### Issue 1956 - Thursday 19th October, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- X is asking new users in NZ and the Phillipines to pay $1/yr to verify their accounts
- Victorian auditor finds dodgy dealings in government co-owned fibre optic bridge sensor startup
- The Parliamentary Friendship Group on Tech and Innovation is now a thing
- Velociraptor HDDs, ThinkPad 701C upgrade, Canvify iOS app, free payphone fun, Linux cheat sheet app
- Cheap Logitech portable keyboard, 14" 1080p touch USB-C monitor, iPad Air 5th-gen, SanDisk 1TB microSD, Bose QuiteComfort Ultra earbuds

## The News

### X is asking new users in NZ and the Phillipines to pay $1/yr to verify their accounts

X has begun "testing a new program (Not-a-Bot) in New Zealand and the Philippines" where "new, unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post and interact with other posts. Within this test, existing users are not affected". Musk reckons this $1/yr fee is "the only way to fight bots without blocking real users" and while it "won't stop bots completely", "it will be 1000X harder to manipulate the platform". Considering the desperate situation X is in, I don't blame them for trying this out. Will it actually decrease bot activity? Elon will never be honest with the results of this experiment so we will never know.

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### Victorian auditor finds dodgy dealings in government co-owned fibre optic bridge sensor startup

VicTrack and Xerox came up with a nifty system called FiBridge that uses "fibre optic sensing" to check if bridges are safe. It was so promising that the state government and Xerox set up a joint partnership in 2021 called Eloque to sell it to governments around the world. Sounds cool, but there's one problem - it didn't fucken work. The Victorian Auditor-General's Office found that the department of transport "did not conduct sufficient due diligence before investing. It also did not specify its requirements before Eloque started to install FiBridge on state-owned assets". The CEO of Eloque was also the CEO of VicTrack (who own the bridges these sensors would be installed on), creating a "lack of transparency around his governance and management responsibilities and led to conflicts of interest".

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### The Parliamentary Friendship Group on Tech and Innovation is now a thing

There's now a Parliamentary Friendship Group on Tech and Innovation that will "provide a forum for industry and parliamentarians on productivity-enhancing technologies like artificial intelligence, as well as run briefings and events on the latest research and development trends, as well as economic and investment trends". It will be co-chaired by Labor MP Jerome Laxale, Liberal MP Aaron Violi, and Independent MP Allegra Spender. Their first meeting was an event co-hosted by the Technology Council of Australia (TCA) and the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and reps from Atlassian, Accenture, Cochlear, Google, Harrison.AI, SEEK, and Xero attended. What a nice little package for all the lobbyists hanging around Canberra.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Velociraptor HDDs, ThinkPad 701C upgrade, Canvify iOS app, free payphone fun, Linux cheat sheet app

- Back in the day I really wanted a WD Velociraptor HDD. It spun at 10,000 RPM and was the fastest HDD you could buy. Then SSDs became a thing and made it obsolete.
- Someone on the Framework forums has emptied out the chassis of a classic IBM ThinkPad 701C (the one with the expanding keyboard) and is replacing the insides with the guts of a modern Framework laptop.
- Canvify is an iOS app that lets you see what a photo would look like on your wall using the magic of augmented reality. What a time to be alive.
- A guy in Philadelphia installed a free payphone out in the street for shits and giggles. Unlike Telstra who made payphones free because the Australian government forces them to!
- cheat is a little Linux utility that gives you a quick cheat sheet for common commands right at the command line. Kinda like a man page, but brief and to the point. It's on GitHub too.

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## Bargains

- Logitech Keys-to-Go Portable Bluetooth Keyboard - $39.95 at JB Hi-Fi
- ZSUS 14" FHD IPS Portable Touchscreen Monitor - $120 from AliExpress
- Apple iPad Air 5 10.9" 64GB Wi-Fi - $849 at JB Hi-Fi
- SanDisk 1TB Extreme PRO microSDXC Card - $186.09 from Amazon
- Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds - $382.46 from Myer

## Image Of The Day

A group photo of the speakers and organisers of One More Thing's 2013 conference at ACMI, Melbourne. That's me kneeling in the front left. (One More Thing)

## The End

📻 I'm Not Like Everybody Else (Mono Mix) - The Kinks

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