### Issue 1245 - Monday 9th November, 2020

## In Today's Issue

- Some of the stuff Twitter and Facebook are doing to control misinformation post-US election
- Draft law appears that gives government the power to take over computer networks it deems essential
- Tabcorp's computers went up in flames so horse races across Australia were cancelled
- Inkjet printers are the devil and HP is Satan's conduit for harvesting fresh souls
- Cheap 85" TCL TV, Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Ryzen 7 laptop, Dell 34" ultrawide monitor, $400 Good Guys gift card with 12m Telstra plan

## The News

### Some of the stuff Twitter and Facebook are doing to control misinformation post-US election

Donald Trump is still carrying on like a flaming galah over in Washington DC, which means Twitter and Facebook are still on high alert. Trump got so red and nude online that Twitter had to apply warnings labels to 37% of his tweets since polls closed. Come inauguration day, Twitter is free to give Trump the arse as he will no longer be subject to the "public interest policy". He will be a pleb like us, bannable like us. Over on Facebook, many "Stop The Steal" groups have popped up, one of which gathered 320,000 users in under 24 hours. The spread of these loonies has become so intense that Facebook is planning to "add more 'friction' - such as an additional click or two — before people can share posts and other content" and "demote content on the News Feed if it contains election-related misinformation, making it less visible, and limit the distribution of election-related Facebook Live streams". You know when Facebook limits engagement shit is bad.

### Draft law appears that gives government the power to take over computer networks it deems essential

A few weeks (maybe days, I dunno) ago I mentioned that the Australian federal government wants the ability to commandeer hacked networks under national security grounds. Today they published a draft of the law that'll give them that power. Electricity, gas, water, and maritime ports are already at the whim of government infosec experts, this change to the law will add "communications, financial services and markets, data storage and processing, defence industry, higher education and research, energy, food and grocery, healthcare and medical, space technology, transport, and water and sewerage sectors" to the industries that will need to comply with extra obligations and responsibilities like mandatory reporting of cybersecurity incidents, various risk management plans and what appears to be installing whatever the ASD asks you to. @jpwarren has a useful Twitter thread of him reading the draft bill trying to understand its nonsense.

### Tabcorp's computers went up in flames so horse races across Australia were cancelled

Tabcorp's servers shit the bed at the worst possible time over the weekend - just as a bunch of big horse races were about to kick off. According to Tabcorp, "a smoke and likely fire incident at a third-party managed data centre resulted in extensive damage to Tabcorp's servers and associated infrastructure. This led to technical and systems outages, as well as the closure of TAB retail venues". It was so bad that race meetings were delayed or postponed. No point whipping the shit out of a horse if you can't bet on it! This would be awful if it happened to any other company, but this is Tacbcorp, who make their fortune predominately off the misery of others. Fuck em, I hope another fire happens, maybe located on or near an executive's fancy car.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Inkjet printers are the devil and HP is Satan's conduit for harvesting fresh souls

Cory Doctorow gives us a rundown of HP's greatest ink-jet printer hits, like half-full cartridges, unnecessary calibration that wastes ink and simply lying to customers that the cartridge is empty. It's no surprise then, that people started buying third party ink to avoid this rubbish. It's also unfortunately not a surprise that in 2016, HP added a chip to the cartridges to prevent the use of third-party ink. Over the years HP pushed out silent updates to block third party cartridge DRM workarounds. HP's latest shitshow is Instant Ink - literally an ink rental program. You pre-commit to a certain number of pages per month and HP posts you the ink as you need it. They ran a promo called Free Ink For Life that would give you 15 pages a month of Instant Ink for free, but it only lasted a year until HP told everyone that it is ending the "Free Ink For Life" promo. What a bunch of pricks.

## Bargains

- $400 Good Guys gift card if you go on a $59/m 12m Telstra phone contract
- TCL 85" P715 4K TV - $2560 + delivery from Appliance Central after cashback
- Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 laptop (14" 1080p, Ryzen 7 4700U, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM) - $1077 from Lenovo
- Dell UltraSharp U3415W 34" 3440x1440 monitor - $729.30 from Dell

## The End

📻 Telepathic - Rose Hill Drive

😎 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.

🌐 Aussie Broadband is the best ISP in Australia. If it's good enough for Simon Hackett, it's good enough for us plebs! Sign up using my referral code (1001031) and we both get $50 credit.

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.​