Issue 1315 - Tuesday 2nd March, 2021

In Today's Issue

The News

Non-fungible tokens are the latest fad/ponzi scheme/genius idea using blockchain technology

It's time for us to have a chat about the latest fad in blockchain technology - Non-fungible tokens, aka NFTs. They're getting talked about lately due to the insane prices getting thrown around for art or collectables that are essentially a file on a computer that has its ownership linked to an identity on the blockchain. The NBA's "Top Shots" is probably the best example of this, a US$230m marketplace selling officially licenced video clips people can trade. Grimes has sold over $6m of digital art on a marketplace called Nifty Gateway. That's some serious real world cash. What a time to be alive folks.

Gab got hacked, spoils to be shared with researchers and journalists

The shitheels at Gab (which has grown over 800% in popularity since Trump got the arse) have suffered a large data breach, with its grubby little CEO slithering back to Twitter to report that "mentally ill tranny demon hackers" are to blame. A group calling themselves Distributed Denial of Secrets and fronted by Emma Best has confirmed they "obtained 70GB of passwords, private posts, and more from Gab and was making them available to select researchers and journalists. The data, Best said, was provided by an unidentified hacker who breached Gab by exploiting a SQL-injection vulnerability in its code". Good luck to Ms Best in exposing these creeps, you have my best wishes.

Victorian solar FIT to drop again mid-2021

Victorians with solar panels on the roof of their home take note - the minimum feed-in tariff (FIT) is dropping from 10.2c to 6.7c on the 1st of July 2021. The drop sucks, but it makes sense as the wholesale cost of electricity is rapidly falling due to more and more renewables coming online both at grid-scale (VIC's 50% renewables by 2030 energy target is halfway there) and domestic rooftop solar (2.66 million homes in Australia have solar now). 6.7c is the minimum FIT by the way, retailers are more than welcome to offer higher rates. Just be careful you don't get sucked in by higher FITs and then get destroyed by higher supply charges to go with it.

Something I Saw On The Internet

An easy way to make a QR code sign for people to log in to your wi-fi network

WiFi Card is a simple service that generates a QR code you can print out and people can scan with their smartphones that quickly connects them to a wi-fi network. Type in the network's SSID and password and off it goes. WiFi Card will use the iOS or Android built-in mechanism to connect to wi-fi. Great if you have a guest network for people to connect to at work (or at home if you're the kind of person that lets visitors on their home network, yuck), a shop that has free wi-fi for guests or some other project that needs you to connect to a specific wi-fi network.

Bargains

The End

📻 Lawman - Girl Band

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

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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.​