Hello to the 2,233 OzBargainers starting their 90 day free trial of The Sizzle. There's so many of you, I'm actually a little nervous. I hope you like what you see over the next 90 days and stick around after that!
Stripe, everyone's favourite online credit card processor (we all have favourite credit card processors, yeah?) has sorted out its regulatory issues with providing its popular payments API for cryptocurrency purposes. Now purveyors of cryptocurrency can "process payments for fiat currencies globally through a single integration with fraud prevention and authorization optimization built in". I guess Stripe figured out a way to accept the higher fraud risk associated with cryptocurrency transactions on credit cards. It's never been easier to run your own cryptocurrency wallet and do a rug-pull on the rubes "investing".
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), and the Office of the eSafety Commissioner have joined up to make the Digital Platform Regulators Forum (DP-REG). This forum will give these government agencies an "overarching focus to consider the best approach towards competition, consumer protection, privacy, online safety and data overlaps". ACCC boss Rod Sims said "the forum will help to streamline our approach to the regulation of digital platforms in Australia". The forum will have meetings every 2 months and be chaired by someone from one of the member agencies on a rotating basis every 6 months.
The Senate inquiry into the Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill had a public session yesterday and all the people chosen to give their opinions said the proposed law sucks and won't do a damn thing to stop trolls. Victims of online defamation Nyadol Nyuon and Erin Molan reckon it does nothing to address the high cost of pursuing a defamation case, which the EFA prices at between $20k-$80k. The eSafety Commissioner hates the law too, as it's confusing defamation with trolling - two very different things. The Commissioner also points out that the law's mandate that social media companies have to "unmask" trolls and hand over identifying info on that user to anyone that asks would actually make victims of trolling less safe.
Pour one out for my desktop Mac of choice - the 27" iMac. It disappeared from Apple's website this week and Apple confirmed to Arstechnica that the 27" iMac has "reached end of life". I had a few 27" iMacs over the years and really liked them as it was basically a great monitor with a free computer, which made it reasonable value for money in the context of Apple products. You can now spend almost as much as the 27" iMac used to sell for and buy a Mac Mini and the Studio Display to achieve the same thing. That said, this does leave the door open for an iMac Studio or something with a 32" 6K display where they chuck a nice computer on the back for free like they did with the 27" iMac.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
📻 Riffer - Spiderbait
😎 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 or change email address? Visit the customer portal.
📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.
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