# Issue 561

##### Tuesday, 23rd January 2018

## In This Issue

- The AEC paid heaps for a crap system, wow, I'm so shocked this happened to us
- Someone wants to make EVs in SA
- Intel's Spectre and Meltdown patches are cooked, don't apply em
- Facebook makes "Flick" a unit of time
- Random cryptocurrency news
- Deep meme explanation
- Thinking about ditching your old Mac for a new PC? You gotta read this
- Cheap Wolfenstein, Samsung USB drives, Sony AHC cans, Surface Books, iTunes, Todoist

## News

### The AEC paid heaps for a crap system, wow, I'm so shocked this happened to us

The AEC is getting roasted for giving Fuji Xerox $27m for a system designed to scan in Senate ballot papers for the 2016 federal election that totally didn't work. The system was so bad, that 3 days before the election, the AEC decided to hand-count every single Senate ballot, as well as scanning them in, because they couldn't trust that the system Fuji made would work properly. Typical Australian IT incompetence on display here. I'm not even mad anymore, I'm numb to all this. Hello darkness my old friend.

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### Someone wants to make EVs in SA

Sanjeev Gupta might be a name familiar to you, but if he isn't (I wasn't aware until this story popped up), Sanjeev is a UK billionaire that trades commodities around the world. His business purchased OneSteel, keeping a South Australian steelworks in operation last year and plans to add 1GW of solar panels to power it. Now he wants to buy the ex-Holden factory in SA and use it to build electric cars using technology developed by Gordon Murray, the designer of McLaren's dominating F1 cars back in the 80s. The AMWU obviously is keen to see all those workers put to good use building EVs. Shit, turning SA into a hub for EV manufacturing is so obivous, even a dickhead like me can argue coherently for it.

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### Intel's Spectre and Meltdown patches are cooked, don't apply em

Intel has released advice saying not to install any updates for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. The current one update is causing a big chunk of people's systems to randomly reboot, which is obviously bad. Intel has said they've got a fix coming soon, but for now, don't install anything. Linus Torvalds, in his usual tactless manner, said that Intel's "patches are COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE" and if "anybody talked to them and told them they are f*cking insane?". If you're still confused as to what the hell Spectre and Meltdown mean, The Atlantic has a good primer.

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### Facebook makes "Flick" a unit of time

Facebook has made a new measure of time, called a Flick. Nothing at all to do with the amount of time spent on social media, but to do with their VR efforts on the Oculus Rift. A flick is "the smallest time unit which is LARGER than a nanosecond" - 1/705,600,000 of a second. Why do this? "Flicks are designed to help measure individual frame duration for video frame rates. So whether your video is 24hz, 25hz, 30hz, 48hz, 50hz, 60hz, 90hz, 100hz, or 120hz, you’ll be able to use Flicks to ensure that everything is in sync while still using whole integers instead of decimals" - not that interesting, really. But it was mentioned everywhere, so I thought I better mention it too.

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### Random cryptocurrency news

- South Korea will ban people from using anonymous bank accounts to trade cryptocurrency (South Korea has anonymous bank accounts!?)
- TSMC (huge semiconductor foundry - makes chips for Apple & others) said that Bitmain, the world's largest producer of Bitcoin mining gear, has ordered 20,000 wafers a month from them - more wafers than NVIDIA asks for every month!
- The ATO is reminding everyone to pay their taxes on the gains they make selling cryptocurrencies. Check the ATO's guidance from Dec-21-2017 for their latest stance on cryptocurrencies.
- Nordea, a large Swedish bank, has told its 31,000 employees not to trade cryptocurrencies because there's no regulation, making it too risky. I don't know if this means personal trading with your own money, or work trading with the bank's money?
- ASIC wants more powers to go undercover on the dark web, because cryptocurrencies make it difficult to investigate financial crimes.

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## Not News, But Still Cool

### Deep meme explanation

Reply All's latest episode (Apocalypse Soon) goes deep, deep into internet culture again, explaining this bizarre meme tweet. This episode explains the Tide pod bullshit, the mess surrounding Logan Paul, the "somebody toucha my spaghett!" meme and something to do with a fucked up looking Knuckles the Echnida that I had no idea about and still don't quite understand (Nigerian low budget action films?!). An excellent way to feel incredibly old.

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### Thinking about ditching your old Mac for a new PC? You gotta read this

Lightroom was a turd on Paul Stamatiou's 2-year old iMac and he needed more grunt than anything Apple had on the market, so he spent months researching a move to Windows and a custom built PC. The result is one of the best articles (and longest - 32,000 words!)I've ever read for anyone who's been using a Mac for a long time and wonders what life is like on the other side, particularly "pro" users, where Apple's quite limited set of hardware doesn't keep up with industry trends as quickly as some people would like. If you've been on the fence about switching your workflow from Mac to Windows, this is a must read.

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### Cheap Wolfenstein, Samsung USB drives, Sony AHC cans, Surface Books, iTunes, Todoist

- Wolfenstein: The Old Blood and The New Order are only $7.55 ea on the AU Playstation store.
- Officeworks and The Good Guys have Samsung 32GB ($15) and 64GB ($25) USB 3.0 flash drives going cheap. They're nice because they're made out of metal and semi-fast.
- Sony WH-1000XM2 wireless noise cancelling headphones for $371 (use code PRAWNS).
- Microsoft has 20% off its eBay store (use the code PUPIL), which means stuff like the 1st-gen Surface Book Pro i7 with 256GB SSD is only $1359.20. Loads of Surface accessories, which often aren't discounted, are on sale too.
- Woolworths has 15% off iTunes cards for a week starting tomorrow, but get Officeworks to match instead, so you get an extra 5% off.
- If you're interested in Todoist (I've never used it, but I know people that like it), here's 3 months of free Premium access.

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That's it, see ya tomorrow!
--Anthony

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 acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures, and to elders both past and present.​

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