### Issue 1550 - Friday 18th February, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- ABC iView to make an account mandatory on March 15th
- Elon Musk whinging about SEC enforcing his own agreement against him
- ACCC boss wants government to write off NBN build cost
- Three interesting articles to read this weekend
- Friday forum update
- Cheap Xiaomi Redmi Smart Band Pro, refurb DJI OM4 gimbal, Theme Hospital or Theme Park for PC, Quake for PlayStation 4/5

## The News

### ABC iView to make an account mandatory on March 15th

The ABC has set a date for when they're gonna make it mandatory to have an account for iView - March 15th. Having an account isn't bad, it's the opt-in by default data sharing that shits me. Totally unnecessary for the ABC to do this, but here we are. Also in "you gotta make an account now" news, the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview drops this little nugget: "Similar to Windows 11 Home edition, Windows 11 Pro edition now requires internet connectivity during the initial device setup (OOBE) only. If you choose to setup device for personal use, MSA will be required for setup as well". What a pain in the fucking arse. With some luck it might not get pushed to the stable builds?

### Elon Musk whinging about SEC enforcing his own agreement against him

Tesla and Elon Musk are complaining to the courts about the SEC's handling of the agreement they came to after Elon's infamous "funding secured" tweets in 2018. In a letter they claim that the SEC is "weaponizing the consent decree by using it to try to muzzle and harass Mr. Musk and Tesla". They go on to say that the "SEC seems to be targeting Mr. Musk and Tesla for unrelenting investigation largely because Mr. Musk remains an outspoken critic of the government" and all the SEC's efforts are "calculated to chill his exercise of First Amendment rights". I have four words for Mr. Musk - have a sook cunt. Meanwile, last night Elon tweeted, then deleted, a lame meme comparing Justin Trudeau to Hitler. Cool.

### ACCC boss wants government to write off NBN build cost

The boss of the ACCC has said the words we all want to hear - "now that [the NBN's] built, I think it's appropriate to treat its cost as sunk and therefore, what matters for Australia is getting the best use out of the NBN". Instead of forcing NBN to chase more ARPU (it needs $51, it's stuck on $45) and pricing high speed internet beyond the affordability of the regular punter, society and the economy isn't reaping the full benefits of the NBN. I doubt the either political party will change the status quo regarding the NBN before privatisation and once its privatised, who knows what will happen to it.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Three interesting articles to read this weekend

- Second Sight made retinal implants that helped blind people see (I'm paraphrasing here), but went bust in 2020, leaving people with these unique implants stranded as their devices failed or impacted their health in other ways long term.
- Anandtech's Dr. Ian Cutress got to visit Intel's flagship D1X fabrication plant in Oregon and took a bunch of photos. This is where Intel experiments with new processes, which at the moment is scaling up EUV processing for 7nm chips.
- Yet again we have a story of Facebook underpaying and under-supporting content moderators, who see the nastiest of nastiest shit the internet has to offer. This time they're outsourcing the job to Kenyans.

## Friday Forum Update

Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.

- corduroy needs a VDSL modem - not a router, just the modem
- I made a list of all the devices Google say are currently 100% verified compatible with Chrome OS Flex
- jurgen found some old floppy disks and did some data archeology on them
- cmlewiis asks if it's worth using anti-virus software on iOS devices
- coljac kicked off a discussion about the doxxing/unmasking of the Bored Ape Yacht Club founders

## Bargains

- Xiaomi Redmi Smart Band Pro - $56 from Banggood
- Refurbished DJI OM4 smartphone gimbal - $84 from Amazon
- Theme Hospital or Theme Park for PC - $2.09 each from GOG
- Quake (remastered version) for PlayStation 4/5 - $5.98 on the PlayStation Store

## The End

📻 Bleached - Bugg

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