### Issue 1414 - Friday 23rd July, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- FoI gets us a heavily redacted COVIDSafe report
- Link rot leads to porn videos on old news articles
- Blizzard sounds like an awful place to work
- 3 months hands on experience with Starlink
- Lego Star Wars AT-AT, Sony headphones, free Apple TV+ for PS5 owners, 10% off Ubiquiti gear

## The News

### FoI gets us a heavily redacted COVIDSafe report

Thanks to a Freedom of Information request by The Canberra Times, we can now read the COVIDSafe report from March that was supposed to be made public but the government has been hiding. Unfortunately "all elements of the report relating to the actual evaluation and analysis of the effectiveness of COVIDSafe were redacted by the government" with the "only elements left visible in the report relate to the basics of how COVIDSafe works and its launch, and positive elements, such as the quick timeframe it was developed". Typical arse covering tactics from the government. I know COVIDSafe is small in the scheme of things, but is a perfect example of how the optics of something is more important to government than the actual outcome.

### Link rot leads to porn videos on old news articles

Vidme was a popular video hosting service for advertisers that was used on many, many news websites like New York Magazine, the Washington Post, HuffPost, and even our little slice of hell, the Herald Sun. There's thousands of articles out there with Vidme videos embedded in the page. Vidme went out of business in 2017, but porn company 5 Star HD Porn purchased the Vidme domain name. They've now used the Vidme URL to host porn and now porn is appearing everywhere a Vidme video was embedded. Thumbnails for videos of full hardcore porn are just slapped in the middle of articles from around 2017-2016 in normally reputable news publications. Link rot at it's most extreme!

### Blizzard sounds like an awful place to work

We all know about Blizzard, the storied game developer responsible for popular games like Warcraft and Overwatch. What I didn't know, is that their workplace is stacked full of absolute shit stains. It's so bad that the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing is suing them after a two year investigation found Blizzard's workplace culture is a "breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women" that underpaid women and subjected women employees to "constant sexual harassment, including having to continually fend off unwanted sexual comments and advances by their male co-workers and supervisors and being groped at the 'cube crawls' and other company events" One woman even killed herself due to her boss's sexual harassment. Blizzard reckons DFEH is lying, but it doesn't reflect what it's like to work there now.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### 3 months hands on experience with Starlink

Jeff Geerling has been on the Starlink beta for 3 months and has blogged about his experience using Elon Musk's speedy satellite internet service compared to a fixed line cable (aka HFC) connection in the USA. Overall for Jeff, it was indistinguishable from a fixed line connection most of the time, but drop-outs were a problem for streaming scenarios. He'd get the occasional hiccup on Zoom, or Netflix would stall and need a kick up the bum to get going again. On average his bandwidth was around 150mbit down and 20mbit up, with 40ms of latency. Jitter (the number of times latency is inconsistent) is worse, but it's livable for anything asynchronous and may improve as more satellites go up.

## Bargains

- LEGO Star Wars AT-AT 75288 - $175 at Amazon
- Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones - $319.20 from digiDIRECT's eBay store
- 6 months free Apple TV+ for PlayStation 5 owners
- Wireless 1 has 10% off Ubiquiti gear if you're after some new networking crap

## The End

📻 Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun - Beastie Boys

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

💬 Did you know that The Sizzle has a Slack group? Join in and chat with other subscribers like you.

💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info? Visit the customer portal.

The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.​