There will not be an issue of The Sizzle sent on Monday 8th June because it’s the Queen’s Birthday public holiday in Victoria. Cheers Lizzy for the day off.
Zoom to restrict E2E encryption to paid users only as a way to help police
Dutton predictably wants more government agencies to access the metadata program
Signal’s popularity is booming and they added a nifty face blurring tool to the latest version
Four little macOS apps that’ll remind you why macOS is (was?) great
Cheap Pioneer 5.1 speakers, Doom Eternal, Viofo dashcams, Sims 4, DJI Osmo, LIFX mini
Zoom has said that they're only going to offer end-to-end encryption on its video conference platform only for paid subscribers. If you're making a freebie Zoom call with some mates for 40 minutes or whatever, it won't be encrypted. Sounds like it's an excuse to make you cough up for the paid version, but according to Zoom the lack of end-to-end encryption for free users is "because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose". I don't know what's worse, this bootlicking nonsense or trying to upsell people who want a bit of privacy.
The Department of Home Affairs (Peter "Potato" Dutton's police sweatshop) wants to expand who can get access to the big fat metadata machine. Commsday got its hands on a letter via FOI that Dutton wrote to the Tasmanian Attorney-General, who asked Dutton to get state Australian Consumer Law (ACL) regulators to be declared as enforcement agencies under the Act, so they can use metadata for ACL related infractions. In that letter Dutton said the department is working on ways to expand who can use the metadata system. We all knew the metadata system was a slippery slope, but who knew it would happen this quickly?
Continuing the security related theme for today, Signal has experienced a huge surge in downloads presumably due to US protestors wanting a secure way to communicate (e.g: organiser collaboration). For the past few weeks Signal was averaging about 8,000 downloads each week, but in the last week that shot up to over 26,000 and is now in the top 10 free apps on the iOS App Store. It's still a drop in the ocean compared to downloads of Whatsapp or Messenger, but the more people using Signal, the greater the network effect. Signal also released a new Face Blur feature because "2020 is a pretty good year to cover your face".
One of my favourite irregularly updated blogs, Tinyapps.org, has published a list of four macOS apps that make them smile despite the fact macOS is clearly not Apple's focus of attention lately. Claquette is a really simple video editing app that does pretty much 90% of what I use Final Cut Pro for. Fileloupe is a file browser made by a dude who used to work at Apple on Finder and before that, BeOS. MacDown is a no bullshit markdown editor with syntax highlighting and a live preview pane. Then there's the almighty Sublime Text that I'm using right now to type in my words before pasting them into a browser. I really should pay for it.
Pioneer’s “Andrew Jones” 5.1 surround speaker kit (awesome bang for buck, BYO amp) - $998 from Kogan
Doom Eternal - $51 at 2Game
Viofo A129 Pro Duo 4K & A129 Duo (non-4K) dashcams - $288.95/$188.95 from Shopping Square
The Sims 4 for Xbox One - $4.99 from Microsoft
DJI Osmo Action dual screen 4K action cam - $348 at Harvey Norman
White, B22/E27, dimmable LIFX Mini wi-fi light bulb - $19.99 on Amazon
🎶 All My Best Shit - Spice
😁 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.
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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.