### Issue 1724 - Monday 31st October, 2022

Quick heads up, tomorrow is a public holiday in Victoria (Melbourne Cup) so there won't be an issue of The Sizzle. Normal service resumes Wednesday the 2nd of November.

## In Today's Issue

- Elon Musk still owns Twitter and is wading through the sludge of his new $44b burden
- Adobe removes chunk of Pantone colours from apps, replaces them with black unless you pay for a licence
- eSafety Commissioner's mandatory age verification system is a cyber security disaster waiting to happen
- Three random items from my bookmarks - TLS 1.3 explainer, ultapure water, Australia has really cheap solar power
- Cheap Tenda 8-port gigabit switch, Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, Unraid licences, Nintendo eShop gift cards

## The News

### Elon Musk still owns Twitter and is wading through the sludge of his new $44b burden

Just confirming last week's news that yes, Elon Musk went through with his US$44b purchase of Twitter. Musk has been giving out opinions on moderation of his new toy, tweeting that "Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes". Bloomberg is reporting that "Musk also intends to do away with permanent bans on users because he doesn't believe in lifelong prohibitions". The New York Times is quoting "four people with knowledge of the matter" that "managers are being asked to draw up lists of employees to cut", Casey Newton's Platformer reckons "Twitter engineers were told today to print out their last 30 to 60 days of code, so they could show it to Elon Musk himself", The Washington Post is telling us that Tesla engineers were seconded to Twitter to assess Twitter's code and Reuters says that the sacked Twitter execs won't be getting their golden parachutes (worth ~US$122m) because they've been fired "for cause" as opposed to being made redundant.

### Adobe removes chunk of Pantone colours from apps, replaces them with black unless you pay for a licence

We are all familiar with Pantone, yeah? They give names and codes to colours so when you say "give me Ultimate Gray, Pantone 17-5104, #939597" everyone knows what you're talking about. Pantone colour references have been supported in Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign for decades, but as Sizzle subscriber Iain Anderson noticed, that changes tomorrow because Adobe's licence agreement with Pantone shit the bed. If you want colours beyond Pantone + CMYK Coated, Pantone + CMYK Uncoated and Pantone + Metallic Coated, you've gotta buy a US$21/m licence from Pantone and install a plug-in. Makes sense if you're Pantone, you get to make more money, but sucks if you were enjoying these "free" colours in your favourite Adobe app and all of a sudden you now need to pay US$21/m for them. If Photoshop etc, were not cloud based you could at least keep using the older version of the app, but that's not an option with Creative Suite these days.

### eSafety Commissioner's mandatory age verification system is a cyber security disaster waiting to happen

One of the previous federal government's brain farts to appease their fundamentalist Christian base was getting the eSafety Commissioner to come up with a mandatory age verification regime for online pornography. It failed in the UK, but even with a change of government, they're still working it, with a report on how such a system would operate, due in March. In the aftermath of Optus and Medibank's cyber security issues, our friends Justin Warren from the EFA and Samantha Floreani from Digital Rights Watch are in the Guardian today pleading with the government to stop this bullshit idea, as implementing mandatory age verification would create a huge honeypot of sensitive information that's totally unnecessary. A spokesperson for the communications minister simply said in response that it "supports restricting Australian children from viewing online pornography".

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Three random items from my bookmarks - TLS 1.3 explainer, ultapure water, Australia has really cheap solar power

- Have you ever wondered how version 1.3 of the Transport Layer Security protocol works, but never bothered to read an RFC because they're dry and boring? Michael Driscoll has made "The Illustrated TLS Connection", breaking down every single step of the process. It is very complex and I'm surprised TLS actually works.
- Asianometry explains how important ultrapure water is to manufacturing semiconductors - that is water with less than "10 particles larger than 3.5 nanometers for each milliliter of water" that is so pure "you're more likely to win the national lottery than to find a non-water molecule inside it". Crazy stuff.
- Getting solar panels for your home is way cheaper in Australia than the USA. This article from EnergySage puts the average cost per watt at around US$2.77 in the USA compared to only US$1/watt here. They say it's because of "soft-costs" like permits and inspections in Australia are way easier and cheaper than the US.

## Bargains

- Tenda TEG1008D 8-port gigabit switch - $30 from Amazon
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Bluetooth, Small (40mm), Graphite - $399 from Amazon
- 20% off Unraid Licenses - Pro is now US$103.20
- 10% off Nintendo eShop Gift Cards at Target

## Image Of The Day

TWITTER ACQUIRED (Beeple)

## The End

📻 Theophilus Thistler (An Exercise in Vowels) - Sonic Animation

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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.