Telstra and the NBN are blaming each other for why NBN plans are so expensive
iPhone sales down, but Apple still makes a record revenue quarter
100m credit applications with USA’s 7th largest bank stolen & made public
BitBoy - a $45 portable console emulator
Cheap Sonos gear, 14” portable monitor, Amazon Echos, Yamaha soundbar
Telstra's CEO has published a blog post giving his opinion on the NBN Pricing Review. Like every other ISP, Telstra wants the CVC charge scrapped, saying this pricing construct has lead to Australia having the "second most expensive wholesale broadband pricing in the world for 50Mbit and 100Mbit services". NBN, the defensive pricks they are, have responded to Telstra's blog post saying that 20% of NBN's revenue (about $1b/yr) goes to Telstra for using its infrastructure, which has "an obvious impact on wholesale prices" and dismiss CVC pricing criticism as "unfounded".
Apple's financial results for Q3 2019 (April, May & June 2019) are out and they've have a record amount of revenue for a 3rd quarter - US$53.8b, a 1% increase from last year. Net income is down, as are iPhone sales, which are 11.8% lower compared to the same time last year. For the first time in years, Apple made more money from all its other stuff (wearables, services, Mac, iPad) than it did the iPhone. In other Apple news, the LG 5K Ultrafine monitor is back on sale (A$1,889.95) and now has USB-C support, so you can plug in an iPad Pro for some 5K iOS action.
Paige A. Thompson (aka erratic) has been charged with hacking the USA's 7th-largest bank, Capital One, and stealing the credit applications of around 106 million people. Apparently she had this data for months and the only reason Capital One found out was because someone saw this data in a publicly accessible GitHub account owned by Paige Thompson and reported it to Capital One. Paige also tweeted about how she obtained this data and posted a list of files into a Slack channel that could be other data she nefariously obtained. Now she's facing up to 5 years in federal prison.
I recently discovered the BitBoy. It's basically a US$30 ARM computer running Linux, shoved into a Gameboy shaped enclosure with a small LCD screen and battery. You put your favourite (long breath) NES/GB/GBC/GBA/SNES/SMD/SMS/PCE/NEOGEO ROMS onto a microSD card, put the microSD card into the BitBoy and play until your the cartlidge in your thumbs wear out and the pain becomes too much to handle. Here's a video review of the BitBoy. Apparently there's loads of similar devices in various form factors from AliExpress and whatnot, so if you shop around you may even find something fancier than the kinda tiny (but still cool) BitBoy.
15% off the Sonos online store until the 10th of August
HP 3HX46AA 14" 1080p portable USB-C monitor - $199 from Zotim
Amazon Echo 2nd gen - $99 from Amazon AU
Amazon Echo Show 5 - $109 from Amazon AU
Yamaha YAS-108B soundbar - $165 from Betta Home Living
🎶 Hunter - Björk
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