### Issue 2010 - Friday 19th January, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Mark Zuckerberg is all in on artificial general intelligence
- Aldi Mobile fined by ACMA for authorising SIM swaps without customer verification
- No Netflix, YouTube or Spotify for Apple Vision Pro
- ChimeraOS turns your living room PC into a Steam gaming console
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap BYD Atto 3, 4TB PCIe SSD, Samsung S24 Ultra, Apple Watch SE 2nd-gen, 83" LG OLED TV, 8TB U.2 SSD, NBA 2K24 for PS5, Boost Mobile pre-paid

## The News

### Mark Zuckerberg is all in on artificial general intelligence

Zuck, tired of the metaverse, posting a video to Instagram with the caption "our long term vision is to build general intelligence, open source it responsibly, and make it widely available so everyone can benefit". He also told The Verge that "we've come to this view that, in order to build the products that we want to build, we need to build for general intelligence" - also referred to as AGI (artificial general intelligence). He doesn't have a "clear definition for AGI or an idea of when it will arrive", but "the important part is actually the breadth of it, which is that intelligence has all these different capabilities where you have to be able to reason and have intuition". Good luck with that "responsible" bit Mark, I trust you've learned from your mistakes.

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### Aldi Mobile fined by ACMA for authorising SIM swaps without customer verification

Medion Australia (aka Aldimobile) was fined $259,440 after ACMA found "1600 cases where SIM-swap requests were completed without the customer verification check, along with one password reset request". These unauthorised SIM-swap requests "led to nine known cases of people having their SIMs swapped illegally, five of whom suffered financial losses totalling over $160,000". It's fucked that something so basic wasn't done by a company that absolutely knows better, putting their customers at massive risk. I reckon in addition to the $260k fine, the people who lost money should sue Aldi for whatever they lost, as it's Aldi's fault the scammers got their phone number to approve any transactions! I am not a lawyer but that sounds like a solid case to me.

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### No Netflix, YouTube or Spotify for Apple Vision Pro

Netflix, Spotify and YouTube have all said they won't have an app for Apple's Vision Pro VR headset. Not, "we have an app coming soon, just not on launch", neither of them has any intention (at the moment) of developing a native app for it at all. Both Netflix and YouTube said people can just watch whatever they like in the browser. Watching video is one of the main use cases I've seen for Vision Pro, so not having what is arguably the two most popular ways to watch video available except in a web browser, is a pretty shit experience. Probably doesn't help that Netflix competes with Apple TV+, Spotify competes with Apple Music and Google competes with, well, almost everything Apple does. Why would you want to make your competitors niche product better? Maybe if Apple Vision Pro takes off and achieves some sort of critical mass, but right now don't give Apple the satisfaction, fuck 'em.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### ChimeraOS turns your living room PC into a Steam gaming console

Want a Steam Deck but don't need it to be portable? Check out ChimeraOS - it's "an operating system that provides an out of the box couch gaming experience. After installation, boot directly into Steam Big Picture and start playing your favorite games". It only works with AMD GPUs but looks like a really interesting project. Check out this video on YouTube of it in action. It runs Linux and takes advantage of Steam's Proton compatibility tool (just like on the Steam Deck) to play a heap of games that don't have native Linux support. Perfect for building your own game console if what Sony and Microsoft are offering don't do it for ya.

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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.

- rjmckenzie made a cool wall calendar of vintage computing photos from NASA's public domain collection of images
- mkeating noticed that Disney+ has tweaked their terms of service to hint at a possible upcoming launch of subscription tiers and ads
- zuccs has a family member that wants to sell their Fetch Mini 4K and wants to know if it'll cause any issues if the unit it linked to their Telstra account
- andyb needs a new fridge so if you have any strong domestic refrigeration related opinions, now's the time to vent
- andrew is after a UPS for their sick new homelab server, do you have any recommendations for them?

## Bargains

- $2023 cash back on a BYD Atto 3 electric car if you order before March 31st
- Lexar NM790 4TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD - $289 from BPC Tech's eBay store
- Pre-order a Samsung S24 Ultra and get a $300 JB Hi-Fi gift card and double the storage (256GB model for the price of the 512GB or 1TB for the price of the 512GB)
- Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen), 40mm, 40mm cellular, 44mm - $346/$427/$394 from Officeworks
- 83" LG G3 4K OLED TV - $7,970 + delivery from Appliance Central
- Intel DC P4510 8TB PCIe Gen 3 NVMe U.2 Enterprise Grade SSD - $687 from Server Part Deals US
- NBA 2K24 Kobe Bryant Edition for PS5 - $49 from Amazon
- Boost Mobile 365-day pre-paid, 170GB or 260GB, unlimited calls & SMS - $189.99/$254.99 from Lucky Mobile

## Image Of The Day

Telstra's Mobile Exchange on Wheels MKII (Telstra / Flickr)

## The End

📻 Standing in the Way of Control (Soulwax Nite Version) - Gossip

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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.