# Issue 579

##### Friday, 16th Feburary 2018

## In This Issue

- USA, UK and Australia confirm their belief that NotPetya was 100% Russian military
- 1 million people sign petition saying Snapchat's new UI sucks
- Who would win - one unicode boi or the world's wealthiest corporation?
- Peter Thiel is sick of Silicon Valley's intolerance
- A delightful selection of minor news
- Australian car company bosses want fed govt to do something to encourage EVs
- Florence is a beautiful "visual novel" for iOS & made in Melbourne
- 10% off eBay sitewide, free Yubikey, cheap DJI Spark, 25% off JBL speakers, cheap Joycons & Nokia 8

## News

### USA, UK and Australia confirm their belief that NotPetya was 100% Russian military

The White House issued a statement today, formally blaming the Russian military for NotPetya, that nasty data deletion worm, that along with all its variants, ruined the lives of sys admins and hopefully ended the careers of a few CIOs around the world. The UK's NCSC and Australia agrees with the USA. The statement simply said that the Russians were using NotPetya to "destabilise" Ukraine and that the "reckless and indiscriminate cyber-attack will be met with international consequences". Dunno what the consequences the USA will impose on Russia though - a full scale ground invasion via Finland perhaps? That'd be good for the ol' military industrial complex.

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### 1 million people sign petition saying Snapchat's new UI sucks

People are really, really, really upset about Snapchat's latest redesign. A petition managed to get 1 million people asking Snapchat to roll the changes back has fallen on deaf ears. Evan Spiegel reckons that "even the frustrations we're seeing really validate those changes. It'll take time for people to adjust, but for me using it for a couple months I feel way more attached to the service". I haven't used Snapchat in ages, but I assume someone moved the emoji icon and changed where you access the thing that makes you look like a dog? No wonder people are upset!

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### Who would win - one unicode boi or the world's wealthiest corporation?

Oh look, another Unicode bug that causes every Apple operating system to crash. "The bug, induced by sending a specific character in the Indian language Telugu, causes certain apps on iPhones, iPads, and Macs to freeze up and become unresponsive. Messages, Safari, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other apps that accept text input are all affected". If you use the character in iMessage, it will cause iMessage to freeze every time it loads, haha. Apple said a fix will come soon. What's going on here? How can this happen again?

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### Peter Thiel is sick of Silicon Valley's intolerance

In an article in the WSJ (paywalled, here's an alternative link), people close to Peter Thiel him say that he's leaving San Francisco and going to Los Angeles because he has "grown more disaffected by what he sees as the intolerant, left-leaning politics of the San Francisco Bay Area, and increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for tech businesses amid greater risk of regulation". He's even thinking of leaving Facebook's board because of his relationship with Donald Trump and the rest of Facebook's, particularly Mark Zuckerberg's, disdain of the stupidest President the USA has ever had. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out Pete.

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### A delightful selection of minor news

- Nokia is looking at getting out of the wearables market only 2 years since buying Withings.
- Google is removing the "view image" button in image search results because it was sued by Getty Images.
- FedEx left the details of 110,000 customers, including passport photos and drivers licences, unencrypted on a publicly exposed S3 bucket.
- Bitcoin has spiked again, surpassing US$10,000 in value for no apparent reason. Still half what it was worth just a few weeks ago.
- Microsoft is adding an "ultimate performance mode" for "power users" in Windows 10 Pro for Workstations.
- The latest version of Google Chrome has has begun automatically blocking ads it deems intrusive.

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## Not News, But Still Cool

### Australian car company bosses want fed govt to do something to encourage EVs

BMW's Australian boss has said that unless Australian governments take EVs seriously, BMW won't bring future EV models to Australia, leaving us with crappier cars as BMW pours more of its efforts into EVs instead of ICE vehicles. Ditto Jaguar's CEO, who thinks Australia "will squander billions of dollars of potential economic benefits" by not supporting early adopters of EVs. Even the Australian Chief Scientist reckons we really missing out when it comes to electric cars. Meanwhile, over in the USA, Southern California Edison customers and employees can get US$10,000 off a brand new BMW i3.

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### Florence is a beautiful "visual novel" for iOS & made in Melbourne

The creators of Monument Valley have a new iOS game - Florence. Not a single zombie, BFG, dragon, wizard or fast car in it and that's a nice thing sometimes. Florence is more of a visual novel than a game really and according to the review on Press Start, "encapsulates the rollercoaster ride that is young love, breaking free of routine and the pursuit of happiness". Excellent ratings on the App Store too. I downloaded Florence, just to check it out and ended up playing the entire thing. My mate Raj over at Reckoner likes it too. If you're after something to occupy you for about 30 minutes, it's $4.49 very well spent, just to appreciate the creativity. There's even a few nice Melbourne touches in it.

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### 10% off eBay sitewide, free Yubikey, cheap DJI Spark, 25% off JBL speakers, cheap Joycons & Nokia 8

- eBay has 10% off sitewide if you spend more than $75. Use the code PRONTO. Very nice deal, as stuff is normally not price-jacked like the 20% off deals.
- Sign up for a free 3 month trial of Wired magazine and get a free Yubikey 2FA token.
- JB Hi-Fi have the DJI Spark drone & drone controller for $629
- Use the code 25OFFJBL to get 25% off at JBL's online store. The Playlist Chromecast speaker is Wirecutter's pick and only $186.75 delivered.
- Grey left or right Joycon controller for the Nintendo switch, $47 at EB.
- Harvey Norman has the wonderful Nokia 8 smartphone for $599, plus a $59 HN gift card.

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

Xenia Rubinos - Lonely Lover

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

The Sizzle acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures, and to elders both past and present.​

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