### Issue 1539 - Thursday 3rd February, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Meta's global userbase has shrunk for the first time ever
- Anti-trolling bill unmasked as a pro-defamation lawsuit bill
- News that couldn't fit elsewhere
- Firewalla routers look pretty nice, I would like to try one
- Cheap 64GB RAM, AMD Ryzen CPU, Sonos cashback, Aldi ergo keyboard, Gigabyte 2TB SSD, Tenda 4-pack smart wi-fi plugs

## The News

### Meta's global userbase has shrunk for the first time ever

Meta's share price tanked 22% after missing earnings targets and its first ever drop in in daily/monthly active users. Zuck has taken aim at TikTok in particular, saying "people have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly". Also in feel-good news, Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest is suing Meta for all those scummy cryptocurrency ads they allowed to run featuring his face, alleging they "failed to create controls or a corporate culture to prevent its systems being used to commit crime". The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

### Anti-trolling bill unmasked as a pro-defamation lawsuit bill

Our Prime Minister has been going around calling the Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill "some of the strongest powers to tackle online trolls in the world" that will "better protect Australians online", like it's some sort of problem impacting regular people in their day to day lives. But in reality, the Attorney-General's department told a Senate inquiry that "the bill is about defamation and it is not intended to address broader types of online harm", further elaborating that "it is a targeted bill that is about defamation and only defamation" - nothing to do with genuine trolls at all! Once again, we have a law designed to protect and empower pissant politicians and their mates from the harsh truth that everything thinks they're wankers.

### News that couldn't fit elsewhere

- The Victorian government is handing out $230m for telcos to improve 4G and 5G coverage in "locations of strategic importance". I couldn't be bothered making an account on the Victorian tender portal to find out more.
- Starlink has launched a new "Premium" service, with a bigger, more expensive US$2500 antenna that'll provide speeds of up to 500mbit/s for US$500/m and "improved performance in extreme weather conditions". The plan for the Premium service to begin in mid-2022
- A pre-print study comparing crashes with Tesla's Autopilot enabled to crashes in cars without it, with various adjustments for age and road type, show that Tesla's published numbers aren't as impressive as they say they are.
- The FBI confirmed that it purchased a licence for NSO's Pegasus spyware for testing purposes. It's okay, it was never used in an investigation. The DoJ and FBI discussed how they might go about using it on US phones via a re-branded version called Phantom.
- The Belgian privacy regulator ruled that IAB Europe's "Transparency and Consent Framework" (those annoying popups) used by online advertisers to obtain consent to collect user data, breaches the GDPR. All data collected via this "consent" has to be deleted.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Firewalla routers look pretty nice, I would like to try one

Never heard of em until today, but the Firewalla range of routers looks pretty cool. They appear to be little ARM-based SBC's (Orange Pi/Nano Pi units you get off AliExpress) but with properly designed firewall and routing software that's controlled via a smartphone and is easy to set up. Every feature under the sun available too - Wireguard VPN, ad blocking, deep parental controls, smart queues, network segmentation, etc. etc. Again, I've never used this thing so it could suck and their gigabit capable router, "Purple", is $470 shipped to Australia (oof) but I liked Firewalla's boss shitting on VC funding in TechCrunch today.

## Bargains

- Team T-Create Expert 64GB (2x32GB) 3600MHz DDR4 RAM - $349 + shipping from PC Case Gear
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU - $499 from Amazon
- 10% cashback from Sonos via Cashrewards
- Ergonomic wireless keyboard - $39.99 at Aldi
- Gigabyte Aorus 2TB Gen4 7000s PCIe SSD (PS5 compatible) - $499 from Amazon or Umart
- Tenda Beli SP3 smart wi-fi plug (4 pack) - $39.95 from Shopping Square

## The End

📻 Another World - Royal Headache

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