### Issue 1513 - Monday 13th December, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Log4j has a massive security hole everyone's rushing around to patch
- UK agrees to extradite Julian Assange to the USA
- Australia continues splashing in the tech diplomacy kiddie pool alongside the USA
- Five nerdy DIY things I spotted recently
- Cheap Dell laptop, EB Games gift cards, Luminar 4, Crucial SSD, Google Nest speaker, Lenovo window/door sensor, Seagate HDDs, Razer wireless headset, 10% cashback at The Good Guys

## The News

### Log4j has a massive security hole everyone's rushing around to patch

A huge vulnerability in Log4j (a common Java-based logging utility used on many websites) is causing IT departments around the world to be working way harder than they should be for mid-December. According to Sophos' Naked Security blog, this flaw is an "uncomplicated, reliable, by-design remote code execution (RCE), triggered by user-supplied data that may ironically be getting logged for auditing or security purposes" and Cloudflare reckons it is "likely one of the most serious vulnerabilities on the Internet since both Heartbleed and ShellShock". Minecraft is ripe for abuse, so if you're running a server for the kiddies, update it.

### UK agrees to extradite Julian Assange to the USA

The UK High Court has granted the USA's request to extradite Julian Assange. The US promised the UK he will be treated humanely, but still, the USA literally planned to kidnap or assassinate him! He's appealed, but in the meantime he is rotting away in a UK prison despite not being guilty of anything. Julian is a bit of a maligned figure in Australia but he's an old school hacker. I read about Julian's (aka Mendax) antics in Suelette Dreyfus' book Underground when I was 13 and it was probably formative for my current views on computers and digital rights, so I have a soft spot for the dude and hope he can return to Australia a free man soon.

### Australia continues splashing in the tech diplomacy kiddie pool alongside the USA

Australia, Japan and the USA are paying for a nice bit of fibre optic cable to hook up Micronesia, Kiribati and Nauru to the existing HANTRU-1 cable. Chinese companies were gonna do it but we swung our dicks first. It's the least we could do for these countries before drowning them in a decade thanks to our refusal to cut the use of fossil fuels. Also in tech diplomacy, Australia has joined other US allies in pledging to address "the misuse of certain dual-use technologies that can lead to human rights abuses" and ensure that "critical and emerging technologies work for and not against democratic societies". China and Russia were not invited.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Five nerdy DIY things I spotted recently

- Looks like it's relatively easy to get a $15 IKEA Vindriktning air sensor and modify it for use with Home Assistant for measuring PM10 air quality.
- Someone figured out how to combine a wi-fi IR blaster with Siri via so they can shout commands at a VCR. Absolutely useless, but the marriage of vintage tech with modern tech is delicious.
- Wanna run your own API-enabled SMS gateway on a Raspberry Pi? Christian Haschek has detailed instructions. Why would you want to do that? Why not?!
- What about using a Raspberry Pi as a cheap IP enabled KVM with virtual CD/USB support? PiKVM is exactly that. It's not plug and play, but it's a fuckload cheaper than a commercial IP KVM.
- Xue Yao is making new 11th-gen Intel CPU mainboards for IBM T61/T60 ThinkPads. Yes, that's right, drop-in modern mainboard replacements for laptops that were sold in 2006.

## Bargains

- Dell Inspiron 15 3501 laptop (i5-1135G, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $899 from melbourne-estore's eBay store
- 15% off Ultimate Student gift cards at Coles that can be used at EB Games
- Free licence for Skylum Luminar 4, a photo editing & library app
- Crucial MX500 1TB SATA SSD - $124 from Amazon
- Google Nest Audio smart speaker - $95 at Officeworks, $99 at JB & Kmart
- Lenovo Smart window/door sensor (wi-fi) - $15 at JB Hi-Fi
10% cashback at The Good Guys with no cap (but a few exclusions) via ShopBack tonight only Seagate Barracuda 3.5" SATA HDDs 6TB/8TB (buy 2x and get 3 months free Xbox Game Pass) - $159/$189 + delivery from Shopping Express Razer Barracuda X wireless gaming headset - $109 from Amazon

## The End

📻 Drown - The Smashing Pumpkins

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