# The Sizzle

### Issue 87 - Tuesday, 16th February 2016 - Sitting Back On The Couch

- IBAC starts its probe into Ultranet
- Kodi's getting pissed that pirates are re-selling their work
- Stephen Fry leaves Twitter
- Apple acknowledges that iOS devices can be bricked by changing the date
- Microsoft releases new phone - Lumia 650

- Lord of The Rings compared to enterprise IT
- Use your Raspberry Pi as a jukebox with Mopidy
- Use Napkin instead of Skitch

NEWS

IBAC starts its probe into Ultranet
The Victorian Department of Education pissed away over $180m on a failed intranet called Ultranet, developed by CSG and Oracle. The Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) is looking in to how the hell this happened and who is to blame. Some very dodgy relationships with Oracle & CSG have already emerged and even to the point of Department of Education staff buying shares in CSG. A total lapse in morality. This will go on for a few weeks and hopefully will be very revealing.

Kodi's getting pissed that pirates are re-selling their work
If you haven't heard of Kodi, it's a great piece of open source media centre software that runs on practically everything. It has a healthy plugin system too, where you can develop an add-on that'll give you access to a plethora of pirate material. People on eBay are taking advantage of this and Kodi is annoyed that their trademark is used in relation to pirate material. So Kodi is asking people to stop conflating piracy with their name, or else they'll enact their legal rights under their trademark.

Stephen Fry leaves Twitter
The big man on Twitter's campus, Stephen Fry, has quit Twitter after people took some joke at an awards ceremony too seriously. Fry was harassed, he didn't like it, wrote on his blog that's he's leaving Twitter and the world continues on its merry way, with no consequences whatsoever.

Apple acknowledges that iOS devices can be bricked by changing the date
For a few days, word has been circling on social media that if you set an iOS device's date to Jan 1, 1970, it won't boot into the home screen, rendering the device a brick. It's probably due to the Unix Epoch issue. Apple has realised it's a problem and has said a fix will come soon. Dunno if it'll be 9.3 or 9.2.2. In the meantime, don't change the goddamn date on your iPhone.

Microsoft releases new phone - Lumia 650
After the lukewarm response to their flagship Lumia 950 and 950 XL phones, Microsoft has launched the Lumia 650 - a mid range phone, just US$199 (around AU$300-$350) and running Windows 10. 1GB of RAM is pretty pissweak and the camera is kinda average. No Continuum either. Unless you're a Windows freak, grab a Nexus 5X or the latest Moto G.

COOL SHIT

Lord of The Rings compared to enterprise IT
If you're a fan of Lord of the Rings and work in enterprise IT (I assume there's a large crossover of these two things), Remy Porter crafted an 8 minute video explaining how the epic, twisting and turning plot of Lord of the Rings is very similar to working on your typical IT project. I can't stand the Lord of the Rings and think it's the epitome of boring, but that's just me and if you dorks like it, who am I to judge you?

Use your Raspberry Pi as a jukebox with Mopidy
Mopidy is a music jukebox server thing written in Python that runs very nicely on a Raspberry Pi. Install Mopidy on your Pi or any computer running Python, point it at your music library and using an MPD client (of which there's a fair few available for many platforms) or a web browser, you can listen to your music anywhere, any time. It even supports Spotify and Google Music.

Use Napkin instead of Skitch
Still mourning the dearth of development on Skitch? Looking for a better way to annotate screenshots or images on your Mac without going into the deep abyss that is Photoshop? Check out Napkin - it's pretty much what Skitch should have turned into once it was purchased by Evernote. It's US$40, but if you annotate stuff in a big bad way, it's a good investment I reckon. Kinda wish this was on Windows - this sort of app is what I miss about the Mac.

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

The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!