The US government along with 60 other countries, including Australia, have signed a non-binding statement called the Declaration for the Future of the Internet. These countries "reaffirm the vision of an open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet and reverse negative trends in this regard". It all sounds good. Hard to disagree with making the internet easier to access and cheaper, allowing information to flow freely, protecting privacy and so on, but as Access Now says, "we have seen so many global principles and statements come and go without meaningful progress". I doubt this one is any different.
Telstra is buying 51% of Fetch TV (if the ACCC lets them). According to an announcement on Facebook, "the Fetch team will continue to operate standalone, servicing all of our existing ISP and retail customers as well as Telstra". For now it's business as usual, but over time "Telstra will start to migrate Telstra TV customers onto the Fetch platform". I guess that means the Telstra TV set top box (which was a rebranded Roku device and quite good) is dead? Will also be interesting to see if any of the Foxtel apps or properties (Binge, Kayo, etc) make their way onto the Fetch TV unit.
You know that wireless electricity thing I mentioned yesterday that Belkin was gonna release some time this year? It's steaming hot bullshit. Belkin told The Verge that "our agreement with Wi-Charge only commits us to R&D on some product concepts so it's too early to comment on timing of viable consumer products". There's no product launch imminent. It looks like Wi-Charge's founder and chief business officer Ori Mor was getting too excited and the story took hold across the internet. Yet another false start for this technology that's been "6 months to a year" away for almost a decade.
Inspired by Nathan For You (fucking brilliant show, go watch it!), someone's made Straight 2 Spam. Simply copy the text on the website and paste it into your email so that email ends up in the other person's spam folder. Perfect for the scenarios where you want to say you emailed someone, but you don't want them to actually see the email, or add a delay to when they see it. Delightful.
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.
📻 Dr Love - Bumblebeez
😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.
💬 Checked out the paid subscriber only forum? It's a tidy little place to discuss tech with like minded Aussies.
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📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.
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