### Issue 1671 - Monday 15th August, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- US politicians may be allowed to spam Gmail users
- Xiaomi's got a humanoid robot
- There's a good chance News Corp & other media ad networks violate the Privacy Act
- Tesla brokens try to debunk claims Autopilot can't detect kids with a real live kid
- Cheap Elgato HDMI capture device, Google Pixel 6a, Elgato Stream Deck, Crucial SSD, GCP course & exam, domain names, Edifier speakers

## The News

### US politicians may be allowed to spam Gmail users

Certain politicians in the USA have long whinged that Gmail's spam filter unfairly targets their campaign emails, claiming that the spam filter is evidence of "Big Tech's bias". Google disagrees of course, but floated the idea of guaranteeing emails from "authorised candidate committees, political party committees, and leadership political action committees" always land in the recipients inbox. They asked the Federal Election Commission if testing this would break any laws and were told no, opening the door to Google giving every politician in the USA the green light to send whatever they want as often as they want to any email address hosted by Google.

### Xiaomi's got a humanoid robot

Remember when Elon Musk trotted out a dancer in a robot suit to announce Tesla Bot? When I saw it I was in tears of laughter, but when Xiaomi saw it they thought "we can make that" and make it they did. They call their humanoid robot CyberOne and say in a press release that it is "a symbol of Xiaomi's dedication to incubate a technological ecosystem centered in a single point". Basically it's a tech demo of their engineering prowess, like Honda or Toyota does every few years - not a revolution in factory labour as Tesla tried to pass their (still vaporware) robot off as. Here's a 3 minute video of CyberOne exploring the wilderness and making weird purring noises instead of talking.

### There's a good chance News Corp & other media ad networks violate the Privacy Act

Dr. Katharine Kemp from UNSW has published a report detailing how News Corp claims the data they collect is anonymous or de-identified so doesn't need to adhere to the Privacy Act, which conflicts with how News Corp promotes its ad network saying "it can distinguish 16 million individual users, recognisable through a particular unique and persistent identifier, even when the user is not logged in to any News Corp service". Because of this, she wants the ACCC to investigate not just News Corp, but Nine and Seven West Media (who operate similar ad networks) "for potentially breaching consumer law over how they track consumers online, share their data, and describe it as anonymous or de-identified".

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Tesla brokens try to debunk claims Autopilot can't detect kids with a real live kid

Omar Qazi, who runs the blog/Elon Musk propaganda factory Whole Mars Catalog, has taken Elon Musk fanboyism to the next level. After seeing a video from Dan O'Dowd's Real Dawn Project (who is on a mission to outlaw the public beta testing of Tesla's "Full Self Driving" feature) of a Model 3 ploughing into a child sized mannequin repeatedly with Autopilot engaged, Omar decided he needs to debunk this test using a real child. Here's the video. Yes, he found parents insane enough to sign up their kids to do this. To the car's credit it stops every time it detects a human, real or fake, child or adult - but the speed and scenario they tested in were very different to Real Dawn's test.

## Bargains

- Elgato HD60S+ external HDMI capture card - $230 from Amazon
- Google Pixel 6a - $599 from Google
- Elgato Stream Deck (15 Keys) MK1 - $143 from Amazon
- Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD - $299.84 from Amazon UK
- Free Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Professional course & exam voucher
- Free 1st year .xyz, .app, .dev, .design, .ink and .wiki domain regsitrations from Porkbun
- Edifier S3000PRO active bookshelf speakers - $699 from Wireless1

## The End

📻 Ann - Tropical Fuck Storm

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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.