Issue 1879 - Monday 3rd July, 2023

Thanks to all the Sizzle subscribers that took the time to help me do a much needed membership drive during June. There's still fewer subscribers this year than last year, but it would have been much worse without your posts on social media egging people on to sign up. I really appreciate it!

In Today's Issue

The News

They're making the UK's Online Safety Bill even worse

The UK's controversial Online Safety Bill, most widely known for forcing messaging apps to do real-time monitoring for naughty stuff (CSAM, terrorism, etc) that'll break the end-to-end encryption in those apps, has expanded its horizons even further. Now the bill wants to make social media platforms liable for content that "encourages, promotes or provides instructions for a challenge or stunt highly likely to result in serious injury" and introduce "tougher age-checking measures to prevent children from accessing pornography", which in previous drafts was limited to adult websites only. 100% chance that our eSafety Commissioner is furiously taking notes.

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FTC to crack down big time on fake product reviews

Over in the US, their FTC is planning "a new rule to stop marketers from using illicit review and endorsement practices such as using fake reviews, suppressing honest negative reviews, and paying for positive reviews". It would include making it a crime to sell "false indicators of social media influence, like fake followers or views", "creating or controlling a website that claims to provide independent opinions about a category of products or services that includes its own products or services" and much more. About fucken time. There's so much review manipulation going on. I really hope the FTC can enforce this with a big stick.

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Elon Musk Content Corner

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Something I Saw On The Internet

Running macOS in a Docker container is easier than ever

Wanna run macOS in a Docker container? SickCodes have done all the hard work and published it on GitHub. You can choose from all versions of macOS all the way back to High Sierra. The main purpose is for security research (testing your sweet 0-days I guess) but it's also useful if you just want a command line version of macOS, something to run iMessage on, or a fully blown macOS environment with a GUI and all that supports X11 forwarding. Documentation looks solid too, shouldn't be too much of a pain to get going unless you've never used Docker before.

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Bargains

Image Of The Day

The PlayStation was named to be the opposite of work station. It was first produced by Sony in 1994 and went on to be the first video games console to sell a hundred million units. Sony ceased production of PlayStation in 2006. (Victoria and Albert Museum)

The End

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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.