### Issue 1670 - Friday 12th August, 2022

Sent today's issue to the entire Sizzle list so the ~2500 people that are yet to sign up but haven't unsubscribed are given a reminder of what they're missing out on. Please upgrade to a paid subscription, it's only $5 a month! Visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme and pop in your credit card details to get this sparkling technology related content every weekday.

## In Today's Issue

- Amazon's making a creepy TV show using footage they captured via Ring cameras
- NBN's back at the negotiating table with ISPs & offers to ditch CVC by 2026
- Facebook tests encrypting Messenger, Intel compares Arc A750 GPU to RTX3060, Google fined $60m by Federal Court
- Mighty Kingdom, Australia's largest game developer, is in the shit
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap Kyocera laser printer, Seagate PCIe 4.0 SSD with heatsink, refurb Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds

## The News

### Amazon's making a creepy TV show using footage they captured via Ring cameras

Amazon's MGM Studios is making a TV show called Ring Nation that will "feature viral videos shared by people from their video doorbells and smart home cameras". Stuff like "neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions and silly animals". America's Funniest Home Videos, but recorded via Amazon's network of omnipresent recording devices. I know it's 2022 and capitalism is driving us insane and I should no longer be shocked by its actions, but this is this is some absolute madman corporate synergy (Amazon owns both MGM and Ring), normalising the surveillance state one fake laugh track at a time.

### NBN's back at the negotiating table with ISPs & offers to ditch CVC by 2026

In the latest round of negotiations on wholesale pricing between NBN and ISPs, NBN has re-introduced a path for ditching the much reviled connectivity virtual circuit (CVC) bandwidth charges. In the discussion paper, NBN proposes they move to flat-rate pricing "no later than July 1st 2026" for all speed tiers and 100mbit and above speeds by 1st July 2023. This means ISPs will only pay NBN a fixed monthly fee for the speed tier their customer is signed up for (NBN calls it AVC), rather than the additional fee on the actual bandwidth (CVC) used. The downside are yearly price rises pegged at inflation, which I thought the ACCC already said is a no-go zone. You can check out the full Special Access Undertaking (SAU) Discussion Paper here. Reviews.org (???) has a good explainer of the NBN's CVC concept.

### Facebook tests encrypting Messenger, Intel compares Arc A750 GPU to RTX3060, Google fined $60m by Federal Court

- Facebook is testing turning on end-to-end encryption by default and encrypted backups of chat history in Messenger. No doubt inspired by the news earlier in the week that they handed over chat logs to cops who then charged a teen and her mum with a crime for getting abortion pills. Which to be fair to Meta, when the police request was made was prior to the Supreme Court decision to repeal Roe vs. Wade and for "disposal of a corpse", not "getting an abortion".
- Intel's released benchmarks of its Arc A750 GPU, comparing it to Nvidia's RTX 3060. Across five games (Borderlands 3, Control, Cyberpunk 2077, F1 2021 and Fortnight), running on high settings at 2560x1440, Intel's GPU was faster than the RTX 3060. That's cool and all, but unless the Arc A750 is cheaper than the RTX 3060 (i.e: around $500 vs $550 for the RTX3060) I don't think it'll gain much traction. It also needs to go on sale soon as Nvidia & AMD's next-gen GPUs are due later this year.
- Google copped a $60m fine from the Federal Court after the ACCC sued them for "misleading some local users into thinking the company was not collecting personal data about their location via mobile devices with Android operating systems". It was unclear if "Google would still collect and access location data when a user's location history was set to off but their web and app activity was on and one of its apps was used". I'd argue that Google's data sucking business is so convoluted, this was an honest mistake, not Google trying to pull a fast one.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Mighty Kingdom, Australia's largest game developer, is in the shit

CNET has a long article about Mighty Kingdom, Australia's largest game developer. They're ASX listed, are based in Adelaide and employ 150 people. The story centres on two dud game projects - Kitty Keeper and Conan Chop Chop - both of which bombed and resulted in lengthy legal issues for Mighty Kingdom. Kitty Keeper in particular has some messy issues around a grant from the South Australian government that might have been obtained via lies. Mighty Kingdom is also running out of money and the share price has tanked heavily, leading to them getting investment from some dude who loves NFTs. Nothing good happens when NFTs are involved.

## Friday Forum Update

It was a quiet week on the forum, so here's a list of the 5 most viewed threads of all time. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to use the forum (it's for paid subscribers only!), visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.

- Convincing People To Get a Free Trial of The Sizzle
- Good part time jobs for nerds?
- I've gone crazy on Ubiquiti Unifi
- How To Avoid Paying RRP
- Hearing Is Futile: Becoming Borg

## Bargains

- Kyocera ECOSYS P5021cdn colour laser printer - $179 from digiDirect's eBay store
- Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD with Heatsink - $393.06 from Amazon UK
- Refurbished Sony WF-1000XM4 wireless earbuds - $217.55 from Sony's eBay store

## The End

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