Android 11 enters public beta, looks like welcomed a refinement release
ARM-based Mac rumours flare up prior to upcoming WWDC
Pocket Casts removed from Chinese iOS App Store & Apple hits US$1.5 trillion market cap
Reports of VMware Fusion’s death are greatly exaggerated
Cheap Fetch Mighty PVR, Amazon Echo Studio & 3rd-gen Echo, Xiaomi Android TV box, Google Nest Hub, Two Point Hospital
After a slight delay due to US citizens finally cracking the shits over their fucked situation, Google took the covers of Android 11. Notifications are getting tweaked again, with chat apps (e.g: Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, etc) getting their own notifications section. Pressing the power button brings up a "digital wallet" kinda like on the iPhone and adds a section for smart home controls via Google Assistant. Screen recording is now built-in to the OS, so every phone with Android 11 will be able to do this (I'm shocked it wasn't already). If you want a full rundown of what's new The Verge has you covered. The beta is available now for Pixel owners if you’re keen to see what’s new.
Amazon has done something to try and show they’re not totally oblivious to what’s going on around them, deciding to halt sales of its Rekognition service on AWS to law enforcement for one year. They hope that in the next 12 months US Congress will "place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology" and business goes back to normal. Why not just copy IBM and Microsoft and say they'll stop selling facial recognition tech until laws enacted, what's with the 12 month bullshit? Meanwhile, 250 Microsoft employees are asking their bosses to stop selling services to police (like, all services - Office, Windows etc.) and throw their support behind defunding police agencies, starting with their home town of Seattle. The link has the email employees sent to Satya Nadella in full. Vive la revolution!
Apple has removed Pocket Casts from the Chinese App Store. According to the Pocket Casts Twitter account, Apple's action was "at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China". They're not salty about it though, as they "believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship. As such we won't be censoring podcast content at their request". It's unknown if Pocket Casts got yelled at by the Chinese Cyberspace Administration (lol) and refused to kick a podcast out of its app, or if the CAC contacted Apple directly and Apple just nuked Pocket Casts to appease their 2nd biggest market. Oh, Apple shares hit an all time high today, valuing the company at US$1.5t - by far the most valuable company on the planet.
For a while I thought VMware was putting their Fusion and Workstation desktop virtualisation clients out to pasture, but it seems like there's someone at VMware that gives a shit as Fusion and Player recently received nice updates. VMware Fusion 11.5.5 on the Mac gained container support! Install the update, open Terminal, and check out the vctl command for controlling Docker containers. This is for being able to run containers within your VM environment, right? Otherwise you'd just install Docker directly on your Mac? For Windows users, the annoying "you must disable Hyper-V" prompt when running Workstation is gone! You can use Hyper-V and VMware side by side on Windows 10 now. I ran into this problem recently (long story, don't ask) so I'm glad it annoyed someone at VMware way more than it annoyed me.
Fetch Mighty PVR - $299 delivered
Amazon Echo Studio or 3rd-gen Echo - $279/$99 at Amazon AU
Xiaomi Mi Box S 4K Android TV - $83 delivered from TobyDeals
Google Nest Hub - $98 at JB Hi-Fi
Two Point Hospital for PC (and I think Mac, don’t quote me on that) - $16 on Steam via WinGameStore
🎶 Rat is Dead (Rage) - CSS
😁 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.
📡 Aussie Broadband is the best ISP I've used since Internode's glory days. Their CEO gives talks at AUSNOG about their network and they even have network utilisation charts for every NBN POI. Their pricing isn't the cheapest, but if you want an ISP that's fast & reliable, give them a shot. Use my affiliate link or my referral code (1001031) and we both get $50 credit on our next bill.
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.