NEWS
SA's electronic health records system is a dud (surprise)
South Australia's electronic medical records sytem is a steaming pile of shit, says the Australian Medical Association (AMA). It surveyed 250 staff members (doctors and nurses) and 40% of them reckon its a turd, 30% reckon it's no better than paper and 20% think it's contributing to worse patient outcomes. Unfortunately, upon hearing that the records system blows, SA's health minister dismissed it saying the AMA are "serial whingers". SA has spent $422m on this system and after 4 years, is still garbage. The SA coroner said it's getting in the way of death investigations, the follow-up appointments of 258 patients were deleted and the emergency department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was stuffed as *planned* maintenance occured uring the day and didn't come back online properly. It's okay though, the AMA are just whinging, carry on.
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GS Yuasa claims it has a battery twice as good for the same price, offers no details
Japanese battery company, GS Yuasa claims that it has invented a "lithium-ion battery that will give electric cars twice the range that today's designs do, for the same cost" and will enter mass production in 2020. Lithium Energy Japan, a joint venture between Mitsubshi and GS Yuasa will be the ones supplying car makers in Japan and eventually, Europe, with these super batteries. There's no detail on how they're doing this, not even a buzzword or two. I'm calling bullshit. It's more than a nice coincidence this news came out the day after Mazda made a splash with its HCCI engine yesterday. Until they've at least explained how they've managed to double the capacity of the best lithium batteries in what is a relatively short period of time (2020 mass production is not far away)it's vapourware.
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Launch Vic cancels its deal with 500 Startups
A few weeks ago it came out that Dave McClure, the co-founder of 500 Startups is a sex pest and he apologised for being so weird around women he was working with. Just a few days before Dave's mea-culpa, he was hobnobbing with Startup Victoria, a goverment department that fawned over his startup sweatshop and handed over a sack of cash to base itself in Melbourne instead of Sydney. Extremley bad optics. The minister put 500 Startups "on notice", then it came out 500 Startups knew about Dave's habits, yet didn't say shit about it to Startup Vic. Today, Startup Vic told 500 Startups to piss off and the $2.9m destined for 500 Startups never left taxpayer's hands.
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eSports could be a thing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris
eSports might be a thing at the 2024 Olympics. Paris is gonna be hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics and its been chatting to the IOC about having eSports as an official medal sport at the games. The IOC isn't too keen though, saying "we are not yet 100% clear whether eSports is really sport, with regard to physical activity and what it needs to be considered sport", but they ackowledge that the kids love it, so if the Olympics wants to remain relevant, it may have no choice but to include it. In 2022, eSports will be part of the Asian Games so that sets some sort of precendent for the 2024 Olympics. The Asian Games haven't decided on a list of titles up for an eSports medal, but this year's Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) in Turkmenistan will have DOTA 2, StarCraft 2, HearthStone and The King of Fighters XIV. The pictogram used for "Electronic Sports" for AIMAG is a person sitting at a desk, heh.
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Virgin Australia starts installing in-flight wi-fi across its fleet
Virgin Australia will be providing in-flight wi-fi across close to all of its fleet by the end of 2018, both domestically and international. Virgin Australia's CEO said that it'll be a two tier setup. Free shitty internet that'll probably barely work, then a premium pack with less shitty speeds that you gotta whip the credit card out for. That said, it's satellite based internet, so don't expect anything amazing. Gogo will be the ones providing it, unlike Qantas who are relying on NBN's Skymuster satellite. So by 2019, on either VA or QF, I can expect to have in-flight wi-fi on basically all flights, removing the final area of my life where the internet's evil spirits cannot touch me.
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COOL SHIT
10% off eBay sale & very cheap Dell Factory Outlet monitors
eBay has a 10% off, site wide sale that goes until the 13th of August. The code this time, is PINCH. Some highlights via Ozbargain: Hisense 65N6 tele for $1,568.20, Bose QC35s for $359.95, Chromecast Ultra for $85.50, Kindle Paperwhite for $156.60 and a Google Home for $178.20 (or $137.75 if you don't mind HK stock). Unrelated to eBay, but Dell has some excellent pricing on refurb & "as new" monitors - The U2715H (2560x1440, IPS) for $409 is an awesome price. If you're keen, get in quick, there's not a lot of stock.
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Honest VPN service reviews
One of the most common questions I'm asked by you lot is "what's a good VPN?". I don't blame you for asking, as it's really hard to find honest reviews of VPNs, as most sites are only reviewing them for the comissions offered by VPN providers or the good reviews go stale after a few months, when what was once a good VPN service ends up as having harvested everyone's data since day 1 and sold it off to Russian spammers or something. Mo Bitar has what appears to be, a no bullshit, genuine list of VPNs he's tried out and his opinions of them. Tunnelbear and OVPN seem to his picks. I've thought about setting up a small Sizzle VPN service myself, using Algo, as a little bonus for subscribers for a few bucks a month.
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AusRegistry is ripping us off on the price of wholesale .com.au domains
There's a group of people witin auDA that AusRegistry is price gouging for .com.au domain names. auDA are the body responsible for .au domains and AusRegistry are the company auDA have a contract with to wholesale .au domains to registrars. The wholesale price of a .com.au is $14.95, that's what auDA charges domain registrars, then the registrar adds their margin on top for managing it for you. Apparently, the contract agreed to in 2008 between auDA and AusRegistry says that the price should come down depending on the volume of domains sold. There's been loads of .au domains sold, yet the wholesale price for a .com.au has stayed the same since 2008 - $14.95. Why? AusRegistry is on the auDA board, so there's no motivation from auDA to push AusRegistry to lower the price or get a new contract made. Good old fashioned Aussie rent-seeking!
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Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers. Know someone who could use a bit of Sizzle in their life? Buy them a gift subscription!
