### Issue 1359 - Thursday 6th May, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Facebook's oversight board tells Facebook to decide if Trump should be permabanned or let back on
- SpaceX's Spaceship has a successful launch, Blue Origin to auction off a ride
- 30% tax offset for making videogames in Australia
- Get rid of specific URLs from Google search results with Wiper
- Cheap SanDisk Endurance microSD card, Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G, Fire TV Sticks, Bose 700 headphones, $800 off an iPhone on a Telstra plan, Lenovo Chromebook Duet

## The News

### Facebook's oversight board tells Facebook to decide if Trump should be permabanned or let back on

Facebook's weird "independent" Oversight Board has finally decided on what to do about the Donald Trump issue - kinda. They've said that whilst banning Trump at the time of the Capitol riot/insurrection was a good idea, "it was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension". The board has set a deadline of 6 months from today for Facebook to decide if Trump should come back or not and "justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform". What a waste of time - Zuck needs to get his arse off the fence and make a decision on this. At the end of the day the buck stops with him.

### SpaceX's Spaceship has a successful launch, Blue Origin to auction off a ride

SpaceX has landed its fancy big Spaceship rocket for the first time without it crashing after a high altitude launch. For those unfamiliar, Spaceship is designed as a big cargo hauler and will be part of NASA's Artemis moon mission, as well a Elon Musk's planned Mars colony. Very good news for SpaceX and NASA as Spaceship didn't immediately have the same success as their other rockets. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin is aiming to chuck some humans into "the edge of space" on its tourism rocket New Shepard in late July. If you're keen for a joyride, it'll be auctioned off to the highest bidder on Blue Origin's website. A live auction will take place on June 12th to determine the winner.

### 30% tax offset for making videogames in Australia

Ahead of next week's federal budget, the government has announced a Digital Games Tax Offset. You'll get 30% of what it cost your business to make a video game in Australia as a tax offset (not just deduction, so if you owe less tax than the offset is worth, you get a refund), with a minimum spend of $500,000. The criteria and definition of what qualifies for the offset is to be developed with industry, but the announcement mentions that "games with gambling elements or that cannot obtain a classification rating will not be eligible". Damn, my idea to integrate Sportsbet odds into a drug experience simulator will have to remain on the backburner.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Get rid of specific URLs from Google search results with Wiper

Wiper is a quick and easy to setup Firefox extension that'll let you filter your Google search results. Don't wanna see Stackoverflow when searching for programming related stuff? Add stackoverflow.com to Wiper and your Google searches will be Stack Overflow free. I use it to filter out Quora and Pinterest results. 99% of the time I don't wanna see what SEO junk is going on there. Apparently Google used to let you do this via the advanced search options and save them for all searches in your account settings, but they got rid of it for a reason only God would know.

## Bargains

- SanDisk High Endurance microSD card 128GB/256GB - $24.95/$49.95 delivered from Shopping Square
- Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G 128GB - $715.50 from The Good Guys
- Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite - $47 from Amazon
- Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K - $89.10 from The Good Guys
- Bose 700 noise cancelling headphones - $376 at Amazon
- $800 off an iPhone if you port to Telstra's $99/m 12m SIM only plan at JB Hi-Fi
- Lenovo Chromebook Duet - $359.10 from The Good Guys

## The End

📻 Lava Breed - Tumbleweed

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

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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.​