### Issue 1483 - Friday 29th October, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Zuck loves the metaverse so much, he's renaming Facebook to Meta
- Apple generates over $1b a day of revenue now, despite a pandemic & supply issues
- There's a new Raspberry Pi Zero with a quad core CPU
- The Teenage Engineering Compuer-1 mini ITX case looks cool
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap iPhone XS, Age of Empires IV, Spotify Premium, Surface Laptop Go, AU VPSes, Samsung portable SSD, Amazon Fire TV stick 4K, Telstra mobile plans, WD Black SSD

## The News

### Zuck loves the metaverse so much, he's renaming Facebook to Meta

Meta (short for metaverse) is now the name of the overarching brand that operates Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and all the other shit Facebook does. Zuck gave a 90 minute presentation outlining his metaverse dream. I'll save you the pain - it's Ready Player One, based on tech that doesn't exist yet, but Zuck reckons his team and piles of money can invent an online virtual world we will constantly inhabit. There will be shitloads published about Zuck's hard-on for the metaverse, but I encourage you to set make time and read these interviews (The Verge & Stratechery) and Zuck's "founder's letter" to see in his own words what he's excited about. It'll make you scream as to how adolescent the "metaverse" he describes is. Who wants this and why do they hate humanity?

### Apple generates over $1b a day of revenue now, despite a pandemic & supply issues

Apple's Q4 earnings are out and while overall revenue grew 29% (come on, 29% for a company the size of Apple is nuts!) it was lower than the market expected. Apple said it's due to "larger than expected supply constraints" that had "around a $6 billion revenue dollar impact driven primarily by industry-wide silicon shortages and COVID related manufacturing disruptions". The most amazing stat I saw in Apple's earnings is that they made a total of US$366 billion in revenue the past 12 months. That's over US$1b per day. During a pandemic, when supply of hardware has never been more tight. Mind boggling stuff here folks.

### There's a new Raspberry Pi Zero with a quad core CPU

Hey look, there's the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. It's a big performance update to the previous Pi Zero, sporting a 64-bit quad-core 1GHz SoC now. Besides a minor update from Bluetooth 4.1 BLE to 4.2 BLE and the requirement for a 2.5A USB power supply, it's the same little, cheap, constantly out of stock computer you know and love - just much faster. Apparently the new SoC gets quite toasty so for anything hitting the CPU hard you might want to investigate extra cooling. The price went up a bit too, now selling for $22.95 locally. Still amazes me you can get a full blown computer running Linux (not a microcontroller!) in such a small form factor.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The Teenage Engineering Compuer-1 mini ITX case looks cool

Trendy Swedish design group Teenage Engineering is selling a PC case! Better known for their synths and audio gear, they're now selling sheets of metal you need to bend to shape and assemble yourself, that'll hold a mini-ITX mainboard and associated parts inside. No fucking idea if it's a good case airflow wise, or how much of a prick it'll be to assemble (bending metal? seriously?) and it's pretty expensive at US$190 aaanndd it's sold out - but it looks cool as fuck and I want one.

## 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.

- realrayman is after a physical security key for 2FA and is interested to know what's out there besides Yubikeys
- Discussions about cryptocurrency kicked off after I posted news about a cryptocurrency ETF soon to launch on the ASX
- warkolm wants to add a 3rd node in a point-to-point Ubiquiti setup and has a few questions about it
- I've been crapping on about my plans and experiments to get more subscribers to The Sizzle
- mgm was cleaning up and found an old manual for the CP/M version of WordStar

## Bargains

- Refurbished Apple iPhone XS 64GB - $599 from Coles
- Age of Empires IV Digital Deluxe Edition - $87.27 on Humble Bundle
- 3 months free Spotify Premium (new users only) via PayPal
- Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 12.4" i5/8GB/128GB SSD - $798 at Harvey Norman
- $4/m Australian VPSes from QuantumCore
- Samsung 500GB T7 Portable SSD - $99 at The Good Guys & Amazon
- Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K - $49 at Good Guys, JB, Big W, Bing Lee
- Get a $400 Good Guys gift card if you go on a $69/m Telstra 12m plan with 80GB data from The Good Guys
- WD Black SN750 1TB SSD - $155 + delivery from SaveOnIT

## The End

📻 Rock N Roll Can Rescue The World - Electric Eel Shock

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

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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.