### Issue 2216 - Thursday 14th November, 2024

It's my last day curating today. Ant will be back tomorrow to bookend the week. Thanks for having me in your inboxes again! Raj.

## In Today's Issue

- Apple to launch wall-mountable smart display in March 2025
- US National Guard member jailed for 15 years after leaking top secret military docs on Discord
- Mark Zuckerberg has released a song with T-Pain
- Has MKBHD turned into just another internet wanker?
- Cheap monitors, watches, phones, laptops & more

## The News

### Apple to launch wall-mountable smart display in March 2025

Look, it may not be a thing we hoped Apple might be developing, but at least it's not yet-another-iphone-camera-bump announcement. The Apple rumour-mill is in overdrive talking about a new 6" wall-mountable display that will run a new OS codenamed "Pebble" (dear god, why another one iPadOS is bad enough) and an array of new sensors designed to detect when people are approaching it. This will trigger the display to then show widgets relevant to that person and time of day such as controls for their AC or another Apple stock widget that people instantly remove. Naturally this will all be customisable and I'd imagine the OS to heavily borrow from iOS and its home screen/widget arrangement. The device is also rumoured to include a camera (for FaceTime I guess?) run apps like Safari, Apple TV & Apple Music as well as have dock accessories that could be placed next to your bed or in the kitchen. If you're thinking it sounds a lot like an even dumber iPod Touch or Amazon Echo Show you wouldn't be wrong. Some added sensors and Apple's marketing could easily make this a more attractive offering should it release at the rumoured price point of sub US$100-$200. Guess we'll find out in March?!

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### US National Guard member jailed for 15 years after leaking top secret military docs on Discord

22 year old US Air National Guard Jack Teixeira has an apparent penchant for showing off according to his former classmates. This got wildly out of hand when he started to share top secret documents to a private Discord server of 25 people. The contents of the documents were largely inconsequential and random according to the DOJ, but Teixeira was knowingly putting them out there either by retyping their contents by hand or sharing them whole-hog and simply asking the server's members to not share them further. Naturally that didn't happen and they ended up in Russian Telegram chats and Minecraft Discord servers of all places before their source being tracked down by investigating journalist Bellingcat. With no apparent motive or underlying Snowden-esque agenda, Teixeira has been ruled out as a foreign agent and took a plea deal to reduce his sentence from 60 years to 15. All of that is pretty interesting in its own right, but what's wild to me is that after joining the service at 19 he had top-secret clearance a couple years later and could access details as intricate as troop movements amongst other things. Even crazier there are currently over 2 million individuals in the US forces with the same clearance. No wonder shit gets leaked, if you're not tripping over it at Trump's golf course you likely know someone who has access to it anyway.

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### Mark Zuckerberg has released a song with T-Pain

Get the f##k out. No, I'm serious here. The godfather of Auto-Tune and the kickboxing lizard king have released a country-slash-auto-tuned cover of Lil Jon's "Get Low". The new duo "Z-Pain", no I'm not making this shit up, collaborated in what was an apparent anniversary present for Zuckerberg's wife Priscilla. On one hand I gotta give it to Zuck, he just doesn't give a shit what people think and will foil-surf his zinc covered face away to his heart's content. This is just another example of that, ignoring, of course, the fact that he's created one of the biggest soul-sucking disinformation platforms in the history of man kind. If you're interested in listening to the track (and let's be honest you are) you can stream it on Spotify here.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Has MKBHD turned into just another internet wanker?

I'm going to assume you know who Marques "MKBHD" Brownlee is, but are you across some his recent not so popular foibles? Not too long ago he released an app called Panels to a more than lack-lustre reception. An ad-riddled, expensive wallpaper app didn't (and still doesn't) have a lot going for it. Fast forward to today and the release of a new video entitled "How My Video Gear is Changing!" where Brownlee goes into what is a 10 minute ad-read for DJI and most definitely not a reflection of the tools he uses. That's not too bad I guess, its influencers doing influencer things, but then he goes and drives like a nut case in the video flying around at 95mp/h (153km/h) in a 35mph (56km/h) zone. That part's been removed from the video now and he's since apologised, but is it too little too late for the once darling of internet tech reviewers? Could MKBHD go full Jake Paul and it'll be him we see fight Mike Tyson next?

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## Bargains

- Dell 34" S3422DWG 144Hz Monitor - $349 from Dell
- Dell UltraSharp U3419W 34" UWQHD IPS 60Hz Curved Monitor (Used) - $199 from BPC Tech
- Aqara Smart Video Doorbell G4 - $109 from Bing Lee
- Motorola Moto G85 5G smartphone - $308.75 from Mobileciti
- Apple iPad Air 13” M2 (2024) 128GB Wi-Fi - $1187 from MacApp
- Dell G15 (5535) Gaming Laptop - Ryzen 7 7840HS, 15.6" FHD 165Hz, RTX 4060, 16GB DDR5 RAM, 512GB SSD - $1498.20 from Dell
- Google Pixel Watch 2 - $214 (WiFi), $263 (LTE) from JB Hi-Fi

## Image Of The Day

A historical black and white TV broadcast from July 20th, 1969, shows NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, completely wrapped up in his space suit, jumping around on the bright surface of the Moon. We can't see the expressions on his face, but it must be a mix of excitement, fear, and fun. One of my favorite pictures of the NASA Perseverance mission is a close-up of the little helicopter Ingenuity, captured by Mastcam-Z on sol 45 (April 6th, 2021), because it reminds me incredibly of Armstrong's photo. 52 years after the first steps of a human being on the Moon, the human genius (or better... ingenuity) put the four tapered paws of the most sophisticated drone in the Solar System on the fluffy regolith of Mars, millions of kilometres away. We can't read Ingenuity's face either, but I believe it's the same mix of Armstrong's excitement, fear, and fun of 52 years ago. The image was assembled from a 3×3 mosaic of individual Mastcam-Z images at 110-mm focal length, and the helicopter is about 5 meters away from the rover. (Mastcam-Z)

## The End

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## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

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.