No Sizzle on Monday because it's the King's Birthday public holiday in Victoria!
Apollo's developer, Christian Selig, has called it quits on the popular 3rd-party Reddit app. He posted on Reddit saying the app will shut down on June 30th as "talks with Reddit have deteriorated to an ugly point". While the costs of the new API are exorbitant, the main issue Apollo's creator has is the 30-day deadline. It's just too much for an indie developer like him to handle a total overhaul of his business in such a short time frame. It's much easier to shut it down and move on than deal with the grubs at Reddit who clearly don't want to co-operate. Every other Reddit app, like Narwhal and Reddit is Fun are taking the same approach. Reddit has carved out an exemption for non-commercial "accessibility apps" though. Reddit's CEO is doing an AMA tomorrow about "the latest API updates, including accessibility, mod bots, and third-party mod tools". That's gonna get spicy.
WhatsApp has a new feature called Channels. They describe it as "a one-way broadcast tool for admins to send text, photos, videos, stickers, and polls" - effectively a blog within WhatsApp. There will be a searchable directory of Channels (opt-in), but you can also be invited to a Channel via URLs sent in chats, emails or posted online. The post history is only stored for 30 days and admins can block screenshots and forwards of content in the Channel. WhatsApp also plans to add ways to "build a business around their channel using our expanding payment services" and add the option for "end-to-end encrypted channels to a limited audience". Channels launches in Colombia and Singapore first, rest of the world "over the coming months".
Edward Snowden has given an interview with The Atlantic where he talks about the 10th anniversary of his brave whistleblowing, exposing the global industrial scale espionage the US government was spearheading. He said he has no regrets over what he's done despite living in exile in Russia and views the "widespread use of end-to-end encryption as one of the positive legacies of the leaks". He also said that stuff like "facial-recognition software, AI, and invasive spyware such as Pegasus" make the things he exposed in 2013 "look like child's play". He admits now that digital privacy is "an ongoing process" and "we will have to be working at it for the rest of our lives and our children's lives and beyond". That's depressing, but realistic.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
Poster shows advertisement for M.I.T. summer computer course - introduction to COBOL programming. (Library of Congress)
📻 Race for the Prize - The Flaming Lips
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