Only a small edition of The Sizzle today, as I'm busy with some stuff.
NEWS
What.CD is dead
Pour a 40 on the curb for what.cd - the best torrent site I've ever used, put up this mysterious message overnight: "Due to some recent events, What.CD is shutting down. We are not likely to return any time soon in our current form. All site and user data has been destroyed. So long, and thanks for all the fish." No doubt the copyright police caught up with them and the jig was up. What.cd was great for filling in the sometimes significant content gaps in Google Music/Spotify/Apple Music. There was so much music there that simply isn't available anywhere else, legally or otherwise. I knew I should have downloaded every single torrent off it. A sad day for all music fans.
Discuss
UK has some new deeply invasive internet surveillance laws
The UK has passed some pretty hardcore digital surveillance laws recently. The "snoopers charter", as it's more affectionately known, will allow the UK government to literally monitor and record everything its citizens do on the internet. ISPs will now be forced to record their user's web history in real time (which we kinda have already) and law enforcement can demand companies decrypt any data on request. There's so much stuff they're able to do now, it's hard to summarise here. This is worrying for Australians too, as our lawmakers love to copy what the UK does, so you can bet your arse that Senator Brandis and his authority loving cronies will use the UK precedent to expand their powers to infringe on our privacy.
Discuss
Russia can't access LinkedIn anymore
LinkedIn is now blocked in Russia. The Russian equivalent of ACMA, Roskomnadzor, asked LinkedIn to host Russian user data in Russia, in line with Russian law. LinkedIn never did it, so it's now blocked there. Sure, Russians will have a hard time finding work in Europe now and it's a black stain on an open internet and free speech and all that shit, but it's LinkedIn, so my nano-violin is playing quite loudly right now.
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COOL SHIT
Firefox Focus for iOS
Mozilla has released a version of Firefox for iOS. Called Firefox Focus, it's designed to protect your privacy from ad tracking networks and anyone who might get access to your iOS device. Ad trackers, analytics trackers, social network (Facebook, Twitter, etc) trackers are all blocked, so your privacy is (somewhat) maintained and the internet is suddenly a lot faster. It also lacks tabs, blocks pop-ups, has no menus and automatically doesn't log your browsing history.
Discuss
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 Dead In A Ditch, by Cosmic Psychos. Like The Sizzle? Like it on Facebook!