### Issue 2068 - Tuesday 16th April, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Complaint against Meta for misinformation dismissed by Australian regulator Meta funds
- Aussie Feds arrest & charge creator of Firebird RAT in Sydney
- Tesla to sack 14,000 workers, Adobe shows off AI for Premiere Pro, Blackmagic's new products at NAB 2024
- PLATO's Friendly Orange Glow
- Cheap POCO smartphone, SAF air quality monitor, Starlink 30-day $1 trial, Kings LiFePO4 battery, Everyday Extra, Fallout 4, Apple gift cards, Lenovo gaming laptop, ASUS mesh wi-fi kit, Bose subwoofer, PNY RTX4060 GPU

## The News

### Complaint against Meta for misinformation dismissed by Australian regulator Meta funds

Back in November, Reset.Tech complained to Digital Industry Group Inc (aka DIGI) that "fact-checked falsehoods were not always being labeled despite claims in its transparency report and provided 152 examples of where Meta had failed to label a piece of content". DIGI is supposed to be the mob responsible for administering the voluntary Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, but it also a lobby group that pushes the interests of big tech companies like Meta, Apple and Google. It dismissed Reset.Tech's complaint this week, saying "Reset Australia produced no convincing evidence that Meta's transparency report contained false statements". Self-regulation doesn't work in other industries and doesn't work here either.

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### Aussie Feds arrest & charge creator of Firebird RAT in Sydney

The AFP has arrested a bloke in Sydney and charged him with "12 counts of computer offences related to the RAT known as Firebird" - "10 counts to supply data with intent to commit a computer offence" plus "one count of producing data with intent to commit a computer offence and one count of controlling data with intent to commit a computer offence". According to Bleeping Computer, the Firebird RAT allowed for "stealthy access, password recovery from multiple browsers, and elevation of privilege through exploits". Dunno how much he earned from this endeavour, but probably wasn't worth it considering the skills he obviously has in software development.

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### Tesla to sack 14,000 workers, Adobe shows off AI for Premiere Pro, Blackmagic's new products at NAB 2024

- Tesla's sacking 10% of it workforce, roughly 14,000 people. Musk said in a company wide email that "there is nothing I hate more, but it must be done. This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle". Meanwhile, Tesla is flogging a "Full Self Driving" subscription in the US for US$99/m instead of a US$12,000 up-front purchase.
- Adobe's shown off a generative AI video feature for Premiere. It's basically the controversial Photoshop Generative Fill feature, but for video. There's no release date for it, but there is a demo video of an "early exploration" of what adding generative AI to Premiere will look like. If it actually works like the demo, it's pretty wild stuff.
- Blackmagic's got a bunch of new video production related goodies at NAB 2024. There's like a dozen new things, including new 12K and 6K cameras, a "Micro Color Panel" for DaVinci Resolve that even works with the iPad Pro, DaVinci Resolve 19 with over "100 feature upgrades", loads of SMPTE ST-2110 converters, some 4K ATEM switchers and a shitload more stuff that'll be of interest to anyone working in video production.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### PLATO's Friendly Orange Glow

Currently in my pile of books that I naively think I'll read one day, but we both know will likely never happen, is The Friendly Orange Glow by Brian Dear. It is a history of Xerox's PLATO system, "home of not only computer-based education but, surprisingly, the first online community, and the original incubator for social computing: instant messaging, chat rooms, message forums, the world's first online newspaper, interactive fiction, emoticons, animations, virtual goods and virtual economies, a thriving developer community, MUDs (multi-user dungeons), personal publishing, screen savers". That's right, all that stuff was basically invented by the folk at Xerox PARC over 50 years ago. The author's blog is a fun scroll-through if you don't wanna read the book.

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## Bargains

- POCO X6 Pro smartphone - $419 from Aliexpress
- SAF Aranet4 Home: Wireless Indoor Air Quality Monitor - $249.24 from Amazon USA
- Starlink Residential 30 Day Trial - $1 from Starlink
- Kings 24Ah @ 12.8V LiFePO4 portable power pack with 60W USB-C output - $199 from 4WD Supa Centre
- Woolworths Everyday Extra - $35 for first year from Woolworths
- 20x Everyday Rewards Points on Apple Gift Cards at Woolworths
- Fallout 4: Game of The Year Edition - $13.73 on Steam
- Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9 laptop (i5-12450HX, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, RTX4050, 15.6" 1080p 144Hz) - $1306.26 from Lenovo
- ASUS ZenWiFi XD4S AX1800 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh Router System (3-Pack) - $249 from Amazon
- Bose Bass Module 700 Black Subwoofer - $749.70 from Amazon
- PNY VERTO Dual Fan GeForce RTX 4060 8GB GPU - $410.85 from Smarthomestoreau's eBay store

## Image Of The Day

Not a real iPhone, unfortunately (danamania / Flickr)

## The End

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