### Issue 1976 - Friday 17th November, 2023

Just another reminder that Sizzlethon 2023 is still happening until mid-next week! You tell a friend about The Sizzle and I donate $1 to Ballarat's Child and Family Services (aka Cafs) for each person that uses your link to sign up for a free trial. The top referrer also gets a $100 JB Hi-Fi gift card, so if you think you can refer more than 4 people to The Sizzle, there's a good chance you'll win!

## In Today's Issue

- Apple to implement RCS messaging standard in iOS later next year
- Optus CEO fronts Senate, releases first report on what went wrong last week
- Signal needs money, GPT-4 Vision can turn a sketch into a website, the Windows app for Windows & iOS really needs a better name
- This might shock some of you, but Elon Musk is a total ratbag
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap Xboxes & PS5s, Seagate 4TB HDD, Jabra earbuds, Lenovo monitors, Nokia C31 smartphone, Echo Show, Fire TV stick, free Apple TV+, RackNerd VPSes, Apple gift cards, Crucial SSD, Sonos Arc soundbar, Sennheiser headphones, GoPro Hero10, Samsung soundbar

## The News

### Apple to implement RCS messaging standard in iOS later next year

Apple told TechRadar and 9to5Mac today that it will support Rich Communication Services (RCS) text messaging in iOS, alongside iMessage, SMS and MMS in the Messages app. The full Apple quote is, "Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe the RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users". RCS requires carrier support (which now that iOS supports it, will come quickly) and only Google's proprietary implementation of RCS that Apple won't support is end-to-end encrypted, but it's better than nothing right now and gives the industry something to build on. I reckon Apple is hoping that finally supporting RCS is enough to placate the EU's Digital Markets Act instead of opening up iMessage.

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### Optus CEO fronts Senate, releases first report on what went wrong last week

As I write this, the Optus CEO and Managing Director of Networks are getting grilled by clueless Senators up in Canberra that you can wisely ignore, but as part of that process Optus submitted a document to the Senate with an account of what happened on the day. From 4am to 10am they didn't really know what was happening, but by 10:21am realised that "resetting and clearing routing connectivity on network elements which had disconnected themselves from the network" and "physically rebooting and reconnecting some network elements to restore connectivity" appeared to fix things, so that's what they did until everything was up and running at around 2PM. The document confirms that "the outage occurred due to approximately 90 PE routers automatically self-isolating in order to protect themselves from an overload of IP routing information" and was the result of "a software upgrade at one of the Singtel internet exchanges (known as STiX) in North America". There's still ACMA's and the Communications department's investigations too.

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### Signal needs money, GPT-4 Vision can turn a sketch into a website, the Windows app for Windows & iOS really needs a better name

- Signal blogged that it spends US$14m/yr on infrastructure alone and will need US$50m/yr to operating by 2025 as it becomes more popular. Unlike commercial messaging apps, Signal is a not for profit and doesn't have ads, doesn't sell data and tries to keep its service free to use so as many people as possible can enjoy secure communications. That means it has to raise $50m/m from donors and to do that, they've outlined what they'd actually spend that money on.
- A whiteboard/sketch app called "tldraw" posted a video of a new feature called "Make It Real" that uses the new GPT-4 Vision API to turn "a vector drawing into functioning Tailwind CSS and JavaScript web code that can replicate user interfaces". It turns images into prompts for GPT-4 which can then turn that prompt into code. It's not perfect but it's still bloody impressive and even more so if you assume this technology will improve rapidly.
- There's now a "Windows" app for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows, and web browsers. It's basically a fancy new remote desktop app for business accounts that's a "central hub for streaming a copy of Windows from a remote PC, Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365, Microsoft Dev Box, and Microsoft's Remote Desktop Services". Weird how you'd call the app simply, Windows, unless it was part of plan to actually put Windows in an app (via the cloud?) for consumers too.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### This might shock some of you, but Elon Musk is a total ratbag

ESG Hound has a succinct article outlining all the things Elon Musk has gotten away lately with that anybody else would likely have been thrown in jail for - "Elon Musk is the Mr. Magoo of criminals, bumbling from one hilariously over-the-top and sloppy crime to another but always somehow landing on his feet, unmolested and unbothered, sporting a shit-eating grin", "the number of laws and regulations that Musk and his companies have broken is almost impressive. Nearly every agency Musk Inc. touches in his ever-expanding crime spree has let him walk". It really is amazing how he gets away with it while openly sympathising with anti-semitic conspiracy theories on a regular basis. But hey, the company he started makes fancy space rockets so he isn't that bad.

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## 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.

- petecohen is looking into single sign on options for a small business so staff don't have to manage multiple logins to various services
- devraj has helped develop an app called Yalbilinya to help people learn Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta language using vision technology
- holmesrg wants to buy some concert tickets off eBay but wonders if it's safe
- Pete is after a mini PC with a heap of CPU cores, loads of RAM and can be powered without a huge external power brick
- lenjet wants a set of smart scales that works nicely with the Apple Health ecosystem

## Bargains

- Xbox Series X console - $638 at Domayne & get 10% bonus eGift cards ($63.80 worth)
- Xbox Series X 1TB Console - $645.95 from Amazon
- PlayStation 5 God of War Ragnarok Console Bundle - $619 at The Good Guys
- PlayStation 5 Disc Console + Bonus Spider-Man 2 - $648 at Harvey Norman or $679 from Amazon/JB/Big W
- Gran Turismo 7 for PS5/PS4 - $48 at Harvey Norman/$39 at Big W
- Seagate 4TB Expansion Portable HDD - $118 from Amazon
- Jabra Elite 3, Elite 7 Pro or Elite 7 Active wireless earbuds - $58/$149/$139 from JB Hi-Fi or just the Elite 7 Pro from Amazon
- Lenovo R45w-30 44.5" 5120x1440 gaming monitor - $997 from Officeworks
- Nokia C31 Android smartphone - $128 at Harvey Norman
- Echo Show 8 (2nd Gen) - $99 from Amazon
- Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max 2nd Gen 2023 - $59 from Amazon or JB Hi-Fi
- 3 Months Free Apple TV+ for PS4/PS5 owners
- Cheap USA based VPS hosting from RackNerd various plans & sizes - $28/yr for 1 vCPU, 2GB RAM, 30GB SSD, 2.5TB/m data
- Apple offering $40-$320 bonus gift cards when you buy select products from their online store (e.g: $80 Apple gift card when you buy AirPods Pro for $399)
- Crucial T500 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD - $205.84 or 2x for $370.51 from Amazon USA
- Sonos Arc Soundbar - $1,099 from WestCoast Hi-Fi
- Sennheiser HD400S, HD569, HD600, HD800S headphones - $85/$209/$399/$1799 from Sennheiser
- GoPro HERO10 Black with Floating POV Pole & Action Jib Kit - $381.52 from Ryda's eBay store
- Lenovo L28u-35 28" 4K IPS monitor - $297 from Amazon
- Samsung HW-Q990C/XY Q-Series Soundbar (2023) - $1170 from Appliances Central

## Image Of The Day

Dennis Ritchie, PhD, of Bell Labs, co-inventor of the UNIX operating system and father of the C programming language. (Alcatel-Lucent / Flickr)

## 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.