# Issue 769

##### Wednesday, 21st November 2018

## In This Issue

- Apple removes Tumblr from App Store due to child porn concerns
- NASA to investigate SpaceX and Boeing because Elon smoked weed
- Dutton's pissy about the Assistance and Access Bill getting too much scruitiny
- If you wanna provide IT contractors to govt, you gotta prove you pay your taxes
- Google and Facebook release updates to monitor & restrict how often you use their stuff
- Ford's CEO is excited about reselling customer data to other companies
- New Civ6 expansion adds climate change to the game
- Cheap speakers, arcade cab, Nokia 2.1 & Google Mini, Logitech MX Anywhere 2S mouse, ALDImobile 12m plan, Optus iPad Pro plans, Xbox One X game bundle, 55" LG OLED, refurb iPhone SE

## News

### Apple removes Tumblr from App Store due to child porn concerns

Apple nuked Tumblr's app from the App Store on November 16th and it still hasn't returned. Apparently Tumblr was serving up child porn and obviously Apple doesn't want to be associated with that. What makes this interesting is that all the content on Tumblr is user generated, much like Reddit - but unlike Reddit, Tumblr seems to have made no effort to remove the child porn (mostly teens posting nudes of themselves, which whilst consensual is still kiddie porn) and that's what's made Apple turf em from the App Store.

Share this story | Discuss

### NASA to investigate SpaceX and Boeing because Elon smoked weed

NASA is going to do a "safety review" of SpaceX and Boeing due to Elon Musk's weed smoking antics on the Joe Rogan Show a few months ago. NASA reckons Elon's antics are a sign of a worrying safety culture at SpaceX and wants to dig in further. Seems a bit prudish to me and roping in Boeing smells of "well we can't just look into SpaceX otherwise Elon will bitch and moan about Boeing getting a free ride". The downside of this review is that crewed launches to the ISS that were planned for early 2019 are probably going to be delayed even further and the USA has to keep on paying the Russians to use the Soyuz.

Share this story | Discuss

### Dutton's pissy about the Assistance and Access Bill getting too much scruitiny

Peter Dutton is whining that the scrutiny being applied by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to his precious Assistance and Access Bill is happening to simply "delay and obfuscate" its introduction. He also said in an interview with Sky News (his safe space), that he's asked PJCIS to cut short the public consultation to speed things up. Luckily PJCIS has held course and will continue with three more public hearings over the next fortnight. Despite this, Dutton plans to try get the bill through the Senate again next week. Let's see how the Senate cross bench gets pork-barreled this time!

Share this story | Discuss

### If you wanna provide IT contractors to govt, you gotta prove you pay your taxes

From July 2019, business supplying the federal government with IT contractors for projects worth over $4m will need to hand over documentation showing that they pay their taxes. I'm shocked this wasn't a thing the government checked before, but apparently it's not! This means there will be a level playing field so companies that don't do this stuff can't under-bid on tenders, pushing out the legit companies. Businesses will also need to disclose if they or their directors have been "convicted of tax evasion, phoenix activity, and bribery or corruption offences". Sounds good to me and hopefully weeds out the cowboys in the industry.

Share this story | Discuss

### Google and Facebook release updates to monitor & restrict how often you use their stuff

Google has made its Digital Wellbeing feature available to all Pixel & Android One devices via the Play Store. You can use it to see how long you spend using each app and locking yourself out of apps when you use em too much. It's also got a weird feature that'll slowly turn the device's UI to greyscale before your bedtime, to remind you to put the phone away. How fucking hooked are people to these things that they're fighting their natural desire to sleep?! Facebook's added similar features to its smartphone app so you can add time limits, see how much you've used Facebook in the past week and muting push notifications for certain time periods.

Share this story | Discuss

## Not News, But Still Cool

### Ford's CEO is excited about reselling customer data to other companies

In the day and age of companies like Facebook and Google copping shit from all corners over how they handle user data and privacy, you'd think every CEO worth their salt would keep their mouth shut regarding how they plan to make money off customer data. Ford CEO Jim Hackett didn't get the memo and blabbed on a podcast about how they know so much about their customers (predominately via Ford's finance division), that selling and re-purposing Ford customer data is something they're keen to do in order to offset losses from a shrinking automobile market.

Share this story | Discuss

### New Civ6 expansion adds climate change to the game

There's a new expansion pack for Civ 6 coming Feb 14th! Civilization 6: Gathering Storm will introduce the concept of climate change to Civ for the first time. Yep, your civilisation will have to contend with the externalities of its production - just like in real life. Using resources such as oil and coal would presumably make the chances of natural disasters increase and other resources like food or luxuries disappear or appear in other areas of the map. I look forward to wasting an entire week of my life playing this. Here's a trailer and here's some gameplay.

Share this story | Discuss

### Cheap speakers, arcade cab, Nokia 2.1 & Google Mini, Logitech MX Anywhere 2S mouse, ALDImobile 12m plan, Optus iPad Pro plans, Xbox One X game bundle, 55" LG OLED, refurb iPhone SE

- Audioengine 2+ speakers in gloss red for $259 + delivery from Mwave
- Remember those Aldi arcade cabinets for $500? They're $399.20 delivered on eBay using the code PEPPY
- Get a Nokia 2.1 and a Google Home Mini for $99 delivered from Telstra
- Logitech MX Anywhere 2S wireless mouse for $59 delivered from Amazon AU
- ALDImobile is offering 12m unlimited calls & SMS with 12GB of data for $99 again
- Optus is selling the new iPad Pros now. Get the 11" 64GB LTE unit for $75/m with 200GB of data. Works out to only $14.63/m for the data plan
- EB has the Xbox One X 1TB with 9 games you might actually want to play for $598
- David Jones has the 55" C8 LG OLED for $1999, which when combined with 5% Cashrewards, is only $1,899.05
- Phonebot is selling refurbished iPhone SE 64GB for $259

Share this story | Discuss

That's it, see ya tomorrow!
--Anthony

The Smashing Pumpkins - Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)

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 and we both get $50 credit on our next bill.

Did you know that The Sizzle has a podcast? Eliza Sorensen and I chat about the week's news every Friday. It's a great way to quickly catch up over the weekend if you didn't have time to read the daily emails. Subscribe now! Big thanks ZenCast (created & run by a Sizzle subscriber!) for the free hosting.

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 acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures, and to elders both past and present.​

This email was sent to *|EMAIL|*
why did I get this? | unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

*|LIST:ADDRESSLINE|*