Hello to the 858 new Sizzle subscribers that took advantage of my little Ozbargain promotion this week. We managed to raise $429 for the fine folk at Digital Rights Watch! I hope you like your 90 day taste of The Sizzle.
Too bad if you're in the 2nd most populated state in the USA and want to have a cheeky wank - you're blocked from Pornhub now. Pornhub took this action after Texas enacted a law that forces them to verify the age of visitors using a government ID API, something Pornhub reckons is a privacy risk unless done on-device, not in the cloud, so they block access if you've got a Texas IP address. You can get around this using a VPN if you're keen of course. I agree with Pornhub here - I don't want the government to have a log of each time my ID was used to verify my age when visiting adult content, but I also get the state's view that adult content shouldn't be so easy for minors to access. There needs to be a better technological solution here that respects user privacy.
SpaceX's Starship had its 3rd test last night and it seems to have gone pretty well. It was the first time all 33 Raptor engines functioned as expected and a test of the payload bay doors was successful too. It still hasn't nailed the landing (it's supposed to land gently in the ocean for recovery), but there's 9 more tests approved with the FAA for 2024. In the near term, SpaceX plans to use Starship to launch a fuckload of Starlink satellites all at once from its huge payload area. Longer term, NASA wants to use Starship to take heaps of stuff to the Moon and setup a permanent base there. Even longer term, Musk reckons Starlink will take people to Mars (imho not in my lifetime). Strongly recommend clicking through to the article on this story as the photos are fantastic. Unfortunately they've stopped livestreaming their launches to YouTube in glorious 4K and only broadcast them on Twitter/X which is nowhere near as good quality.
This year's Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act annual report dropped last week and after many years, there's still zero uses of this incredibly invasive Act related to terrorism. If you remember, the government and law enforcement at the time made a huge fuss that they desperately needed powers to force tech companies provide "technical assistance" to "provide data", even if it is encrypted. They harped on about terrorists and kiddie fiddlers, but in reality, all its been used for really is the NSW cops (53 out of the 66 technical requests made were by them) to investigate a homicide or drug offence (47 out of the 66). Perfect example of the government catastrophising an issue to get their way and erode our freedom as there's fuck all chance the law will be scaled back now that we know it's not that useful for the purpose it was intended for.
Who remembers Aperture, Apple's professional image editing and photo management program they abandoned in 2014? I do and when Apple discontinued it, that's also when I kinda stopped taking photos with my fancy camera as I didn't like any of the software (i.e: Lightroom) to edit with. Aperture's legacy lives on with a new app called Nitro - which itself is an updated version of RAW Power - both made by Nik Bhatt, the former engineering lead on the Aperture team. RAW Power has been around for a while and it's great, but Nitro is brand new and has features like "gradients, brushing, cloning, XMP sidecars, synchronized zoom, and more" that were not possible with the legacy codebase of RAW Power. It's got a 7-day free trial and after that is a $150 one-off purchase via the Mac App Store. Maybe it's time for me to dust off the ol' digital camera and give Nitro a spin to see if it rekindles any creative spirit I have left.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
Starship and its Super Heavy booster climb off the launch pad at Starbase, Texas. (Arstechnica / SpaceX)
📻 La femme d'argent - Air
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