### Issue 1703 - Friday 30th September, 2022

Just a reminder that if you've missed out on any issues of The Sizzle this week (thanks Microsoft), visit the Sizzle archive to catch up. I've uploaded this week's issues a few months early.

## In Today's Issue

- Uni students taking a "startup year" could be a thing soon
- Meta promotes its research of AI-generated videos
- Google Stadia to close down Jan 2023
- Five useful little Mac apps
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap Untitled Goose Game, Microsoft cert exams, refurb Fetch TV Mighty, Eneloop AA/AAA batteries, Nvidia Shield TV Pro, Big LAN VI tickets

## The News

### Uni students taking a "startup year" could be a thing soon

The federal government is floating the idea of a "Startup Year" for uni students. Students would be able to rack up an additional $11,300 of HELP debt on top of their degrees that gives them an extra year at uni in some sort of startup incubator/mentorship/guidance program. That money goes to the university to operate the program, not to students as seed capital or living expenses. The plan is to fund 2,000 places in these programs for the start of the 2023 academic year. Here's the consultation paper if you wanna know more. I like the concept in theory, but don't like the idea of additional debt for students.

### Meta promotes its research of AI-generated videos

Meta has taken inspiration from AI image generators Stable Diffusion and DALL-E and made one of their own to produce videos. They call their research "Make-A-Video" and it literally works the same way as the AI image generators. Give it a sentence like "a fluffy baby sloth with a knitted hat trying to figure out a laptop, close up, highly detailed, studio lighting, screen reflecting in its eyes" and a short video clip is shit out. Here's a gallery of videos Meta's research team generated. They're surprisingly effective as little art videos. Nobody's gonna be fooled these are real, but damn, the progress being made just in the last 6 months alone kinda feels like realistic AI-generated media is coming sooner rather than later.

### Google Stadia to close down Jan 2023

Not that relevant to Australians as it was never made available here, but Stadia is headed for the Google Graveyard. The cloud gaming service "hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected", so Google will be refunding all Stadia purchases (including hardware) and will officially turn Stadia off on Jan 18th 2023. How the fuck did Google not make this succeed? They own a huge cloud computing network, have more money than God to entice developers and subsidise losses, launched it during a unique period in history where people were locked inside for almost 2 years and when gaming is more popular than ever. The mind boggles.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Five useful little Mac apps

- Got a Mac with a Touch Bar and it distracts you? Use Hide My Bar to turn the screen on or off whenever you want. That's it, that's all it does.
- Fix My Speakers plays a very loud noise on your smartphone with the purpose of blowing water out of the little holes if you dropped it in the shitter or a pool or whatever.
- Apple Music has the shittiest UI of any music playing app I've ever seen. Vinyls attempts to make it less crap and add a bit of fun into the blandest interface known to man.
- AirBuddy is a tiny app that'll let you control a pair of AirPods via your Mac. Change noise cancellation modes, view battery status, etc. It even integrates with the Shortcuts app to enable various automations.
- Recent versions of macOS have a handy feature that lets you annotate screenshots after you take them. Shottr is like that, but better. It'll do scrolling screenshots, pixelate/censor parts of an image and more - for free!

## 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.

- artywah is after a replacement email client for Apple's venerable Mail.app on macOS
- tobes kicked off a thread exploring mobile provider alternatives to Optus, for obvious reasons
- superhighfives has a whopping 3000/3000 fibre internet connection (in London) and asked for networking help to get the most out of it
- canion wants a no bullshit FTTN modem to chuck into bridge mode and plug into their Eero mesh wi-fi setup
- mkeating wants to talk about the new iPhones

## Bargains

- Untitled Goose Game - $14.47 on Steam
- Free Microsoft certification exam after completing Cloud Skills Challenge
- Refurbished Fetch TV Fetch Mighty - $199 from JB Hi-Fi
- Panasonic Eneloop Pro 4-pack AAA or 8-pack AA batteries - $19.99/$39.60 from Amazon
- NVIDIA Shield TV Pro 4K HDR Android TV Streaming Media Player - $278 from Amazon
- Big LAN VI Gaming Tournament (Mitcham, VIC) tickets - $13.55 from The Big LAN

## The End

📻 Christian Brothers - Elliot Smith

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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.