### Issue 1904 - Monday 7th August, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- IAG sacks otherwise good employee that didn't hit keystrokes per hour quota & Fair Work is cool with it
- Elon Musk offers to pay legal bills of anyone "unfairly treated by employer" for tweeting
- Creator of Vim passes away, cryptolocker hits large US hospital network, TikTok provides option to disable algorithm in EU
- Little dogs helped Adelaide Telecom workers run cables through tight spots in the 70s
- Cheap monitors, SSDs, Echo Dot & Fire TV combo, Nokia phones, Boost Mobile SIM, refurb HP SFF PC, Ultimate Gift Cards

## The News

### IAG sacks otherwise good employee that didn't hit keystrokes per hour quota & Fair Work is cool with it

IAG, Australia's largest insurance company (NRMA/CGU/SGIO & more), sacked an otherwise excellent employee with 18 years of service after installing a keylogger on their work supplied computer and finding "a number of hours where zero keystrokes were recorded on the employee's device; up to 85% of work hours in one month". The worker took it to the Fair Work Commission who unfortunately agreed with IAG's decision, saying that the former employee offered no "credible [alternative] explanation" for the lack of keystroke activity and "little put forward by the [employee] that assisted [the] argument that the cyber records were inaccurate".

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### Elon Musk offers to pay legal bills of anyone "unfairly treated by employer" for tweeting

God knows why, but Elon Musk re-ignited the idea of a cage match between himself and Mark Zuckerberg, tweeting that the "Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans". Zuck isn't getting his hopes up, posting on Threads, "I'm ready today. I suggested Aug 26 when he first challenged, but he hasn't confirmed. Not holding my breath". In the same stream of internet diarrhoea, Musk posted that X will pay the legal bills of anyone "unfairly treated by your employers due to posting or liking something on this platform". Can't wait to see which instances of Nazi whataboutism this moron spends money on.

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### Creator of Vim passes away, cryptolocker hits large US hospital network, TikTok provides option to disable algorithm in EU

- Bram Moolenaar, the "creator, maintainer, and benevolent dictator for life" of Vim, a text editor anyone that's ever touched a UNIX-based computer has used at least once, has passed away. His family posted to a Vim mailing list that "Bram was suffering from a medical condition that progressed quickly over the last few weeks" and that he "dedicated a large part of his life to VIM and he was very proud of the VIM community that you are all part of". RIP to a real one.
- A cryptolocker has hit Prospect Medical Holdings, a US health care provider in multiple states. The attack has closed down various facilities and patients told to reschedule or go elsewhere because their computer record system is inaccessible and they don't know when it'll be back up. Not the first time and not the last time this will happen and it is utterly fucked. What happened to honour among thieves?
- Thanks to the EU's Digital Services Act, TikTok will allow users to disable the "personalised" algorithm and instead enjoy "popular videos from both the places where they live and around the world" instead of whatever drivel the algorithm reckons you might like. It also mean 13-17 year olds in the EU "automatically won't be targeted with personalized ads based on their online activities" - the way it should be worldwide.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Little dogs helped Adelaide Telecom workers run cables through tight spots in the 70s

Zachariah Kelly over at Gizmodo saw a cute little anecdote from Telstra back in March about a dog called Cuddles that helped phone tech Bob Johnson run cables in various properties around Adelaide back in the 70s. The dog would grab one end of the cable and pull it through tight spaces. Adorable. Zach also dug up some info from Telstra about Geoff King and his dog Taffy, who was related to Cuddles and also ran communications cables around important South Australian buildings. Taffy was even a member of the telecommunications union after the dog was refused entry at Yatala prison after the site manager said nobody can work there without being a union member.

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## Bargains

- Alienware 34" AW3423DW QD-OLED 3440x1440 gaming monitor - $1469 from Amazon
- Dell S2722DC 27" 2560x1440 USB-C monitor - $384 at JB Hi-Fi
- Kingston KC3000 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD - $188 + delivery from Umart
- PNY CS2241 4TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD - $259 + delivery from JW Computers
- Echo Dot with Clock (5th Gen) & Fire TV Stick 4K Max - $114 from Amazon
- Nokia X20 5G Android smartphone - $288 from The Good Guys
- Nokia X30 5G Android smartphone - $449 from Cellmate
- Boost Mobile 365-day SIM with 260GB data, unlimited calls & SMS - $247.50 from OzTechBiz
- Refurb HP Prodesk 600 G4 SFF PC (i5-8500, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $260 + delivery from CLS
- 20x Everyday Rewards Points on Ultimate Gift Cards (JB, EB, Good Guys, etc) at Woolworths starting Wednesday

## Image Of The Day

The Fernsehturm (English: Television Tower) in central Berlin was constructed between 1965 and 1969 by the government of the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, as both a functional broadcasting facility and a symbol of Communist power. (Dirk Wellmitz / Flickr)

## The End

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