### Issue 2212 - Friday 8th November, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Australian higher ed regulator suing popular cheating site Chegg
- Canada boots TikTok out of country but allows access to app
- Thousands of Myki card readers not working, possibly due to 3G shutdown
- Two academic takes on the plan to ban kids under 16 from social media
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap Edifier speakers, Samsung OLED monitor, Death Stranding for PC/Xbox, Kingston SSDs

## The News

### Australian higher ed regulator suing popular cheating site Chegg

Australia's "Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA)" has "accused Chegg, a US-based publicly listed company, of breaching Australia's new anti-cheating laws, based on allegations that five university students used the service to cheat on university assignments in 2021 and 2022" and is suing Chegg in the Federal Court. I bring this up in The Sizzle because TEQSA has the power to demand Aussie telcos block websites and it doesn't appear that they've asked for Chegg to be blocked, but are suing them anyways for a pissweak $150,000 plus TEQSA's legal costs. That's a weird move as it's not like TEQSA hasn't blocked sites in the past - why not Chegg?

⬆ Share or Discuss

### Canada boots TikTok out of country but allows access to app

Canada told TikTok to close its local offices in Toronto and Vancouver due to national security concerns. Their innovation minister said "I'm not at liberty to go into much detail, but I know Canadians would understand when you're saying the government of Canada is taking measures to protect national security, that's serious". However, TikTok's service and app is not banned in Canada and there's currently no plans to do so. This makes no sense to me. You know TikTok is up to something bad enough to tell them to fuck off, but it's okay if they keep operating? What the hell is even the risk to Canada here? Just saying "data is sent to China" isn't really a good scare tactic if that's what you're going for.

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### Thousands of Myki card readers not working, possibly due to 3G shutdown

Besides a story or two on the ABC, I've seen surprisingly few stories about negative impacts from the 3G network shutdown - until this one in The Age about good old Myki. Apparently up to "200 trams and 2500 buses" have card readers that despite being upgraded to support 4G, do not actually support it and are offline as they can't connect to a network to send transaction data back to HQ. The transport department is refusing to admit it was 3G, which might be correct as it's not like these card readers need VoLTE to make phone calls or are blocked because they can't call 000, they're pure data devices, so what's going on?

⬆ Share or Discuss

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Two academic takes on the plan to ban kids under 16 from social media

Two articles in The Conversation lately that highlight to me how much of a knee-jerk and populist reaction the government's plan to ban kids under 16 from using social media is. A few weeks ago George Buchanan, the deputy dean of computing technologies at RMIT wrote that the internet's informal networks are vital to many people's mental well-being. Taking that away from them will do more harm than good - a situation I think many of us nerds could relate to when we were 14-15 years old and used the internet as our safe space from reality. Meanwhile, the research on social media's impact on kids is far from settled and there is not a consensus that it's damaging kids lives, unlike say, smoking or alcohol where we have loads of evidence and data - something we don't have about social media use.

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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.

- Huggy let us know about Fossify, a range of Android apps that are open source and don't have ads or tracking built-in
- daft009 has another automation project, this time taking the data in a PDF and exporting it to a CSV
- ajbeardy's 2020 MacBook Air developed a screen fault and is after tips on getting Apple to fix it for free/cheap despite being out of warranty
- zuccs posted about Mozilla's VPN product, a rebranded Mullvad VPN service, is now available in Australia and is cheaper than going direct via Mullvad
- gtch gave the Christmas mince pie review thread a bump with their opinions on a batch of pies they got from a local supermarket

## Bargains

- Edifier R1280DBs or R1700BT active speakers - $109/$119 from Centrecom
- Samsung LS34DG850SEXXY 34" 3440x1440 175Hz OLED curved gaming monitor - $1,199 from Mwave
- Death Stranding Director's Cut for PC/Xbox - $27.47 on the Xbox Store
- Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD 1TB/2TB/4TB - $99/$189/$379 from Centrecom

## Image Of The Day

M3, 2022 (Lola Dupre)

## The End

📻 Regurgitator - Blubber Boy

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## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.