### Issue 1491 - Thursday 11th November, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Apple still has to support 3rd party payments on App Store by December 9
- Adelaide isn't going to give cops access to facial recognition feature in new CCTV network
- Big day of miscellaneous news
- Cool app to control EV charging based on rooftop solar output
- Cheap Double Helix magazine, Insta360 camera, Creative Cloud, Catch Connect, Apple TV, Logitech webcam, Ryzen ThinkPad

## The News

### Apple still has to support 3rd party payments on App Store by December 9

Apple has been whinging that adding "links and buttons to external payment options", as it was told to buy the court in its case against Epic, is "exceedingly complicated" and asked the court for an indefinite period of time to make the changes. The judge told em to stop complaining about it as "Apple has provided no credible reason for the Court to believe that the injunction would cause the professed devastation" - i.e: Apple's talking out its arse when it complains about consumer harm by giving them the choice to pay outside the App Store. I love seeing the world's wealthiest company told to get fucked.

### Adelaide isn't going to give cops access to facial recognition feature in new CCTV network

Adelaide City Council will ban police from using the facial recognition feature in its upgraded city-wide CCTV network. The council passed a motion saying that they'll get a formal undertanking from SAPOL not to use it, "unless, and until, the parliament of South Australia adopts legislation" that is "consistent with the biometric surveillance, facial recognition and privacy recommendations of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the Law Council of Australia". It doesn't mean SAPOL can't grab a copy of the video and pump it into their own system for analysis, but at least it will prevent real-time facial recognition for the time being.

### Big day of miscellaneous news

- Rivian's IPO went nuts lats night. Shares went up over 50% from the offer price, valuing the business of fancy electric utes and vans at over US$100b. They haven't even sold a damn car yet.
- YouTube is going to hide the amount of dislikes a video gets from public view. They're doing this based on their experiments that found hiding this number stops targeted dislike campaigns aimed at newer users.
- NBN said earlier this week its trial of FTTN/FTTC to FTTP upgrades will have 6,000 participants. Yesterday they revised that number and it's gonna be more like 525. The incompetence continues.
- Apple's launched their own MDM and "enterprise" support program for small businesses up to 500 employees - Business Essentials. It'll go live in "spring 2022" with a beta taking place now if you're keen.
- Peter Jackson's visual effects company Weta now belongs to Unity, who you may be familiar with as making a game engine made popular by Pokemon Go, Cuphead, Monument Valley and Beat Saber. Smart move, the two fields are essentially merging.
- Elon Musk sold $1b worth of Tesla shares last night. A far cry from the 10% (worth around $20b) he promised to sell based on the results of a Twitter poll on the weekend. Poster boy bullshit artist.
- Valve is delaying the Steam Deck mobile gaming device's launch until Feb 2022. It was supposed to be in the hands of early bird pre-orderers in December. A semiconductor shortage will do that.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Cool app to control EV charging based on rooftop solar output

Someone has made an app I figured someone would make eventually - a way to link your home's rooftop solar to an electric car charger and real-time electricity retailers like Amber so you can have total control over the source and price of charging your EV. The app is called Charge HQ, is still in private beta, only works with a limited number of solar inverters and requires a relatively expensive OCPP-enabled EV charger (most domestic ones don't support OCPP), but it's a start! I personally use a Zappi, but the guy who distributes it in Australia is a personal enemy of mine, so I struggle to recommend it because doing so would give him money.

## Bargains

- Double Helix (CSIRO's kids science mag) 12m/24m subscription - $56/$102 from CSIRO Publishing
- Insta360 ONE X2 360-degree camera - $582.40 from digiDIRECT's eBay store
- Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps (works for new & existing customers) - $43.99/m from Adobe
- Catch Connect (Optus MVNO) 365-day SIM with 240GB data - $109 from Catch
- Apple TV 4K (2021) 32GB - $236.55 from JW Computers (can get Officeworks to price match)
- Logitech C922 Pro 1080p webcam - $109.65 from IOT.Hub's eBay store
- Lenovo ThinkPad E15 G2 (Ryzen 7 4700U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) - $1159.20 from Lenovo's eBay store

## The End

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😎 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.