In This Issue

News

Uber’s CEO compares his robocar murder to Saudi assassination of journalist

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stepped straight into a pile of dog shit during an interview with Axios yesterday, comparing the Saudi Arabian assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi to the "serious mistake" they made with their murderous self-driving car. That "serious mistake" was the deliberate ordering and carrying out an assassination of a journalist airing a regime's dirty laundry. Here's a 2 minute video excerpt of the interview for some more context. Today Dara issued an apology, saying "I said something in the moment that I do not believe. When it comes to Jamal Khashoggi, his murder was reprehensible and should not be forgotten or excused". It shouldn't be excused, but Uber still has the head of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund on their board of directors. Cool.

Google’s “Project Nightingale” is secretly ingesting hospital patient data across the USA

The Wall Street Journal (paywalled) has let loose that Google is "secretly gathering millions of patient records across 21 (US) states, in an effort dubbed Project Nightingale". The data Google's slurping up includes "lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, complete with patient names and dates of birth". The data is coming from Ascension, a US healthcare provider that agreed to give it to Google. The article doesn't explain what Google has planned, but it’s a safe guess it’s got something to do with advertising. Interesting that neither Ascension or Google made any announcement about this partnership. Probably beacuse they know the optics on such a project are absolute ratshit.

More Starlink satellites launched, this time by a rocket that’s been used three times

SpaceX has launched 60 additional Starlink satellites, adding to the 60 placed into orbit in May. To make it even more special, the rocket used was a Falcon 9 that's been in space three times previously. This launch of 60 Starlink satellites was the fourth use of the rocket and SpaceX plans to use it again for more Starlink satellites soon. Their aim is to launch 60 "every other week" according to Gwynne Shotwell. Shotwell also said that Starlink needs "360 to 400 (satellites) to have a constant connectivity where the satellites can end up through the ground talking to each other. Once we get to 1,200 satellites, we will have coverage of the whole globe". Tell someone from the 70s that launching 60 satellites every few weeks would be a thign in 2020 and they'd totally believe you as that's the bare minimum of what people in the 70s thought 2020 would be like.

Not News

Search based advertising is a pile of lies, but everyone keeps doing it

This article may or may not be paywalled for you (sometimes I can read the full thing, sometimes it locks me out!) but it's a banger story about how useless search based advertising is. The core argument is that it's incredibly difficult, almost impossible really, to tell if someone purchased a product based on an ad they saw on Google/Bing/whatever, or if they were going to buy it anyways but just happened to click on a link to take them to the site. Even after running experiments that prove search based advertising doesn't make a difference (e.g: eBay stopped running search ads for a few weeks, sales didn't drop), the industry persists because there's billions of dollars involved and thousands of charlatans who believe their own hype.

Bargains

🎶 Mind Reader - Silverchair

😁 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.​