Issue 2249 - Tuesday 14th January, 2025

Hello! Here with some more housekeeping. Beehiiv, the platform which I’ve been using to send out the Sizzle, is doing some automatic link tracking. I just wrote a forum post about why this sucks and what I’m trying to do about it.

In Today’s Issue

The News

It’s 2025 and we’re still doing NBN election promises

And that’s the starter gun going off for the 2025 election! Yesterday, Anthony Albanese pledged $3 billion in NBN funding to pay for 622,000 new fibre to the premise connections by 2030, and reiterated a promise to keep the network publicly owned. Friend of the Sizzle, The Guardian’s Josh Taylor, summed up the sorry state of NBN policy over the past fifteen years:

As tempting as it is to look backwards at the obviously moronic takes, we should also question whether this is a good move now. The Australian, predictably, has the most negative takes with TPG saying we shouldn’t be spending money upgrading areas where there’s existing infrastructure ($) and a piece arguing that current bad internet speeds and the ascendance of Starlink and 5G is leading to a (tiny) drop-off in NBN connections already ($) so a NBN splurge is a bad bet. On the latter at least, I think there’s a bit of confusion between cause and effect. I suspect people are leaving crappy NBN fibre-to-the-node copper connections for satellite and cellular, neither of which are capable of handling anywhere close to the lion’s share of the a nation’s connectivity on fibre and copper.

I’m not surprised that it’s an election issue because we all know how important it is to politicians that kids in the bush are losing to gamers overseas because of their poor speeds. (A bonus for the real sickos: enjoy this bonkers NBN take in the Age in 2006).

EV charging via power pole and BYD up, Tesla down

Haven’t had a chance to hit EVs yet this year, so I was excited to see this from Australia’s energy grid lobby group calling to be allowed to install chargers on existing power poles. Energy Networks Australia says adding kerbside chargers would bring down costs by increasing supply and adding competition, but an article notes that there’s a lot of red tape to go through to get them installed and questions about whether it could affect grid reliability. I say have a crack. BYD continues to gain on Tesla, with the Chinese carmaker supposedly Australia’s preferred EV maker over the Musk-owned company which, for the first time, saw a (small) drop in global sales last year. Also OpenAI is now hiring staff reportedly to work on autonomous cars. If only we could directly power cars with Sam Altman’s endless hype…

Never been a better time to be decentralised social media

We spend so much time talking about the Bad social media companies, it’s nice to shine a light on the Good (or at least, better) ones. Decentralised social media service Mastodon will soon be owned by a non-profit organisation, with the founder saying this will ensure it will “be free of the control of a single wealthy individual.” Wonder who he’s talking about? Bluesky, on the other hand, will get a boost from a campaign — backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, the writer who coined “enshittification” Cory Doctorow and actor Mark Ruffalo — that is seeking to raise $4 million to create an organisation to build off Bluesky’s underlying AT Protocol. The more time I spend online, the more I realise the only option for a good internet is one that’s built on open protocols that give us more choice which is where we should put our energy to support. As a former Twitter addict, I’ve found that Bluesky has pretty much scratched the itch so I highly recommend that you follow The Sizzle.

Oh, Also

Bitcoin garbage dive legal bid denied

I get it. If my ex-girlfriend had dropped off $1.1 billion (and counting) at the tip, I’d probably dedicate a decade to coming up with extravagant schemes about how I could get it back, too. We can all see a little of ourselves in Brit James Howells who just had a judge deny his long-shot bid to force his local Newport Council to let him excavate a council landfill to find a hard drive supposedly holding 8,000 bitcoin, or cough up about a billion dollars in compensation. Howells reckons the hard-drive would still work even if it was crushed. IDK, it seems like the judge did him a favour by putting an end to this, but I’m not sure he agrees.

Bargains

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday afternoon. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Gadigal 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.