# The Sizzle

### Issue 159 - Wednesday, 1st June 2016 - For Vegans, We Got Some Meat

- Turnbull will chuck a lazy $15m at startups if he sticks around as PM
- Xiaomi will pre-load Office on its gear in return for 1500 Microsoft patents
- AMD reminds us they still make CPUs at Computex
- Periscope experiments with real time crowdsourced comment moderation
- Panasonic pulls out of the LCD panel game

- The $14,000 super secure smartphone
- Over 642 million hacked accounts have been unleashed in the past few weeks
- Nifty FullPageOS Raspberry Pi distro

NEWS

Turnbull will chuck a lazy $15m at startups if he sticks around as PM
Old mate Turnbull has wheeled out an extra $15m on top of an existing $8m for a "Incubator Support program" that will start on July 1st. Part of the Innovation Agenda, this program will help start startup incubators, support current ones and pay for "experts" to hang around these incubators and dole out nuggets of advice to the brave entrepreneurs.
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Xiaomi will pre-load Office on its gear in return for 1500 Microsoft patents
Xiaomi has hit a deal with Microsoft to license 1500 of its patents in return for pre-loading Microsoft Office and Skype on a bunch of its devices. One of the reasons Xiaomi doesn't really sell gear in the west is due to its weak patent portfolio - maybe some of these patents will help it get closer to selling devices in the USA (the holy grail for any global company). Microsoft too benefits by reminding people that Office is a thing and is good and you should use it.
Discuss

AMD reminds us they still make CPUs at Computex
AMD seems to be getting their shit together at this year's Computex, having announced Summit Ridge - their new CPU architecture to succeed the relatively poor performing Bulldozer. There's no ETA for when it will come out, but OEMs will get samples in Q3, so maybe shipping products containing Summit Ridge will come out Q1 2017. In more tangible products, there's some new mediocre APUs (7th Gen "Bristol Ridge") and what looks like an excellent bang for buck graphics card - the Radeon RX 480.
Discuss

Periscope experiments with real time crowdsourced comment moderation
Twitter has implemented a new feature in its video streaming app Periscope, that will crowdsource the moderation of shit comments. If you see a nasty message pop up whilst watching a stream, you can flag it, you won't see any more from that user and Periscope will ask random users watching the same stream if the message is "questionable". I kinda like this idea - sort of like a jury, having the content assessed by your peers, not some dweeb in Silicon Valley.
Discuss

Panasonic pulls out of the LCD panel game
Panasonic is gonna stop making LCD TV panels. Due to the competitive nature of the LCD panel market (and China ramping up production and making LCDs pretty much as good as Japan/Korea) and the fact TV sales are stagnating, it just isn't profitable to make them any more. They'll still make Panasonic TVs, but using other brand panels. They'll still make LCDs for stuff that aren't TVs though. This exit leaves Sharp/Hon Hai/Foxconn as the sole Japanese TV LCD manufacturers.
Discuss

COOL SHIT

The $14,000 super secure smartphone
Say hello to the new Vertu! (G'day James) - the Solarin is a US$14,000 smartphone that's apparently super secure. It's made by an Israeli company, so you know it's gonna be secure, yeah? A concierge service monitors your device and can inform you if you're getting hacked. The phone itself is nothing special, but it's secure and stuff so your nudes are safe.
Discuss

Over 642 million hacked accounts have been unleashed in the past few weeks
Old data breaches from a few years ago that hackers have been sitting on have suddenly flooded the Internet, with over 642 million accounts now available for harvesting, if you know where to look. Fling, LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr were all hacked years ago and for some reason, the info from that hack is only coming out now. Sure, it's old, but if you've been using the same email addy and password all this time, you really should change it.
Discuss

Nifty FullPageOS Raspberry Pi distro
If you just need to display a single website for a kiosk or information display, FullPageOS might be for you. It's a Linux distro for the Raspberry Pi that does nothing but display a website on boot. Looks like it's easy to configure too. Just another use for the little lovable Raspberry Pi!
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!