### Issue 2030 - Monday 19th February, 2024

After interviewing over 1,200 people on his site Uses This, Daniel reached the bottom of the barrel and resorted to asking me for my thoughts about computers. I enjoyed pretending someone cared what I had to say!

## In Today's Issue

- Epic to launch its own iOS app store in the EU
- Australian SMS Sender ID Registry reaches consultation stage
- Renesas buys up Altium and Canva's CFO resigns after "inappropriate behaviour"
- New developments larger than 50 lots must include mobile phone coverage
- Cheap 34" monitor, Bose & Sennheiser earbuds, AMD CPUs, GL.iNet router, GTA collection for PS4, Ubiquiti gear

## The News

### Epic to launch its own iOS app store in the EU

Looks like Epic will be the first mob to take advantage of changes in the EU to allow alternatives to the Apple App Store on iOS devices. According to a tweet from Tim Sweeney, apple granted Epic Games Sweden AB a developer account and they will use that to operate an Epic Games Store in the EU so they can sell Fortnite (and other games too I assume). Bit of a surprise considering how shit the deal is that Apple forces on whoever wants to run an app store - mainly the ludicrous Core Technology Fee. Also, despite changes Apple made to their policy allowing "a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog", Xbox boss Phil Spencer told The Verge "there's not room for us to monetize Xbox Cloud Gaming on iOS". That sucks.

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### Australian SMS Sender ID Registry reaches consultation stage

The SMS Sender ID Registry is getting closer to reality, with the government releasing a consultation paper and feedback period. They're deciding if it should be mandatory for "all brands and entities, within Australia and overseas" to register with ACMA to send "alphanumeric sender IDs to an Australian mobile phone". This aims to solve the issue where someone spoofs the number an SMS is from to be the same as an official message from a bank or whatever so that it appears in the message thread/chain as legit messages. This is a very effective scam method, so shutting that down sounds like a good idea to me. Yeah, it'll mean businesses will have to pay a yearly fee to a registry, but something's gotta be done about all these people getting ripped off by scammers.

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### Renesas buys up Altium and Canva's CFO resigns after "inappropriate behaviour"

Missed this during the week, but one of the biggest ASX-listed tech companies, Altium, has been acquired by Renesas Electronics. Altium Design is a very popular software suite for PCB design and electronic design automation and was originally founded in Australia back in the 80s, but moved its HQ to California a long time ago. Also in local tech financial news, Canva's CFO resigned following claims of "inappropriate behaviour". Dunno what that behaviour was, but old mate is out of a job while Canva is on the precipice of an IPO. I wonder if he got to keep his shares.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### New developments larger than 50 lots must include mobile phone coverage

The federal Telecommunications in New Developments policy has expanded its scope to include "the provision of fixed voice and broadband services to include mobile coverage". So you know how it's mandatory to have a phone line or NBN or whatever in a new housing estate? That's also gotta include mobile phone coverage now for developments of over 50 lots. Makes a lot of sense to do this - we all rely on our mobile phones to call 000 and there are large chunks of metro and regional areas that used to be empty paddocks or farms that are now full of homes. It's unacceptable that these people don't have mobile coverage, often for months or years.

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## Bargains

- AOC U34G3XM/EU 34" 3440x1440 144Hz monitor - $349 + delivery from Scorptec
- Bose QC Ultra Earbuds - $369 from Amazon
- Sennheiser MOMENTUM True Wireless 3 Noise Cancelling Headphones - $249 from Amazon
- AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU - $887.27 from Computer Alliance's eBay store
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X (without cooler) or 7900 (with cooler) CPU - $588.47 from Computer Alliance's eBay store
- GL.iNet Flint 2 (GL-MT6000) Wi-Fi 6 Router - $220.15 from Amazon
- Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy Definitive Edition for PS4 - $29 from Amazon
- Ubiquiti UniFi U6-Lite AP or Ubiquiti UDM-SE - $158.95/$883.15 from Wireless1

## Image Of The Day

1987 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation: Advanced robots will have to not only have 'hard' functions but also have 'soft' functions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to realize 'soft' functions of robots such as dexterity, speediness and intelligence by the development of an anthropomorphic intelligent robot playing keyboard instrument. This paper describes the development of keyboard playing robot WABOT-2(WAseda roBOT-2) with a focus on the mechanisms of arm-and-hand which has 21 degrees of freedom in total, their hierarchically structured control computer system, the information processing method at the high level computer and finger-arm coordination control which realizes the autonomous movement of WABOT-2 (David Oyler / Flickr)

## The End

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