### Issue 2078 - Wednesday 1st May, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Australia's getting an internet "age assurance technology" pilot
- Tesla fires entire Supercharger & new vehicle development teams
- UK makes it illegal to sell an internet connected device with a crap default password
- ASD's declassified Cray supercomputer docs, musicForProgramming, htop runs Doom
- Cheap Samsung S23 FE, Baseus & Bluetti batteries, Google Pixel Buds Pro, WD Xbox SSD, Ryzen 7900X3D CPU

## The News

### Australia's getting an internet "age assurance technology" pilot

Comms minister has announced plans for "a suite of online measures to address easy access to pornography for children and young people and tackle extreme online misogyny, which is fuelling harmful attitudes towards women". Leading this suite is a "a pilot of age assurance technology to protect children from harmful content, like pornography and other age-restricted online services" - i.e: the same stuff we've seen in US states that PornHub has blocked because they can't safely comply and the UK failed to introduce because they couldn't figure out how to do it without creating a giant "hey this guy looks at porn" honeypot. There's also "legislation to ban the creation and non-consensual distribution of deepfake pornography" and "a counter-influencing campaign in online spaces where violent and misogynistic content thrives, to directly challenge the material in the spaces it's being viewed".

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### Tesla fires entire Supercharger & new vehicle development teams

Tesla has sacked entire teams working on its Supercharger network, the new vehicle development team and its public policy team. The public policy team doesn't surprise me as Tesla hasn't ever given a shit about what governments think beyond what money they can squeeze out of them, but getting rid of the Supercharger and new vehicle development teams make absolutely no sense. The Supercharger network is probably one of the biggest selling points of a Tesla right now and in Australia at least, is by far the most reliable charging network, so to hobble it and sack the executive responsible is incomprehensible. New car development makes even less sense, as Musk said at Tesla's earnings call last week that they are going to build a new, cheaper car "for the masses". Meanwhile, he's asking shareholders to re-instate his US$55b compensation plan that was invalidated by a Delaware court. Classic Musk.

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### UK makes it illegal to sell an internet connected device with a crap default password

The UK has begun enforcing a law from 2022 (it didn't take effect until now) that says anything you buy that connects to the internet "must either have a randomized password or else generate a password upon initialization (through a smartphone app or other means)", "should be securely updateable" and "simple for the user to apply". Failure to comply can result in fines up to 10m GBP or 4% of related worlwide turnover, whichever is higher. All common sense stuff and its been a while since I've seen something like a router or even an IoT device have a default password that's the same on every device sold, but good to have as a law with some sort of consequences. Another interesting part of the law is "device owners can report security issues and expect to hear back about how that report is being handled". A nice change from reporting a security issue and being threatened with a lawsuit and/or the cops for "hacking".

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### ASD's declassified Cray supercomputer docs, musicForProgramming, htop runs Doom

- Here's a bunch of declassified documents and some photos from the Australian Signals Directorate about the process they undertook to get a Cray X-MP/22 supercomputer back in the mid-80s.
- Looking for some background tunes while you work? One of the 70 playlists on musicForProgramming might scratch that itch. I'm listening to episode 70 right now! The website design is very cool too.
- Some loose unit made htop play Doom. Yes, that app you use to monitor system processes on various UNIX systems has been modified to play doom. I don't know what else to say really. Doom. In htop. Enjoy?

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## Bargains

- Samsung Galaxy S23 FE 128GB - $629 from Amaysim
- Baseus 20Ah USB powerbank, 100W USB-C PD output - $58.71 from Baseus' eBay store
- Google Pixel Buds Pro - $149 from JB Hi-Fi
- Western Digital Black C50 1TB Expansion Card for Xbox - $203.65 from Amazon Germany
- Bluetti EB55 537Wh Portable Power Station - $499 from My Generator
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D CPU - $634 from Amazon USA

## Image Of The Day

1,000 Clipart Business CD-ROM (ShivaShaw / The Internet Archive)

## The End

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