NEWS
Tesla is allegedly not letting its workers in Fremont form a union
Tesla is copping a bit of heat for allegedly not allowing its workforce to unionise. A blog post from an angry man working at Tesla's Fremont factory reckons the pay is low, the hours are long, management doesn't listen and there's severe issues with the ergonomics of the factory that are injuring workers left right and centre. Elon Musk is dismissing the concerns and says he's just a paid stooge from the autoworkers union trying to start shit. Not looking good for Elon lately - hanging out with Trump and now knocking unions. I don't like it.
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Twitter has no idea how to make money
Twitter has once again missed investor expectations, recording a sluggish 1% growth in revenue, despite the amount of daily active users increasing by 11%. As a result, stock is down 10%. Even with Donald Trump giving Twitter, arguably, the best free advertising of any social network possible, Twitter just doesn't know how to turn all those eyeballs into fat stacks of cash like Facebook. Maybe it's not even possible. Maybe Twitter should just strip everything back, stop burning money on throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks and just be a small company improving the service for users.
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Apple speaks out about it's bank battle in Australia
Apple has gone on the PR offensive in Australia, with its global head of Apple Pay giving an interview with the Financial Review about its battle with reluctant local banks. From the sounds of it, Apple isn't going to give an inch, saying it's so confident that customers love the Apple Pay experience, that they'll just move banks to use it. The article is a good insight to Apple's views on how Apple Pay should be used. What gets me though, is Apple's stranglehold on that NFC chip. I get, and agree with em about opening it up wide ala Android and manually switching wallets and all that crap, but why not make an API or something for Apple's built in wallet so anyone can make an NFC enabled app, rather than having to get Apple's blessing? There's so much opportunity for NFC to take off, but I think it's held back by Apple unnecessarily.
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ACCC is seriously tackling how ISPs promote their service quality
The ACCC is pissed off with the crazy variability between Australian ISPs. While ISPs might advertise their services as 50mbit or 100mbit, end users generally never see those advertised speeds - this is not congruent with Australian Consumer Law, which likes to make sure companies are advertising what consumers can realistically expect. 80% of the 390 consumers it surveyed were at a loss at how to compare different ISPs. As a result, we now have six principles as to how ISPs should promote their services (read the linked story for them). The ACCC will publish a more detailed best practices guide in the coming months and is hoping to implement an independent ISP monitoring and reporting program - fucken yes, that would be awesome. Hopefully it's similar to TrueNet in NZ.
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NSW govt is throwing more money at startup incubators
Feel like extracting some sweet government subsidies under the guise of creating jobs? Create a startup incubator in Sydney and take part in the state government's "supersized" start-up hub! There will be rental subsidies and loans available to start a roughly 15,000sqm single location incubator, to contain all the overwhelming innovation in Sydney until the "innovation district" planned for White Bay and Glebe is ready in around 5 years. Sounds like a hand out for property developers to me, rather than actually supporting startups, but what do I know? I work at home in my underpants with the blinds closed and AC on.
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COOL SHIT
My dreams of owning an EV sooner rather than later, have been rudely stomped on
This is extremely not "cool shit" - Hyundai has revealed the pricing for the Ioniq EV in New Zealand and it is bad, very bad. NZD$60,000 bad. Yep, NZ$60,000 for what's essentially a Hyundai Elantra (which is around NZD$40k decked out) with a bunch of batteries in it. You're paying $20,000 kiwi bucks extra for the batteries. Sad. Disappointing. Unfortunate. I was looking forward to replacing my current dino juice mobile with an Ioniq (if it ever goes on sale in AU), but if it'll cost A$50,000 (there's a 15% price difference between the Elantra in AU and NZ), that's still far too expensive.
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The most advanced two legged robot shows off its walking skills
The latest in walking robot technology has been demonstrated in public and is available to view in a series of 30 frames every second, flashed across your screen from the USA via fibre optic cables at the bottom of the sea floor. Cassie, an ostrich looking contraption made by the nerds at Agility Robotics (a spin off of some research at Oregon State Uni) is apparently the best two legged robot humanity can devise. And yes, the Dr. Frankensteins involved in its creation kick it and push it, increasing the amount of damning evidence to be used against us in the robotic Nuremberg trials in 2130.
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An alternative web UI for Twitter
My mate Gavin sent me an email saying to check rettiwt out. It's an alternative web UI for Twitter that's designed for "hardcore" users that's enabled via a Chrome plugin. Takes all the bullshit out of the normal plugin, throws the timeline on the side and gives you a nice wide space on the right to view the image or video in a tweet and any replies to that tweet. Looks nice I reckon, dunno if I'd use it much, but Gav was nice enough to let me know and maybe a few of you will think it's cool too. I always like hearing from Sizzle readers, so feel free to email me, throw me a tweet or shout out on the forums! Or don't, I'm happy if all you wanna do is read this thing and give me $5/m. You do whatever you want.
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Here endeth the sizzle (until Monday!)
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Like The Sizzle? Like it on Facebook!