### Issue 1806 - Thursday 16th March, 2023

Do you enjoy watching the best sport in the world, also known as Australian Rules Football? You might like to join The Sizzle's footy tipping competition! Thanks Josh for starting it up.

## In Today's Issue

- Samsung to spend a nuclear submarine program equivalent of money to be the king of semiconductors
- Epic fined for Fortnite in-game purchase "dark patterns" and locking accounts of people that disputed charges
- NASA's new lunar spacesuit, Spotify HiFi still a thing coming eventually, Latitude Financial got popped
- Samsung's faking pictures of the moon taken on their smartphones and are proud of it
- Cheap Nintendo merch, Nvidia Shield TV Pro, Plex Pass, most things 5% off at JB, WD 2TB portable HDD, Mac Mini, Apple Watch Ultra, AirTags, refurb Sony headphones, UniFi UDM SE, refurb RX 6700 XT GPUs, PlayStation 5 console

## The News

### Samsung to spend a nuclear submarine program equivalent of money to be the king of semiconductors

Samsung is gonna spend 300 trillion Korean won (~A$345b) over 20 years to make South Korea the semiconductor capital of the world. It'll be focused around a huge new campus near Seoul and "in addition to logic and memory chip production facilities, the new mega cluster will also house Samsung's semiconductor ecosystem partners, including suppliers of raw materials, parts, and even fabless chip designers, a total of 150 companies". The South Korean government will feed this huge manufacturing complex by investing almost a billion dollars into 10 fabless semiconductor design firms. I found it an interesting contrast to Australia, who just announced a similar level of money for nuclear submarines. I'd much rather Australia spent it on semiconductor manufacturing than nuclear subs and I even think nuclear subs are cool.

### Epic fined for Fortnite in-game purchase "dark patterns" and locking accounts of people that disputed charges

Epic got slapped with a US$245m fine by the USA's FTC. From the press release: "Epic deployed a variety of design tricks known as dark patterns aimed at getting consumers of all ages to make unintended in-game purchases. Fortnite's counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button. The company also made it easy for children to make purchases while playing Fortnite without requiring any parental consent". "Epic also locked the accounts of customers who disputed unauthorized charges with their credit card companies". Will it stop a fresh pack of arseholes deploying deliberately misleading interfaces again in a new digital marketplace? Probably not, but let's enjoy this small win.

### NASA's new lunar spacesuit, Spotify HiFi still a thing coming eventually, Latitude Financial got popped

- NASA has shown off the spacesuits astronauts will wearing when they land on the moon in 2025/2026 - aka the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit. The photos show a prototype dark grey cover over the suit (designed by the costume designer on For All Mankind!), but the suits actually worn by the astronauts will be white, for thermal reasons.
- In an interview with The Verge, Spotify's co-president confirmed that they're still planning to release Spotify HiFi, a lossless/higher quality audio feature they first announced two years ago. He didn't say when or how, just that they haven't forgotten about it. Apple, Tidal and Amazon have lossless, I wonder what's holding Spotify back?
- At least 103,000 drivers licences have fallen out of Latitude Financial according to a statement they've made to the ASX. They claim the info was nicked from "two other service providers" they use, but didn't say which ones, but did say they're still "responding" to the attack. More about this tomorrow or Monday I reckon.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Samsung's faking pictures of the moon taken on their smartphones and are proud of it

Someone on Reddit discovered that their fancy new Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra's photos of the Moon were way too good than what the little sensor in the phone should theoretically be capable of. They ran a few tests and ultimately discovered that phone is doing some sort of AI trickery to enhance crappy blurry photos of the Moon when it thinks a photo of the Moon has been taken. A few days later Samsung has confirmed "Scene Optimizer" AI enhancement in a blog post and went some detail on what's going on. The Moon is a "specific object" Scene Optimizer can detect and apply "detail enhancement". I don't know what other objects Samsung is automatically "enhancing", but at what point do we start to doubt the images coming out of the cameras on our smartphones are real? At the very least it would be nice if companies doing this stuff were way more transparent about what exactly is happening in the background.

## Bargains

- EB Games is clearing out various bits of Nintendo merchandise for $5-$9 a piece
- Nvidia Shield TV Pro 4K Media Player - $218 from Amazon
- Lifetime Plex Pass - $128 from Plex
- 5% off everything (usual exclusions, like Apple, game consoles, etc apply) at JB Hi-Fi until the 19th of March
- WD 2TB portable HDD - $75 from Amazon

It's Afterpay Day again and eBay is taking 15% off everything as long as you use AfterPay to pay. Some of the good stuff:

- Mac mini M2 (8GB RAM/256GB SSD) - $823.65
- Apple Watch Ultra - $1119
- Apple Airtag 4-Pack - $131.75
- Refurb Sony WH-1000XM5B - $347.65
- Ubiquiti Unifi Dream Machine Special Edition (UDM SE) - $810.90
- Refurb/ex-mining AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Founder Edition - $356.15
- PlayStation 5 Console (disc version) - $679.96

## Image Of The Day

Bank One ATM Screen Displaying Y2K Readiness Disclosure, December 28, 1999 (Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation)

## The End

📻 Like the Sun - Tanukichan

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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.