# Issue 674

##### Friday, 6th July 2018

Just a reminder that if you like The Sizzle, feel free to forward it on to anyone you reckon would like it too! A tweet or Facebook post about The Sizzle would be nice too :)

## In This Issue

- Sydney Airport & Qantas kick off couch to gate biometrics trial
- Series of lynch mob killings in India blamed on WhatsApp
- Proposed EU copyright laws fail to pass parliament
- HealthEngine repents for its sins and promises to change
- Random slightly interesting news because it's Independence Day weekend in the USA
- Itty Bitty Sites manages to shove the contents of a website in its own URL
- Appreciation for pizza box form factor computers
- Cheap GTX1060, Dell XPS 15, Viewsonic 27" WQHD monitor & Sony CarPlay headunit

## News

### Sydney Airport & Qantas kick off couch to gate biometrics trial

Next time you fly with Qantas overseas via Sydney airport, you may be asked to participate in a "couch to gate biometrics trial". There's cameras all over the international terminal that will detect you through "four key steps in the passenger journey including automated check-in, bag drop, lounge access and boarding". This works in conjunction with the Department of Home Affairs automated clearance process for clearing immigration without having to show anyone your passport. It sounds nice in theory, just wandering around the airport without having to hand over ID or tickets, but will it actually work? Are the face recognition platforms that reliable already? I remain sceptical.

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### Series of lynch mob killings in India blamed on WhatsApp

Over the last 2 months, lynch mobs in India have killed 12 people accused of being pedos, based on nothing but a chain message on WhatsApp. India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that WhatsApp "cannot evade accountability and responsibility" for this vigilante justice and wants WhatsApp to do something about it. As a first step, WhatsApp will "publish new educational materials around misinformation and conduct our news literacy workshops", as well as offering $50,000 grants to researchers to study this phenomenon. Oh the wonders of instantaneous and frictionless mass communication.

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### Proposed EU copyright laws fail to pass parliament

That shitty copyright law in the EU I talked about yesterday failed to get up in their parliament. It was knocked back despite musicians like Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox, Placido Domingo and David Guetta who were among "1,300 musicians who urged politicians to enact a law forcing sites like YouTube and Facebook to use filters that would stop users illegally uploading their music". Thank fuck for that. I get the feeling that this is just the first step of the salami getting sliced and we will see smaller, more successful attempts to incrementally reach the holy grail of rights owners - content white lists enforced by ISPs and websites with criminal ramifications for avoiding them.

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### HealthEngine repents for its sins and promises to change

HealthEngine has seen the error of their ways been shamed by the media into changing their shoddy business practices. The Perth-based doctor booking service that "funnelled hundreds of users' health data to lawyers, and boasted to advertisers it could target users with marketing based on their symptoms and medical conditions", initially said it did nothing wrong, claiming that it had clear consent from its users. But it didn't, leading doctors to cancel their subscriptions. Now HealthEngine has announced it will "stop sharing users' data and will remove advertising from its website". Let's see how long HealthEngine lasts as a company without the prospect of revenue from selling patient data.

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### Random slightly interesting news because it's Independence Day weekend in the USA

- Google "opened" a Melbourne office yesterday, but they've had one for ages. This announcement is just a new, larger office.
- Twitteriffic has removed push notifications and live-updating tweets from its app due to an upcoming Twitter API change.
- Google's DeepMind has beat beat humans in a game Quake 3 capture the flag. It did this by playing ~450,000 games of Q3CTF against itself before playing the humans.
- The NSW government has a $50m fund for helping regional telcos expand and improve internet access in the gaps NBN won't fill in.
- Facebook paid over $350m to secure the broadcast rights for the English Premier League in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I hope they do a better job than Optus.

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## Not News, But Still Cool

### Itty Bitty Sites manages to shove the contents of a website in its own URL

Itty Bitty Sites is an amazing little project by Nicholas Jitkoff that places the entire contents of a website into the URL without the need for a webserver. Take this link for example. The contents of it after the # are called a fragment. This fragment is not interpreted by the web server, but is looked at by the web browser. The stuff you type in is compressed, then base64 encoded, placed in the URL post-fragment and when accessed by a web browser, the contents of the fragment are expanded locally and displayed on screen. How cool is that? Itty Bitty even generates a QR code of the URL for easier dissemination:

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### Appreciation for pizza box form factor computers

Thanks to @voltagex on Twitter, I have stumbled across a delightful blog exploring a computing niche I didn't think anyone really appreciated - pizza box computers. This variety of desktop computer had its day in the late 80s to the mid 90s and were named pizza boxes because the cases they came in were roughly the shape of a pizza box. Sophie Haskins has collected a couple of them and writes about her attempts to restore them to their former glory. The Quadra 605 and Power Mac 6100 have long been of particular interest to me because they exhibit two of my computing peccadilloes - Macs & pizza box form factors! The SGI Indy has a ridiculous boot chime and the HP 712/60 has a very funky POST screen.

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### Cheap GTX1060, Dell XPS 15, Viewsonic 27" WQHD monitor & Sony CarPlay headunit

- Galax Nvidia GTX1060 OC 6GB graphics card - $362.40 with code PICKITUP
- Dell XPS 15 (9570), i5-6300H, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1080p IPS - $1444.16
- ViewSonic VA2719-2K 27" 2560x1440 IPS monitor - $269.10 with code PLATYPUS
- Sony XAV-AX5000 car headunit with CarPlay/Android Auto - $557.48 with code PICKITUP

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

Regurgitator - I Like Your Old Remix Better Than Your New Remix

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.​

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