Sydney the only Australian city to join the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights
India’s space program is gonna try land on the moon in a few weeks
Huawei started displaying ads on smartphone lockscreens all of a sudden
Dropbox’s latest redesign adds too much stuff nobody asked for
UK rubber stamps US extradition request for Julian Assange
Sponsored Job Ad: Technical Recruiter - Lookahead Search (Sydney)
Don’t forget to pay tax on your cryptocurrency
Nextdns is a cloud-based private DNS server
Cheap Optus wi-fi modem, Samsung 64GB microSD, Crucial 1TB SSD, Voll B50 bookshelf speakers, PlayStation Classic, Microsoft Surface Book 2, Sonos Beam and Sonos One speakers
Sydney is the first Australian city to join the The Cities Coalition for Digital Rights - a group of cities that agree to not be shit regarding the digital rights of their citizens (the full list of pledges is here). Over 400 cities across Australia were asked by Digital Rights Watch to support the declaration, but only Sydney agreed to it. Darwin and Perth are actually doing the opposite, implementing facial recognition programs. Considering white Australia is a country grown from convicts (literally petty crimes punished incredibly harshly), it's disappointing to see us sucking up to such authoritarianism so willingly.
India has been rapidly developing its space program lately and is now preparing to land a rover on the moon - something only the USA, Russia and China have succeeded in doing. The plan for Chandrayaan-2 is to visit parts of the moon never before visited in a few weeks to "analyze crust samples for signs of water and helium-3. That isotope is limited on Earth yet so abundant on the moon that it theoretically could meet global energy demands for 250 years if harnessed". Sounds like a pretty worthwhile mission to me, good luck to everyone involved!
Huawei's flagship P30 & P20 smartphones suddenly started display ads for Booking.com on the lockscreen overnight. There's an app installed by default called "Magazine Unlock" that shows random pretty images on the lockscreen (but not ads) and it appears to have re-enabled itself on people's phones and started showing ads for Booking.com. Kinda gross that unavoidable ads are shown without permission on a $1500+ device like the P30 Pro (which I actually quite liked for the ~2 weeks I owned one).
Dropbox has released a totally overhauled version of their product they call "new Dropbox". It centres around "bringing your content together" and now lets you integrate Google, Microsoft, Slack, Zoom and other productivity apps into the one spot. Dropbox looks to have pivoted from simply being a useful tool to sync files across multiple computers to being an all-in-one cloud productivity app. I haven't used Dropbox for years (I get OneDrive for free with Office 365) but this looks like a goddamn mess nobody asked Dropbox for.
The UK has approved the USA's request to extradite Julian Assange to face the music on 18 counts regarding his "alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States" - i.e: the Iraq War and Afghan War Logs plus 250,000 US diplomatic cables that he received (or solicited, depending who you ask) from former US Marine Chelsea Manning. Dunno when armed guards will escort Julian across the Atlantic, but you can rest assured of the shitshow that'll go down once his trial begins in the US.
We hire people who already care about technology and train them to become great technical recruiters. Sometimes that's a developer who wants to be in a more people focused role. Sometimes it's a product manager who wants more autonomy. The glue that binds us at Lookahead is that we care about technology and bringing people together. Each of us has experience in a software team, and it's that empathy for how products are built that helps us match the right people to the right companies. If you're a Sizzle subscriber, we're already off to a good start. If you are curious about what a people focused role is like, email steve@lookahead.com.au
If you’d like to let 700-ish tech savvy Aussies know about your job vacancy, drop me a line. It’s $100 for a week.
June 30 is only a few weeks away, so that means getting all your tax related shit in order - that includes any cryptocurrency you’ve got stashed away. CoinJar has a tidy little guide with what to keep in mind regarding tax & cryptocurrency. They also mention that the ATO has a forum (!?) and on that forum there’s a section specifically about cryptocurrency (!!??), so if you’ve got questions chances are someone’s already asked it and you can find the answer there, or you can ask a question yourself.
Nextdns is kinda like Cloudflare’s DNS and Pi-Hole mashed into one easy to use interface. You sign up for it (it’s free for now), configure all the settings you like (what to block/whitelist, enable DNS over HTTPS, etc.) and plug the unique DNS server IP address details in to your devices. Pretty nifty! They’re gonna have apps soon to make it even easier to use (so you don’t have to manually update your IP address in their dashboard). I still prefer Wireguard + Pi-Hole for when I’m using 4G on my laptop/iPad though.
Kmart’s got Alcatel 4G wi-fi modems for $20 that include 4GB of Optus data. Lots of LTE bands supported and cheap to unlock via an eBay code.
Samsung EVO Plus 64GB microSD card - $18 at Officeworks. At least buying from Officeworks you don’t have to worry about getting a fake.
Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD - $152 using the code PYLON at @ Futu Online’s eBay store.
Voll B50 bookshelf speakers - $119.95. These are small but they apparently sound great for the price.
Amazon’s got the PlayStation Classic for $39.
Microsoft Surface Book 2 (13.5", i5-8350U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $1797 at Harvey Norman.
Get two Sonos One speakers for $499 or a Sonos Beam for $549 direct from Sonos’ online store.
🎶 Radiohead - 15 Step
😁 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.
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.