# The Sizzle

### Issue 178 - Wednesday, 29th June 2016 - Like A Monkey With A Miniature Cymbal

- Evernote fiddles around with their pricing
- The NBN's chief architect quit today
- NBN refuses to release any info about their FTTdp trials
- Huawei MateBook reviews are up
- Symanetc security products have huge new flaws

- Roam-E, the phallus shaped drone that'll indulge your narcissistic vanity
- Here's why wi-fi sucks (and how to make it suck less)
- Inside - the follow up game from the makers of Limbo

NEWS

Evernote fiddles around with their pricing
Old mate Evernote has announced a new pricing structure and more limitations on the free service. The main change is that you can now only use two devices with the free service - if you wanna use your Mac, iPad and iPhone, well time to cough up US$4/m for the Plus tier, which removes this restriction. Evernote say these changes will help them invest more time into making Evernote great again (red cap not included).
Discuss

The NBN's chief architect quit today
Here's a juicy bit of innuendo just before the federal election - NBN chief architect Tony Cross has resigned and will leave for good on Friday. He joined NBN back in 2010, then went to work for Telstra designing their GPON and DSLAM networks. Tony returned to NBN in 2014, hand picked by the new regime and has overseen the design of the FTTN network. No reason given as to why this seemingly sudden resignation took place. Someone's had enough feeding the Australian public shit? Another massive issue with the FTTN rollout? Either way, nice timing from Tony.
Discuss

NBN refuses to release any info about their FTTdp trials
Also in NBN news, Delimiter has tried to get the full results of the "skinny fibre" (aka FTTdp) trials conducted in Ballarat and Karingal last year, that we only knew about due to a set of leaked NBN documents. NBN has refused to give these documents up pretty much saying it's commercial in confidence and people knowing this info would be detrimental to the NBN project. Unfortunately, this is the usual response from NBN when anything that'll make the FTTN rollout look bad is revealed and people want more info.
Discuss

Huawei MateBook reviews are up
Reviews are up of the Huawei MateBook, which we first saw at CES months ago - read them on Arstechnica, The Verge, PC World and heaps of other sites. It's a Microsoft Surface clone, with better specs, but the reviewers don't seem to rate it very highly. Whilst the MateBook looks great, the keyboard case is half arsed, accessories (like the pen, keyboard and dock) all have to be purchased separately and performance wise, the CPU tends to throttle down more than other hybrid computers due to the relatively thin case Huawei shoved a Core m3 into.
Discuss

Symanetc security products have huge new flaws
I don't know why you'd trust Symantec with anything, but it's appears that almost all their products have huge vulnerabilities, recently exposed by Google's Project Zero. Vulns so bad that they allow privilege escalation with no user interaction. According to the researcher who has been looking into this, "these vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets". The issue is with the way Symantec's malware scanning decide to unencrypt malware code in order to see what sort of malware it is, which allows the malware to bypass the protection Symantec's software is supposed to provide.
Discuss

COOL SHIT

Roam-E, the phallus shaped drone that'll indulge your narcissistic vanity
Are you a hip and cool person who needs a phallus shaped drone following them around to take photos while they do rad BMX stunts and crazy breakdancing moves? Then the Roam-E is for you! It's a little helicopter with a camera attached that uses face detection to seek you out and take snaps, panoramic video and even live streaming video. Just watch the damn video.
Discuss

Here's why wi-fi sucks (and how to make it suck less)
If you've ever wondered why wi-fi sucks, read this excellent piece from the IEEE explaining the reasons why. Basically, it's because wi-fi is so popular, yet has a limited amount of radio spectrum to use. Many wi-fi devices don't co-operate with each other very well and all hog the same part of the spectrum, when really, they should be spreading themselves out so there's space for everyone.
Discuss

Inside - the follow up game from the makers of Limbo
The team that made the much lauded game Limbo for the Xbox 360 will release a new game tomorrow. Inside is apparently dark and moody and all the things people love from indie games. It's only on Xbox One and Windows though, might come to PS4 and Mac in a few years, hah. I don't know much about video games, but everyone loved Limbo and this is the follow up game from the same team, so it's worth a squiz I reckon.
Discuss

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 Over and Over, by Hot Chip. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!