There’s a new Raspberry Pi
NSW Supreme Court reckons media outlets are responsible for social media comments on their article
Ubuntu to support 32-bit libraries a little longer
Huawei’s Aussie CTO calls out the NBN for being a piece of expensive crap
Miscellaneous news items
Yet another blogging platform powered by Dropbox
Confused by aperture, shutter speed, ISO & exposure? Try this camera simulator
Cheap BeatsX earphones, Dell 34” ultrawide monitor, ThinkPad E595, GL.iNet travel router, Xiaomi 20Ah battery
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B has an an all new SoC, featuring a quad core ARM Cortex-A72 CPU, your choice of 1/2/4GB of DDR4 RAM, dual HDMI output, gigabit ethernet & USB 3.0 ports that run off a dedicated PCIe lane, 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5 and a USB-C port that'l accept up to 15W of power. The new Pi 4 is way faster than the 3B+ in all regards and even supports 4Kp60 hardware decoding of HEVC video. It'll start shipping on June 30 and costs $59.95 for 1GB RAM, $66.95 for 2GB of RAM and $94.95 for 4GB of RAM - you can order em locally from Core Electronics or PiAustralia.
The NSW Supreme Court has made a ruling that creates a precedent turning media companies responsible for the comments on their articles on social media. It came about via legal action Dylan Voller took against the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Centralian Advocate, Sky News Australia and The Bolt Report, who posted links to articles on Facebook about him where the people commenting on the links to those articles just made shit up about Dylan. The judge's justification for doing so is kinda lengthy, so go read the article. There's also a good chance the decision will be appealed.
Yesterday I mentioned how Valve is gonna hold back Steam from users of the latest version of Ubuntu due to a lack of 32-bit library support. Today Ubuntu said they're going to keep supporting selected 32-bit packages in Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS. From Ubuntu's blog post, "we will put in place a community process to determine which 32-bit packages are needed to support legacy software, and can add to that list post-release if we miss something that is needed" and that it will "work with the WINE, Ubuntu Studio and gaming communities to use container technology to address the ultimate end of life of 32-bit libraries".
Huawei's Australian CTO, David Soldani, has unloaded on the NBN at a 5G conference in Sydney this morning. He criticized the NBN's insane cost for fixed wireless - around $10,000 for each premises that only manages to achieve ~6Mbps, slower than the ADSL it replaced and "$51 billion on a network that can't even deliver 50Mbps to around one million of its fixed-broadband end-user premises". While this is all stuff most of us already know, I guess every other vendor is too scared to speak up and lose a potential whale like the NBN, but Huawei are never gonna get NBN's business so they can go nuts.
Apple has released public betas of iOS 13, iPadOS 13, macOS Catalina, and tvOS 13. You can head on over to Apple's website and grab them now, no developer account required.
Australia Post and NAB have teamed up to create another digital identity verification scheme, called TrustCheck. What happened to Digital iD? Have we moved on already?
Telstra's streamlined their mobile plan offerings down to 4, no lock-in plans. Handsets are now charged separately and repaid over 24 or 36 months. 5G is $15/m extra unless you're on the top tier plans.
Verizon had a BGP routing related oopsie that re-directed a bunch of traffic via a US metallurgical company, slowing the internet down for many people around the world.
Microsoft has released a beta of the all new terminal app for Windows 10, which includes support for bash, Powershell and the traditional Windows command line.
I'm a sucker for checking out new blogging platforms and Blot is the latest to appear on my radar. It lets you upload images and markdown to a Dropbox folder (or Git) and publish them into a blog. Blot has a few different templates to choose from and you add metadata to the markdown file for stuff like the permalink (e.g: thesizzle.com.au/coolblogpost), dates, tags, summaries, post thumbnail and more. It costs US$3/m to use and you can bring your own domain name. I haven't used it so don't know if it's awesome, but it looks good (I like the Console template) to me.
Photography is all about capturing light with a device called a camera. To effectively do that, you need to know how the settings on a camera work to determine how that light is captured. Things like aperture, shutter speed and sensor sensitivity are the main controls for doing so and they aren't exactly user friendly. That's where Photography Mapped's little camera simulator comes in handy. It allows you to adjust all the settings on a camera (with explanations) to get an idea of what happens when you tweak them. It's not fancy but gets the message across.
BeatsX wireless earphones for $96 delivered from Telstra’s online store
Refurbished Dell U3415W 34" ultrawide, curved, 3440 x 1440 monitor - $509.99 delivered from Bufferstock (I have one, it's pretty awesome for the price)
ThinkPad E595 (15.6" 1080p, AMD Ryzen 5 3500U, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM) - $769 shipped from Lenovo
GL.iNet GL-MT300N-V2 travel router is $26.81 from Amazon AU
Xiaomi PowerBank 3 Pro (20,000mAh, 45W USB-C PD output) - $49.99 on eBay
🎶 Steriogram - White Trash
😁 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.
The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.