The ACCC is kicking off a new investigation as part of its long-term Digital Platform Services Inquiry. The latest deep dive "examine products and services offered by digital platform service providers across a variety of sectors and will use examples like the expansion into consumer cloud storage and smart home devices to analyse the relationships between digital platform services and various services offered in their digital platform ecosystems". The ACCC wants to "assess how that data can leveraged across products and services within an ecosystem that may prevent businesses from entering and competing". Report is due to land by the 30th of September.
A startup by the name of Humane is getting a chunk of buzz around the internet today after a write up in the Wall Street Journal. This company got US$100m of fresh funding OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, Microsoft and others. It was started by Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, a husband and wife combo that were big deals at Apple and is stacked with former Apple employees. Sounds great, what do they do? According to the article, "The company hasn't disclosed what it plans to sell", but "patents suggest Humane intends to build a wearable device that may be capable of projecting a display with which users could interact". Wake me up when there's something I can buy. Until then it's yet another Silicon Valley circle jerk.
On the topic of startups, the federal government has put up a bill so uni students can add the cost of enrolling in a startup accelerator program to their HECS debt. The program is called "Startup Year" and allows final-year undergraduate students, post-graduate students and recent graduates "to access up to two loans of up to $11,800 over their lifetime through the HECS-HELP scheme". The education minister said that these loans will "build skills in entrepreneurship and connect students with the support, mentorship and facilities they need to develop their startup ideas". Could be good and find the next Aussie unicorn, but also could just saddle thousands of youngsters with an extra $20k of debt that achieved nothing. At least with an extra year or two of uni you get a Masters out of it.
Vultr, the cloud compute service I use for The Sizzle's forum and my personal blog, has just announced a free tier. For precisely $0 you get 1 vCPU, 512MB RAM, 10GB disk, 2TB of bandwidth and an IPv4/IPv6 address. That is awesome for free. Very usable as a Wireguard exit node. The catch is you need to apply for it, can't just sign up and get it. They use a "weighted score" to determine who gets in, based on a few factors they don't seem to be disclosing. I presume it is to avoid abuse of this offer. Either way, worth signing up for. Never know when a free VPS will come in handy!
2005 Dream, r/retrobattlestations (thickener / Reddit, thank you Steve for showing it to me)
📻 Used For Glue - Rival Schools
😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.
💬 Checked out the paid subscriber only forum? It's a tidy little place to discuss tech with like minded Aussies.
👋 Forums not your thing? The Sizzle has a Slack group you can procrastinate in and chat with other nerds bored at work.
💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info, change email address or cancel your subscription? Visit the customer portal.
🎁 Make someone's day and buy them a 12 month gift subscription to The Sizzle.
📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.
🫂 Friends of The Sizzle is a small group of businesses or organisations operated by Sizzle subscribers. Support your fellow Sizzler!
💔 Tired of my bullshit? Unsubscribe and I'll never speak to you again.
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.