A friend of mine is planning to set up a co-working space out where I live, in Bacchus Marsh - a nice place between Melbourne and Ballarat. If you're even slightly interested in co-working out west of Melbourne, fill in this questionnaire so he can get a decent idea of what people are after in a co-working space.
NEWS
There's probably gonna be new Macs announced on the 27th of October
There's a very strong and very well reported rumour that Apple has remembered the Mac is something they make and that there will be an event on the 27th of October (US time) to unveil new ones. While there's no official invites sent out, every Apple nerd I know is frothing at the mouth for new Macs (me included), so I had to include it in today's news, even if just to give us poor Mac fans a glimmer of hope.
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Google Pixel reviews - it's good
Reviews of Google's Pixel smartphone are in and everyone likes it. It's the Android phone to get and Google's proclamation about the camera being the best on any smartphone isn't marketing bullshit, it actually is a damn good camera. Some Aussie reviews from Gizmodo, SMH and Ausdroid. The US sites have reviews too: The Verge, Arstechnica, Android Central and the Wall Street Journal - they all reckon its the best Android phone out there if you can deal with the cost. Oh and here's a Marques Brownlee unboxing vid.
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Rockstar announces Red Dead Redemption 2
Fans of GTA with cowboys and horses will be happy that Rockstar have announced Red Dead Redemption 2. It'll apparently be out "Fall 2017". First of all, it's fucken autumn, not fall and second that's like a year away. Boo. A trailer will be out some time on Friday morning. God I hope Rockstar don't do to Red Dead Redemption what they did to GTA - not everyone wants to do pointless missions online for ever. There should have been at least 3 kick arse expansion packs for GTA5 by now!
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NBN reckons they'll fix CVC pricing very soon
CVC pricing is the number one issue ISPs bring up when they talk about the NBN. It costs ISPs way too much to provide a solid service on the NBN. I was whining about this exact topic on the new Sizzle blog just a few days ago, if you need to get up to speed. Anyways, NBN CEO Bill Morrow told a Senate estimates committee that they are going to shake up the CVC pricing model and implement "dimension based charging" in early 2017 and expects a 42% drop in CVC charges ISPs incur, hopefully resulting in customers getting faster and cheaper plans.
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Vodafone to sell fixed line NBN in the next year or so
Oh, and speaking of NBN, Vodafone have finally said they're gonna offer NBN fixed line services. The timeline is pretty loose (by the end of 2017), but it's something that's been on the cards since the NBN was announced. Makes a lot of sense for Vodafone to offer an NBN & mobile bundle. Shit, I'd go for it if the price is right - Vodafone's plans are already excellent value, so if they can offer unlimited 100/40 in a bundle, I'd be keen.
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COOL SHIT
Jaycar can eat a bag of dicks for screwing over Freetronics
Over the years I've gifted many nerd friends with the Freetronics Arduino Experimenter's Kit. It's a great way to learn about the Arduino with some simple projects to get your feet wet. Jaycar has sold these for a while, but recently they've decided to create an exact copy of the Freetronics kit, right down to the foam cut outs and the instructional guide. The creator of the kit, Jonathan Oxer has uploaded a video to YouTube showing off how blatant the copy is and expressing his disappointment at Jaycar treating him and his company with such disdain. Jaycar are scumbags.
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Electric Object’s new LCD art display frame thing
Last year Electric Objects made a "digital painting" - a 23" LCD in a nice frame designed to look like a piece of art rather than a TV. They've now released a second edition, making the LCD half the thickness, improving colour quality and better dimming features so the LCD's backlight doesn't take over the room. You then pay $9.99/month for a subscription to EO's Art Club, which rotates different content to your display and you can control what goes up there via your smartphone.
It's only US$299 as well (an extra US$99 for a fancy wooden frame). I'm really tempted to buy a couple of these - US$102 to ship a $299 item is shit though.
Discuss
Use Orka to manage a fleet of Raspberry Pis
I haven't used this yet, but if you have a bunch of Raspberry Pis to manage, Orka is like a one-stop-shop to make sure they're all working and to manage them easily. You can log in to the shell from the console and do stuff to a lot of Pis at once and get notifications when certain thresholds (CPU, RAM, Disk, etc.) are reached. There's a client that goes on ther Pi and communicates to a server (which could just be another Raspberry Pi if ya want). Kinda like an Ansible or Puppet setup with less of a learning curve. Might give this a shot whenever I'm bored next.
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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 No Show, by Regurgitator. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!