# In This Issue

- Investors currently value Apple at a massive two trillion dollars, by far the world’s most valuable business

- Facebook gasses out out some Qanon bullshit prior to the US election

- New agreement between NBN and ISPs coming soon, with penalties for NBN being crapSale on bookmarks, everything 50% off, get your cheap saved items here!

- Cheap UE Boom 3 speaker, Logitech MX Master 3 mouse, Dell 27" 4K monitor, TP-Link 802.11ax mesh kit, Kingston SSD, Goat Simulator

# News

#### Investors currently value Apple at a massive two trillion dollars, by far the world’s most valuable business

Apple is now worth two trillion US dollars, the first public company to achieve that lofty feat. The rapid growth in Apple's stock price has been absolutely phenomenal. In 2018 Apple's valuation hit US$1t, which is insane enough, but it took only two years to gain another trillion dollars in value. What the hell happened in the last 2 years to make investors think Apple literally doubled in worth? There's no significant new revenue streams I can think of that Apple isn't already exploiting, so what gives? Apple is the biggest whale, but isn't alone - a report from Credit Suisse said that in 2020 the big 5's value rose 37% while the rest of the S&P 500 (i.e: the USA's biggest companies) fell 6%! Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook make up 20% of the entire US stock market's value. Five companies! In the USA's huge economy! The mind boggles.

#### Facebook gasses out out some Qanon bullshit prior to the US election

Facebook has decided now is a good time to say it has "removed 790 QAnon groups from its site and was restricting another 1,950 groups, 440 pages and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts related to the right-wing conspiracy theory". Apparently activity in these groups "rose 200 to 300 percent in the last six months", something I assume Facebook noticed and figured it better nip in the bud before we end up with another Pizzagate or Oklahoma City bombing. YouTube, Twitter and Reddit "regularly" remove Qanon content but it still persists all over the internet. It's easy to ignore Qanon because their beliefs are so fucked up, but for technologists like us I think it's worth keeping an eye on em because social media is the key enabler of their nonsense and social media is our fault, we did that.

#### New agreement between NBN and ISPs coming soon, with penalties for NBN being crap

The current agreement between ISPs and the NBN is ending on November 30, with a new agreement set to replace it soon. This new agreement will add rebates/penalties if NBN fuck things up. For example, if a new connection takes too long to complete, an on-site appointment is missed or NBN takes too long to fix a fault, the ISP gets paid a fee to compensate (which may or may not be returned to the end user). I'm surprised this wasn't already the case! What's more interesting to me are rebates for slow speeds and congestion. If FTTN/FTTB/FTTC connections don't manage at least 25/5 speeds the ISP gets a discount for however long it takes NBN to get their shit together. Ditto fixed wireless congestion.

# Not News

#### Sale on bookmarks, everything 50% off, get your cheap saved items here!

Once again I am clearing out some old shit from my bookmarks that at one point I wanted to share with you but didn't make the cut for sharing it on the day I found it:

- LG's knock-off of Apple's AirPods have a feature I reckon Apple should copy - a UV light in the charging case to disinfect the chunk of plastic you stick in your ear. Would lower the chances of getting an ear infection I reckon.

- Neptune looks like a nifty 3rd party Twitter app for iOS. This client is "focused on simplicity, allowing users to navigate without distractions like ads and a non-chronological timeline". We could all do with a little focus.

- A quick and easy tutorial on how to attach an image to your next electronic mail. Glad I watched this one, I was struggling prior to learning the right way to do it! Hope you learn something too.

- Computers are so powerful now that we can run a full blown interpretation of Mac OS 8 within an Electron app. That's right, a Mac OS emulator made in Javascript that runs in a web browser.

- One of my favourite YouTube channels, Autogefühl, has an in-depth video review of the Volkswagen ID.3 electric hatchback. Shame VW Australia has no plans to sell it here, looks like a nice vehicle.

# Bargains

- Goat Simulator for Nintendo Switch - $11.25 on the eShop

- Kingston SA400 240GB SATA 2.5” SSD - $45 from Amazon AU

- TP-Link Deco X60 802.11ax mesh wi-fi 3-pack - $579 at Bing Lee

- Dell S2721Q 27” 4K monitor - $669.42 from Dell

- Logitech MX Master 3 Advanced wireless mouse - $114.10 if you pay with Latitude Pay at The Good Guys

- Ultimate Ears Boom 3 portable Bluetooth speaker - $113.20 if you pay with Latitude Pay at The Good Guys

🎶 My Own Summer (Shove It) - Deftones

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

📡 Aussie Broadband is the best ISP I've used since Internode's glory days. Their CEO gives talks at AUSNOG about their network and they even have network utilisation charts for every NBN POI. Their pricing isn't the cheapest, but if you want an ISP that's fast & reliable, give them a shot. Use my affiliate link or my referral code (1001031) and we both get $50 credit on our next bill.

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.​