NEWS
Cisco is sacking 5500 people (7% of its workforce) after announcing plans to restructure into a more services focussed company, rather than simply selling hardware. 75% of its revenue still comes from selling those green boxes you love/hate to configure, but it knows that's turning into a commodity game with thin margins (*cough* Huawei *cough*) and wants to "further invest in key priority areas such as security, IoT, collaboration, next generation data center and cloud". CLOUD.
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All the infosec nerds have had a bit of time now to go over the dumps from the Shadow Broker's NSA hack revealed yesterday and have said it's legit. Cisco and Fortinet have verified that the dumped NSA exploits are still vulnerable 0-days. Kaspersky's labs have confirmed it as well, by comparing these dumps to some earlier dumps confirmed to be from the NSA too.
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There are rumours that the Nokia brand will adorn smartphones once again. A new company called HMD, filled with ex-Microsoft and Nokia employees owns the Nokia brand for smartphones and a Nokia executive has "confirmed" to a Chinese website that three Nokia branded Android devices will hit the market late 2016. Nokia were industrial design leaders back in the 90s, so even though the phones will be running Android, what they do with the hardware will be interesting.
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Kobo, the Palsonic to Kindle's Panasonic, has released a 7.8" e-ink screen device that's waterproof and has a night time reading light. Apparently the larger screen is more like a hardcover book's dimensions, as opposed to a paperback. I always thought an A4 sized e-ink screen would be nice for some stuff, particularly reading PDFs, so it's nice to see a slightly larger device available. Downside is that it's a bit heavier (but still lighter than some harcover books I've lugged arouned, hah).
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COOL SHIT
Hospitals getting hit with ransomware is shithouse
Motherboard has an interesting article about hospitals getting stung with ransomware. Hospitals aren't full of tech savvy users (they click everything and anything), are generally very budget constrained (so they have old shit and IT staff stretched too far) and are mission critical (people get sick even if the computers don't work) - this lethal combination results in them being easy targets for people wanting to extract cash from them to ensure vital data like patient records isn't deleted. It's kinda sad and a little scary to be honest.
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A look inside the world of a sports broadcast producer
If you've ever wondered how a live sports broadcast happens, check out this video from a Fox Sports covering an A-League game. The producer of the broadcast has synced the talkback channel (where he gives instructions to the crew) to the program output and a couple of Go Pros, so you can see how fast acting and how much switching of sources there are in a normal sports broadcast. Very impressive and I can imagine, quite stressful. So much effort just to show a few blokes kicking a ball.
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OpenTTD lets you relive Transport Tycoon on modern operating systems
Who remembers the isometric masterpiece from Transport Tycoon? Yeah? You do? Reminisce with OpenTTD - an improved and open source version of Transport Tycoon! Some very dedicated nerds have been creating and maintaining OpenTTD for years and it's loads of fun, even if you don't remember Transport Tycoon. Oh, if you haven't played Transport Tycoon, it's like SimCity but you build public transport and freight infrastructure and plan routes. Chase those subsidies yo. There's even a official (made by Chris Sawyer himself) version of Transport Tycoon for mobile!
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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 E Talking, by Soulwax. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!