# Issue 768

##### Tuesday, 20th November 2018

## In This Issue

- Transport Workers Union to continue fighting against the gig economy
- Twitter tries to "de-emphasise" follower counts, fails miserably
- Boss of Nissan & Renault fired & arrested for under-reporting his income
- Value of Bitcoin lowest in a year
- The stockmarket reckons we've reached peak iPhone
- The gap between real-life and the internet is basically gone
- Rode's new podcast unit is very tidy
- Cheap Jabra elite earbuds, 70" 4K LG TV, Xbox live gold, Yamaha soundbar, Google Home Mini with LIFX, Surface gear, Nintendo Switch, iTunes cards, Vodafone recharges, SMSL stereo amp

## News

### Transport Workers Union to continue fighting against the gig economy

The Fair Work Commission recently decided that a Foodora delivery person is actually an employee, not a contractor and Foodora owes the driver over $15,000 in missing wages. Energised by this decision, the Transport Workers Union who helped the guy ripped off by Foodora is now going after other gig economy businesses like Uber and Deliveroo. If the FWC applies the same decision to other gig economy businesses, they could disappear from Australia all together as their business models fall apart when they have to pay proper award rates. A fair day's wage for a fair day's work is the backbone of any fair labor market and these pricks do not provide that sort of income, so good riddance and piss off back to Silicon Valley where this shit flies unchecked.

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### Twitter tries to "de-emphasise" follower counts, fails miserably

Twitter's CEO was crapping on lately about how he thinks it is a wise idea to de-emphasise user follower counts as it's a poor metric for quality and "meaningful" conversations. The design team at Twitter took their boss's comments and released an update to Twitter's web interface that reflect what Twitter thinks will improve their platform. That update consisted of changing the font size of a user's follower count by like, 2 points. That's Twitter's idea of de-emphasising follower counts. Why not just get rid of them entirely, or at least, make them private, so others can't see? Oh I know why, if you take follower counts away, engagement drops as you've removed one of the key gamification signals our stupid lizard brains respond to.

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### Boss of Nissan & Renault fired & arrested for under-reporting his income

Carlos Ghosn is the boss of the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance (the 2nd biggest car maker in the world) and is credited with being the reason why RNMA is the only mainstream car maker to take EVs seriously with the Nissan LEAF and Renault Zoe. Unfortunately, he's a crook and has been arrested in Japan for "reporting compensation amounts in the Tokyo Stock Exchange securities report that were less than the actual amount, in order to reduce the disclosed amount of Carlos Ghosn's compensation". RNMA's board immediately sacked him and at "the end of a 90-minute press conference Saikawa gave a bow of apology". Seeing as Carlos was the champion of EVs at RNMA, it's unsure if they will continue to be a leader, or backslide like other Japanese carmakers and keep on ignoring EVs.

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### Value of Bitcoin lowest in a year

Bitcoin has fallen to a yearly low, currently hovering around US$5,000 for 1 BTC. According to Arstechnica, "nobody knows why the cryptocurrency market has turned into such a bloodbath—just as no one really knew why cryptocurrencies enjoyed such a spectacular rise a year ago. But it seems likely that one factor is the ongoing turmoil of Bitcoin Cash, the third most valuable decentralized cryptocurrency". For those unfamiliar, Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin, which has just recently had its own hard fork, making " Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV". Apparently the market doesn't know what's going on and people are just selling as much as they can while it's still worth something. Remember when it was worth like US$17,000+ back in December last year?

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### The stockmarket reckons we've reached peak iPhone

Apple's stock has dropped over 17% since November 1st (wiping over $170b off their market cap), mainly due to reports from suppliers telling the market that Apple has slashed orders of parts for iPhones. This signals to the market that Apple expects iPhone sales to drop - why else would you cut orders for parts? Now Apple's statement a few weeks ago that they're no longer going to report iPhone sales figures after proudly doing so for over 10 years, makes even more sense. We've reached peak iPhone, which is bad for Apple as more than half of their revenue comes from iPhone sales. If Apple wants to keep growing, they'll need to find other ways to make money now as the iPhone cash cow is shrinking.

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## Not News, But Still Cool

### The gap between real-life and the internet is basically gone

When I was a youngin the internet and real world rarely crossed over. That's why I loved it so much. I could talk all the shit I want and it would have little to no repercussions outside that little bubble. That's definitely changed lately, with the Victorian state ALP trawling through a Greens staffer's Twitter account, taking old shitposting tweets out of context and using them as ammo against them and the party during an election campaign. Anna Spargo-Ryan has a great article on Meanjin exploring this phenomenon of people deliberately misinterpreting the context of online conversations for their own gain.

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### Rode's new podcast unit is very tidy

Rode has announced the Rodecaster Pro, "the world’s first fully integrated podcast production studio". It's basically a fancy mixer designed to be a one stop shop for all your podcasting needs. There's 4 XLR mic inputs, 8 programmable sound effects pads (for stingers and ads and shit), a few 3.5mm inputs and a USB port so you can hook it up to a computer. The killer feature though, is a Bluetooth connection so you can connect a smartphone and use it to take callers live! It'll even do echo cancellation of callers so it sounds slick. The only thing missing is an SD card slot so you can use it entirely without a computer. But still, a classy little unit. Will go on sale next month, but no pricing info yet (I'm guessing $500 at least).

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### Cheap Jabra elite earbuds, 70" 4K LG TV, Xbox live gold, Yamaha soundbar, Google Home Mini with LIFX, Surface gear, Nintendo Switch, iTunes cards, Vodafone recharges, SMSL stereo amp

- Jabra Elite 65t True Wireless Earbuds - $231.96 with code PEPPY (free delivery with eBay Plus)
- 70" LG 4K TV 70UK6540PTA - $1713.60 + delivery with code PEPPY
- Harvey Norman is selling 12m Xbox Live Gold memberships for $47.97
- Yamaha ATS 1080 soundbar - $198 at Betta Electrical
- Google Home Mini plus a LIFX mini white A19 globe - $49 at JB
- Microsoft Surface Pro 6 i5 / 8GB / 256GB - $1498 also at HN who have 15% off the Surface range in general
- Nintendo Switch console - $379.05 delivered from Gamesmen on eBay with code P5OFF
- 15% off iTunes cards at Big W, but Costco is selling $50 cards for $39.95 (20.1% off!)
- 20% off Vodafone recharges at Woolworths
- SMSL AD18 stereo amp - $168.30 shipped from Amazon AU

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That's it, see ya tomorrow!
--Anthony

Rage Against The Machine - Bulls On Parade

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