### Issue 1650 - Friday 15th July, 2022

I was a guest on the Hemispheric Views podcast this week. They got me on to chat a bit about The Sizzle, you might find it interesting!

## In Today's Issue

- Amazon's Ring is a cops best friend, hands over video without your consent or a warrant
- Hyundai's Ioniq 6 EV announced, Ioniq 5 gets a small discount in Australia
- Local tech news crumbs
- Mail-in-a-box makes it pretty easy to self host an email server
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap Samsung tablet, Canon EOS R5 camera, Xbox Series X, WD 5TB portable HDD, 300GB/m Telstra plan, Dell 34" curved USB-C monitor, TerraMaster NAS

## The News

### Amazon's Ring is a cops best friend, hands over video without your consent or a warrant

Amazon's Ring constant collusion with US police is well known, but recently they admitted to the US Senate that in 2022 they complied with 11 "emergency" requests from police. In these cases there was no warrant but Ring handed over video to police without the camera owner's consent. That's pretty concerning. Now The Verge has discovered that it's so routine, that Ring has a formal website for cops to request "emergency" video from a Ring camera without a warrant. I get why there might be an urgent need for access to video, but damn this is a slippery slope that isn't worth sliding down considering the high risk of abuse.

### Hyundai's Ioniq 6 EV announced, Ioniq 5 gets a small discount in Australia

Hyundai has shown off the production model Ioniq 6 - a fancy sedan that kinda looks like a munted Porsche. The biggest battery variant has 610km of WLTP range and is based on the same E-GMP platform as the Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6. It'll go on sale in Australia in "the first half of 2023" in one fully-equipped specification, two drivetrain options (RWD & AWD), will be a similar price to the Ioniq 5 and sold the same way via Hyundai's website. Speaking of the Ioniq 5, there's now two variants in Australia - the Dynamiq and Techniq. The Dynamic has fewer features (no sunroof, smaller wheels), but is cheaper ($69,990+ORC) and has more range (481km). Still bugger all stock flowing in though.

### Local tech news crumbs

Some local tech news from the week that didn't make the cut then, but are worth mentioning now as there's not much else going on:

- The Victorian government signed a 3-year "state purchase contract" with Amazon Web Services. It'll "facilitate streamlined and consistent contracting for all eligible Victorian government agencies" and "help agencies save costs from the day they sign up due to the economies of scale achieved from the aggregated procurement".
- Australia must "seize a once in a generation opportunity to help make the country a renewable superpower", according to the Prime Minister's speech at the Sydney Energy Forum. He went on to say renewable energy will "lay a new foundation for sustainable growth and prosperity". Nice words, time for action!
- NBN paid out $78m in executive bonuses in 2020 and the ALP reckons NBN was setting artificially low targets so the bonuses were pretty much locked in. Now they're in government, they're going to force all government owned businesses to justify targets set for executive bonuses.
- Bank of Queensland got pinged $133,200 by the ACCC for not implementing its Consumer Data Right obligations by the July 1st deadline. If you forgot, CDR forces banks to make data they have on you accessible and interoperable with other entities on your request. BoQ just didn't have it shit together in time.
- The NSW government has placed cameras and sensors under 32 buses and is using the data collected while the bus is doing its route to assess local roads. This way they get a stream of data on road quality regularly, rather than the usual 4-yearly road audit they do now. Sounds like a good idea to me.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Mail-in-a-box makes it pretty easy to self host an email server

Everyone tells you to never set up your own mail server and just pay Fastmail/Microsoft/Google to do it for you, but Mail-in-a-Box makes it stupidly easy to self-host a modern mail server that appears to not get shitlisted by the big boys. There's a decent webmail interface, it supports Let's Encrypt, has good spam filtering and is regularly updated (last update June 12, 2022!). I installed it myself years ago for fun and it was great, so I imagine it's only improved in the years since.

## Friday Forum Update

Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.

- adjwhite86 wants a fitness tracker device thingy, but not necessarily an Apple Watch
- coljac is an astronomer lucky enough to handle data from the James Webb Space Telescope and will answer any questions you have about it!
- andyb kicks off a discussion on Privacy Act reforms, particularly for smaller businesses and organisations
- mvyrmnd has set up something called SearXNG (a self-hosted meta search engine??) with a Tor Proxy you might find interesting
- Beggars created a little tool called TidyFork that will clean out old forks and starred repos on GitHub

## Bargains

- Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite Wi-Fi 32GB - $197 from Amazon
- Canon EOS R5 camera body - $4588 from digiDirect's eBay store
- Xbox Series X Console - $734.99 at Costco
- WD 5TB Elements Portable SE HDD - $145 at Officeworks
- Sign up at JB for a $99/m Telstra 300GB/m phone plan on a 24m contract and get a free $1000 JB gift card
- Dell S3423DWC 34" 3440x1440 curved monitor with USB-C - $599.50 from Dell
- TerraMaster F5-221 Intel J3355 5-bay NAS - $459 + delivery from Scorptec

## The End

📻 Demons - Super Furry Animals

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

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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.