The Sizzle

Issue 219 - Thursday, 25th August 2016 - I Can See Electricity

A smaller Sizzle today because I've been busy with stuff way more important than this.


NEWS

Canon announce the 5D Mark IV and it looks great
Canon has released an update to its legendary EOS 5D series of digital SLRs. The Mark IV packs a 30MP full frame sensor with Dual Pixel AF, 4K (DCI res) video at 30fps, a fancy 150,000-pixel RGB+IR metering sensor to improve light detection, built in wi-fi, NFC and GPS, and a weird Dual Pixel RAW feature that lets you do micro focus adjustments and reduce ghosting after taking a photo. Looks like a shithot camera I reckon - if I was more financially endowed, I'd buy this (and drive out to some nice places in my Tesla Model S P100D). DP Review has a good look at it, with a full review coming soon.
Discuss

Dominos are testing a pizza delivery drone in NZ
Dominos has unveiled a pizza delivering drone in NZ. There's just the tiny issue of pesky regulations like having direct line of sight of the drone at all times and obtaining the consent of anyone under the drone's flight path, but that's easily fixed with some lobbying and bribes. Hopefully it's more than just a marketing stunt and when Australia gets pizza drones, free pizzas will fall from the sky for me to eat during the inevitable teething problems.
Discuss

Buying or renting digital media isn't that popular, streaming is where it's at now
A US study from GfK (one of the largest customer research companies in the world) has found that renting or buying digital media isn't as popular as physical media was in the past. 46% of consumers in the US have ever bought or rented a digital movie or TV show, compared to 86% who have purchased or rented a DVD and 78% who did so with VHS. People only "own" about 23 digital titles on average, compared to 87 titles on DVD. What is popular though, is streaming - 78% of people who never purchased or rented digital media have used something like Netflix to watch stuff. Basically, we are cheapskates unless there's a shiny disc for us to collect. The full infographic is on the GfK website.
Discuss


COOL SHIT

Apple wheels out the execs for a long chat about AI & Siri
Apple's really got something it wants to prove, with yet another interview with senior execs allowed out the door, under the watchful eye of Apple PR. This time the yarn is all about artificial intelligence and how Apple is managing to do all this AI stuff without getting all up in your shit like Google. Apparently they did some machine learning stuff with Siri back in 2014 and the improvement in lowering Siri's comprehension errors was massive.
Discuss

Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!) and sorry for the short one today, but like I said, things happen in my life that aren't related to this and I have to attend to them.
--Anthony


The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Today's subject line is from Electricity, by The Avalanches. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!