NEWS
Tesla Model 3 unveiled, looks great, still not a lot of info though
Elon Musk did a 30 min presentation before rolling out a few Model 3s for us to finally look at, then walked off stage. I was a bit disappointed as all the info was stuff we knew before (US$35,000, 215mi range, 5 seater, first ones shipping end of 2017) and the presentation was only 30 minutes. No overview of its features or anything. Check out the pics and read the rundown at Gizmodo AU. I'm not buying one unless my personal finances somehow, magically, go from a negative into a positive.
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Reddit's warrant canary disappears
A warranty canary is something like "we've never had a warrant given to us" in a company's privacy report. When that statement is removed, well, it means they received a warrant they can't talk about and had to hand over customer info against their will. That happened to Reddit yesterday. We don't know what for as Reddit can't say, but yeah, a government forcing Reddit to hand over info is a thing now.
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Windows Phone isn't dead, just sleeping
At the Microsoft Build conference, Microsoft was showing off all sorts of apps and mobile products on iOS and Android. But not Windows Mobile, their very own platform. None of the presenters used or owned a Windows phone either. Windows chief Terry Myerson said that Windows Phone isn't a focus for them right now and Joe Belifore, Windows Phone head honcho, is on a sabbatical. Good night sweet prince *puts pillow over Lumia's face*
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Father of a young cancer victim asks Tim Cook for access to his son's iPhone
The father of an Italian boy who died of cancer at only 13 has pleaded with Tim Cook to make a way for him to get into his son's iPhone, so he can keep any photos or memories of his son. Talk about awkward... You get why this guy wants in, but, Tim Cook and Apple can't do that without compromising the security of the phone for everyone. Cellebrite, the Israelis who are apparently assisting the FBI in cracking into iPhones these days has offered to scoop out any info off the kid's phone for free.
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Jay Z might be suing Tidal for pumping up its subscriber info
Jay Z, who owns Tidal, is potentially suing former board members and investors in Tidal for misleading him when it came to the success of Tidal before Jay Z got involved. Seems to me that Tidal is basically DOA in the face of the much better Apple Music or Spotify, isn't going to improve any time soon so Jay Z cracked the shits and is taking it out on the people that sold him a dud. Good luck Mr. Carter.
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COOL SHIT
Apple brings out the pirate flag because it's better to be a pirate than join the navy
Some cheeky nerd at Apple chucked this up on the flagpole outside 1 Infinite Loop today, to celebrate their 40th birthday. The pirate flag is such a fantastic legacy of the (at the time, considering the state of the industry) revolutionary thing the Mac was to become. One of Steve Job's motivational quotes was to say that "It's better to be a pirate than join the navy" and that flag kinda reinforced it for the Mac team who were afraid the group was becoming too large and bureaucratic. Susan Kare (who painted the original) now makes and sells replicas of the flag on demand for US$2,250. A true pirate would make their own or steal one.
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The ABC's tips on how to gorge on free Telstra data on Sunday
The ABC has a weird article with some tips on how to exploit Telstra's freeleech data day coming up this Sunday. To be fair, some of these are good ideas. Excellent time to start some cloud backups on your fast 4G connection, I reckon. Dunno about the torrents suggestion though - do they even work on mobile broadband? It's not like you can open some ports on Telstra's NAT servers. However, Usenet would work fine *wink*.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics on your smartphone
Did you know that the The Australian Bureau of Statistics has smartphone apps to get access to their popular info? It's on iOS and on Android (the Android version looks nicer! The iOS one isn't updated for the iPhone 6, ugh) and has looks relatively nice to use! Never be unaware of our GDP, the average weekly earnings of your fellow citizens or the population of this big island ever again.
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Here endeth the sizzle (until Monday!)
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!