### Issue 2182 - Wednesday 25th September, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- ChatGPT use by child protection workers did not go well
- Halide & iA Writer experience dumb as rocks app store reviewers
- New hardware - Rodecaster Video, Logitech MX Creative Console & Sony Inzone M10S OLED monitor
- If you like The Sizzle you'll probably like Tedium
- Cheap Dell 34" & 27" monitors , EzySIM pre-paid, UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra

## The News

### ChatGPT use by child protection workers did not go well

The Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner released the results of an investigation into the use of ChatGPT by a Child Protection worker (CPW), who used it to wrote a Protection Application Report that was submitted to the Children's Court regarding a "young child whose parents had been charged in relation to sexual offences". They were able to detect it was written by ChatGPT because "parts of the report included personal information that was not accurate", saying that a doll used by the father for "sexual purposes" was actually an "age appropriate toy" for the child, "downplaying the severity of the actual or potential harm to the child, with the potential to impact decisions about the child's care". After an internal review the discovered this CPW used ChatGPT in 100 cases. The Commissioner now wants Victoria's Department of Families, Fairness and Housing banned and blocked from using all generative AI tools.

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### Halide & iA Writer experience dumb as rocks app store reviewers

An update to Halide (winner of an Apple Design Award & featured in the iPhone 16 keynote for fucks sake!) got knocked back because "a random reviewer decided our permission prompt wasn't descriptive enough". Apparently "this app needs camera permissions to take photos" isn't descriptive enough. They didn't get any love following the proper appeal channels, so Ben Sandofsky made a post on Mastodon, word got around and then Apple called them to apologise and say it was a mistake. This stupidity not limited to Apple either, I saw on Mastodon that iA Writer, a top notch word processor that's been around for years, had an update to its Android app because all of a sudden Google is refusing to let it use the Google Drive API so users can sync their documents to Google Drive. Why do app store reviewers lack common sense?!

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### New hardware - Rodecaster Video, Logitech MX Creative Console & Sony Inzone M10S OLED monitor

A trio of interesting gizmos got announced overnight. First up is the Rodecaster Video. It's basically a Blackmagic ATEM Mini, but by Rode instead of Blackmagic and with better audio features (unsurprisingly) designed for capturing videos of podcasts, like a cool "hands-free auto-switching" feature that automatically changes camera angles based on who is talking. Logitech expanded its MX range of products (I'm using the MX Master mouse and keyboard right now!) to include the MX Creative Console, a customisable LCD button keypad and jog dial/scroll wheel combo designed for Adobe's Creative Cloud suite. Sony's new Inzone M10S monitor is a gamer's delight, sporing a whopping 480Hz refresh rate on a 2560x1440 27" OLED panel with a super low 0.03ms response time. It's not cheap at US$1099 and doesn't have an Aussie release date, but if you're a serious FPS gamer that also wants a great looking display, this is it.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### If you like The Sizzle you'll probably like Tedium

Tedium is an excellent blog/email newsletter that I'm pretty sure I've recommended here before, but fuck it, I'm recommending it again! Every few weeks there's a banger article that tickles my nerd bone. Some highlights I've bookmarked over the years: Steve Ballmer running TV ads in the USA explaining basic facts about political issues, a thinkpiece about how AI seems to be designed for the needs and wants of the managerial class, a review of the half-decent Blackberry biopic, how 3M got in the business of making floppy disks and why they stopped, and some thoughts on why Meta's Threads is the most soulless social network yet. Keep up the good work Ernie.

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## Bargains

- Refurb Dell UltraSharp U3415W 34" Curved Monitor 3440x1440 60Hz - $276.47 from UN Tech's eBay store
- EzySIM (TPG MVNO) pre-paid SIM, 30 days, 6GB data, unlimited calls & SMS, $9/m on-going - $4 from EzySIM
- Ubiquiti Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra - $185 from Centrecom
- Dell G2724D 27" QHD IPS 165Hz Gaming Monitor - $358.37 from Dell

## Image Of The Day

Left - "Replica of a Chip", created by Marilou Schultz, 1994. Wool. Photo taken at the National Gallery of Art, 2024. Right - Intel Pentium (P5) die shot. (Ken Shirriff)

## The End

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