### Issue 1878 - Friday 30th June, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Reddit brings in scab moderators to take over protesting communities
- YouTube trials blocking ad blockers and upselling users to Premium
- ACMA fines Mycar & Commonwealth Bank for sending marketing emails without easy unsubscribe link
- Federal government pulls plug on National Space Mission for Earth Observation
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, Age of Empires 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Valve Steam Deck, refurb Dell micro PC, Sony & Canon digital cameras

## The News

### Reddit brings in scab moderators to take over protesting communities

The process of removing moderators from protesting Reddit communities has begun, with management sending messages to moderators of some protesting communities that "your mod team indicated that you do not want to reopen the [name of subreddit] community. This is a courtesy notice to let you know that you will lose moderator status in the community by end of week". Kinda not surprised as the normies are getting pissed off with these protests. In the more mainstream ones I hang out in (/r/afl and /r/ausfinance mostly), they're continuing as business as usual, no protesting. Even in the more nerdy sections of Reddit I lurk that have run polls asking what should the mods do next (e.g: /r/plex & /r/homelab), the results have generally not been in the moderator's favor. What's happening with Reddit sucks, but nobody cares, they just wanna use Reddit.

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### YouTube trials blocking ad blockers and upselling users to Premium

YouTube is conducting a "small experiment globally" to block ad blockers on its site. For a handful of users, YouTube now displays a pop-up saying that video playback will be blocked after 3 videos, with the text that "ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide. You can go ad-free with YouTube Premium, and creators can still get paid from your subscription". I'm sympathetic to YouTube here. It's an expensive service to operate and YouTube Premium is a bargain for what it provides. Even more of a bargain if you take the cheeky Turkish VPN route, but I'm happy to pay in Aussie bucks for YouTube Premium and is probably the last subscription I'd cancel should my financial shit hit the financial fan.

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### ACMA fines Mycar & Commonwealth Bank for sending marketing emails without easy unsubscribe link

ACMA has handed out some large fines recently to the Commonwealth Bank and Mycar for not adhering to spam laws. Mycar copped a $1m fine for sending over 1.45m text messages adn emails without the ability to unsubscribe, 276,000 emails where to unsubscribe you had to enter your car rego and 5,000 SMS to people who previously asked not to get them. The Commonwealth Bank paid a $3.55m (the largest ever for spam) fine after it sent 61 million emails that to unsubscribe you had to log-in, which is apparently illegal, and 4 million emails where the unsubscribe feature didn't work. More spam fines please. I try so hard to do the right thing so fuck those big companies that should know better who don't make it easy to unsubscribe with a single click.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Federal government pulls plug on National Space Mission for Earth Observation

The government has cancelled the National Space Mission for Earth Observation, which was going to cost $452m and deliver a massive boost to the local space industry. It was the first stage of a 15-year plan to "build and operate four satellites to be launched between 2028 and 2033 to assist with Australian access to global earth observation data" that would "monitor climate change, agriculture and mining patterns, aid maritime surveillance and improve responses to natural disasters". Unsurprisingly, local industry, and South Australia in particular as a lot of it was going to be based there, is pissed off the ALP pulled the cord on one of the few forward thinking, STEM plans the previous government set up. This sucks. Australia could do so much in space, yet our government won't spend a dime while other countries drop billions on it knowing the economic advantages it will bring.

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## Friday Forum Update

Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.

- This thread about Google's search result quality suffering due to Reddit's moderator protests turned into a discussion about Kagi, an alternative search engine I really like.
- This thread discussing a blog post worrying about Mastodon ending up like XMPP, turned into a discussion about Mastodon sucking and why people still use Twitter.
- This thread discussing Reddit moderators protesting turned into a philosophical chat about the future of social media.
- gurgle bumped this long running thread about books Sizzle subscribers are reading at the moment.
- geelen wants to know if Superloop is any good as their 1000/50 NBN plan is much cheaper than Aussie Broadband's

## Bargains

- Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 Triple Thrill Pack for PC - $3.79 from GOG
- Age of Empires II - Definitive Edition for PC - $5.73 from Steam
- Valve Steam Deck 64GB - $703.12 from my-phonez eBay store
- Red Dead Redemption 2 Ultimate Edition for PC - $41.98 from Steam
- Refurb Dell OptiPlex 7070 Micro PC (i9-9500, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $339 from UN Tech
- Sony A7 IV digital camera (body only) - $2,9834.80 from digiDirect
- Canon EOS R5 digital camera (body only) - $4,326.88 after Canon cashback from digiDirect

## Image Of The Day

I made a new design for the stressed-out tech worker in your life! Or maybe... it's just YOU??? Honestly I've had this idea jotted down for awhile, but since my suffering has been amplified multifold by printmageddon/shipmageddon I think I'm feeling it even more than ever. Listing a new round of preorders online Friday 7/7 and I'm throwing this green-on-green combo into the mix. SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!!! (_dollgirls / Instagram)

## The End

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