The Sizzle

• Reports into why the 2016 census bombed are now public
• Ministers and senior public servants to go on a cyber bootcamp
• Toyota HQ talking up an electric car, whilst Toyota Australia decides hydrogen is cool
• Reddit's CEO got caught trolling trolls
• NPR tracked down and talked to a fake news publisher

• Loads of Black Friday bargains

NEWS

Reports into why the 2016 census bombed are now public
Two reports into the disastrous 2016 census dropped yesterday. One from the Senate committee looking into it and another from "Prime Minister’s special adviser on cyber security", Alastair MacGibbon. The reports blame IBM and its subcontractors for being shithouse and taking government contracts for granted, but also blames the government for failing to fund the ABS properly for years so they could prepare for the census properly. Everyone sucked equally!
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Ministers and senior public servants to go on a cyber bootcamp
One good thing out of the census report is that it recommends all Australian government ministers and senior public servants will be sent to a "cyber bootcamp" to gain a microbe of knowledge about how the internet works and what's at risk if you fuck things up to do with the internet. Imagine having to be the person tasked with teaching idiots like Barnaby Joyce, Peter Dutton or that shitcunt from One Nation who thinks global warming is a hoax. Farken hell.
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Toyota HQ talking up an electric car, whilst Toyota Australia decides hydrogen is cool
Toyota seems to have realised electric cars are a thing and to stop fucking around with hydrogen fuel. A few weeks ago it announced it'll develop an electric car by 2020. Then it said it's just chucked 4 people on the project (which may not be a bad thing, if you subscribe to the skunkworks theory of development). Now it's proudly claiming a "battery breakthrough" that gives "15% greater range", which sounds good, but 15% greater than what? Meanwhile, Toyota Australia has decided to import the Mirai in an attempt to sell hydrogen cars here, lol *sad trombone*
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Reddit's CEO got caught trolling trolls
Steve Huffman, Reddit's CEO, has admitted to editing a handful of posts in the Donald Trump subreddit that were bagging him. Every time someone said "fuck u/spez" (spez is the CEO's Reddit name), he'd change the post to say "fuck r/the_donald". Apparently this happened in the wake of pizzagate (wtf is pizzagate) and he just had enough of people being mean to him on the internet. Internet drama is great.
Discuss

NPR tracked down and talked to a fake news publisher
NPR tracked down one of the leading fake news peddlers, Jestin Coler. He runs a bunch of shit sites with made up news that people think is real. NPR asked him why he does this, and he said it's just to show how stupid and gullible right wingers are, as he reckons, left wing people just don't eat up his fake news. Oh, and a bit of dick waving at how easy it is to spread fake news.
Discuss

COOL SHIT

Loads of Black Friday bargains
Because it's Thanksgiving in the US, Black Friday/Cyber Monday is coming up soon too - even Australian stores have joined in the fun. Of course, OzBargain is having a field day, so here's the best tech-related stuff I've found on OzBargain today.

Deals for digital software & game downloads:

• The new and cool Doom for $22
• VMware have 30% off Fusion and 40% off Workstation (tho VMware's consumer stuff may not be long for this world)
• Grab a .xyz domain for US$0.25. Only applies for the first year, dunno how much it is after that. Could be good for a laugh
• Get Adobe Creative Cloud at 20% off - works out to be A$552 for a year of the entire suite
• The VPN I use when hooking up to weird wi-fi or want to go a bit incognito for a while, Freedome, is currently 50% off. 1 year sub, with 5 devices, is €29.95 (about AU$47)
• Sims 4 Deluxe for just A$14 if you access Origin via a Canadian VPN
• Google Play Music and YouTube Red free trial for 4 months - plenty of time to try it out. I use it instead of Apple/Spotify. Well worth the $10/m
• The PlayStation store has a bunch of digital downloads of games on sale. Might get MGS V "Definitive Experience" for $27 and GTA V for $45 (I never played it on PS4, hah)
• Civ 6 steam code for just $23. Fucken huge bargain.

Stuff that's shipped from overseas:

• Lexar JumpDrive S75 256GB USB 3.0 flash drive, A$59 delivered (relatively fast & cheap) from Amazon US
• 200GB SanDisk MicroSD card for A$79 delivered, also from Amazon US
• New version of the Amazon Fire TV stick for A$57 delivered from B&H (cheapest thing around that support Plex, great for the parents to hook up to your Plex server)

Local store offers:

• VideoPro is selling the Sonos PLAY:1 for $238 with free delivery
• Myer has 20% off Lego. I like collecting the architecture Lego of places I've actually been to
• ShoppingExpress has some good pricing on stuff, but they're taking the "release shit every hour approach". WD 4TB Red HDDs for $205ea delivered is top notch. That $99 QNAP NAS is handy as a chuck it in the cupboard and never touch it device for backups. Intel Compute Stick looks interesting. SSD pricing across the range is solid

eBay has a 10% off site wide coupon at the moment. Here's some good stuff to use it on (i.e: stuff that isn't already jacked up in price versus buying it elsewhere):

• Kindle Paperwhite for $156 & free pickup at any Officeworks store
• Sigma ART lenses (some of the nicest prime lenses you'll ever use) - 35mm for $594 & 50mm for $792 with local warranties.
• Bose QC35 wireless noise canceling headphones for $395. COTD is supposed to be selling em for $389 or $379 if you have a MasterCard, but good fucken luck ordering from COTD in a sale (probably have like 3 in stock)
• Get a Chromecast 2 and a Chromecast Audio for $82.62 delivered from Kogan

If you spot any sweet deals you reckon other Sizzle readers would like, post it on the forum yeah?

Here endeth the sizzle (until Monday!)
--Anthony