### Issue 1631 - Monday 20th June, 2022

The Sizzle cracked 1,000 paid subscribers over the weekend! Writing The Sizzle every day is the best job I could think of. Thanks to all 1,007 of you for making it happen. As long as you keep paying me, I'll keep doing it.

## In Today's Issue

- Julian Assange's extradition to USA approved by UK (again)
- SpaceX sacks creators of open letter criticising Elon Musk
- Telegram launches $7.49/m Premium offering with dozens of features
- Librewolf is Firefox but more private
- Cheap Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 Extreme Black bundle, Razer gaming mouse, Apple Watch, Chromecast, new & refurb ThinkPads, AirTag leather loop, Philips headphones, Pixel 6 Pro, Samsung endurance microSD, Telstra 5G plan, Coles Mobile SIM, Sonoff Zigbee sensors,

## The News

### Julian Assange's extradition to USA approved by UK (again)

Julian Assange's extradition to the USA is on again. He has 14-days to appeal. If you've forgotten what started this whole mess, in 2019 the US government charged Assange with a whole range of things surrounding his collaboration with Chelsea Manning, who gave Assange classified information about the USA's role in Iraq/Afghanistan wars and a cache of diplomatic messages that were published on WikiLeaks. Labor MP Julian Hill (remember, Assange is an Australian citizen!) makes a good point - "Manning, who leaked classified material exposing US war crimes, has been pardoned, yet Assange who published it (a journalistic activity), is facing an effective death sentence".

### SpaceX sacks creators of open letter criticising Elon Musk

SpaceX sacked "a group of employees" that created and circulated an open letter airing their grievances about Elon Musk being a dickhead. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell justified the action because "the letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views". In about 24 hours, 400 SpaceX employees (out of around 12,000) signed the open letter before it was taken down. I don't know what the creators of the letter expected to happen (as if Elon was going to change), but at least they exposed Elon's paper thin to the point of translucent, skin.

### Telegram launches $7.49/m Premium offering with dozens of features

Telegram Premium is now a thing. You pay US$4.99/A$7.49 via an in-app purchase and in return you get "doubled limits, 4 GB file uploads, faster downloads, exclusive stickers and reactions, improved chat management – and a whole lot more". Doubled limits includes the ability to "follow up to 1000 channels, create up to 20 chat folders with up to 200 chats each, add a fourth account to any Telegram app, pin 10 chats in the main list and save up to 10 favorite stickers". There's lots of little things going on with Telegram Premium, check out the full list of what you get for your money. I can see this being well worth it if you're a heavy user of Telegram. It's personally my chat app of choice, but I don't use it that much to justify the monthly fee.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Librewolf is Firefox but more private

I use Firefox as my daily driver browser with a bunch of extensions, but LibreWolf looks interesting. It's "an independent fork of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom". All telemetry is eliminated, non-Google search engines are default, uBlock Origin is installed by default and the configuration is "hardened to maximize privacy, without sacrificing usability". Sounds good to me. I wish more websites wouldn't shit the bed (particularly ones where I have to pay/submit a form) when all this privacy stuff is enabled. Often I find myself firing up a vanilla Chrome instance when a site doesn't work in Firefox due to my security settings.

## Bargains

- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 Extreme Black Bundle (256GB Fold 3, Samsung Watch 4 Large, Galaxy Buds 2, $100 Amazon gift card) - $1999 from Amazon
- Razer DeathAdder V2 wired mouse - $49 from Amazon
- Apple Watch Series 7 (GPS 41mm) Green - $519 from Amazon
- Google Chromecast with Google TV - $79 from Google
- Refurb Lenovo ThinkPad T460s (i5-6300U, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) - $279 from FuseTech AU
- Lenovo ThinkPad E15 Gen 4 (Ryzen 5 5625U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) - $1079 from Lenovo
- Apple AirTag Leather Loop (Red) - $29 from Amazon
- Philips Fidelio X3 wired open-back headphones - $237.35 from Amazon UK
- Google Pixel 6 Pro 5G 128GB & bonus $100 Harvey Norman gift card - $1048 from Harvey Norman
- Samsung Pro Endurance microSDXC 64GB or 128GB - $13/$29 from The Good Guys
- Telstra 5G mobile broadband plan with 400GB/m data on a 24m contract for $69/m & bonus $700 JB Hi-Fi gift card
- Coles Mobile 365-day SIM with 85GB data & unlimited calls/SMS to 15 countries - $99 from Coles
- 50% off a range of Sonoff Zigbee sensors (doors, motion, etc) from Oz Smart Things

## The End

📻 Peace Sells - Megadeth

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## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

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.