### Issue 1653 - Wednesday 20th July, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Border Force has no idea if any of the devices it inspects or retains are useful in court
- Apple settles class action over those nasty butterfly keyboards on previous MacBooks
- ACCC & ASIC testing automated takedowns of phishing and scam sites
- The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy
- Cheap LG 38" monitor, Ryzen 9 5950X, Dell 27" 4K monitor, Google Pixel 6a 5G, Xiaomi smart watch, Silverstone mini-ITX case, refurb HP laptop, Cygnett smart wi-fi plugs

## The News

### Border Force has no idea if any of the devices it inspects or retains are useful in court

According to "figures obtained by Guardian Australia", Border Force has "seized or retained more than 1,000 devices from travelers entering Australia in the past five years". Which you know, could be legit, maybe there is kiddie porn on all of em, I dunno. But if you ask Border Force, they have "no records available for how many criminal charges or other legal action have arisen from data obtained through phone searches at the border". So you've got all these devices, plus the hundreds per year you rummage through aimlessly in a secret room at the airport then hand back, but you can't tell us if any of this resulted in legal action??? Fuckwits.

### Apple settles class action over those nasty butterfly keyboards on previous MacBooks

Apple will cough up US$50m to settle a 2018 class action lawsuit over the crappy butterfly action keyboards used on MacBooks between 2015 and 2019. If you've erased this low point in Apple's modern history from your mind, the butterfly keys had "issues with keys repeating, sticking, and otherwise failing when dust and other particulates got into the butterfly mechanism". They were truly ratshit keyboards, horrible to type on too, not just mechanically unreliable. After a few years of this nonsense Apple replaced the keyboard with the ones we've got on MacBooks now and they're way better in every aspect. It's a US case so none of that cash will flow down to us, but maybe Apple will think twice before inflicting user hostile crap like this on us again.

### ACCC & ASIC testing automated takedowns of phishing and scam sites

The ACCC and ASIC have teamed up to trial "automated takedowns of websites hosting phishing and other scams". They kicked things off in June using Netcraft (didn't they used to have a thing monitoring website uptime back in the 90s?) that the UK's National Cyber Security Centre has been enjoying for 4 years now. The ACCC says there's been "dozens of takedowns" in the last 3 weeks, mostly "phishing sites impersonating Australian businesses and government authorities", "puppy scams, shoe scams, cryptocurrency investment scams and tech support scams". I'm unsure how this is all automated. Maybe it's the detection/reporting of a scam that's automated?

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy

Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy looks like a great book. It is the "first scholarly research book about this underground subculture, which began life in the pre-internet era Bulletin Board Systems and moved to internet File Transfer Protocol servers ("topsites") in the mid-to late-1990s". I haven't read it, but the title and description enticed me enough to download the free PDF and upload it to my e-book folder on OneDrive with the aspiration to reading it on my iPad one day.

## Bargains

- LG 38WN95C 38" curved 3840x1600 monitor - $1699 from Amazon
- AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU - $766.53 from Harris Technology's eBay store
- Dell S2721QS 27" 4K monitor - $339.01 from Dell
- Google Pixel 6a 5G - $499 if you trade in a phone worth more than $10 at JB Hi-Fi
- Xiaomi Redmi Watch 2 Lite - $73.04 from Luckymi_official's eBay store
- Silverstone Sugo 14 SG14B Mini-ITX case - $39 + delivery from Mwave
- Refurb HP Elitebook 830 G5 (i5-8350U, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD) - $398.40 from SMG-AU's eBay store
- Cygnett CY2881CHCPM smart wi-fi plug with HomeKit support & power monitoring - $20.97 + shipping from Cygnett

## The End

📻 Fuck Off - The Frogs

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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.