### Issue 1846 - Tuesday 16th May, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Conduent to take over Myki and give it features Opal has had for years
- Apple, Google and Microsoft given a heads up by PwC on how to get around tax laws PwC cooked up for Australian Treasury & ATO
- EU approves Microsoft & Activision merger, National Anti-Scam Centre to open in July, AI is eating Stack Overflow's lunch
- Free 55" TV with a catch, permanent ads on a second display just below it
- Cheap C&C Remastered Collection, GL.inet travel router, PNY & Kingston SSDs, BlitzWolf mechanical keyboard, Viofo A119 Mini dashcam, Amaysim pre-paid, SmallRig desk mount stand, Apple Watch, M2 12" iPad Pro

## The News

### Conduent to take over Myki and give it features Opal has had for years

The Victorian state government announced yesterday that they're giving a fat stack of cash to "globally renowned ticketing supplier" Conduent Business Services over 15 years to replace NTT as the supplier of Myki. Conduent have also delivered and operated ticketing systems in Paris, Dubai, New Jersey and Montreal and will bring the much desired ability for passengers to "tap on and off with their credit or debit card and pay with a digital wallet on a smartphone or smart watch" - things that are table stakes in Sydney and believe it or not, Adelaide. Trials kick off in 2024 and Conduent have the gig for 15 years.

### Apple, Google and Microsoft given a heads up by PwC on how to get around tax laws PwC cooked up for Australian Treasury & ATO

Corporate goons PwC get truckloads of money from the government to practically come up with policies and get an even bigger truckload of cash from megacorps to come up with ways to get around those policies. Never has this utterly fucked situation been more fucked than a story in the AFR yesterday explaining how Apple, Google and Microsoft were the first people PwC got on the blower to after an ex-PwC partner finished up formulating the multinational anti-avoidance law for Treasury and the ATO in 2015. PwC gave these three massive tech companies (and others) advice on how to get around the very tax laws they created. Dunno if this is "tech news" but Apple, Google and Microsoft are involved and it pissed me off, so in The Sizzle it goes.

### EU approves Microsoft & Activision merger, National Anti-Scam Centre to open in July, AI is eating Stack Overflow's lunch

- Unlike the UK, the EU has approved Microsoft buying Activision. The EU reckons the 10-year deals Microsoft stitched up with "competitors" to supply games is solid and that Microsoft "would have no incentive to refuse to distribute Activision's games to Sony" but even if it did decide not to give Sony any games "this would not significantly harm competition in the consoles market". The FTC has already filed legal action to challenge the merger in the USA, so weirdly, the EU is the only major economy happy for Microsoft and Activision to get married.
- The National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC) got a launch date - July 1st, 2023. The ACCC's announcement says they will work on "the first fusion cell, which will coordinate efforts across government and the private sector to combat specific scam activity more effectively". Fusion cell, lol. Anyways, it'll bring the ACCC, ACMA and ASIC together to be a central point for reporting, intelligence and disruption of scams (mostly phone & internet based) in Australia.
- Web analytics firm SimilarWeb noticed that Stack Overflow's traffic has dropped 6% on average every month since early 2022, with a big 13.9% drop between Feb & March 2023 and 17.7% drop between March & April 2023. Their hypothesis - GitHub's Copilot and ChatGPT being good enough for many of the queries Stack Overflow was the go-to source of information for. Stack Overflow's director of communications confirmed the theory. Ironic, as a good chunk of the data that fed Copilot and ChatGPT probably came from Stack Overflow.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Free 55" TV with a catch, permanent ads on a second display just below it

Want a free 55" 4K HDR smart TV? Telly in the USA is offering you that - in return all you need to do is put up with a second screen just below it that permanently shows ads "and other information". The secondary smart screen is how Telly makes money, flogging ads that you will always have in front of your eye balls. My first reaction upon reading this was utter disgust and a general lowering in my already quite low faith in humanity, but if you don't use this thing as a TV for watching your favourite movies and TV shows, but as some sort of display you glance at every now and then, it feels more tolerable and maybe, quite thrifty and I'd be tempted to take the free TV.

## Bargains

- Command & Conquer Remastered Collection - $4.49 on Steam and the EA App
- GL.inet GL-MT3000 portable travel router - $135.15 from Amazon
- PNY CS2241 4TB PCIe 4.0 SSD - $304 + delivery from MyDeal ($40 cashback via Cashrewards)
- Kingston KC3000 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD - $210.95 from Mwave
- BlitzWolf BW-KB0 Bluetooth mechanical keyboard & bonus Xiaomi 64GB USB flash drive - $41 from Banggood AU
- VIOFO A119 Mini dashcam - $152.14 from Amazon
- Amaysim 365-day prepaid SIM 60GB/120B unlimited called & SMS + 2000 Everyday Rewards points - $99/$119 from Woolworths
- SmallRig Selection Desk Mounting Stand - $32.90 from Amazon
- Apple Watch Series 8 GPS 41mm/45mm Midnight Aluminum - $579/$629 from David Jones
- Apple 2022 12.9-inch iPad Pro (Wi-Fi, 128GB, M2 SoC) - $1597.15 from Amazon

## Image Of The Day

Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It) 5067 for Sega Master System. (AlMagno / Internet Archive)

## The End

📻 Incinerate - Sonic Youth

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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.