### Issue 2046 - Wednesday 13th March, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Apple keeps tweaking App Store and iOS app distribution policies in the EU
- eSafety announces new regulatory codes for search engines in Australia
- US considering 30% excise on electricity used by crypto miners
- Tim Berners-Lee needs to heed his own advice before lecturing us
- Cheap Dell thin client PC, TCL 85" TV, Samsung 1TB SSD, 245W USB-C charger, donations to DRW

## The News

### Apple keeps tweaking App Store and iOS app distribution policies in the EU

Apple has updated its App Stores policies in the EU again with some big changes. If you wanted to run an app store in the EU, you had to also make it so other developers can put apps there, but Apple removed that requirement so the worst nightmare of those against the EU's DMA can come true - Meta can technically make their own app store the only way to get Meta apps in the EU. Apple also removed the requirement that if you want to link to promotions or discounts outside the App Store, you had to use Apple's fearmongering template. The big change however is Web Distribution. It means you can go to a website and install an app via that website, no app store needed. That'll be fucken sweet, shame it's EU only. There's still a lot of hoops to jump through, but it'll be available by mid-year.

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### eSafety announces new regulatory codes for search engines in Australia

The eSafety Commissioner announced new Online Safety Codes for search engines in Australia. I could not find the actual codes this press release is talking about (they should be on onlinesafety.org.au, but it says the search engine services code hasn't been changed since 2023?), but the presser says "Google and Bing, will now be required to take important steps to prevent child sexual abuse material being returned in search results and ensure AI incorporated into the search engines is not misused to create deep faked versions of this harmful content". I would be surprised if Google and Bing aren't already doing their best to stop CSAM appearing in search results and in their AI-generated art tools, plus its not as is eSafety will actually do anything to Google or Microsoft should they ignore these codes anyways, so it's all just posturing by the government so they can point to eSafety and say "hey look at us, we're doing something!!".

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### US considering 30% excise on electricity used by crypto miners

The US federal treasury is looking to introduce a 30% excise on electricity used for "digital asset mining". Crypto mining outfits in the USA would need to report how much electricity their computing resources used and how much they paid for it, then pay the US government 30% of that. Effectively they're hoping to increase the cost of crypto mining in the US by 30% and either make some nice pocket money to aid Israeli bombs in Gaza or funding the National Science Foundation (the duality of the USA my friends) or, ideally, make crypto mining unprofitable they either stop or move offshore to some dodgier place that'll make life hard for them. Anything to stop the massive energy waste of crypto mining is good thing. It's incredibly wasteful (2.3% of all electricity in the USA and roughly 20GW globally right now, almost the same as the current demand for Australia's NEM!) considering how little gain we get out of that energy.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Tim Berners-Lee needs to heed his own advice before lecturing us

Tim Berners-Lee has published his thoughts on the state of the world wide web he was largely responsible for, 35 years after unleashing it on the world. It's kinda bland and doesn't really say much you haven't heard before - decentralised platforms suck, focus on user intent not their attention, etcetera, etcetera. What I found most interesting is the fact old mate is complaining about the "self-interest of several corporations that have eroded the web's values and led to breakdown and harm" yet is publishing his blog post on Medium. Come on Tim, of all people on the internet, you can't setup your own web server? You said you invented the damn thing.

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## Bargains

- Used/refurb Dell Wyse 5070 thin client PC (Intel J5005 CPU, 8GB RAM, 64B SSD) - $64 from UN Tech
- TCL 85" C845 Mini LED 4K Google TV - $2,541 + free delivery to most places from Appliances Online
- Samsung 1TB T7 USB-C SSD - $119 from Amazon
- Chipofy 245W USB-C 4-Port GaN charger - $80.99 from Amazon
- For every 90-day free trial of The Sizzle given away, I will donate 50c to Digital Rights Watch - $186 raised so far! Tell all your friends!!

## Image Of The Day

Die Hackerbibel - Teil 2 (retroGfx / Internet Archive)

## The End

📻 Dirty Magic - The Offspring

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