### Issue 1462 - Thursday 30th September, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- YouTube banning all vaccine related misinformation at last
- Twitter unveils new cryptocurrency related features
- Cloudflare's R2 is an Amazon S3 object storage competitor
- Apple's laziness in fixing AirTags bug leads to exploit going public
- Cheap AirPods Pro, BeyerDynamic DT 990 Pro headphones, SanDisk 1TB USB flash drive, Catch Connect & Telstra pre-paid SIMs, 6TB WD Blue HDD

## The News

### YouTube banning all vaccine related misinformation at last

YouTube is banning a wide range of vaccine related misinformation, not just COVID-19 related vaccine conspiracy theories. Starting now, they'll ban videos "that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines". That also includes "content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them". About fucking time! I love how at the start of their post they say that "we've long removed content that promotes harmful remedies, such as saying drinking turpentine can cure diseases" - like that's an evergreen problem they have, people guzzling turps because they saw a YouTube video.

### Twitter unveils new cryptocurrency related features

Twitter couldn't resist any longer and has joined the NFT bandwagon. In a raft of other product updates, they said they will support NFT authentication "soon". According to TechCrunch, this will "allow NFT creators to connect their crypto wallets to Twitter, in order to track and showcase their NFTs on the platform". Here's a demo video showing how it might work. Twitter also showed off Bitcoin support for its Tip Jar feature, that'll let people "add a Bitcoin Lightning wallet or their Bitcoin address in order to start receiving Bitcoin tips". There's some non-cryptocurrency related features too, like recording and replaying Spaces conversations, a "Heads Up" experiment that'll "help to give users a sense of a conversation’s vibe before they wade in" and moved Saftey Mode into beta.

### Cloudflare's R2 is an Amazon S3 object storage competitor

Cloudflare's gone and launched their own alternative to Amazon S3 - R2 (one letter behind S3, get it?). Nothing special there you might say, there's shitloads of object based cloud storage services out there! The secret sauce of R2 is Cloudflare's Bandwidth Alliance. Unlike Amazon's ungodly US$0.09c/GB for data sent out of the AWS universe to the wider internet, Cloudflare won't charge you for egress to other providers that are part of their Bandwidth Alliance (of which there are many). Storage itself will cost US$0.015/GB, don't know about other charges at this point, but knowing Cloudflare it'll be pretty damn competitive. Corey Quinn has an informative Twitter thread about the potential cost savings. R2 still in testing, but an open beta will be live "soon".

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Apple's laziness in fixing AirTags bug leads to exploit going public

When you chuck an AirTag into lost mode you enter your phone number so when someone finds the AirTag and scans it, they see that phone number and hopefully call you and return your lost item. Sounds fine and normal - until someone "injects arbitrary computer code into its phone number field" that "causes the Good Samaritan's device to visit a phony Apple iCloud login page", where they can be tricked into handing over their iCloud details. Bobby Rauch told Apple about this Stored XSS flaw months ago, but after getting repeated non-answers as to when it will be fixed or if it's eligible for Apple's bug bounty program, he went public. Apparently this is a common complaint from bounty hunters trying to work with Apple.

## Bargains

- Apple AirPods Pro - $279 from MyDeal
- BeyerDynamic DT 990 Pro headphones - $179 + delivery from Mwave
- SanDisk 1TB Extreme PRO USB 3.2 flash drive - $203.65 + delivery from Amazon USA
- Catch Connect 365-day prepaid SIM with unlimited calls & 240GB data - $109 from Catch
- Telstra 365-day prepaid SIM with unlimited calls & 200GB data - $234
- 6TB WD Blue SATA HDD - $178 from Amazon USA

## The End

📻 Big Take Over - Bad Brains

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

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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.​