NEWS
Plex adds support for Amazon Drive, removes the need for a local Plex server
The hard working people at Plex have added support for Amazon Drive into their client app, so you don't have to have a Plex Server on your network to watch your stories. Upload whatever you want onto Amazon Drive (which only costs A$100/yr for unlimited storage), tell your Plex client the Amazon Drive details and the library will appear ready to stream. Pretty awesome. Meanwhile, if anyone needs help uploading their entire Plex collection onto Cloud Drive, you're welcome to come over to my fibre NBN enabled home and drop off a few HDDs, heh. This feature is still in beta and will probably be made available to Plex Pass subscribers only.
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Lenovo sacks more Moto staff
Lenovo has sacked "hundreds" of staff from it's ailing Moto smartphone division. This is on top of sackings last year where 3,200 Moto related staff were told to put all their stuff in a box and leave the premises calmly otherwise they won't get their severance pay. Lenovo is still keeping its smartphone HQ in Chicago though (Motorola's old HQ, even after being sold to Google, then to Lenovo). I guess it's hard to turn a buck making Android phones these days.
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Signal is now available as a desktop app
There's a desktop version of Signal now. You can now use a big monitor and keyboard to collude with all your freedom loving patriot mates to blow up the MCG on Grand Final day to show everyone how serious you are about protecting Australia from people that hate Australia. Not that I'm saying that's gonna happen, but if you were to plan something nasty and horrible like blowing up a major sporting event, Signal is probably how you should communicate it. But don't even do that in the first place. Damn I hope the government isn't reading your emails and flags shit by key words.
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Twitter buyout rumours getting louder
Disney might be buying Twitter. Last week it was apparently Salesforce buying Twitter. TechCrunch has been spreading shit that it might be Microsoft or Verizon buying Twitter. I think Twitter is gonna be sold soon. I don't know why I think that, but I just feel it. Twitter getting sold feels like something that is gonna happen and these rumours pop up to tet the waters of what the punters and the market reckon. Maybe we should crowdfund to buy Twitter, to make Twitter Great Again, or something.
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Philly 76ers buy big into e-sport teams
The Philadelphia 76ers,a popular NBA team, has decided to enter the world of e-sports, becoming the first professional sports team in the USA to do so. The 76ers have purchased two e-sports franchises, Team Dignitas and Team Apex and will merge them into one e-sports POWERHOUSE (or so I read, I've never heard of these names until now). These teams compete in games like League of Legends, Overwatch and Counter Strike. I don't know how they compliment each other, but I assume they thought it's a good investment? A couple of soccer teams in Europe have done it too. I guess the kiddies these days love watching other dudes play video games instead of kicking a footy or bouncing a ball.
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COOL SHIT
Ozbargain bargains
Couple of Ozbargain finds for youse today. $19.95 for a nice 5000mAh Xiaomi battery pack delivered from Australia via Express Post. Woolies is selling $30 Optus SIMs for $10. Shopping Express has a sale on Toshiba SSDs and flash memory, like a 960GB one for $309 or a 120GB one for $50, 32GB MicroSD for $10 and 32GB flash drives for $9. If ya buy two there's free shipping as well.
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Sneaky malware avoids detection by counting your recently access files
I often find how malware manages to outsmart users to be fascinating and this latest find from SentinelOne is a great example. Whoever made this piece of macro based malware realised that security researchers (the people who will make this piece of malware useless by adding it into AV definitions and the like), usually test how malware operates by running it in a VM or fresh airgapped machine. To detect if it's running in a lab setup or a real world setup, it would scan the drive to find a certain number of documents living in the Recent Files feature of Windows, hah. IF there's nothing in there, it more often than not means this is a fresh machine and some nerd is studying how the malware works.
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Government to hand out $23m of grants for startup incubators
I missed it last week, but the federal government has started a $23m support program for startup incubators. Old maate Greg Hunt launched the thing and reckons it will increase Australia's innovation capacity (like there's some sort of tank we keep our national cache of innovation in). There's grants from $10k to $500k available if you want ot setup a new innovation incubator. Like Erlich Bachman in Silicon Valley for example. Turn your house into an incubator and get a sweet $10k to fund a swimming pool that will assist in the development of aquatic based innovation and development.
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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 The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret, by Queens Of The Stone Age. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!