In today's issue:
NEWS
Atlassian inches closer to a big IPO on the NASDAQ
Atlassian has revealed more details on their US IPO, submitting drafts of the necessary paperwork to the SEC. The biggest thing to come out of Australia's tech scene, since, well, forever has decided to list on the NASDAQ with the stock ticker TEAM. No details on the IPO price and how much they hope to raise, but Atlassian is valued at approximately $3.3b, based off the investments ploughed into it so far as a private company. It's expected that once the IPO takes off, the co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar will be in the top 20 wealthiest Australians. I don't really care much for Atlassian's products (they don't suck, I just don't use em and JIRA is always a source of bad news), but you gotta relish the fact that Australia is getting known for something that isn't mining. Expect an increase in Tesla sales around the Sydney area soon. If you've no idea what Atlassian does or why they're such a big deal, check this SMH article out.
iPad Pro comes out tomorrow
The iPad Pro finally gets an Australian release date - November 11. The 32GB model will set you back $1249, the 128GB model with LTE is $1699. For some reason there's no price on the 128GB wi-fi only model. The Pencil is $165 and the Smart Keyboard, $269. So if you want the 128GB with LTE (I really don't know how long 32GB will last you) fully kitted out, you'll have to drop $2133. I'm planning to pick up the 128GB + LTE iPad Pro. It's not cheap, but could kill two birds with one stone for me. I spend 90% of my time reading stuff on the web and writing. The iPad Pro with a Bluetooth keyboard should be able to do that fine and I can sell off my MacBook Pro, pocketing the cash for a 4K monitor to connect to my perfectly fine i5-2400 Windows box. Thank the rotting corpse of Steve Jobs for the 14 day no questions asked return policy.
Fallout 4 is out now and it's great
If you're not a gamer, this next bit of news might help you understand why a few of your colleagues at work took a sickie and might not be seen the rest of the week. Fallout 4 is the latest title in the incredibly popular and revered Fallout series of games. It was released at midnight and is as awesome as everyone expected. The game is set in a futuristic atomic wasteland Boston, where you have to scrounge around to survive after years of living in a fallout shelter. People love it because of the various ways it can be played - full on FPS style, guns blazing, or a more RPG adventure style, where you explore and ask questions. If you want to check Fallout 4 for yourself, it's on PS4/XB1 and PC.
Use your smartphone to help the Garvan Institute research cancer
The Garvan Institute has partnered up with Vodafone to launch DreamLab, a distributed computing client for Android which works on crunching data for Garvan's projects. If you've never heard of the Garvan Institute, check this shit out. Look at that list of accomplishments. They were the first organisation outside the USA to sequence and entire human genome for under $1000 too. Places like this need our support, so if you have an Android phone, chuck this on it and let it run at night. Whilst one smartphone itself isn't that powerful, imagine hundreds of thousands of them computing all night. If enough people use it, who knows what discoveries the Garvan Institute can make. I hope they put this ad on TV to get a lot more people using it.
Cryptolockers expand to Linux webservers via dodgy web software plugins
Cryptolockers have started hitting websites now, not just idiots who randomly open email attachments from strangers. This new variety of cryptolocker works against Linux webservers, by taking advantage of known vulnerabilities in plugins and scripts. Some dodgy shopping cart plugin or a plugin for something known, just re-packaged and trying to look like the original. It works just like all the other cryptolocker software - once installed it runs a script, encrypts your home folder and common locations for website data. You don't get your website back until you send the hacker some Bitcoins. Let this be a message to all webmasters out there - backup yo shit often. An automated backup that adheres to the 3-2-1 rule is your God, ok?
COOL SHIT
HEBCON is a celebration of crappy robots
These pathetic Japanese robots are hilarious. Look at the crab thing fight the piece of paper with wheels attached! There's a tissue box stuffed with dildos that crawls along the battle arena using the movement of the vibrating dildos! Oh man, robots fucking up is the funniest thing ever. HEBCON is a competition dedicated to creating the crappiest possible robot and making them fight. The crappier the bot, the better it is. I hope there's an Australian HEBCON, I'd totally go to that, live stream it and provide commentary.
Search for stuff to watch across all those streaming media services
Struggling to find out which streaming service a movie or TV show is on? Well there's a few tools around that can make it easier for you to solve this extremely first world problem. streamin.it is such a website that lets you search a bunch of Australian services at once. Gyde is an iOS app that does the same thing with movies, but can search a few different services that streamin.it can't (streamin.it searches some Gyde doesn't). Moreflicks is another website that supports a bunch of UK and US streaming services. I hope you find something to watch.
Paragon's NTFS driver for Mac is on sale
If you need to read and write to NTFS volumes on your Mac, there is only one choice - Paragon's NTFS driver for Mac. By default Mac OS X will only read NTFS volumes, but not write to them. Paragon's driver is the best way to write to an NTFS disk without totally corrupting all the data on it. Right now it's only US$9.97, half it's usual US$19.95. I've been using it for years now and it works brilliantly. Ideally though, if you need to share data with a Windows computer and your Mac, format the drive as ExFAT instead of FAT32 or NTFS, which works on both operating systems (Windows 7 or higher).
Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Like The Sizzle? Convert your free trial into a paid subscription now and never miss an issue! Already a subscriber? Thanks for being awesome.