### Issue 1804 - Tuesday 14th March, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Silicon Valley bank run ends with SVB collapsing and the FDIC making account holders whole
- Meta's got a decentralised Twitter clone in its skunkworks called P92, lead by Instagram's boss
- Facebook might pull news from Canada, Microsoft sacked "ethics & society team", TikTok's SDK is in 28,000+ apps and sends data back to HQ
- Boeing X-37B Spaceplane racks up 908 days in space on a classified mission
- Cheap Blue Yeti nano USB mic, refurb Dell 22" 1080p monitor, Bose soundbars, Bose headphones & earbuds, Beyerdynamic XLR mic kit, Xiaomi smartphone, F1 Manager 2022, Coles Mobile SIM, microscope starter kit, Xbox controller

## The News

### Silicon Valley weekend bank run ends with the FDIC making account holders whole

Last week I was making jokes about Silicon Valley Bank collapsing and over the long weekend it collapsed, kinda. If you want all the details, Matt Levine's articles covering the situation are excellent reading and Ben Thompson has a solid summary too, but to summarise even further (that's what I'm here for!): lots of stuff about bonds and maturity and interest rates and how banks work, but valley VC types panicked when word spread that SVB couldn't give everyone their money if they wanted it due to some poor investment choices and kicked off an old fashioned "bank run". The FDIC/government stepped in and created a "full-service FDIC-operated 'bridge bank' in an action designed to protect all depositors", with its new CEO saying the bridge bank is "open and conducting business as usual".

### Meta's got a decentralised Twitter clone in its skunkworks called P92, lead by Instagram's boss

Meta is "exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates" according to The Platformer. Details are "scant", "still in its earliest stages" and "there is no time frame for it being released", but sources are saying that Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, is the lead on the project dubbed "P92" and it supports ActivityPub - like Mastodon. I don't know what it would look like in practice, but as the article ruminates, "A decentralized social network with top-notch design and user experience, a functional trust and safety team, and Meta's skilled growth hackers" together with "the power of Instagram, which is already at global scale and counts among its users most of the public figures that would be necessary to kick-start a new text-based network" might be something people use. It'll still have the Meta stink all over it though.

### Facebook might pull news from Canada, Microsoft sacked "ethics & society team", TikTok's SDK is in 28,000+ apps and sends data back to HQ

- Remember when the Australian government helped media companies extort Facebook and Facebook said fuck it, we'll just remove news and it was awesome? They're threatening do it again in Canada as their government ponders doing the whole "pay to link" nonsense we did. Who says Australia isn't a tech innovator?!
- As part of Microsoft's mass indiscriminate layoffs to juice short term financials, the entire ethics and society team was axed. This small but important group at Microsoft worked to "identify risks posed by Microsoft's adoption of OpenAI’s technology throughout its suite of products. I'm sure everything will be fine.
- A Gizmodo report has found over 28,000 apps use TikTok's SDK in their app to do stuff like tracking ad conversion, logging in using your TikTok credentials and sharing videos to TikTok. Integrating the SDK also sends a shitload of user data from that app to TikTok as well, usually without the user knowing or consenting.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Boeing X-37B Spaceplane racks up 908 days in space on a classified mission

The Space Shuttle might be a museum piece now and SpaceX gets all the reusable spacecraft attention these days, but did you know about the Boeing X-37B Spaceplane (aka Orbital Test Vehicle)? There's two of them, run as part of a classified project run by NASA and the US Space Force. The payloads are also classified, but they've had 6 missions between the two X-37Bs, with the last mission concluding in November 2022 after orbiting Earth for a whopping 908 days. It's basically a Space Shuttle, but also a drone. No humans on it. What it's doing up there we have no idea. I doubt it's anything wholesome.

## Bargains

- Blue Yeti Nano USB microphone - $71.20 delivered from The Gamesmen's eBay store
- Refurb Dell Dell P2219H 22" 1080p IPS monitor - $89 from UN Tech
- Bose Smart Soundbar 600, Soundbar 700, Soundbar 900 - $619/$639/$999 from Amazon
- Bose 700 Headphones - $359 from Amazon
- BeyerDynamic M70 PRO X microphone (XLR) with shock mount, pop filter & bag - $104 from Manny's/Store DJ
- Xiaomi Redmi 10A smartphone - $159.20 from xiaomi_global_direct's eBay store
- F1 Manager 2022 for PC via Steam - $19.66 from Green Man Gaming
- Coles Mobile 365-day pre-paid SIM with 60GB data, unlimited calls & SMS to 15 countries - $99 from Coles
- Discovery Microscope Starter Kit - $39.95 from Australia Post
- Xbox Wireless Controller - $69 from Amazon
- Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II - $337 from Amazon

## Image Of The Day

X-37B 1 sits on the runway after landing at the Shuttle Landing Facility on 12 November 2022, the 909th day of the OTV-6 (USA-299) mission (United States Space Force)

## The End

📻 The Cincinnati Tilt - Rickshaw Billie's Burger Patrol

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