislative power to do so. Late Friday afternoon they announced "civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court against Australian Clinical Labs Limited (ACL)". On this occasion the "sensitive health information and credit card information of in excess of 100,000 individuals" was exfiltrated and to make matters worse, "ACL failed to carry out a reasonable assessment of whether it amounted to an eligible data breach and then failed to notify the Commissioner as soon as practicable". Nobody will go to jail as it's a civil proceeding, but ACL can only be fined up to $2.2m for this as it happened before the law was updated in December last year to increase the punishment.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### I had to learn about obituary pirates, so now you do too

One of the great things about the internet is that every day it finds a new way to lower my faith in humanity. Today's little punch in the gut is the knowledge that "obituary pirates" exist. These shitbirds take obituaries published in newspapers, funeral home websites and other obituary websites and churn out crude videos on YouTube to try and rake in a meagre amount of advertising revenue from each video when people search for the deceased's name. They also use the videos to try and guilt people to buy sympathy gifts or donate on behalf of the family but pocket the cash themselves. It's deplorable and I don't like it.

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## Bargains

- Edifier MR4 studio monitors - $119 + delivery from Centrecom
- Edifier R1280DB active speakers with Bluetooth - $98 from Centrecom
- 16TB Seagate EXOS X16 3.5" HDD - $335 from Eastdigital's eBay store
- $200 off iPhone 15 models at Amaysim when purchased with a pre-paid plan
- AOC U34G3XM/EU 34" 144Hz non-curved 3440x1440 monitor - $379 from digiDirect
- Dell S2721QS 27" 4K monitor - $321.90 from Dell
- Telstra 5G home broadband plan with 1TB/m of data - $1 for first month, then $85/m after that
- Refurb Dell Latitude 5500 laptop (15.6 1080p, i5-8365U, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 4G LTE modem) - $331.17 from Max Direct's eBay store
- Ducky One 3 TKL RGB Hot-Swap mechanical keyboard - $183.20 from PC Case Gear
- Crucial T500 4TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD - $231.74 from Amazon UK (thanks for the tip Sam)

## Image Of The Day

The entrance to MSY's no longer operating North Melbourne store on Queensberry Street. Yes, that's an electrical cable being used as a door handle. It wasn't temporary, it was like that for years. (I took this photo!)

## The End

📻 Pat's Trick - Helium

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## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

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.