Totally unrelated to tech news, but if you're into airlines and stuff like I am, you might enjoy Ready for Takeoff - Eight 30 minute ads Qantas paid to show on channel 9 to appear as original programming. It was still kinda fun to watch none the less. It's on Nine's Jumpin thingy.
NEWS
Tweets to contain up to 10,000 characters, maybe
Twitter is considering raising the amount of characters in tweets. Rumour is that it'll go from 140 characters to 10,000 (the current limit for direct messages on Twtiter). Jack Dorsey's been tweeting about it, in the form of a rant typed up in Notes.app and then posting a screenshot of the text. It's still unknown what Twitter will do, but this piece on Slate is insightful. It's all about making sure to keep all Twitter activity in Twitter, instead of simply using Twitter as a link machine to other websites or apps.
Faraday Future's near future is fancy sports cars for rich people
There was a lot of hype around Faraday Future - a secretive electric car startup based in San Francisco but backed by Chinese money. Their big announcement at CES was a hypercar prototype that doesn't work. Everone (well me at least) was hoping it would be a preview of an actual car real people would drive, but alas, the FFZERO1 is just another rich person's toy. Oh well, lets see what GM/Chevy does with the Bolt tomorrow.
Nikon has some new cameras, the D500 and D5
Nikon has announced some new camera gear - the D500 and D5 DSLRs. Smartphone cameras might be all the rage, but if you gotta take some high quality snaps, DSLRs are where it's at. The D500 is the successor to the D300S, with an APS-C sensor and Bluetooth connectivity to your smartphone (way better than wi-fi I reckon). The D5 is Nikon's new flagship DSLR, full frame and with an insane 3,280,000 ISO. Both should be out around March 2016. Nikon also announced the KeyMission 360, a 4K action camera, if you're into that sort of thing.
Samsung's CES keynote was full of fridges and TVs, just like LG's
Samsung had their big CES keynote, announcing a whole bunch of stuff. The Galaxy TabPro S is a Microsoft Surface clone running Windows. The Gear S2 smartwatch got some new colours. The fridge with a touch screen got a lot of time. There was some washing machines. A 4K Blu-Ray player was announced, alongside some new 4K TVs with smart features running on Tizen, that don't work in Australia. Samsung Pay will work in Australia though. And that was it from Samsung. LG did pretty much the same thing.
Sony's CES keynote was full of TVs and random gadgets
Sony's CES keynote was similar to LG's and Samsung's in that it had some nice TVs and are doing some 4K Blu-Ray stuff, but Sony didn't have the washing machines or fridges like their Korean buddies. They did announce that there's now 35 million PS4s out and about, making it the most dominant current-gen console. Sony's got some "Extra Bass" speakers and headphones, a USB turntable, and a lightbulb that is a speaker they topped it off with some 4K camcorders.
COOL SHIT
Kodak is making an 8mm film camera, yeah, film
Kodak is making an 8mm film camera. Yep, 8mm motion picture film. There will be limited editions sold in 2016, with a cheaper "normal" version sold in 2017. Kodak will develop the 8mm film cartridges for US$50-75. I'm too young to know what 8mm film is like to use (my parents had a VHS camcorder to capture precious video of me falling off a bike), but apparently this is popular with a certain group of people who like poor quality video. God speed to Kodak, take their money while you can.
Photos of the Internet's guts
Don't wonder any more what the Internet looks like! Photographer Peter Garritano has gone around Manhattan's 60 Hudson Street, taking snaps of what one of the critical parts of the Internet looks like. Cables and shit mainly. For those that don't know, 60 Hudson Street is important because of its history as the HQ of Western Union, one of the leading telegraph companies back when telegraphs were big. Most of the world's communications ran through this one building in Manhattan and still does, just over pulses of light instead of telegraphs. This 10 minute video has some nice info on the significance of 60 Hudson.
ZTE crowdsourcing ideas for a smartphone
ZTE want to crowdsource some smartphone designs in what they call "Project CSS". They're gonna launch a community (Z Community apparently) and people will give feedback and provide guidance for ZTE to build a kick arse phone. I reckon this is pretty awesome - I wonder how much they'll listen however and how long it'll take to go from "ok tell us your ideas!" to "they're now shipping!". If they were asking me what I'd like, I want a phone running Android 6.0 that gets fast updates, has 3GB of RAM, a Snapdragon 820 CPU, 4.5" ~300ppi screen, nothing too thin, a bit of thickness for a large-ish battery with Quick Charge 2.0 is ok, 32GB-64GB of fastest flash storage possible and the best goddamn camera they can get their hands on. Sell it for AU$499.
Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!