# The Sizzle

### Issue 209 - Thursday, 11th August 2016 - Too Many Western Men

- More Census bullshit
- Telstra to invest $3b into its mobile network
- SolarCity to make a solar roof product
- ACCC allows JB Hi-Fi to bid for Good Guys
- Apple responds to Aussie banks ACCC request

- Kogan/Dick Smith eBay sale & cheap Xiaomi dashcams
- A bad movie about computers with James Bond in it
- Storm It - an app for tweet storms you absolutely should not use

NEWS

More Census bullshit
Fallout from the Census is still raining over our stupid (but best in the world) country. The site still isn't up and the ABS's line of "we was hacked" is looking more like incompetence, with the federal minister responsible for the Census saying it wasn't hacked at all. In "insider" at the ABS said the census website never passed the load testing process in the first place. The former NSW privacy commissioner reckons the 2016 Census should be scrapped. The PM is pissed off too. Meanwhile, the NDIS's payment system has been fucked for 8 weeks.
Discuss

Telstra to invest $3b into its mobile network
Telstra is planning to plough $3b of investment into upgrading its mobile network over the next three years. This is the biggest spend on mobile infrastructure for Telstra since the initial launch of Next G back in 2008. This upgrade will bring LTE to 99% of the Australian population and set Telstra up to offer 5G services around 2020. Telstra also had a good financial year, generating a $5.8b yearly profit after tax - 35.9% higher than last year.
Discuss

SolarCity to make a solar roof product
SolarCity (now part of Tesla) is gonna develop a roof made out of solar panels. The plan was unveiled during an investor call, with Elon Musk saying the solar roof looks better than panels laid on top and will last much longer than a traditional tile roof. The aim is to target people with old homes that need a roof and want to kill two birds with one stone - new roof and solar panels. Apparently there's 5 million roof replacements a year - 5 million opportunities to replace those dilapidated roofs with solar panels. More formal info about the solar roof will come in a few months.
Discuss

ACCC allows JB Hi-Fi to bid for Good Guys
Not necessarily tech news, but the ACCC's latest decision impacts where many of us buy our tech. The Good Guys franchise is up for sale and one of the potential bidders is JB Hi-Fi. According to the ACCC, JB and the Good Guys compete in different product categories and aim for different customers, so there's no real determinable outcomes for customers if JB was to buy Good Guys - plus there's heaps of other places to buy the stuff they sell.
Discuss

Apple responds to Aussie banks ACCC request
Apple has responded to three of Australia's largest banks asking the ACCC to let it negotiate as a group with Apple to open up the NFC hardware on the iPhone. Apple's main argument seems to be that doing so would "fundamentally diminish the high level of security Apple aims to have on our devices" - is Apple taking the piss here? By letting 3rd party developers use NFC on the iPhone, they're afraid iPhone users will be hacked? I guess if the apps are shitty, maybe?
Discuss

COOL SHIT

Kogan/Dick Smith eBay sale & cheap Xiaomi dashcams
Dick Smith/Kogan are having a 20% off sale on eBay. Nothing particularly stand out cheap that interests me, but you might find something you want there. On Banggood (lol) there's a great price on the well regarded Xiaomi dashcam (good review here). I grabbed a gold one for $66.43 - if it's good I might get a 2nd one as a rear camera.
Discuss

A bad movie about computers with James Bond in it
Pierce Brosnan is in a movie where a psychotic IT guy manages to hack some rich dude's fancy house full of internet connected devices and makes his life a living hell. Oh and the rich guy is the CEO of a company that makes planes and naughty IT guy decides to hack the planes too. What a weird movie.
Discuss

Storm It - an app for tweet storms you absolutely should not use
If you like to rant on Twitter, this is the app for you. Bash out a few thousand words on your phone and Storm It will split it out into as many tweets as needed, adding the (1/73) nomenclature to the end of the tweet. Automated tweet storms. I can't wait to publish my theory of why the North Melbourne Kangaroos are such an awful football team, but also the best football team, on Twitter, spread out over 4,500 tweets, when they lose to Hawthorn on Saturday night.
Discuss

Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony

The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Today's subject line is from Go Out, by Blur. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!