### Issue 1620 - Thursday 2nd June, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Sheryl Sandberg quits Meta after 14 years of tolerating Mark Zuckerberg
- Microsoft pulls out of plan to build Top Secret Azure instance for Australia
- Elon wants bums on seats, Flubot malware shut down, OpenSea manager arrested
- What's the deal with electricity pricing lately?
- Cheap WD HDDs, Surface 8 Pro with Telstra plan, Beyerdynamic headphones, Deepcool CPU cooler, SanDisk microSD, Paramount Plus extended trial, LEGO Space Shuttle

## The News

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Sheryl Sandberg has resigned as Chief Operating Officer at Meta and is leaving the company. For 14 years she was supposedly the adult in the room alongside Zuck, growing the business from something relatively minor to the behemoth Frankenstein it is today and central to most of its controversies. Sheryl is also known for her popular "Lean In" book and movement posing as feminism and women's workplace empowerment, but is just the usual corporate diarrhea, just in pastels and high heels. Don't know what she's doing next and to be honest, who cares.

### Microsoft pulls out of plan to build Top Secret Azure instance for Australia

Microsoft's pulled out of negotiations to provide a "Top Secret" version of Azure for Austraila's Office of National Intelligence. The system would have stored the most secret of info for our intelligence agencies and has been on the boil since 2020. Microsoft hasn't explained why they are no longer interested but Innovation Australia reckons "told the ONI in April that it could not meet the requirements of the proposed platforms nor the timelines for delivering it" and that a "shortage, specifically security credentialled skills, made the task impossible". There's also rumours Microsoft is just getting out of the top secret cloud stuff in all markets except the USA. Everyone involved is shitting themselves apparently, as there's no plan B.

### Elon wants bums on seats, Flubot malware shut down, OpenSea manager arrested

- Elon Musk's telling Tesla and SpaceX employees to get their arses back in the office full-time, in company wide emails titled "Remote work is no longer acceptble" (typo included). Also in the email, "if you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned".
- The systems responsible for the notorious Flubot malware (those SMSes with the weird URLs saying you have a parcel to collect) are now under the control of Dutch Police and Europol. The jerks responsible are still on the run, but their servers spread across 11 countries (including Australia) are now out of action.
- Not on the run is former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain, who has been arrested for buying NFTs shortly before he would put them on OpenSea's front page, then selling them later for huge profits. As US Attorney Damian Williams said, "NFTs might be new, but this type of criminal scheme is not".

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### What's the deal with electricity pricing lately?

This post from the boss of small-ish electricity retailer Energy Locals does a good job explaining what the hell is going on with electricity pricing at the moment. From his point of view it boils down to greed from fossil fuel generators and suppliers. One half is the lack of (possibly on purpose) maintenance on coal plants, creating a shortage of power in the grid. The other is the coal mine and gas field owners taking advantage of the situation in Ukraine to raise their prices for fuel to the power plants, despite the fact their supply costs have nothing to do with Ukraine or Russia. Unfortunately, it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

## Bargains

- WD Elements SE 2TB portable HDD - $69 at JB Hi-Fi
- Port over to a Telstra $79/m 24m contract and get $1400 off a Surface Pro 8 at JB Hi-Fi
- Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro 250 & DT770 Pro 80 Studio Legends headphones pack - $349 + shipping from Mwave
- Deepcool Gammaxx 400 V2 Blue CPU cooler - $29.99 from Amazon
- SanDisk Extreme 256GB A2 microSD - $50.49 from Amazon
- Western Digital 16TB WD Red Pro 3.5" NAS HDD - $466.96 from Amazon
- 1 Month Free Trial of Paramount Plus
- LEGO 10283 Creator Expert NASA Space Shuttle Discovery - $239.20 from David Jones

## The End

📻 We Don't Know What Tomorrow Brings - The Smile

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