# The Sizzle

### Issue 282 - Thursday, 24th November 2016 - The FCC Won't Let Me Be Or Let Me Be Me

- Trump repeats his desire for Apple to manufacture in the US
- The NHTSA wants smartphones to have driver mode to reduce distraction
- The Germans want Snowden to visit and spill his guts, but he won't
- Telegram launches a simple blogging platform called Telegraph
- Steam announces user voted awards for games

- Catch of The Day will be selling the mini-NES tomorrow
- Dr. Me is an Australian service to hook you up with a doctor over a video chat session
- 1990 episode of Beyond 2000 dreams what Australia will be like in 2020

NEWS

Trump repeats his desire for Apple to manufacture in the US
Old mate Trump is going around saying that he'll lure Apple back to manufacturing in the USA by giving them such sweet tax cuts, they'll be mad not to set up new factories on US soil. When the fact that a US factory making iPhones probably won't have a lot of people in it actually working and will be full of robots, Trump just says that's ok, Americans will build the robots too, so it's all good. This story in the Guardian takes a quick glance at the feasibility of US made Apple products. Likely some low volume stuff, like the iMac, is where they'd start, rather than the iPhone. The iPhone, could be made in the USA, but really, they'd just be packaged and screwed together in the US - all the hard work would be done in China.
Discuss

The NHTSA wants smartphones to have driver mode to reduce distraction
America's NHTSA is worried about drivers distracted by smartphones. 385 fatal crashes were caused by smartphones in 2014. No doubt it's become worse since then. To combat this, the NHTSA wants smartphone makers to implement "driver mode" into the phones that can detect when a person is in a car and lock out the more distracting features, like text messaging, viewing videos, images and automatic scrolling text. The recommendations are still voluntary, but it wouldn't surprise me to see this stuff implemented soon by Google or Apple. Having your customers die in car crashes caused by their addiction to your product isn't a good thing.
Discuss

The Germans want Snowden to visit and spill his guts, but he won't
The Germans are looking into how hard they were owned by the NSA's mass surveillance program and want to have a chat to patriot Ed Snowden as part of their investigation. Of course, Ed can't leave Russia for Germany, as the Germans can't promise they won't hand him over to the USA. Instead the Germans have offered him the ability to participate via video link, or to have German investigators go to Moscow and talk to him - but he's rejected that too. So the lefty Germans have asked a court to decide if the German government what's more important - getting Snowden to safely talk about how the US spied on Germany or Germany's relationship with the US, which would take a severe hit if they had Snowden in their hands but refused to hand him over.
Discuss

Telegram launches a simple blogging platform called Telegraph
Telegram, the IM platform I like the most but nobody else I know uses, has launched a blogging service called Telegraph. It's kinda like Medium, but can be started anonymously and is relatively lightweight so things load quickly. Not bad if you just wanna shit out some words outside of Twitter or Facebook. It's pretty easy to use, check it out.
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Steam announces user voted awards for games
Steam is launching an award for the best games, voted by Steam users. There's eight categories in the Steam Awards, each with wacky titles like The "I Thought This Game Was Cool Before It Won An Award" Award, The "Best Use Of A Farm Animal" Award and The "Just 5 More Minutes" Award, which must go to Civilization 6. Damn that wonderful game. Winners will be announced in December. Civ 6 should win all the awards imho.
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COOL SHIT

Catch of The Day will be selling the mini-NES tomorrow
Catch of the Day will be selling some of those mini-NES units tomorrow at 4PM. Together with Target, these are the only joints claiming to sell the extremely popular console before Christmas. God speed to you if you decide to try your luck.
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Dr. Me is an Australian service to hook you up with a doctor over a video chat session
I dunno if this is specifically "tech" related, but I found out about Dr. Me lately and thought it was pretty interesting. It's an app that launches a video chat session with a legit Australian doctor who can give you a consultation on your phone. If all you've got is say, a shitty cold and can't go to work, but need a medical certificate, you could just launch Dr. Me, have a chat to a doc who will email you a certificate. Dr. Me can even email you prescriptions apparently. Costs $49 per consult and it isn't able to be claimed back on Medicare, but still, a great idea. I've not had a need to use it yet, but if anyone does give it a shot, I'd be interested to hear how it went.
Discuss

1990 episode of Beyond 2000 dreams what Australia will be like in 2020
And just quickly, because I'm supposed to meet a bloke in Port Melbourne to pick up a Sun X4500 filled with 48x 750GB HDDs at 2:30 and it's already 1:22 and it takes 50 min to get there from my place, here's a 90 minute of a Beyond 2000 special episode, contemplating what life would be like in Australia in 2020. 2020, if you've lost track of what year it is currently, is only 4 years away. I love me some future gazing from the past. Bonus points for Australian future gazing goodness!
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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 Without Me, by Eminem. Like The Sizzle? Like it on Facebook!