### Issue 2127 - Wednesday 10th July, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Xbox Game Pass & Telstra mobile plan price increases
- Founders of Z-Library flee house arrest in Argentina
- Australian Standards getting an update that'll make bi-directional EV charging easier
- AI blog spam is re-appropriating human author identities on an industrial scale
- Cheap HP micro PC, Echo Pop speaker, Ring video doorbell, Aldi 60" webOS TV

## The News

### Xbox Game Pass & Telstra mobile plan price increases

The price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is going up by over 20%. It's now $18.95, but will set you back $22.95 a month as of the 12th of September. Probably still a good deal for a hardcore gamer that plays every day, but as a casual gamer that dips in to a title for a week or two at a time and doesn't really need the latest releases, I think I'm gonna cancel my subscription. $22.95 a month is $275.40 a year. That's equivalent to five or so games a year. Am I playing more than 4 games a year? Sadly not. Also in price increase news, Telstra bumped up their mobile pricing across the board by $2-$4 yesterday. FYI Boost Mobile is wayyyy cheaper if you want Telstra coverage but don't want to pay out the arse for it.

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### Founders of Z-Library flee house arrest in Argentina

Those into digital preservation/open access to information/e-book piracy would be familiar with Z-Library - an awesome collection of liberated texts ranging from academic journals, technical standards and general-interest books. The two Russians that started it were on house arrest in Argentina after the US copyright cabal cracked the shits and managed to get them arrested for "criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering" - until some time this week as the pair has apparently vanished. Nobody knows where they are, but they did recently submit a request to the Argentinian government "to be considered political refugees" in order to "avoid being sent to the US".

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### Australian Standards getting an update that'll make bi-directional EV charging easier

Standards Australia are currently drafting up changes to AS4777.1 and AS4777.2 that'll make it much easier for bi-directional EV charging. Apparently the standards are "open to interpretation" when it comes to bi-directional EV chargers and "resulted in bi-directional chargers not being approved and listed under what is now known as the New Energy Tech Consumer Code". These updates to the standards, according to Tim Washington the CEO of JET Charge, "get rid of all those ambiguities" and that "it gets us on the radar of the global hardware manufacturers who say Australia is now a market they can go into". Sounds great, but Tim also said not to get excited as most of the bi-directional chargers are "in testing phase with vehicle manufacturers" and are "all proprietary systems", "if you want open source where any inverter works with any cars, that is going to take a bit longer".

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### AI blog spam is re-appropriating human author identities on an industrial scale

Old school Apple fans might remember TUAW, a popular blog covering the Apple scene 20 years that was was abandoned 10 years ago. Web Orange Limited ("a Hong Kong-based company that provides online advertising services") purchased the domain name and recently republished all the content, summarised by AI (probably to avoid copyright issues) but under the original author's byline. Presumably the new owners of he TUAW's domain is doing this as a dumb SEO move. Imagine if someone purchased the MacTalk domain and republished all the things I wrote as an AI summary and still had my name attached? I would be very pissed off as what I wrote is 100x better than any fucking AI slop! Unfortunately, the TUAW writers are discovering that there's nothing they can do about it.

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## Bargains

- Refurb HP Prodesk 400 G6 micro PC (i5-10500T, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $299 from Metrocom
- Amazon Echo Pop Smart Speaker - $29 from Amazon
- Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro - $229 from Amazon
- Bauhn 60" 4K Ultra HD TV with webOS - $499 from ALDI

## Image Of The Day

Your GPS Is Wrong (Sebastiaan de With)

## The End

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