### Issue 1598 - Tuesday 3rd May, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Europe reckons Apple abuses its dominate market position with Apple Pay
- Grindr, mental health and prayer apps caught flogging off user data
- Optus argues again for a bandwidth levy on Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, etc
- The Museum of Endangered Sounds
- Cheap Ruark Bluetooth speakers, AOC 49" monitor, Vodafone 365-day SIM, Samsung 980 Pro SSDs

## The News

### Europe reckons Apple abuses its dominate market position with Apple Pay

The European Commission has released the results of a preliminary investigation into Apple Pay and in their view, Apple has "abused its dominant position in markets for mobile wallets on iOS devices", "by limiting access to a standard technology used for contactless payments with mobile devices in stores". Apple's justification for doing so is security, but the EC's investigation "did not reveal any evidence that would point to such a higher security risk. On the contrary, evidence on our file indicates that Apple's conduct cannot be justified by security concerns". Can you imagine the huge shit eating grins currently developing on the faces of NAB, Westpac, ANZ and the Commonwealth Bank???

### Grindr, mental health and prayer apps caught flogging off user data

Grindr was selling user location data between 2017 and 2020, when the company stopped the practice (or so they say). The location data is so fine grained that researchers were able to "infer things like romantic encounters between specific users based on their device's proximity to one another, as well as identify clues to people's identities such as their workplaces and home addresses based on their patterns, habits and routines". A separate report released today by Mozilla highlights poor security in various mental health and prayer apps, which contain very sensitive information. It's all fucked man, absolutely fucked.

### Optus argues again for a bandwidth levy on Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, etc

Optus is back at a CommsDay summit complaining about Netflix, YouTube and Meta using too much data. Their VP of regulatory and public affairs said that "during the heart of the lockdowns, we asked all the streaming companies to reduce their bitrate so we that could manage the traffic. What happened? Nobody noticed". I fucken noticed the degraded quality of all streaming video and it sucked! My initial reaction was that Optus are just being sooks, but the EU is similarly concerned about the strain of a handful of customers sucking up the majority of bandwidth on last mile networks and are looking at a what they can do about it - so maybe it is a genuine problem?

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The Museum of Endangered Sounds

I ripped this directly from kottke.org because I'm an uncreative hack that's bad at his job. "The Museum of Endangered Sounds is a soundboard of dozens of sounds from old technologies, from the ICQ message notification ("uh oh!") to the Windows 95 startup sound to a rotary telephone to a dial-up modem. Suuuuper nostalgic". That's it. That's all you need to know. Unmute your device and enjoy.

## Bargains

- Ruark MR1 MK2 Bluetooth speakers - $559.20 from Myer
- AOC AG493UCX 49" 5120x1440 120Hz monitor - $1180 from digiDirect's eBay store
- Vodafone 365-day pre-paid SIM with 150GB data & unlimited calls/SMS - $125 from Woolworths
- Samsung 980 Pro 1TB/2TB SSD with heatsink and $40/$60 Steam gift card - $198/$358 + $7.99 delivery at Mwave

## The End

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