The Sizzle

Just another reminder that the Sizzle is in holiday mode and will adhere to the following schedule:

12th Dec to 23rd Dec - Sizzle Light
24th Dec to 5th Jan - just one Sizzle sent on the 30th of Dec
6th Jan - normal Sizzle resumes (CES kicks the year off)

• Facebook's plan to tackle fake news
• Apple tells Reuters that it will tell the EU it won't pay 14b Euro in taxes
• BlackBerry is now a TCL brand, like Alcatel

• IPv6 Christmas tree with interactive blinkenlights

NEWS

Facebook's plan to tackle fake news
Facebook has announced what it plans to do about the "fake news" rampant on its platform. If a story pops up in my news feed and I flag it as "FAKE", it'll go into a queue of other fake stories that will be read and assessed for their truthiness by organisations part of the the International Fact-Checkers Network Code of Principles. If the story is designated as bullshit, Facebook will slap a warning on it saying "Before you share this story, you might want to know that independent fact-checkers disputed its accuracy". Steven Levy has a more in-depth look/puff-piece/quasi-PR article on Backchannel.
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Apple tells Reuters that it will tell the EU it won't pay 14b Euro in taxes
Apple has told Reuters it's gonna fight the EU on its demand Apple pay Ireland taxes that Ireland doesn't want paid. We all knew Apple wasn't gonna just hand over the cash, but now it's official. The reasons Apple doesn't want to pay are mainly because the EU ignored Ireland's tax experts, that the EU wants to make an example of Apple and other kinda complicated tax related business concepts I have no desire to understand because my brain can only hold so much info and for it to hold this sort of stuff would be a waste of a good brain.
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BlackBerry is now a TCL brand, like Alcatel
BlackBerry is now a brand name of TCL (who also make phones branded as Alcatel) - a giant Chinese manufacturer that Australians probably know better for their TVs than their smartphones. BlackBerry will still provide the software for the phone though, which is probably a good thing, as BlackBerry's Android phones are some of the few Android phones to get regular security updates. Hopefully that keeps going.
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COOL SHIT

IPv6 Christmas tree with interactive blinkenlights
Have fun this holiday season with an IPv6 enabled Christmas Tree. Every time someone hits it with some ICMPv6 traffic, it'll blink. The tree is streamed on YouTube, so you can watch your ICMP packet change the colour of the lights 15 seconds or so later. Of course, you gotta have an IPv6 address yourself to ping it. Have some fun this holidays setting that up - who needs family and food and carols when you've got a router!?
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Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony