### Issue 1331 - Thursday 25th March, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Disco Elysium videogame refused classification in Australia, calls for revamp of rating system
- Buy a Tesla with Bitcoin and enjoy a totally new and confusing way to change gears
- Slack's new DM anyone feature just created a loophole for spammers and abuse
- The argument for running ad blocking software is still strong, with the good outweighing the bad
- Cheap Sonos Arc & Sub, Optus home 4G broadband, Dahua 31.5" monitor, Nvidia Shield TV Pro, $800 off any smartphone on a Telstra plan, Nintendo Switch Lite, Nokia 7.2, 10% off Macs, Dell 32" 4K monitor, Apple Watch S3

## The News

### Disco Elysium videogame refused classification in Australia, calls for revamp of rating system

The publishers of Disco Elysium - The Final Cut, want to sell their popular game on consoles in Australia, which requires running it past the notoriously prudish Australian Classification Board to get a rating like PG, MA15+, etc. As predicted it was refused classification (i.e: banned from sale) beacuse there's a portion of the game where you take drugs and any video game featuring drugs is outright banned, despite movies and TV shows showing similar activities. Now the industry wants an overhaul of the classification system, saying that the current rules were set in the 1990s "moral panic" era of video games that don't treat them as the "the mainstream medium and artistic discipline that they are".

### Buy a Tesla with Bitcoin and enjoy a totally new and confusing way to change gears

You can now pay for a Tesla in Bitcoin (in the USA), with Elon promising that "Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency". Doesn't sound like a problem until you realise the energy to make the transaction is equivalent to driving the car 5,300km. Also in weird Tesla stuff, they've removed the gear selector stalk on the new Model S and replaced it some machine learning nonsense that "guesses drive direction based on what obstacles it sees, context & nav map" and automatically selects it for you - but when it inevitably fucks up, there's an icon on the touchscreen you slide back and forth. Sounds absolutely horrible.

### Slack's new DM anyone feature just created a loophole for spammers and abuse

Slack has launched a new feature that allows you do send a direct message to anyone using Slack - not just the people in your group/workplace. It's called Connect DMs and lets you "send an invite to anyone via their work email address, and if the recipient accepts (everything is opt-in), their new contact is added to their Slack sidebar. The conversations are tied to the users' organizations, but exist in a separate section of the Slack app itself". Sounds handy, but Slack didn't realise people are shit and it opens up a whole new vector for abuse because "the user making the 'invitation' gets to send a message of up to 560 characters to their targeted recipient, and Slack emails the recipient the full body of that message". Slack said they'll fix it soon.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The argument for running ad blocking software is still strong, with the good outweighing the bad

As someone that makes a living selling his work online, I really shouldn't be advocating for people to use adblockers as so much stuff online is funded with the spillage that giant corporations splash out of the trough that's filled by the advertiser dollars they gorge themselves on - but fuck ads are annoying. Not only are they annoying, but as shouldiblockads.com points out, they spread misinformation, include harmful scripts, links to malicious software and aren't even that effective! For what its worth, I run UBlock Origin in Firefox as my main ad-blocker, as well as NextDNS on my entire network so devices/services where I can't install UBlock also get some level of protection.

## Bargains

- Sonos Arc soundbar & 3rd gen Sub combo - $1999 from Premier Hifi
- Optus 500GB or 200GB/m 4G home broadband plan with modem - $67.60/$58.50 per month on a 24m contract
- Dahua IPS 1440p 60hz 31.5" monitor - $225 + delivery from Mwave
- NVIDIA Shield TV Pro - $276 at Harvey Norman
- $800 off any smartphone when porting to a Telstra $99/m 12m plan with 150GB of data at The Good Guys
- Nintendo Switch Lite - $248 at Harvey Norman
- Nokia 7.2 Dual SIM 128GB storage 6GB RAM smartphone with Android One - $284.05 at JB Hi-Fi
- 10% off Macs at JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys the next few days
- Dell S3221QS 32" curved 4K monitor - $417.93 from Dell
- Apple Watch Series 3 GPS 38mm or 42mm - $278/$328 at Harvey Norman (then get Officeworks to price match for an extra 5% off)

## The End

📻 Familiar Territory - The Mark of Cain

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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.​