### Issue 2198 - Friday 18th October, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Pathology & imaging providers won't get paid unless they upload to My Health Record
- Westpac internet banking up and down like a yo-yo this week
- Kagi adding AI filter to image search, Qualcomm cancells Snapdragon X dev kit, Trump reckons Tim Cook called him
- Adobe's doing some cool stuff with AI actually
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap refurb Dell laptop, TCL TV, Overcooked 2 for Switch, Boost Mobile, Intel Optane SSD, Moto G54 phone, Pixel Watch 2

## The News

### Pathology & imaging providers won't get paid unless they upload to My Health Record

My Health Record is still a thing and the government is introducing a law that will "force health providers to upload pathology and diagnostic imaging to My Health Record by default or forgo Medicare payments" in an attempt to get them to actually use it. The aim is to have "near real-time access" for all results, with a previous rule of patients having to wait seven days before it appears in MHR going away, but in "some cases a clinically appropriate delay may remain if appropriate" to avoid "misinformation and stressing out patients". I remember there was a big fuss about opting-out of MHR, but can't remember what people's beef with it was. Just logged into mine and there's fuck all in there.

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### Westpac internet banking up and down like a yo-yo this week

Westpac's internet banking has been up and down for the last four days. It went down "on Monday and Tuesday, with Westpac first confirming the outage on Monday afternoon and claiming it was resolved hours later. Westpac confirmed new outages at 2:15pm Tuesday afternoon; claimed they had been restored by 4:00pm; confirmed more outages at 8:30am Wednesday before declaring the problem solved at 2:03pm after staff worked “around the clock” to restore services. Yet after days of apologies from flat-out Westpac support staff, the number of outages reported to DownDetector surged again on Thursday morning, with the number of reports at 10.21am higher than at any point on Wednesday". No explanation from Westpac as to why.

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### Kagi adding AI filter to image search, Qualcomm cancells Snapdragon X dev kit, Trump reckons Tim Cook called him

- Kagi (my search engine of choice the last year or so) is "enhancing our image search with a new ranking algorithm and an AI image filter. These updates prioritise authentic, human-created images and downrank AI-generated content. Users can also opt to exclude AI-generated images entirely". I like it.
- Qualcomm has shitcanned its Snapdragon X Elite Dev Kit. According to an email sent to those who pre-ordered one, "the Developer Kit product comprehensively has not met our usual standards of excellence and so we are reaching out to let you know that unfortunately we have made the decision to pause this product and the support of it, indefinitely".
- Donald Trump is claiming that Tim Cook called him to complain about the EU and that Trump agreed it's not fair what the EU is doing to Apple and that "he has to get elected first" in order to help. I could see Tim Cook giving a call to Trump to have a sook about the EU's antics. Cook would never admit to it though.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Adobe's doing some cool stuff with AI actually

Adobe's MAX conference is still happening and they've given a bunch of quick demos as part of their "Sneaks" program, showing off features that aren't ready for production use yet, but could be eventually. The feature that got the most attention was "Project Turntable" for Illustrator, which lets you "easily rotate 2D vector art in 3D, and it'll still look like 2D art from any new angle. Just click a button and drag a slider to spin your graphics around, much like manipulating a 3D object. The best part? Even after the rotation, the vector graphics stay true to the original shape". The video is worth a watch, along with the other cool demos in Adobe's blog post.

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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.

- DanMelbourne kicked off a thread to discuss Apple's skeptical approach to LLMs and their reasoning abilities
- _KO is after a way to create read-only contacts on an Android phone to avoid accidentally changing someone's contact details
- Mitty wants to know about the best bits of "scrounged" tech you've found on the side of the road out of a bin
- Andyb started a thread to chat about the government's plan to scrap debit card surcharge fees
- mnarkbr needs to set up a locked down phone running nothing but WeChat for work purposes

## Bargains

- Refurb Dell Latitude 5310 laptop (13.3" 1080p touch screen, i5-10310U, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $356.15 from Max Direct's eBay store
- TCL 75" C855 QD-Mini LED Google TV - $2200 from Appliances Online
- Overcooked 2 Gourmet Edition for Switch - $12.75 from the Nintendo eShop
- Boost Mobile 365-day SIM with 170GB data, unlimited called & SMS - $145 after cashback from TopCashbackAU
- Intel Optane 1.5TB 905P U.2 SSD - $533 from Newegg's eBay store
- Motorola G54 5G smartphone - $206.10 from Big W
- Google Pixel Watch 2 LTE (2-pack) - $498 + delivery at Harvey Norman

## Image Of The Day

Artville - Networking (Internet Archive / ShivaShaw)

## The End

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