### Issue 2126 - Tuesday 9th July, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Home Affairs wants every internet facing government thing to be audited
- WorldCat reckons it had US$5m in damages because of Anna's Archive web scraping
- Serif's Affinity design software 6-month trial & interesting interview with Canva CEO
- Zuck's Facebook posts are cringe
- Cheap Refurb iPhone 12 mini, refurb HP laptop, Kindle Scribe, Vodafone SIM, TCN gift cards

## The News

### Home Affairs wants every internet facing government thing to be audited

Home Affairs has sent out a decree that there is a "pressing need for Australian government entities to harden their technology management practices" - something I don't think anyone would disagree with! As a result, they are now mandating that "any hardware, software or information system, platform, mobile application or as-a-service offering, which stores, processes, transmits or transforms official or security classified information belonging to, or utilised by, the Australian government" is audited and wants to develop a "technology security risk management plan for all internet-facing systems or services". Good luck with all that, sounds fun.

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### WorldCat reckons it had US$5m in damages because of Anna's Archive web scraping

OCLC is shitty with Anna's Archive for scraping the entire WorldCat database (pretty much a list of every book ever made with an ISBN) over the course of a few years. OCLC sued what appears to be a random librarian they think is "Anna", but she's denied all connections to the site and the other email addresses OCLC served the lawsuit to have not responded. It's now arguing for a default judgement because "it continues to fight an unknown defendant who is unwilling to show up in court". OCLC is hilariously asking for over US$5m in damages, claiming it had to spend $1.5m on hardware upgrades due to the years of scraping, an extra $600,000 on Cloudflare for DDoS protection and "the salaries of 34 full-time employees, who were tasked with mitigating the harm caused by the attacks". Get absolutely fucked OCLC.

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### Serif's Affinity design software 6-month trial & interesting interview with Canva CEO

Fresh from being acquired by Canva, Serif has launched a new six-month free trial for its Affinity creative suite. You can test drive the entire suite for 6 months, then if you want to buy it, you can get it for a one off purchase of US$165 - or for as low as US$83 in their 50% off sale. There's never been a better time to crawl out from under Adobe's boot if you can (40+ years of product development from Adobe makes it tough, I know). Semi-related, there's a good interview with Canva's CEO, Melanie Perkins, over on The Verge. I used to think Canva was a bit of a joke but after having used it recently, it's actually filling a product need for so many people. Purchasing Serif makes so much sense for them. I wish Canva luck in busting Adobe's balls and even sweeter that it's an Australian company.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Zuck's Facebook posts are cringe

Have you ever visited Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page? Some bizarre posts on there lately:

- A video of the big dog wakeboarding in a tuxedo while drinking a beer and holding a USA flag, captioning the video "Happy birthday, America!" to celebrate the 4th of July.
- His very weird 40th birthday where they recreated "a bunch of places I lived in the early days", including one in his dorm room where Bill Gates wears basketball shorts and sits on a tiny sofa.
- Old mate sitting in front of a big piece of meat and talking about his cattle ranch/survivalist compound in Hawaii where the cows eat "macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch".

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## Bargains

- Refurb HP Elitebook 830 G6 (i5-8365U, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 13.3" 1080p, 12m warranty) - $274 from Australian Computer Traders
- Kindle Scribe 16GB & Basic Pen - $349 from Amazon
- Refurb iPhone 12 mini 64GB - $347.77 from Green Gadgets eBay store
- Vodafone 365-day SIM with 240GB data & 2000 Everyday Rewards points - $150 at Woolworths
- 10% off TCN gift cards (JB& GG) at Woolworths

## Image Of The Day

luciano - nirvana - grunge is dead.ans (16colors)

## The End

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