Google has submitted its thoughts to government about the Online Safety Bill. They point out they made "several constructive suggestions for amendments" but like everyone else's feedback on the bill, has been totally ignored by government. In its original submission Google wants this law limited to social media and video sharing sites only as the burden for Google's other businesses (cloud hosting mainly) is too high and impractical. Meanwhile, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is rightfully concerned about the Identify and Disrupt Bill, which it describes as "wide-ranging and coercive in nature" and may "adversely impact the privacy of a large number of individuals, including individuals not suspected of involvement in criminal activity".
Microsoft's Ignite conference is taking place online again. It's the main show for Microsoft's wide ranging technology stacks like Azure and Windows. A highlight of the opening keynote was a mixed-reality platform developers can build apps on top of called Microsoft Mesh that takes video conferencing to a new level using Hololens headsets. The demo video has people interacting with 3D holograms and that looks and smells like vaporware to me, but Microsoft have a few technical documents on Mesh and a demo app on their app store so maybe it's not a bunch of hot air? I don't have a HoloLens 2 to try it out.
Intel has been stung by a Texas jury to pay a patent troll US$2.18b. The troll in question is VLSI Technology, who once upon a time were not a patent troll. They used to be a pioneer in the area of ASICs and one of founding partners in the now mighty ARM, but got subsumed into various conglomerates over time, then spun out as a pure patent portfolio in 2019. Soon as that happened they sued Intel for using their patents relating to "managing clockspeed in an electronic device", a "minimum memory operating voltage technique" and "voltage-based memory size scaling". Sounds like pretty damn common things for any modern CPU to do. Intel sure is sucking the big one lately.
📻 Screens - Weezer
😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.
💬 Did you know that The Sizzle has a Slack group? Join in and chat with other subscribers like you.
💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info? Visit the customer portal.
🌐 Use my affiliate link to purchase a subscription to NextDNS. It's basically all the ad-blocking and logging of Pi-Hole, combined with the fancy protocols and security of Cloudflare's DNS service all rolled into one! I don't use the internet without it.
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.