NEWS
Snapchat is big, Twitter is the same
More people use Snapchat than Twitter now, apparently. Snapchat reckons 150 million people use its weird photo sharing bullshit thing a day, Twitter reckons they have around 140 million people screaming into the internet void daily. Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, said Snapchat is "very modern". Mmmhmm. Everyone can go use Snapchat, that's fine. The cool people will live on Twitter, forever. Just like Livejournal.
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Check out the new emoji
Everyone loves emoji and there's 72 new ones coming to a device near you. The Unicode consortium has released the final approved emoji for Unicode 9.0, which will be released in June 2016 - view the full 72 here. My favourites are U+1F924 DROOLING FACE and U+1F923 ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING. Can't wait to use those!
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Samsung have a near Gear Fit 2 and wireless BT earbuds
Samsung released a new smartwatch fitness band thing and some wireless earbuds It's pretty damn thin and has a curved screen. The Gear Fit2 even has GPS in it, will sell for US$179 and be in stores in the US June 10th. The Gear IconX bluetooth in-ear earbuds are tiny little things that pop into your ear and have fitness tracking stuff and 4GB of storage built in so you can use them without a phone or smartwatch. No info for a local releases for both of these unfortunately - no doubt Samsung will let us know soon.
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You can now dress your Sim in any gender clothes you want
People who like playing the Sims 4, but were annoyed that you can't chuck a dress on a bloke can now wipe that problem off their list of grievances with the world. Maxis now lets you create a character wearing whatever you like - previously it would only let male characters wear men's clothes and women characters could only wear women's clothes.
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The little Pebble Core gets Amazon Alexa support
Remember that Pebble Core thing I linked to a few days ago? The Pebble team has added Amazon's Alexa voice recognition and AI stuff to it. Basically it's a little square that you can tap and talk to and stuff happens. Just like those badges people wear in Star Trek. Cool as fuck, right?
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COOL SHIT
Xiaomi release new version of the Mi Band
Xiaomi has a new fitness band, the Mi Band 2. Only costs ~AU$60 delivered, tracks steps, measures heart rates and now has a clock on it! My wife has the previous one and loves it. I ended up buying 5 more, for her nurse mates at work who like to see who's the busiest around the pediatric ward, hah. Once these new ones hit DealExtreme I think I'll grab one too. Or maybe wait for a new Apple Watch, I dunno.
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ASUS’s weird Zenbo home robot
ASUS released a US$599 domestic robot called Zenbo at Computex. It looks a lot of BB-8 from Star Wars crossed with a G4 iMac. I don't actually know what it does except wheel around and let you talk with it, but it's cute. I bet one of you reading this will buy one and you will have to let me visit your home to meet it. Kids would love the shit out of this I reckon. Should be out by Christmas 2016.
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Learn some Linux already
If you're unfamiliar with Linux and want to see what the fuss is all about, this Linux Journey tutorial seems like a nice way to learn the basics of the very popular operating system. It goes step by step into what you need to know to be useful in Linux and has exercises and quizzes as you go.
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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!