### Issue 2031 - Tuesday 20th February, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Reddit fattens up for IPO by entering $60m/yr AI training deal
- Wyze had an oopsie and 13,000 users could see each other's cameras
- New ACS Migration Skills Assessment goes online in March
- Unsolicited advice on the internet is very annoying
- Cheap iPhones & Apple Watches, Pixel 8 & PIxel 8 Pro, Apple Music, Jabra Elite 3, Nvidia Shield TV Pro, Optus SIM only plan

## The News

### Reddit fattens up for IPO by entering $60m/yr AI training deal

Bloomberg is reporting that Reddit has signed a US$60m a year deal with an "unnamed large AI company", giving them permission to "train its artificial intelligence models on the social media platform's content". Not much more detail than than, but the article says Reddit is doing this in preparation for an IPO. $60m of revenue a year is a nice way of fattening up this pig before it goes off to market. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, as Reddit viewing the user generated content as an AI-training goldmine is one of the reasons they killed off free access to the API that allowed 3rd party apps.

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### Wyze had an oopsie and 13,000 users could see each other's cameras

I've always been a bit skeptical of cloud connected security cameras and this latest incident from Wyze isn't helping me get over that. After an AWS outage that disabled all Wyze devices for "several hours", there was a "security issue" where "some users reported seeing the wrong thumbnails and Event Videos in their Events tab" once AWS came back online due to a "sudden increased demand" that "led to the mixing of device IDs and user ID mappings". Up to 13,000 users could "could see other people's video feed thumbnails and, in some cases, even video footage after tapping the camera thumbnails in the Wyze app's Events tab".

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### New ACS Migration Skills Assessment goes online in March

If you're applying for a visa to work in Australia for a job that relates to computers, you have to get the Australian Computer Society (ACS) to certify you - they're the only mob the immigration department will accept a certification from and they suck. Apparently 80% of immigration applications that land at the ACS are submitted in an "unfit state to be assessed", so it's a relief for potential new Australians that the ACS is finally upgrading the paper based system. It'll use an "interactive web form" and an "API instead of having to store and secure very sensitive personal information". The bad news is that the cost of this certification process has doubled from $550 to $1,100, oof.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Unsolicited advice on the internet is very annoying

There's nothing more annoying than unsolicited advice when all you wanna do is make a funny or have a sook. That's what social media is for, but some people think you actually want answers to the things you type out loud for the world to read. If you're one of those people that gives advice on the internet to people who don't specifically ask for that advice - this article is for you. Before posting, ask yourself: is this person specifically asking for advice? Is your solution helpful to that person now? Is it a typo or grammatical error? If the answer to any of those is yes, then don't reply and keep scrolling.

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## Bargains

- $300 off iPhone 15/Plus/Pro/Max and $200 off Apple Watch Series 9 at Telstra until the 19th of March
- Google Pixel 8 128GB or Pixel 8 Pro 128GB - $899/$1299 from Telstra
- Up to 3 months free Apple Music for inactive or new subscribers via Shazam
- Jabra Elite 3 wireless earbuds - $59 from JB Hi-Fi
- Nvidia Shield TV Pro - $298 from Harvey Norman
- Optus SIM only plan for people with an edu.au email - $39/m for 100GB & unlimited calls/SMS

## Image Of The Day

Apple Macintosh Plus (1988) with its cover removed. (Cody Logan / Wikimedia Commons)

## The End

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