The Sizzle

Issue 72 - Tuesday 26th January, 2016 - Yellow Bellied Black Snake at a BBQ

It's Australia Day and I have a ratshit cold that's keeping me awake at night, so I apologise ahead of time for the lacklustre effort that went into today's issue so I could piss off for an afternoon nap.



NEWS

Many executives decide to leave Twitter
Like rats leaving a sinking ship, a couple of Twitter's board members and top executives have decided to leave before they drown. Meanwhile I'm using Twitter pretty much the same way I have for years now and still enjoying it.

Wikipedia editors pissed about a new Wikimedia board member
Arnnon Geshuri is a big wig HR goon from Google that took up a seat on the Wikimedia board, who control Wikipedia. A group of almost 200 Wikipedia editors have placed a vote of no confidence in Arnnon because, basically, he's a ratbag who was central to the illegal "no-poach" agreement between the HR departments of Google, Apple, Intel and other Silicon Valley companies that resulted in a US$415m payout to the impacted employees. Wikimedia and Arnnon Geshuri have not made any comment regarding the vote of no confidence.

This link crashes Safari on iOS and Mac
On the topic of ratbags, someone will surely send you a link to a website that when launched, crashes Safari. It's due to some bug, that whilst at the moment is harmless beyond the app crashing, could be used as some sort of hacking attempt as some vulnerabilities require the app to crash in order for the vulnerability to be available.

Ed Snowden doesn't want your nudes
That bastion of media integrity and investigative journalism, the UK's Mirror newspaper, has posted that Ed Snowden is sick of getting women sending nude pics of themselves to him. There's even a poll at the end of the article asking if you'd "leak nudes to Edward Snowden". Of course I clicked yes. I reckon its bait from the CIA or something to try and entrap him - send him a pic of an under age girl, he opens it, *bam* Snowden is a kiddie fiddler, let's get him back home to see him fry in the electric chair.

A search engine for wide open private webcams is creepy
A popular security vulnerability scanner, Shodan, has added a new section that displays things running on port 554 spewing out an RTSP video stream, with no password or security of any kind. The ultimate in voyeurism. Watch babies sleep, people going about their daily business at work and home - maybe even catch a woman getting around in the nude. What a wonderful Internet of Things world we live in.


COOL SHIT

Apollo 11 VR coming soon
I didn't really give much of a shit about all those VR platforms like Oculus Rift and the Sony's Playstation thingo coming around, but now that someone's working on recreating the Apollo 11 moon landing in VR, I care a little more.

Sweet Netflix multi-region search engine
If your proxy or VPN hasn't been blocked by Netflix yet, check out uNoGS - a search engine for every region Netflix operates in. Practically every movie you could ever care to watch is available somewhere in the world.

Bunch of nerds in New York got together and set up their own wi-fi ISP
You'd think in a huge dense city like New York, Internet access would be plentiful, fast and cheap. Alas, the last mile of Internet access is under the thumb of Time Warner cable for most people who want relatively fast Internet access. To get around this, NYC Mesh has set up a mesh network of wi-fi around Manhattan and Brooklyn, centred around tapping directly into the backbone of the Internet at two exchanges in New York - bypassing Time Warner completely. Nifty.

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!