CORONAVIRUS
Faecbook’s new desktop UI is live for public consumption
Levandowski pleads guilty to one criminal charge of stealing Waymo data
Web browsers do so much more than render HTML in 2020
Affinite Photo, Designer & Publisher, DJI Mavic Mini Fly More combo, Football Manager 2020, Synology DS918+ NAS, JVC CarPlay/Android Auto head unit, Outer Worlds for PC, Switch Lite, Doom Eternal with Logitech G purchase
Netflix will reduce the quality of its streams in the EU for the next 30 days so struggling networks have capacity for more important stuff.
Tesla finally realised its not an “essential service” (the local sheriff threatening them with jail probably helped) and will close its US factories March 23rd.
Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla & SpaceX can make ventilators if they want to if there's shortage, but the Mayor of NYC is asking him to start now, before there's a shortage.
Microsoft said use of its Teams product has grown by 40% of the past week, amassing 44 million daily active users as of yesterday.
The Victorian government has published a bunch of info for schools to ensure education continues for kids that have to stay at home due to coronavirus.
Gaming hardware maker Razer is converting its manufacturing lines to make up to 1 million surgical masks it will donate to global health authorities.
Telstra won’t sack people for at least 6 months and will hire an extra 1,000 call centre staff in Australia. It’ll also bring forward some 5G infrastructure to boost the economy.
Nvidia is allowing researchers to use its normally quite expensive GPU-accelerated genome analysis toolkit, Parabricks, for free.
The UK wants to build a platform for tracking coronavirus patients using their smartphone location. The NHS & University of Oxford are working on it alongside the government apparently.
NAPLAN isn’t going ahead this year. Even though it’s online for most students, shit is just too messed up for it to proceed and be a useful measure of learning.
Facebook’s desktop web interface got a total overhaul recently. It’s been in beta for a while, but now it’s live for everyone if you go into the settings and turn the new interface on. At first glance it’s basically the mobile UI and the news feed column doesn’t go very wide. Groups are more obvious though, with a quick way to access all of them in the one spot. I like it as Groups is pretty much what I use Facebook for. This new look will be the default for everyone later in 2020. Can’t wait to witness the mass hysteria when everyone’s cheese is moved!
Anthony Levandowski has agreed to a plea deal where he admits guilt to one of the 33 criminal indictments the Department of Justice has thrown at him, in return for the DoJ not seeking more than 30 months in jail. The specific thing he pleaded guilty to is "downloading to his personal computer a file that tracked technical goals for Google’s self-driving project". In court papers he said, "I downloaded these files with the intent to use them for my own personal benefit, and I understand that I was not authorized to take the files for that purpose". Levandowski could have been facing up to 10 years on each of the indictments, so taking the single guilty offer for a possible max of 30 months is probably the right thing to do.
Over the last 30 years, web browsers have evolved from things that render HTML to practically mini-operating systems, as demonstrated by Luigi De Rosa's list of things web browsers in 2020 are capable of. The vast majority are related to mobile web browser use and I had no idea they were actually cross platform. Stuff like requesting payments (Apple Pay & Google Pay), checking if certain native apps exist, the "share via" sharing cards in Android/iOS, support for game pads, picture-in-picture video playback and others just show how much you can do with a web browser alone these days.
Buy any Logitech G product worth over $149 (e.g: mouse, headset, keyboard, etc) and get a free copy of Doom Eternal at Harvey Norman
Nintendo Switch Lite - $279 from Amazon or JB Hi-Fi
The Outer Worlds game for PC - $39.58 at Green Man Gaming
JVC KWM750BT double DIN CarPlay/Android Auto head unit - $294 at Supercheap Auto
Synology DS918+ 4-bay NAS - $636.65 from Computer Alliance’s eBay store using the code PZAP15
Football Manager 2020 is free for PC users of Steam until 25th of March
DJI Mavic Mini Fly More Combo - $639.20 from digiDIRECT
50% off Affinity Photo, Designer & Publisher for Mac, PC & iOS
🎶 Bongo Plan - Art vs. Science
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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.