NEWS
Verizon to buy some of Yahoo for US$4.8b
Yahoo's death spiral has come to an end because US telco Verizon found US$4.8b of change behind the couch to buy Yahoo with. Yahoo will probably end up as a click bait farm thing plastered in ads alongside Verizon's other recent purchase, AOL. Yahoo will still retain it's sizable stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan (which is actually about as popular than Google over there). Yahoo have been irrelevant for years anyways, does anyone give a shit what Verizon does with it?
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Cyanogen sacked 25% of their staff
Cyanogen, the fork of Android that was gonna be awesome, but instead worked on like three phones properly, is currently driving off into a ditch. It fired 30 of its 136 staff due to the total lack of traction it has in the market and the dearth of revenue opportunities on the horizon. The Arstechnica article I linked to helpfully includes a breakdown of all the different brand slapped with Cyanogen (there's a dude, a free OS, a paid OS, a company that sells the OS and an app platform - all called CyanogenSomething).
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Wikileaks publishes 20,000 uncensored US Democratic party emails
Old mate Wikileaks is back in the news, having shit out 20,000 Democractic party emails from Jan 2015 to May 2016. Go hunt around em yourself if you feel like it. I dunno if this is strictly tech related, but it's been big news on all the US tech blogs and I guess you could spin this political story into a tech related one by saying how this wouldn't have been possible without technology and how shit the Democrats are at infosec and opsec that they got owned so hard. Motherboard reckons its the work of Russian state sponsored hackers. A conspiracy theory is that Russia "weaponised" Wikileaks to influence the US election. Get the tinfoil out everyone!
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Pokemon Go is very popular
Pokemon Go is the most downloaded first week app ever to be on the iOS App Store. This news is probably not that surprising, if you've gone outside in the past few days. The game was only launched in NZ, Australia and the USA at first, then Europe the next week and in Japan just a few days ago. Will be interesting to see exactly how many downloads its had, what percentage of people kept playing after a week or so and then how much goddamn cash they made off IAPs and sponsored deals.
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NBN's SkyMuster II satellite to launch in October
The NBN's second satellite is gonna launch into space on October 5th, bringing the people living in the middle of goddamn nowhere an internet connection better than dialup. Sky Muster II will give those people 25/5 speeds. Before you say "omg that's better than my ADSL", remember that satellite internet has ~600ms latency on a good day. I'd rather have 5mbit ADSL than 25mbit satellite. But I'd also rather have 25mbit satellite with 600ms latency than 5kb/sec dialup, hah.
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COOL SHIT
A detailed look at what Guvera did to end up in the pool of shit they're in
Mumbrella has a great story up about the stinky history of Guvera - the Australian streaming music startup that ended up being a dodgy investment foisted on mums and dad investors as a last ditch effort to raise money, to compete in an industry they had sweet fuck all of succeeding in. It looks like many companies are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars each, that'll possibly never be returned. A brilliant example of the hucksterism alive and well in startup land.
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Raspberry Pis make excellent emulation devices for old game consoles
Do you like old video games? Then you should really get a Raspberry Pi and chuck on RetroPie. If you're handy with tools and wood and shit, make yourself a cabinet to proudly display in your home. Jeff Atwood has an interesting blog post about how the Raspberry Pi has impacted the game emulation scene and might inspire you to load up some ROMs and reminisce about the 80s.
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seinfeld.wad
Like Seinfield? Like Doom? Here's seinfeld.wad for your enjoyment. You're welcome.
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Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Today's subject line is from Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, by AC/DC. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!