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Twitch, YouTube and Reddit take out the trash, banning hate-filled personalities off their platforms
Federal government splashes $1.35b on the ASD to fight the cyberwar
Telstra changes 5G plan pricing & Optus trials 26GHz mmWave 5G
Early benchmarks of Apple’s developer kit with an A12Z SoC
Cheap Sony Atmos amp, 14TB HDD, Tenda mesh wi-fi, Tile Mate & Tile Mate Pro, Sim City 4 Deluxe, Ring Fit Adventure
It's been a big day for trolls getting banned off various social media platforms! Twitch "temporarily" banned Donald Trump's account for "hateful conduct" on a stream. The content in question was a "rebroadcast of Trump’s infamous kickoff rally, where he said that Mexico was sending rapists to the United States". Who knew Trump had a Twitch account?! YouTube banned three gigantic arseholes: Stefan Molyneux, David Duke and Richard Spencer, all for "alleging that members of protected groups were inferior". Reddit finally washed off one of its worst stains - /r/The_Donald, which "consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average, antagonized us and other communities, and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations". It looks to me like everyone grew a spine after Twitter decided to slap a warning on a Trump tweet and the world didn’t end.
A Cyber Enhanced Situational Awareness and Response (CESAR) package was announced by the PM today, with $1.35b of funding for Australia to "fight back" against "malicious cyber activity". $470m is to create 500 new jobs at the Australian Signals Directorate, $31m to "enhance ASD's ability to disrupt cybercrime offshore", $35m for a "new cyber threat-sharing platform, enabling industry and government to share intelligence about cyber activity", $12m to help "ASD and Australia's telecommunication networks block known malicious websites and halt the spread of computer viruses", $118m for "data science and intelligence" capabilities, $62 for "national situational awareness" and $20m for "research laboratories to better understand threats to emerging technology". The PM also said to visit asd.gov.au/careers if you're keen to take up arms in the cyber war against our cyber enemies on the cyber battlefield.
Telstra came to their senses and has decided not to start charging users an extra $15 to access their 5G network. Instead it will continue to be free for all plans above $65/m on July 1st, but plans below that will miss out. $65/m is the minimum if you wanna play the 5G game on Telstra. It amazes me how much more expensive these plans are compared to what's on offer from the MVNOs. I guess if you want 5G and/or eSIM support (e.g: for an Apple Watch or a 2nd number on your phone), you've got no choice. Optus announced successful trials of mmWave 5G using a 26GHz chunk of the spectrum, but won't go public for a while as the government is yet to sell off that part of the radiowaves. mmWave stuff is supposed to be short-range super high bandwidth. Not sure what it'll be useful for, but hey, go for it Optus.
Despite being under contractual agreement not to "publicly write about, review, share, or display the unit without Apple's prior written approval", people are sharing benchmarks of their shiny new Apple Developer Transition Kits. The x86 version of Geekbench running via Rosetta 2 (i.e: emulation) gave scores of "811 for single-threaded and 2781 for multi-threaded", "20% slower than the entry-level i3-1000NG4 powered Macbook Air's single-core results and 38% faster than its multi-threaded results". Even under emulation the A12Z outperforms the Surface Pro X's Qualcomm SoC running native ARM code. Considering the A12Z SoC was never intended for desktop use, is 2 years behind Apple's A13 in the iPhone and is running emulated code, this is an impressive result. Can’t wait to get a Mac Mini with a proper piece of Apple Silicon inside it for Christmas.
Sony STR-DH790 7.2 Atmos amp - $649 from Kogan
14TB WD external USB HDD - $423 with Amazon Prime
Tenda Nova MW3 mesh wi-fi 3 pack - $99.95 from Shopping Square
Tile Mate (2018) 4-pack or Tile Mate Pro (2019) - $63.96/$37.46 at JB Hi-Fi
Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition for PC & Mac - $2.69 on Fanatical
Nintendo Ring Fit Adventure for Switch - $119 from Amazon
🎶 Heroin Girl - Everclear
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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.