# The Sizzle

### Issue 186 - Monday, 11th July 2016 - You Got The Bottom Bunk In A Two Man Cell

- More Pokemon stuff
- Theranos CEO not allowed to open another lab for 2 years & current labs shut down
- Looks like there's bipartisan support for electronic voting in Australia
- Facebook Messenger to get end to end encryption via Signal
- Bitcoin seems to have gone through halving the block reward unscathed

- Apollo 11 guidance computer code uploaded to Github
- GTA 5 gets another shitty online only expansion
- Vodafone conjures up a stunt to broadcast Nova radio over its LTE network

NEWS

More Pokemon stuff
Pokemon Go is still a big deal and has enraptured people around the world with its whimsy. The launch has been so successful, Nintendo's stock price has gone up over 20% - a sign that investors reckon Nintendo has a fruitful future making other smartphone games. Also, a teen in Wyoming found a dead body near a river whilst hunting for Pokemon, hundreds of people turned up Sunday morning to roam Circular Quay for Pokemon and my friend James Croft tweeted a picture of people playing Pokemon in Brisbane that has over 8,300 retweets. If you're an Android user, be sure to get your copy of Pokemon off the Google Play Store, don't sideload it as there's an APK disgusing itself as Pokemon but is actually malware.
Discuss

Theranos CEO not allowed to open another lab for 2 years & current labs shut down
Disgraced Theranos CEO, Elizabeth Holmes and Silicon Valley darling has been banned by the US government from operating any sort of medical lab for two years, as well as removing the Theranos lab's certification and its ability to process any more blood tests. This has come about after a report in March from the Center for Medicare and Medical Services that basically said Theranos is hopeless and ya can't trust it to be accurate with the technology it supposedly invented. This is what happens when startup charlatans and venture capitalists think they can "disrupt" medical science without respecting the checks and balances put in place to protect us.
Discuss

Looks like there's bipartisan support for electronic voting in Australia
Last week I mentioned in The Sizzle that some interest groups spruiked the e-voting concept as a thing Australia should do, but they were easy to ignore as they're just a bunch of nerds talking shit. But now Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull have both put electronic voting back on the agenda in their "Sorry I lost the election, but hey I was close/Sweet, I'm the PM now" speeches over the weekend. It'll be interesting to see where this goes, seeing as it looks to have bipartisan support. If you're a programmer, now might be an excellent time to make an e-voting startup and position yourself to snap up some sweet government cash.
Discuss

Facebook Messenger to get end to end encryption via Signal
Facebook is starting to implement the Signal protocol across its popular Messenger chat app. Signal, is an open source protocol for secure end to end encryption - what this means for people using Facebook is that the feds are gonna have a hard time looking at what you talk about on Facebook Messenger. There's a caveat though. This will only work if both people in the chat are on a smartphone. If you're chatting to someone who's using the web interface, it won't be encrypted in the same way. Facebook's CSO had a little rant on Twitter about why this is the case.
Discuss

Bitcoin seems to have gone through halving the block reward unscathed
Libertarians and hackers celebrated the halving of the Bitcoin block reward over the weekend. A Bitcoin block is a part of the blockchain, which is a big list of all the Bitcoin transactions, each time a new block is added, a reward of new Bitcoins are given out to the computer that processes that block. That reward used to be 25 Bitcoin, but is now 12.5 Bitcoin. This is a big deal in the Bitcoin community, trust me. Some people thought there'd be a bit of a shockwave sent through the Bitcoin market as a result, but it has remained remarkably stable.
Discuss

COOL SHIT

Apollo 11 guidance computer code uploaded to Github
NASA has uploaded the code that ran the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer to Github. This is the code that put humans on the moon, available for everyone to look at. Written over 40 years ago, in what to my untrained eyes looks like assembly language. Pretty damn cool.
Discuss

GTA 5 gets another shitty online only expansion
What the hell have they done to to my beloved GTA? The latest addition to GTA 5 is a stunt driving simulator that adds tubes and ramps and racetracks in the sky. Fucking hell Rockstar, you've jumped the shark. I can kinda forgive Rockstar for shunning the old school single player story mode gamers (we haven't received a single GTA5 expansion) in favor of the MMPORG online stuff as that's where the cash is, I assume. But to add this trash to what used to be the pinnacle of video game story telling? Ugh.
Discuss

Vodafone conjures up a stunt to broadcast Nova radio over its LTE network
Vodafone and Nova are doing a marketing stunt (paid for by Vodafone), that will see Nova's drive time radio show sent from the studio to the transmitter via Vodafone LTE, not via a dedicated fibre link as usual. Vodafone offered to o this in order to show just how awesome and fast and reliable the Vodafone network is. I'm sure there won't be any cell site specific QoS at all.
Discuss

Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony

The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Today's subject line is from King Kunta, by Kendrick Lamar. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!