### Issue 1360 - Friday 7th May, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission reckons only crooks use encrypted chat apps
- $1.2b of digital related project funding in the 2021-2022 federal budget
- Apple vs Epic - day 3, the goss keeps flowing
- Elon Musk and SpaceX aren't here to fuck spiders
- Cheap Apple Music 4-month trial, Pokemon Snap, AirPods Max, Nikon Z5, Sony XM4 headphones, Optus pre-paid

## The News

### dsfg4gds

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) has submitted its thoughts to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) as part of its inquiry into the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020 and let loose a wild opinion regarding the use of encrypted chat apps like WhatsApp, Wickr, Signal and so on - "there is no legitimate reason for a law-abiding member of the community to own or use an encrypted communications platform" and that they "are used almost exclusively by serious and organised crime groups". No regard at all given to privacy, just straight to the ol' if you have something to hide you must be a crook argument.

### $1.2b of digital related project funding in the 2021-2022 federal budget

As well as yesterday's game development tax offset, the government has a bunch of other techy/digital related stuff in the upcoming budget it's lumping together as a $1.2b "digital package". The bulk of it is $300m for My Health Record and the majority of that will be used to "provide citizens with COVID19 test results as well as their vaccine status". The next biggest spend is $200m for myGov to get various upgrades and a chat bot. Cool. There's $50m for the CSIRO to host a National Artificial Intelligence Centre and $34m to fund its projects. $130m will be added to the Regional Connectivity Program to upgrade the mobile phone networks in more regional areas. There's probably more announcements to come once the full budget is let loose next week.

### Apple vs Epic - day 3

The Apple vs Epic court case is still going (and will go on for a week or two still) and there's been so many interesting tidbits coming out of the hearings:

- Apple gave special API access to big name developers like Hulu, but justified it as "testing" new APIs rather than special access (even though that testing is indefinite and rarely made accessible to mainstream developers). The Verge has more detail about the API in question (something about making it easy for Hulu to migrate users from App Store billing to Hulu billing).
- Back in 2012 Phil Schiller cracked the shits at the App Store team after seeing a knockoff version of Temple Run hit #1 on the App Store charts, CC'ing everyone with "What the hell is this????" and "How does an obvious rip off of the super popular Temple Run, with no screenshots, garbage marketing text, and almost all 1-star ratings become the #1 free app on the store? Is no one reviewing these apps? Is no one minding the store?".
- Apple were desperate for Netflix to keep in-app subscriptions going, considering "to advertise Netflix in its retail stores, use a portion of its cut of App Store commission fees to pay for search ads, and even bundle Netflix with other Apple services". Another example of Apple giving preference to big names on the App Store while smaller businesses are told to love it or leave it.

For anyone that wants to watch the case more closely (you should if your job/business relies on the App Store), I've found Michael Tsai's daily wrap-ups useful. Most of it takes place when Australians are sleeping so it's difficult to follow live.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Elon Musk and SpaceX aren't here to fuck spiders

The Atlantic has a great overview of SpaceX's current position and what the deal is with Elon Musk's plans to go to Mars. Unlike Musk's usual bullshit, SpaceX really looks like it'll succeed in getting people to the Moon, and with some luck, to Mars. It's only a small part of the story, but it made me realise that SpaceX is this generation's NASA. For nerds around my age and older there's an incredible amount of respect for NASA, but anyone say, in their teens, probably reveres SpaceX more than NASA as they've seen SpaceX do more than NASA due to Musk's personality and the ambition he and SpaceX has compared to NASA's severe conservatism and relative austerity because they're a politicised arm of the government.

## Bargains

- 4-month free trial of Apple Music (new subscribers only)
- Pokemon Snap for Nintendo Switch - $64 from Amazon
- Apple AirPods Max - $764 at David Jones, but get Officeworks to price beat down to $725.80
- Nikon Z5 body only - $1258.85 after cash back from Ryda's eBay store
- Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones - $302 from Etrade's eBay store
- Optus pre-paid SIM 365 day expiry, 120GB data - $150 (good for eSIM purposes, I have Telstra & Optus prepaid so get good coverage almost everywhere)

## The End

📻 Girl And The Sea - The Presets

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

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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.​