# In This Issue

- Tech Related Coronavirus News

- NTSB finds yet another car crash death that could have been avoided if Tesla’s Autopilot was not used

- Study finds that using Android Auto and Apple CarPlay whilst driving is worse than drunk driving

- Just some random crap clogging my bookmarks you might like

- Cheap Cisco WebEx, 2019 iPad Mini, Philips Hue B22 bulb, Fetch TV news, pre-paid Telstra & Optus SIMs, 4GB Rasberry Pi, Pioneer VSX-933 amp, Apple HomePod

# Tech Related Coronavirus News

- Netflix, YouTube, Facebook and other streaming services have officially been told in Europe and Australia to lower quality as to ease the bandwidth squeeze, now that people need to rely on the internet for more than just their stories.

- myGov collapsed today because heaps of people are trying to obtain welfare payments. The government services minister said it was due to a DDoS attack but everyone without brain poisoning knows it’s just a shit website. Same thing happened with the 2016 Census.

- Formula 1 launched a virtual Grand Prix, with some "real" F1 drivers getting into fancy video game racing sims at home and taking on esport racing pros. The first one was last night and you can watch it here.

- Facebook has "donated our emergency reserve of 720,000 masks that we had bought in case the wildfires continued" and Apple has donated "two million N95 respirator masks" - who knew Apple and Facebook had an emergency reserve of masks?

- Google I/O has been cancelled entirely. They were previously planning to run some sessions online but not even that will take place now due to California’s “shelter in place” orders. Protocol has a list of large tech events cancelled due to coronavirus.

- The WHO is developing an open-source app they describe as “Waze for COVID-19” to provide legitimate info for the public, as well as a method for public health officials to do contact tracing. Singapore and Taiwan have already launched their own.

- Here’s some Docker containers pre-configured with Folding@Home and BOINC so you can help run some computational work to further COVID-19 research. If you have spare GPUs in particular, they’ll help immensely.

- Scott Hanselman has a guide to setting up OBS, NDI Tools and an Elgato Stream Deck for a slick livestreaming setup. Good for those who now have to teach or present online instead of in-person. The Elgato Stream Deck Mini is $116.05 off eBay.

- Trump said that the White House is collaborating with IBM, the Department of Energy Google, Amazon and Microsoft to harness their supercomputer resources for epidemiology, bioinformatics and molecular modeling.

# Normal Tech News

#### NTSB finds yet another car crash death that could have been avoided if Tesla’s Autopilot was not used

The NTSB has released its final report into a fatal 2019 crash involving a Tesla Model 3 with autopilot that collided into a semi-trailer crossing a highway. The semi-trailer was at fault, but the NTSB said that “Tesla's analysis found Autopilot didn't treat the truck as a "threat" as it moved into the path of the Model 3 because it was designed to navigate highways with limited access where crossing traffic isn't an issue. Had the Model 3 driver not been able to turn on Autopilot in that specific instance or had the system made sure they paid attention to the road, the accident may have been avoided”.

#### Study finds that using Android Auto and Apple CarPlay whilst driving is worse than drunk driving

IAM RoadSmart has conducted a study exploring driver attention in cars with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. It found that drivers interacting with the touch screens on AA/CP units had up to 57% slower reaction times than that of an undistracted driver. To put that into perspective, driving at the drink-drive limit was 12% slower and using cannabis was 21% slower. Even using AA/CP voice controls were pretty bad, with a 36% worse reaction time than an undistracted driver. It was also interesting to note that Android Auto is slightly less distracting than CarPlay.

# Not News

#### Just some random crap clogging my bookmarks you might like

- Photo Stream is a self-hosted image gallery that doesn't look like it was developed in 2002. Here's a demo site with Photo Stream running.

- Serve The Home has an in-depth review of the HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus. It's about half the size of the original MicroServer but still manages to hold 4x 3.5" drives. If my ML10V2 shits the bed I'm getting one of these.

- SanDisk has new Max Endurance microSD cards that come with a 3 to 15 year warranty depending on the capacity. Good for dashcams, security cameras or a Raspberry Pi.

- Facebook switched to using chrony over ntpd for their time keeping purposes. The blog post they made justifying the decision is kinda interesting if you're an extreme nerd.

- Linus Tech Tips got their hands on a Turemetal UP10 PC case, which is essentially a gigantic heatstink that manages to cool a 32-core EPYC system and some GPU completely silently. Just don't touch it while it's under any sort of load.

# Bargains

- Cisco Webex is free for 90 days

- 2019 iPad Mini 256GB Space Grey - $593 from Shop Zero

- Philips Hue colour B22 bulb - $49 at Target

- Fetch TV has made all the news channels (CNN, BBC, etc) free for 3 months

- Free pre-paid SIM starter kits (no credit) from Optus, Lycamobile and Telstra

- 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 - $88.98 delivered from element14

- Pioneer VSX-933 7.2 channel amp with AirPlay, Chromecast, wi-fi & ethenet - $519.20 from KG Electronic’s eBay store using the code PMID20

- Apple HomePod smart speaker - $298 at Officeworks

🎶 Nostrand - Ratatat

😁 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 is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.​