### Issue 1384 - Thursday 10th June, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- COVID-19 vaccination digital certs coming to myGov
- El Salvador passes law making Bitcoin mandatory legal tender
- Some older news that slipped through the cracks
- Zulip, a free and open source alternative to Slack
- Canton 5.1 speakers, Rode VideoMicro, Creative Pebble V3, Catch Connect MVNO, Google Nest Hub, Nest AUdio, 10% off Macs, 25% off Microsoft Surface

## The News

### COVID-19 vaccination digital certs coming to myGov

Australia is getting a COVID-19 vaccination digital certificate program. After getting both doses of the vaccine, you'll be able to log into myGov or the Express Plus Medicare app to get proof you're immune to COVID-19. It'll pull info from the Australian Immunisation Register (which IBM recently upgraded up for $19m) and will only show your COVID vaccine status, not any other vaccines or health info. There's not much more to it than that and sounds pretty hard to fuck up, but I believe the federal government can find a way.

### El Salvador passes law making Bitcoin mandatory legal tender

El Salvador's government has succeeded in passing laws to make Bitcoin legal tender. All businesses there will have to accept Bitcoin for goods and services in the near future. Considering how much the price of Bitcoin moves from day to day, it'll be fascinating to see how El Salvadorian businesses handle accepting Bitcoin. The Development Bank of El Salvador will be able to instantly convert Bitcoin to USD for businesses that want to lower their risk, but there's still the issue of having to constantly alter pricing to avoid making a loss or charging too high of a price to customers.

### Some older news that slipped through the cracks

It's a slow news day, so here's some stuff I bookmarked in the lsat few weeks that never made it into the Sizzle the day I read it:

- 80% of South Australian pokies joints are currently using facial recognition technology to detect barred patrons and kick them out.
- Tasmania is waiving stamp duty for new EVs for the next two years and wants all government fleet vehicles to be electric by 2030.
- Vocus owned ISPs Dodo and iPrimus have been fined $2.5m for using their own stats for peak time NBN performance instead of the ACCC's data.
- Australian company Altium, who develop PCB design software, rejected a takeover offer of A$5b from Autodesk. Altium is holding out for more cash.
- Heaps of historical original glass plate negatives of stuff like Ned Kelly's armoud and the Gallipoli beach landing are getting sold as NFTs by Lloyd's Auctions.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Zulip, a free and open source alternative to Slack

Looking for an open source alternative to Slack? Zulip might be what you're after. It's a bit different to Slack in that Zulip is centered around threads. You can make a new thread in each channel and have conversations there. To me it looks like taking a forum style approach to a chat platform. You can read Zulip's argument for why their approach to threads and asynchronous chat is better than Slack's. There's a free tier that's pretty capable or if you prefer, you can self-host it on your own server with no restrictions. Like many things I mention in The Sizzle, I've not used Zulip much so don't entirely vouch for it, but it looks interesting at face value!

## Bargains

- Canton C-Movie 5.1 speaker pack - $1899 delivered from RIO Sound & Vision
- Rode VideoMicro on-camera microphone - $58 from Amazon
- Creative Pebble V3 USB powered speakers - $53.96 from Creative Australia
- Catch Connect (Optus MVNO) 365 Day Plan, 60GB data, unlimited voice & SMS - $89 from Catch
- Google Nest Hub (2nd gen) - $129 from Google
- Google Nest Audio - $99 at The Good Guys & JB Hi-Fi
- 10% off Macs at The Good Guys
- Up to 25% off Microsoft Surfaces at JB Hi-Fi

## The End

📻 Wring It Out - Rival Schools

😎 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.​