# The Sizzle

### Issue 110 - Monday, 21st March 2016 - The Fat Kid From Mordialloc High School

I'm running out of Get This quotes for the newsletter titles. Got a month's supply, but after that, I'm all outta quotes. Might be time to plan another running theme.

- There will be an Apple event early tomorrow morning
- Self-driving cars might be 30 years away, or like, next year, we have no idea
- Standing desks suck and actually make things worse (maybe)
- Microsoft apologises for the creepy gyrating women dancers at GDC party
- My Mum called me to let me know the Pope is on Instagram

- Ken Shirriff rips apart a good looking (but shitty inside) counterfeit MacBook charger
- Watch the trailer for season 3 of Silicon Valley
- The Dominos pizzabot is the sort of robot I want to rule the world

NEWS

There will be an Apple event early tomorrow morning
As far as Apple events go, this is kinda lukewarm - a 4" iPhone with last year's iPhone's guts, cool. Faster iPads, nice. Then a bunch of minor updates to software and some Apple watch bands. Zzz. What could turn this lame event into a particularly spicy meatball is Apple's little skirmish with the FBI. I think I might wake up a little earlier than usual and watch the damn thing live like a good little iSlave. Work out what time it's on in your part of the world using this nifty website.
Discuss

Self-driving cars might be 30 years away, or like, next year, we have no idea
Chris Urmson, the guy in charge of Google's self-driving car project, recently backtracked on the bold claims previously espoused by Google that self-driving cars will be ubiquitous in the very near future. It seems like unless there's perfect conditions, autonomous cars still suck and it could take up to 30 years. So in some parts of the world, yeah, there might be a fleet self-driving cars operating in a limited geographical area, but the dream of a car that can drive anywhere, any time, in any conditions, reliably, is a long way away. Maybe we shouldn't ditch those public transit projects just yet.
Discuss

Standing desks suck and actually make things worse (maybe)
Ha! I told you fancy fucks that standing at your desk is stupid and here's the proof. "What we actually found is that most of it is, very much, just fashionable and not proven good for your health," Dr. Jos Verbeek, a health researcher at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and one of the scientists on the review, told NPR." I trust a Finnish scientist (Finnish!) more than some hipster with a CS degree's blog. "The idea you should be standing four hours a day? There's no real evidence for that," Verbeek said, citing a 2005 study that showed prolonged standing heightened risk of enlarged veins. "I would say that there's evidence that standing can be bad for your health." Take this article with a grain of salt though, the report the article is based on actually has little to do with the health impacts of standing desks. I just wanted to tease you.
Discuss

Microsoft apologises for the creepy gyrating women dancers at GDC party
Microsoft were incredibly tone deaf by having a bunch of scantily clad woman dance and gyrate around a bunch of nerds milling around food at drink at some tasteless looking party at the large Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco last week. After realising the severe irony of on one hand promoting diversity and desiring more women in their teams, then on the other hand, setting up a very uncomfortable and demeaning environment for the very women they want to attract, Microsoft apologised and promises it'll never happen again.
Discuss

My Mum called me to let me know the Pope is on Instagram
His holiness is now on Instagram, following a cheesy ceremony that the founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom attended at the Vatican on the weekend. Watching the Pope give the iPhone version of Instagram blown up to 2x on an iPad a big definitive tap to post the first gram on his feed is pretty funny. The only reason I mentioned this and actually knew it was a thing, is because my mum called me to ask how she can "read the Pope on Instagram". She saw it on the TV news and wants to keep up to date with the hot gossip coming out of the Vatican, I guess. The Maltese just can't get enough Pope action.
Discuss

COOL SHIT

Ken Shirriff rips apart a good looking (but shitty inside) counterfeit MacBook charger
We all know of Ken's legendary power supply tear downs, exposing the cheap and poor quality PSUs disguised as legit Apple products. He recently received a 45W MagSafe 2 adaptor that looked virtually identical to an original Apple unit, minus a few very subtle manufacturing tolerances. He tore it down and find it's literally a fire hazard waiting to happen. Just check out the difference in components between the original Apple 45W and this counterfeit unit.
Discuss

Watch the trailer for season 3 of Silicon Valley
If you are a cynical bastard like me who loathes startup culture and the hubris and bullshit surrounding it, you'll get a few dank laughs out of Silicon Valley, now into a third season. HBO has graced us with a trailer and it looks like the Piped Piper boys are in for some knee slapping hijinx! It starts April 24th, plenty of time to catch up on seasons 1 and 2 if ya haven't already.
Discuss

The Dominos pizzabot is the sort of robot I want to rule the world
Okay, sure, the fancy looking robot is bringing you Dominos, which can be very hit or miss as far as pizza goes, but at least it's cheap. I've had some fucken top notch pizzas from Dominos that only set me back a fiver. If a robot can bring that pizza to me for like, $4 instead, so be it. This innovation was conjured up by Marathon Targets, an Australian company that makes target practice robots for our army. I look forward to the day all sorts of things are delivered to my house by robot.
Discuss

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!