### Issue 1782 - Thursday 9th February, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Biden talks up regulation of Big Tech in State of the Union address
- New Zelda game coming soon & Microsoft's acquisition of Activision hits fresh hurdle
- Google embarrasses itself at search engine press conference, with old features & demo failures
- Bank of England reckons a "digital pound" is inevitable and wants to start planning for it now
- Cheap refurb HP laptop, Asus wi-fi rotuer, Dell 4K monitor, SanDisk 1TB microSD, Sony & LG OLEDs, iPad Air, PS5, Pixel 6a, Seagate SSD, Massdrop x Sennheiser headphones, HP monitors, Apple TV for Telstra customers, Mophie USB-C charger, Crucial DDR4 RAM, Square Reader

## The News

### Biden talks up regulation of Big Tech in State of the Union address

The US President's annual State of the Union address is a big deal, outlining what the President's hopes and dreams for the year ahead. In this year's address, Biden said that "it's time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us" and implored Congress to "pass bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage". Big words from the big man. A good place to start would be for Congress to pass the Open App Markets Act.

### New Zelda game coming soon & Microsoft's acquisition of Activision hits fresh hurdle

Nintendo held one of its Direct online press conferences last night. The big news is a fresh Zelda game for the Switch - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It'll go on sale May 12th and for the Zelda fans there will be a Collector's Edition with a fancy case, booklet and some pins. Nintendo also made a few Game Boy and Game Boy Advanced games available on the Switch online store. Elsewhere in gaming news, the UK looks set to deny Microsoft's US$69b acquisition of Activision, arguing that it's pretty fucken obvious Microsoft will eventually make Activision titles exclusive to its platform, resulting in "all gamers seeing higher prices, reduced range, lower quality, and worse service in gaming consoles over time".

### Google embarrasses itself at search engine press conference, with old features & demo failures

Google's "Live from Paris" event took place last night, showing off a bunch of AI-powered features for Maps, Lens and Translate that were re-heated from previous Google I/O keynotes (and still unreleased!), plus a demo of Bard - which got busted giving out lies right on the damn promo page. There was supposed to be a demo of something called "multisearch" but they lost the phone that had the demo on it. A few hours later and the live stream still isn't available to watch. Sounds like a shitshow compared to Microsoft's announcement yesterday of Bing and Edge that was so well received, Satya Nadella had the bravado to say "this new Bing will make Google come out and dance, and I want people to know that we made them dance".

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Bank of England reckons a "digital pound" is inevitable and wants to start planning for it now

The Bank of England and HM Treasury has released an "assessment of the case for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) – a so-called digital pound". The digital pound would "be a new form of sterling, similar to a digital banknote, issued by the Bank of England. It would be used by households and businesses for their everyday payments needs. It would be used in-store, online and to make payments to family and friends. If introduced, it would exist alongside, and be easily exchangeable with, cash and bank deposits". I don't know enough about economics to know if this is good or bad, but I do find it ironic that the blockchain and cryptocurrency will probably end up like the government's digital pound, not some libertarian utopia freeing us from the "slavery" of fiat currency.

## Bargains

- Refurb HP Elitebook 830 G5 laptop (i5-8350U, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD, 1080p) - $298.14 from SMG-AU's eBay store
- ASUS RT-AX56U AX1800 Wi-Fi 6 Router - $169 from Amazon
- Dell S2722QC 4K USB-C monitor - $432.67 from Dell
- SanDisk Ultra A1 1TB MicroSD Card - $139.96 + delivery from Shopping Square
- Lots of Sony 65" and bigger OLEDs are 20% off at The Good Guys
- iPad Air 64GB Wi-Fi 5th-gen - $849 at JB Hi-Fi
- PlayStation 5 Disc Console + God of War Ragnarok Bundle - $819 from Amazon or JB Hi-Fi
- Google Pixel 6a 5G 128GB - $485.64 from Amazon UK
- Seagate FireCuda 530 500GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD with Heatsink - $99 + delivery from Shopping Express
- Massdrop x Sennheiser HD 6XX Open Back Headphones - $315 from Drop
- 2x HP P24h G4 1080p IPS 23.8" monitors - $298 + delivery from Centrecom
- 3 Months Free Apple TV+ for Telstra Customers
- LG 42" OLED 4K EVO C2 Smart TV (also a good computer monitor) - $1356 from The Good Guys
- Mophie 67W Dual USB-C GaN Charger - $46 + delivery from Wireless 1
- Crucial 32GB (1x 32GB) DDR4 3200MHz SODIMM Memory - $119 from AusPCMarket
- Square Reader (credit card payment terminal thingy) - $39 at Amazon

## Image Of The Day

Buzz Aldrin dazzles in eccentric silver suit and patriotic socks as eight surviving Apollo astronauts pose for 50th anniversary photo, April 9, 2019 (Felix Kunze)

## 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.