NEWS
Victoria has loads of Bitcoin to sell and it's a bull market right now The price of Bitcoin has jumped 21% in the last 4 days and as usual with Bitcoin, nobody really knows why. It's probably the Chinese freaking out about something and throwing their cash into Bitcoin as an investment, but could also be related to some upcoming changes in the Bitcoin protocol that'll allow transactions to occur in minutes (i.e: the Lightning Network). It's good then, that Ernst and Young is selling $16m worth of seized Bitcoins on behalf of the Victorian government. The auction should fund a few schools I reckon. Discuss
Iran and Thailand hate the internet Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace (fucking sick name imho) has decreed that all messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Hangouts need to operate servers in Iran within the next 12 months, or they will be banned. Why? So Iran can keep an eye on what people are talking about, of course! Also in shit things governments do, Thailand's government is making law that'll require all ISPs give them full access to all encrypted communications. It's like Snowden's leaks were a how-to guide for shit countries, not a warning. Discuss
Intel has some new CPUs you might not really care about Intel has shown off some new gear at Computex today. A new range of Xeon CPUs (E5-1500 V5) that support real time HEVC (aka H265) encoding using QuickSync. There's also some new i7 chips, this time for the desktop. The 10-core i7-6950X, the 8-core i7-6900K, the 6-core i7-6850K and the 6-core i7-6800K comprise Intel's top of the line "consumer" CPUs. They're faster than the old ones and expensive. Anandtech has all the benchmarks you care about. Discuss
Apple and Broadcom didn't give Caltech a cut for using their wi-fi patents Apple and Broadcom are getting sued by Caltech for infringing on their patents relating to 802.11n and 802.11ac wi-fi. The lawsuit is mainly targeted on Broadcom who make the chips Apple use for wi-fi, but Apple is Broadcom's largest customer for these chips, so they're lumped in by Caltech for good measure. Unlike most patent trolls, Caltech (a totally legit and relatively prestigious university) isn't just doing this for shits and giggles to turn a buck. Will be interesting to see how much Broadcom and Apple cough up to make this go away. Discuss
Australia needs more cyber security, immediately Australia, apparently, isn't giving cyber security the attention it deserves. UNSW cyber security experts have published a paper saying that whilst countries such as the USA and UK are treating it as a priority, Australia still has its head in the sand as to the consequences of ignoring cyber attacks. Australia should set up an APAC centre of cyber excellence and create a cyber defence league (lol cyber). Discuss
COOL SHIT
Book your exact room in a Hilton hotel off a Google map The Hitlon hotel chain has added the ability to choose your room off a Google map directly in the Hilton app. How cool is that? About half of Hilton's hotels are available to book this way, with the rest coming on by the end of the year. I'm sure it costs a fortune to book via that instead of the usual discount websites, but still, cool. Discuss
Android AOSP getting ported to the Raspberry Pi 3 Looks like Google is planning to officially support the Raspberry Pi 3 as an Android device via AOSP. A repo on AOSP popped up for the Raspberry Pi 3, but it is currently empty. No doubt, the Google engineers will give it some love soon. You'd be able to use Android on the Pi instead of say, Raspbian for a GUI - maybe Android will be more power efficient than Raspbian, or something. I look forward to seeing what people do with it. Discuss
Min the minimal web browser Min is a weird web browser. It's like a bare bones browser that takes the omnibar approach of Chrome to a new level - very little window chrome either. Just a big rectangle of web browser. It's for Mac OS X 10.10 only - worth a look if you think Safari or Chrome is too heavy for ya. Discuss
Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!) --Anthony
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