# In This Issue

- ALP begin token attempt to revise the Assistance and Access Bill they helped pass

- Government releases a blockchain roadmap to guide you on your snake oil journey

- Twitter CEO asks Elon Musk for advice on running Twitter

- AMD’s new 64-core CPU is a beast but only if your app can use all those cores properly (it probably can’t)

- Cheap Jabra Elite 85H headphones, Seagate 4TB external HDD, iPad Pro 11" 256GB LTE, Logitech MX Master 2S, Spotify Premium, 12TB Ironwolf HDD

# News

#### ALP begin token attempt to revise the Assistance and Access Bill they helped pass

Remember how the ALP disagreed with the Liberals on the Assistance and Access Bill, but passed the laws anyway because they're weak a piss and said they'll pressure the Libs into changing the laws later on? Later is now and the ALP plans to introduce a range of changes (outlined here) via a Private Senator's Bill. Unfortunately, because the ALP hasn't got a majority in the House of Representatives, these changes will go nowhere and Australian tech businesses will continue to struggle overseas as the rest of the world is rightly a little afraid that Australian law enforcement will be used as a trojan horse by say, the US or UK to gain a backdoor into their systems.

#### Government releases a blockchain roadmap to guide you on your snake oil journey

Australia has a National Blockchain Roadmap! Finally, our smart and intelligent government is telling us plebs how to best use blockchain to enrich Australia's economy. According to the document a blockchain is "best suited for use cases requiring at least three of the following: data redundancy; information transparency; data immutability; and a consensus mechanism" and the industries it reckons can leverage blockchain the most are "the agriculture sector, with a focus on supply chains and wine exports; the education sector, with a focus on trusted credentials and facilitating trusted information about an individual's skills and capabilities; and the financial sector, with a focus on identify checks, specifically 'Know Your Customer' checks".

#### Twitter CEO asks Elon Musk for advice on running Twitter

Jack Dorsey is so clueless at what to do next with Twitter, he's calling up Elon Musk during company meetings and asking Elon "If you were running Twitter, what would you do?". Elon's response was that he wants a way to differentiate between real users and bots/fake users and a way to determine what is "real public opinion" compared to public opinion that's been influenced by others? A Twitter employee posted a video of Elon's guest appearance at Twitter's meeting. Meanwhile, Facebook's Twitter account got "hacked", lol.

# Not News

#### AMD’s new 64-core CPU is a beast but only if your app can use all those cores properly (it probably can’t)

AMD's 64-core, 128-thread Ryzen Threadripper 3990X CPU has hit Anandtech's review lab. It costs US$3990 (cheeky) but compared to what Intel wants for a similar core count (2x Xeon 8280 for roughly US$20,000) it's an absolute bargain. There's so many cores in this thing that Windows 10 Pro thinks the 3990X is actually two CPUs and slows things down. The benchmarks found that the speed bump from going from 32 cores up to 64 cores is often relatively minor - not many apps can scale that well. Considering the price difference ($3k vs $6k in Australia), you're probably better off getting the 3970X (or even the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X) and spending the savings on a better GPU or SSD setup.

# Bargains

- Jabra Elite 85H over-ear headphones (also Wirecutter’s favourite wireless headphones) - $249 at JB Hi-Fi

- Seagate 4TB external HDD - $90 at Bing Lee’s eBay store

- iPad Pro 11" 256GB Silver Wi-Fi + Cellular - $1,349.10 from Green Gadget’s eBay store

- Logitech MX Master 2S mouse (imho very little difference between the MX2 & MX3) - $74 on Bing Lee’s eBay store

- Free 90 days of Spotify Premium for new customers

- 12TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS HDD - $527.20 from Futu Online’s eBay store

🎶 Epic - Faith No More

😁 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.

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.​