Mentioned in today’s edition: Anthropic, Sora, Firefox, Canva, Android Automotive, Jimmy Fallon, Disney and Uber. Plus, deals on TP-Link Tapo cameras, Dell Latitude laptops and Xiaomi smartphones.

The News

Even Telstra is telling punters to try cheaper services after its latest mobile price hike

Telstra is hiking its mobile plans for the second time in a year (EFTM). The company says the need to improve its network has prompted it to raise post- and pre-paid mobile plans by around $4-$5 a month. The company has even taken the unusual step of promoting its "alternative Telstra offerings" including Boost, Belong and JB Hi-Fi branded plans. But don't worry! Belong and Boost will be seeing a price hike too (AFR).

The Sizzle: Dear God, please grant me the wisdom and the strength to move off Telstra. I have no idea why I'm still on their post-paid plans. I moved to Telstra about ten years ago, before I was planning on moving to regional WA, and I wanted the security of the extra coverage*. Now that I'm back in central Sydney, typically working from home so I'm always on WiFi, bringing my own phone, what possible reason do I have to stay with them? Just inertia. Which is clearly what Telstra is hoping for. I wonder if Telstra is essentially becoming the Foxtel of telcos: happy to suckle on the stream of subscriptions from price-insensitive businesses and oldies who've got plans offering them 150GB of data for their dumb phones, coasting largely on reputation and lack of competition. 

* Now, as we know, not as much as was promised!

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Uber is going to do price discrimination based on your location

People in Melbourne will be charged different amounts for Uber rides based on where they're being picked up, in a break from the rideshare company's previous pricing models (SMH, $). While drivers have traditionally been paid based on distance, time and demand, Uber has told its drivers that some suburbs will now have higher fares, peak period times have been expanded and shorter trips will be given a price premium. While the company has linked it to the spike in fuel prices, the change is permanent. 

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Bubblewatch: OpenAI suddenly shuts down its AI video app and API

OpenAI is planning to kill Sora, its AI slop-generating video app, as part of its complete backdown from AI video (WSJ, gift link). It's been reported that OpenAI will shutter Sora, its video generating models for developers and won't have any video capability in ChatGPT either. Disney, too, is walking away from its $1B deal with OpenAI to license its characters to the app. Sora had a wildly popular launch but has since completely fallen off the map. By some accounts, each Sora video cost OpenAI between $1-$5 (Forbes) and the company does not appear to have found a way to make money off it other than bamboozling old media companies into thinking their slop is the future. 

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World:

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Oh, Also

Mozilla is now bundling its free 50GB/month VPN plan with Firefox

This isn't a crazy fun thing but I think it's quite cool: Mozilla is now offering a free VPN with 50GB of monthly data with its latest version of Firefox (Bleeping Computer). It only covers browser traffic but it's pretty generous and, unlike the vast majority of free VPN providers, I have some faith that Mozilla isn't just selling my data to the CCP or FBI (Mozilla) 

_{(And yes I know VPNs inherently come with security issues but it's pretty handy to have this just for when you wanna hide your traffic location for something non-crucial).} 

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Bargains

Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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