# In This Issue

- Apple accused of sending non-Chinese user browsing data to China-based Tencent

- Telstra chair reckons the private sector would have achieved what the NBN has by now

- Fortnite has been nothing but a pulsing black hole for over a day

- Tesla’s new Smart Summon feature sounds cool on paper, is kinda dumb in practice

- Cheap 2TB SSD, Lenovo M93p micro PC, DJI Osmo Action, 3 months free Optus plans

# News

#### Apple accused of sending non-Chinese user browsing data to China-based Tencent

Apple's stepped in some Chinese dog shit again, this time over sending iOS user data to Tencent (China's Alphabet/Google). In Safari there's a feature called "Fraudulent Website Warning", which alerts you if you're trying to visit a dodgy website. In an small note in Safari's Settings page in iOS 13, Apple wrote that they "may send information calculated from the website address to Google and Tencent to check if the website is fraudulent". This obviously worried people outside China that what they're viewing on their device is being sent to Tencent who in turn would tell the Chinese government. Today Apple clarified that only devices with their region set to China have data sent to Tencent and everyone else uses Google (which isn't perfect either by the way).

#### Telstra chair reckons the private sector would have achieved what the NBN has by now

Telstra chairman John Mullen is going around saying that the NBN was a waste of time as "over the last 10 years private sector competition between strong players such as Telstra, Optus, TPG and others was always going to build 100 Mbps broadband access and speed to the majority of the population" at "a fraction of the cost of today's NBN". I agree with him. The industry left to its own devices back in 2007/2008 would have probably rolled out 100mbit services to every capital city and large regional cities by now, using the same technologies as the current multi-technology mix NBN. If the history of the NBN interests you, I wrote a detailed article about the NBN's early days on Reckoner a few years ago.

#### Fortnite has been nothing but a pulsing black hole for over a day

Fortnite has been down for over 24 hours. That's right, one of the world's most popular videogames has been unplayable for more than a day. It's not accidental though, as Epic has taken Fortnite down on purpose and replaced the entire game with a black hole. Epic hasn't said a word about it, but everyone seems to think it's to build hype for "Chapter 2" of the game, with an all-new map and new features like "boats, swimming and fishing" (I am not shitting you). Weirdly, people are still tuning in to their favourite streamers "play" Fortnite, with over a million people watching people watching the black hole.

# Not News

#### Tesla’s new Smart Summon feature sounds cool on paper, is kinda dumb in practice

Timothy Lee over at Arstechnica has a great article about Tesla's new "Smart Summon" feature. Smart Summon came to modern Teslas a few weeks ago and resulted in lots of YouTube videos of people using the Tesla smartphone app to use their vehicle like a remote control car. It's designed to pull your car out of a parking spot and drive to your location. Useful for parking in small spots or if some prick gets too close to your car and you can't get in. Like most Tesla features, it works but with a catch. Going by the videos highlighted in the article, Smart Summon works like a 16 year old learner driver that's never seen a car before, without an experienced driver in the passenger seat.

# Bargains

- Silicon Power 2TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD - $395 delivered from Amazon AU

- 3 months free on Optus SIM-only and phone plans

- Refurbished Lenovo M93p micro PC (i5-4590T, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) - $209.10 delivered from Bneacttrader on eBay

- DJI Osmo Action video camera - $399 delivered from D1 store

🎶 Do the Rump - The Black Keys

😁 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.

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.​