### Issue 1397 - Wednesday 30th June, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Government fails to submit COVIDsafe report twice in a row
- Telstra sells off 49% of its mobile phone towers via InfraCo
- Canada aims for 100% zero emissions cars by 2035 & Audi to launch only EVs by 2026
- Fun ways to practice your SQL skills online
- Cheap Edifier R1000T4 speakers & Dell 34" monitor

## The News

### Government fails to submit COVIDsafe report twice in a row

With the bulk of Australia's population under some sort of lockdown thanks to COVID outbreaks, it's a good time to reflect on COVIDSafe and what the hell happened with it. You don't see or hear about it anymore do ya? Looks like the government is keen to forget about the disappointment too, once again failing to produce a report on the effectiveness of the app as it is required to according to legislation. A report was supposed to be popped out every six months, but we got nothing. The Health Department said they "expect" to table the report some time in the second half of this year. This, plus the cops putting their snouts in check-in data just makes the government look even more like crooks than everyone already knows they are.

### Telstra sells off 49% of its mobile phone towers via InfraCo

What I would assume is Telstra's most valuable asset, its mobile phone towers, was recently spun off to a company called InfraCo Towers. Today Telstra announced that 49% of InfraCo Towers sold for $2.8b to "a consortium comprising of the Future Fund – Australia's government sovereign wealth fund – as well as the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation and Sunsuper, who together will become a strategic partner in Telstra InfraCo Towers as the minority shareholder in the business". The other 51% of InfraCo Towers belongs to Telstra, who entered a 15-year agreement to access new and existing towers. All part of Telstra's maneuvering to snap up huge chunks of the NBN in a few years when then government of the day sells it off (which was planned to happen from day 1).

### Canada aims for 100% zero emissions cars by 2035 & Audi to launch only EVs by 2026

Canada has set a target of 100% of new cars sold there to be zero emissions vehicles by 2035. The change from their 2040 target is largely spurred by the International Energy Agency's Net Zero by 2050 Report that claims we gotta stop selling internal combustion engine cars by 2035 if we don't want the worst effects of climate change becoming a reality. This matches the UK and California's aims to also stop selling new cars that emit CO2 by 2035. Oh, and Audi said this week that they've seen the writing on the wall and won't launch new internal combustion engine cars by 2026, primarily due to strict Euro 7 emissions regulations.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Fun ways to practice your SQL skills online

My wife is now a health information manager and as part of her training, she had to get very familiar with SQL in order to get stuff out of various databases. Two websites that helped her practice and apply what she learned at uni were SQL Murder Mystery and SQL Police Department. These are games that have SQL as a way to move the story along. Apply an appropriate query to get the right data and solve the puzzle. She was struggling a bit with the stuff the teacher assigned, but had fun playing these games and probably wouldn't done well in the subject without them. If you need to learn SQL or even just refresh the SQL you learned many years ago, check the games out, you might like them too.

## Bargains

- Edifier R1000T4 speakers - $49.50 at Amazon
- Dell 34" S3422DW 3440x1440 monitor - $439.20 from Dell's eBay store

## The End

📻 Weakness - McRad

😎 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.​