### Issue 1896 - Wednesday 26th July, 2023

I need to take some time off, so tomorrow's and Friday's issues of The Sizzle will be handled by old mate Raj Deut. Some of you might know him from Reckoner! I'll be back on the 31st of July.

## In Today's Issue

- The ATO is cool with scammers ripping off $557m in MyGov identity fraud
- Get your eye scanned by Sam Altman's Orbs and receive some Worldcoin in return
- Disney to stop selling physical media in Australia
- Stack Overflow is dying, huge drop in visitors and activity
- Cheap Wera screwdriver kit, LEGO Mars Rover, Logitech wireless headset, refurb & new HDD bulk buy

## The News

### The ATO is cool with scammers ripping off $557m in MyGov identity fraud

A whopping $557m has been stolen off the ATO and people entitled to a tax refund by scammers in the last two years. According to an ABC investigation, data from high-profile breaches like Medibank and Optus are being used to lodge fake Business Activity Statements and tax returns via MyGov that are then deposited into bank accounts in the names of those people that the scammers create using the stolen identities. Despite being fleeced of over half a billion dollars, the ATO told the ABC the existing setup is a "balance between the systems being easy to access for the majority of taxpayers, while being hard to access for those with criminal intent" and that "we are managing an acceptable level of risk". Half a billion dollars! In 24 months! It'll be a billion dollars soon! Risk my arse, this is just incompetence.

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### Get your eye scanned by Sam Altman's Orbs and receive some Worldcoin in return

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's Worldcoin cryptocurrency is out of beta. The website claims Worldcoin is a "privacy-preserving digital identity (World ID) and, where laws allow, a digital currency (WLD) received simply for being human" and can be a "reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes, and eventually show a potential path to AI-funded UBI". To do this you visit an Orb (not a joke) and have your eyeball scanned and linked to your World ID digital identity in the "World" smartphone app, plus roughly A$100 in Worldcoin. There's no Orbs in Australia yet, so we can't get World IDs. On one hand, this is terrifying as a solution to a digital identity. On the other we have MyGov. Ugh.

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### Disney to stop selling physical media in Australia

Bad news for people that like to own media instead of rent it - "The Digital Bits have confirmed today with multiple industry, distributor, and retailer sources in the region that Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment is indeed pulling out of the Australian market in terms of physical media. This follows similar moves in Asia (save for Japan) and Latin America, and the reason is apparently down to the gradual collapse of physical disc sales in the region, the growth of Disney+ Starz streaming, and also the rise of global retailers (think Amazon, Zavvi, etc). None of that will be of any comfort to disc fans in Australia, who will now have to pay a hefty shipping premium to import titles from outside the country". It's only a matter of time until Disney decides to end physical media releases entirely, making archival way more difficult.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Stack Overflow is dying, huge drop in visitors and activity

Ayhan Fuat Celik visualised Stack Overflow's traffic over the last few years using data that Stack Overflow themselves provide, and the picture isn't pretty. The website has lost almost 50% of its traffic since the start of 2022. You could attribute it to the rise of ChatGPT and developers (including hacks like myself) simply asking the chatbot for help instead of referring to Stack Overflow, but the rot started well before LLMAs hit the scene. Posts and votes have been tumbling since a huge peak in mid-2020. I'm not active enough in the Stack Overflow community to know what's going on, but whatever happened, it's causing the once mighty Stack Overflow to decay right before our eyes.

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## Bargains

- Wera Kraftform Kompakt 100 52-piece screwdriver set - $92.18 from Amazon
- LEGO Technic NASA Mars Rover Perseverance (42158) - $111 from Amazon
- Logitech Zone Vibe 100 wireless headset - $72 from Big W
- Neology HDD bulk buy, refurb Seagate ST16000NM000J 18TB EXOS X18 3.5" HDDs for $325.92 each & many other capacities both new & refurb

## Image Of The Day

Alan Sugar, Chairman of Amstrad Consumer Electronics plc, pictured with the company's latest product, the CPC 464 home computer - 1984 (KailoKyra / Internet Archive)

## The End

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