### Issue 2167 - Wednesday 4th September, 2024

Hello everyone, Raj at the helm today. I'll be guiding you through today's Sizzle while Ant, the bloody bludger, continues his little sojourn.

## In Today's Issue

- Canva jack up prices by 300% ahead of probable IPO
- Intel's new Lunar Lake CPUs hit the dance floor
- Pixel 9 Pro Fold reviews are here
- Shit I've text Anthony of late
- Cheap GPUs, CPUs, laptops, vacuum cleaners and more

## The News

### Canva jack up prices by 300% ahead of probable IPO

Long referred to as a simple and affordable alternative to Adobe's Creative Suite, Canva's execs appear to be doing their best to put that moniker behind them. Overnight Canva Team customers received an email informing them that the A$39.99/m plan for 5 team members would be changing to A$40.50 per user per month, with a minimum requirement of 3 users. This means a Canva Team subscription for 3 people will go from A$480/year to a bend-them-over-and-take-it A$1458/year! Canva spin-doctors sight the expanded product features, such as their new AI capabilities as the impotence behind the change. An alternative narrative might highlight the company's not-so-secret intentions to IPO in the US and recoup costs from its myriad of big-ticket purchases including "the next Canva" Leonardo.AI, Adobe competitor Affinity, Magic Write and Kaleido. They're also now just realising that running the compute for a suite of AI products is a losing game, which requires a small nuclear plant to power. I look forward to their next rap performance to announce these pricing changes formally.

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### Intel's new Lunar Lake CPUs hit the dance floor

Look out Apple & Qualcomm, Intel's new x86 integrated chips have arrived and they're not here to fork spiders. Or so they'd have you believe. Dubbed "Intel Core Ultra", the new integrated chipsets are designed for thin and light AI PCs, directly pegging them against Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips now found in Microsoft's Copilot PCs. Intel claim the chips are the most efficient x86 processors ever and the accompanying Xe2 graphics architecture the "fastest built-in GPU in the industry". A series of Intel produced graphs and tables tout better battery life (26hrs of Netflix at 150nits), 58% faster AI performance and 68% higher frame rates whilst gaming when compared to Qualcomm. Noticeably absent from these comparisons are Apple's M series SoCs, which theoretically these should be a competitor to, but likely aren't and we're being spoon-fed warped results by PR. It will be interesting to see if their claims hold up when review units are in people's hands.

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### Pixel 9 Pro Fold reviews are here

TL;DR – The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is grossly over-priced with a hamstrung feature set and a cheap sounding fold mechanism, but improved screen ratio. That seems to be the consensus when flicking through reviews from CNet, Wired, Press Start and Android Central today. The craziest thing I've read about this A$2700 phone is that it's missing some features when compared to the standard Pixel 9 Pro. Most egregious, the cameras aren't as good! Instead sitting in purgatory between the standard Pixel 9 and it's Pro brother. Talk about middle-child syndrome. It's the thinest foldable on the market although it's AMOLED screen looks incredible it still has a crease and its folding mechanism sounds a little cheap when compared to Samsung's. Something Google cannot afford given it's ridiculous price tag. I'd love to know who owns a book-style foldable and why? What do you use it for? Is it a tablet replacement? How do you ignore the giant crease and not go mad? Please let me know!

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Shit I've text Anthony of late

Quite often I text Ant with random links that I find interesting. They're not necessarily for The Sizzle, but are often tech related so I figured I'd just dump a bunch of them here for you to enjoy too.
YTCH – Imagine if Youtube was a PayTV network, this little website gives you channels of content to flick through that all source from Youtube. It's pretty fun.
Civ 7 panel @ PAX Aus – Firaxis Games are sending 4 of their finest to chat Civ 7 on Friday of this year's PAX Aus.
402 Tbps fibre - Researchers smashed transfer speeds over optic fibre going 1.6 million times faster than your normal home internet. I look forward to Australia never seeing this.
Smokehouse 720 - Are you a fine purveyor of smoked meats that lives in or is visiting Melbourne? Then check out this delightful establishment. Ant & I did and it we loved it!

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## Bargains

- PNY Verto RTX 4070 Super OC 12GB GPU - $866.15 from smarthome store
- AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D CPU - $246.48 from CPU Store (AliExpress)
- Apple MacBook Air 13" M2 256GB 8GB RAM - $1297 from JB Hi-Fi
- Roborock S8 Robot Vacuum - $699 from Jaycar
- Denon AVR-X580BT 8K 5.2 Channel AV Receiver - $492 from Amazon
- Fitbit Charge 6 Fitness Tracker - $138.31 from Amazon

## Image Of The Day

At the time of purchase (June 1999) the Sony Mavica FD-91 was representative of the state of the art for consumer digital cameras. It was acquired for display within the media section of the Cyberworlds exhibition. The FD-91 is the first digital camera to be acquired by the museum. (Powerhouse Museum)

## 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.