Indian Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission has a successful launch
IBM wins contract for Australian Department of Defence ERP project
Facebook botched Messenger for Kids, allowing users to start group chats with unapproved contacts
Interesting things that were clogging up my bookmarks
Cheap Kogan 34" monitor, Apple Music for Optus customers, Dali speakers & Boost Mobile
The Indian Space Research Organisation has successfully launched the Chandrayaan-2 mission that'll land a rover (named Pragyan) on the Moon to explore the south pole. Scientists reckon there's water ice hanging around in that part of the Moon that's been frozen for ages due to the south pole always being in darkness. If all things go well from now on (leaving Earth orbit, entering Lunar orbit, the Vikram lander arriving on the moon, deploying the Pragyan rover), it'll be the first time humanity has explored that section of the Moon. The lander won't reach the lunar surface until September, so keep your fingers crossed!
Remember how IBM botched the 2016 online Census and seemed to suffer absolutely no consequences for doing so? They just won a $95.5m contract to deliver the initial design for Australia's Department of Defence enterprise resource planning program. There was a little bit of chatter on this in The Sizzle's Slack group where mnarkbr raised the excellent point that even if other companies wanted to get involved, the cost of even applying for this contract would be more than anyone except the usual suspects can afford, and that's why all these duds keep getting contracts despite an awful track record.
Facebook has a special version of Messenger for kids so that kids can only chat to people pre-approved by their parents. Unfortunately, Facebook allowed kids to create group chats with someone who is approved, who could then add their approved contacts in, even if they aren't approved by everyone else in the group. This left "thousands of children were left in chats with unauthorized users, a violation of the core promise of Messenger Kids". The US has the quite strong Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) that's supposed to protect kids under the age of 13, wouldn't it be nice to see Facebook punished harshly with this law?
Just clearing out some stuff in my bookmarks that are interesting but don't deserve an entire paragraph:
A 1hr talk about how to manufacture a modern microprocessor. It's more interesting than it sounds, trust me!
Thinking of leaving the sinking ship that is Evernote? The Verge has a guide to getting all your shit out of that dumpster fire.
An interactive version of youtube-dl, so you don't need to memorise all those CLI switches to get the quality you want.
"Creative Office Tired Girl Brooch Anxiety Angry Girl Overturn Table Computer Coffee Enamel Lapel Pin"
Million Short strips the first million Google results for a search and shows you the stuff at the bottom of the barrel.
Optus now offers 12 months of Apple Music for free on selected plans.
Kogan 34" 3440x1440 curved 21:9 monitor - $590.99 + delivery.
Not many bargains around besides those two above. Here's some bargains from yesterday that I reckon are great and worth repeating (the Boost mobile one in particular - if I wasn’t stuck in a contract with Telstra right now, I’d grab this Boost offer):
Dali Zensor 1 bookshelf speakers (pair) - $236 from Grays Online eBay store with the code PILOT
Coles will be selling 12m Boost pre-paid kits with 80GB of data for $140 (works out to just $11.67/m for 6.67GB/m of Telstra 4G data!)
🎶 Geek U.S.A - Smashing Pumpkins
😁 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.