### Issue 2108 - Thursday 13th June, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Hacker penetrates Tile's law enforcement data request system
- Jabra to quit selling consumer earbuds due to stiff competition
- Study finds facial recognition age verification systems suck
- A fellatio keyboard
- Cheap Steam Deck, Intel NUC laptop, Lenovo handheld gaming PC, EV charging cable, refurb Surface Pro 7, PS5 controller, MacBook Pro, Ryzen CPU, Xbox console, Bose headphones, Catch & EzySIM pre-paid, Civ 6

## The News

### Hacker penetrates Tile's law enforcement data request system

A hacker got access to Tile's system for giving access to customer data to law enforcement. If you forgot about Tile, they make Bluetooth trackers that Apple ripped off with AirTags and made better by building the tracking stuff into every iOS device on Earth. According to 404 Media's chat with the hacker, they "obtained login credentials for a Tile system that they believe belonged to a former Tile employee" and allowed them to "lookup Tile customers by their phone number or another identifier" and retrieve their location history in a format suitable for law enforcement. Tile knew they were compromised, but didn't mention in its public statement what data had been accessed. It wasn't until 404 Media reached out for comment and provided samples of customer data the hacker provided them did Tile realise that yes, customer data was nicked. Ooof.

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### Jabra to quit selling consumer earbuds due to stiff competition

Jabra is getting out of the consumer earbud market. Odd timing considering they literally just released their best earbuds yet with the Elite 10 2nd Gen. From parent company GN's press release: "GN has decided to gradually wind-down its Elite and Talk product lines to further increase focus and resources on more attractive parts of GN’s business", "the investment required for future innovation and growth in this very competitive space is deemed unjustified in the long-term given associated risks". I personally used Jabra's earbuds for many years. I find the AirPods incompatible with my ears, but Jabra's fit nicely. It's sad that they got out competed by low-end stuff on Aliexpress/Amazon and the smartphone vendors on the higher end like Apple/Google/Samsung, but at least Bose is still kicking on.

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### Study finds facial recognition age verification systems suck

A new Australian study by researchers at QUT, USyd & the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society into facial age estimation tools, currently being touted as a way to check someone's age before giving them access to adult content or even to use social media, has found "the software demonstrates racial bias", displays "lower accuracy for young males compared to young females", "creates greater user data privacy risks and divert resourcing that could be spent on strategies that are proven to support healthy sexual development", as well as creating "barriers to post-pubescent young people seeking information about sex online". The full study is freely available to read via the Big Data & Society journal.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### A fellatio keyboard

Let me introduce you to the Gagwriter, "a 3D-printed dick attached to a stand and some cleverly-placed buttons and wiring that map points on the penis to keystrokes". By "maneuvering one's tongue (and nose, if you're trying to hit the 'deep throat' key for the spacebar) around the plastic frenulum, tip, and shaft creates different combinations for specific letters. Two licks to the right of the shaft type the letter A, hitting the tip then right types B, and so on". According to the significant other of the guy that made this amazing device, "it reminded me of learning the controls for a new video game—tricky at first, but soon you start to pick it up, and then it's pretty fun to see how much you can improve". This cheered me up after a few days annoyed and frustrated with the never ending stream of AI slop.

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## Bargains

- Steam Deck OLED 512GB - $893.88 on eBay
- Intel NUC X15 laptop (i7-12700H, A730M GPU, 15.6" 1080p 144Hz, BYO RAM & SSD) - $623.22 on eBay
- Lenovo Legion Go Handheld Gaming PC - $935.22 on Lenovo's eBay store
- 5m type 2 EV charging cable - $177.65 from EVSE (longer lengths also available)
- Refurb Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (i5-1035G4, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD & alcantara keyboard) - $399 from Australian Computer Traders
- PlayStation DualSense Wireless Controller - $79 on Amazon
- Apple 16" MBP (M3 Pro, 18GB RAM, 512GB SSD) - $3699 from Emporium Electronics
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D 12-Core CPU - $602 from Newegg
- Xbox Series X 1TB console - $639 at Amazon or Target
- Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones - $499 at The Good Guys, get 20% cashback via TopCashback
- CatchConnect (Optus MVNO) 365-day pre-paid SIM, 60GB/120GB with unlimited calls & SMS - $89/$109 from Catch
- Ezysim (TPG MVNO) 365-day pre-paid SIM 100GB/420GB data with unlimited calls & SMS - $87.50/$240 from Ezysim
- Civilization VI for Switch/PlayStation/Xbox - $4.79 from eShop/PS Store/Xbox Store

## Image Of The Day

An HVDC converter hall at an undisclosed location is outfitted with Hitachi Energy’s Voltage Source Converter technology, based on modular, multilevel converters. (IEEE Spectrum)

## The End

📻 I Think I'm Paranoid - Garbage

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