# Issue 761

##### Friday, 9th November 2018

## In This Issue

- Google makes changes to sexual harassment policies after workers protest
- Telstra's CFO, Robyn Denholm, is now chairwoman of Tesla
- SA government wants you to hand over device passwords to police or face jail
- Foxtel's got a sports only streaming service now and it's good
- News items in dot point format
- The copyright cartel is strong in Australia
- Running a website off solar power to reduce one's carbon footprint
- Cheap Xioami Mi Box S, Catch Connect 45GB plan, Xbox Live Good, 6TB ext HDD, Dell XPS 13

## News

### Google makes changes to sexual harassment policies after workers protest

After heaps of Google employees protested against management's poor handling of sexual harassment within the company, Sundar Pichai has published a blog post saying that things are gonna change now. They've uploaded a "comprehensive action plan to make progress" that outlines all the changes Google's gonna implement. Amongst all the changes is a ban on the "excessive consumption of alcohol", as it's a big reason why women are getting harassed. Drunk blokes doing something stupid at a work event. Despite Google's plan, organisers of the protest aren't content, saying unless elevating the diversity officer to report to the CEO and providing more employee representation on the board, it isn't going far enough.

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### Telstra's CFO, Robyn Denholm, is now chairwoman of Tesla

Due to Elon's "issues" with the SEC (funding secured!), he had to let go of his role as chair of the Tesla board. Taking his place is an Australian, Robyn Denholm, who is currently the CFO of Telstra (very similar company names). Not much more info than that to be honest, but it's pretty cool that an Aussie woman got the gig. I found Robyn's career trajectory interesting too - used to work for Sun Microsystems (RIP), Juniper (the less evil Cisco) and Toyota (dead company walking) as well as Telstra. She was also on the board of ABB (who make a shitload of high voltage electricity equipment). Sounds like a perfect person to take Tesla into their next phase as a mainstream auto maker and battery company.

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### SA government wants you to hand over device passwords to police or face jail

The South Australian government is proposing new laws that'll give police the power to force a password or biometric out of a suspect. They'll have to go to a judge to get permission and will only be able to use it where the suspect is alleged of a crime carrying a 2 year or more jail sentence, but if you refuse to give the cops your password or finger print to unlock a smartphone or computer, you could face up to 5 years in the slammer. Basically, if you're accused a decent crime and the cops want to snoop around your phone or computer to get evidence, looks like the SA government is gonna give em power to do so. At least there's a judge involved, I guess.

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### Foxtel's got a sports only streaming service now and it's good

Foxtel has finally launched its sports-only streaming service! It's called Kayo and it's still in "beta", but you can sign up now for a 2-week free trial and then continue at $25/m to watch on 2-screens at once, or $35/m for 3 simultaneous screens. It's all 1080p and from a quick session last night watching some live NBL, looks to be 60fps as well. 4K would have been nice. It's got all the sports Foxtel offers on its traditional satellite service, just streaming online. There's no iOS or Android apps, but that's coming really, really soon - even Apple TV. $25/m is a pretty damn reasonable price for most people into more than one sport.

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### News items in dot point format

- Xiaomi has started officially selling smartphones in the UK, with the Mi 8 Pro and Redmi 6A now available there.
- The Nintendo Switch now has a YouTube app, so when you aren't playing games, you can watch videos, about games. Still no Netflix though.
- There's a new model of the PS4 Pro with a superior cooling system. Look for CUH-7200 on the box if you're buying a new one.
- The co-creator of Vine (remember those 6 second looping videos?) has a new startup called Byte, which is exactly the same as Vine.
- Facebook is gonna add a 10-minute window to Messenger so you can un-send messages you didn't intend to send.

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## Not News, But Still Cool

### The copyright cartel is strong in Australia

Cory Doctorow has put up a post on the EFF blog about how Australia is leading the world in stupid copyright laws. Simply put, our government is so pissweak, it implements whatever laws the media industry *cough* Foxtel & Village Roadshow *cough* demand, no questions asked. Right now, the government is considering updating the site blocking law that already exists to deny access to sites hosting pirated material, but to force ISPs to block sites that link to pirated material too. On top of that, they also want to force search engines to remove links to sites that link to pirated material. Cory argues that when this new site blocking stuff doesn't work, the media companies will get the government to start blocking VPNs or other ways of evading the ISP blocks too - that's when shit will hit the fan.

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### Running a website off solar power to reduce one's carbon footprint

Low-Tech magazine decided to put their money where their mouth is and run their website purely off-grid, only on solar power. They cut the bandwidth and CPU usage of their site by a factor of five and the server is a Raspberry Pi running off a battery and some solar panels. I love everything about this and I'm inspired to run The Sizzle's very basic and low-trafficed website purely off solar power too. In the overall scheme of things, my website isn't going to be emitting much carbon emissions, but at the very least, it's a fun project. I should really get around to doing it this summer, now that my backyard shed is built and I've got somewhere to install a panel on top of. I've even got a spare Raspberry Pi and a fast internet connection at home.

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### Cheap Xioami Mi Box S, Catch Connect 45GB plan, Xbox Live Good, 6TB ext HDD, Dell XPS 13

- Gearbest is selling the new Xiaomi Mi Box S international version for $90 delivered
- Catch Connect is offering new customers 45GB of data plus unlimited calls & SMS for just $15 for 90 days. Use Cashrewards and get $5 back, making the entire thing only $10.
- Get a 3 month Xbox Live Gold membership for only $18 with 7 Eleven's smartphone app
- 6TB Lacie Porsche external HDD for just $188 delivered using the code PEARTREE
- Dell XPS 13 with an i5-8250U CPU, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD & 1080p screen for $1439.20 using the code PEARTREE

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

Deka - Gerling

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.

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The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.

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