Elon Musk has found someone to take over at Twitter's CEO. All we know is that it's a woman and they'll start in around 6 weeks time. Beats me why you'd announce that you've found someone to be CEO but not tell us their name. The Verge reckons it will be Linda Yaccarino, the current head of advertising and partnerships for NBCUniversal. Musk will step down as CEO and will be "overseeing product, software & sysops". Meanwhile, Twitter Blue subscribers got a new feature - encrypted DMs. It's only for paying subscribers, so if one of those paying freaks DMs a normal, sane user, it will not be encrypted. Also it's not turned on by default and only works on text. Twitter's announcement post even says "when it comes to Direct Messages, the standard should be, if someone puts a gun to our heads, we still can't access your messages. We're not quite there yet, but we're working on it".
Remember the former Ubiquiti employee that tried to extort the company for US$1.9m? He's going to jail for 6 years. Nickolas Sharp was a senior engineer at Ubiquiti and during his final days there before starting a new job, he copied "155 data repositories" and accidentally revealed his home IP when an internet outage disconnected his VPN. When Ubiquiti's security team realised what happened a few weeks later, he said someone was trying to frame him and began posting as a whistleblower, telling journalists that someone was trying to extort Ubiquiti - only that person was him. Eventually he got found out, got arrested and now he's doing serious jail time. Seems like his only motive was greed, despite earning an excellent US$250k/yr at Ubiquiti. Pathetic.
One of the very, very first (I'm talking like first 10) subscribers to The Sizzle has new online store and I while I don't put ads in here, I want to support him and I really like what he's selling! The shop is called The Usual and one of the things they sell are these awesome deconstructed iPhones placed into a frame. If I had to pick one, I'd get the iPhone 4S - absolutely timeless design and in my opinion, the best iPhone. There's also GameBoys, if Nintendo is your thing, and "DIY" kits that include the phone, frame and the tools you need to take it apart and hang it on the wall. Perfect for your nerd lair/trendy office.
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.
British computing pioneer Charles Babbage's (1791-1871) Difference Engine No. 1 was the first successful automatic calculator and remains one of the finest examples of precision engineering of the time. It was a decimal digital machine - the value of a number being represented by the positions of toothed wheels marked with decimal numbers. The portion shown here was assembled in 1832 by Babbage's engineer, Joseph Clement. It consists of about 2000 parts and represents one-seventh of the complete engine. This 'finished' portion of the unfinished engine was demonstrated to some acclaim by Babbage and functions impeccably to this day. (Science Museum, London)
📻 Gardenhead / Leave Me Alone - Neutral Milk Hotel
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