Apple will give you $1m if you can find security flaws in its operating systems
Augmented reality directions coming to Google Maps on non-Pixel devices
Uber still losing money faster than it can make it, with no profitability on the horizon
Blackmagic’s new Pocket Cinema Camera 6K is pretty sweet
Cheap DJI Spark drone, Note 10 pre-order, iPads, Nokia 8.1 smartphone
Apple has really upped its bug bounties for macOS and iOS vulnerabilities, confirming at the Black Hat security conference that it will offer up to US$1m to whoever finds a remote kernel-level vulnerability (i.e: god mode). There's also a 50% bonus if you find these bugs before the software is released. Apple is doing this with the hope hackers will go to Apple with their findings before the black market. Apple is also going to provide bug bounty participants "developer devices" via an "iOS Security Research Device program", which are iPhones that have certain debugging features enabled that make it easier to find security holes.
Google Maps is getting a new augmented reality navigation feature called "Live View". Search for a place, get directions and point your smartphone's camera out into meatspace to get those directions overlaid on reality. This feature was first announced at Google I/O 2018 and has been on Pixel phones for a few months, but now everyone with an ARCore (Android) or ARKit (iOS) compatible smartphone can enjoy the experience of walking around an unfamiliar place with your phone in front of your face. The feature hasn't filtered down to my smartphone yet. I hope it's as useful in practice as it looks in the photos.
Thanks to the fact Uber is a publicily listed company now, it has to tell the market how it's going financially. As a result, we now know that Uber lost US$5.2b last quarter and revenue growth is the slowest it's ever been. A large chunk of that came from stock it gave to employees post-IPO, but if you take that out of the equation, Uber still lost US$1.8b - twice what it lost this time last year. What will happen first? Uber has a robocar breakthrough before the rest of the industry it can keep to itself or investors give up hope and the company runs out of money?
Blackmagic Design have announced a nice upgrade to their Pocket Cinema Camera. It now supports 6K resolutions and costs only US$2,495. There's an EF mount so you can use easy to find and affordable (compared to cinema lenses) Canon lenses, records in Apple ProRes (up to 4K, need to use Blackmagic RAW for 6K) using just a HFS+ or exFAT file system. It'll even let you plug in a USB-C external SSD and record direct to that. BMD also released a new public beta (16.1) of their powerful video editing suite, Davinci Resolve. I already own FCPX and use that on my Mac, but use Resolve on Windows PCs because it’s free and fantastic.
DJI Spark drone (drone only, no controller) - $399 delivered from Amazon AU.
Pre-order a Samsung Galaxy Note 10/10+ and get a pair of AKG wireless headphones plus a $100 gift card at JB Hi-Fi.
10% off all iPads at Harvey Norman. Get Officeworks to price match for an extra 5% off too.
Officeworks is clearing out the Nokia 8.1 smartphone for $497.
🎶 Parabola - TOOL
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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.