### Issue 2224 - Tuesday 26th November, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Massive Cyber Security Bill is now law, get around it
- Yet another story of automated Facebook moderation gone wrong
- Macquarie Dictionary's word of the year is enshittification
- Five item bookmark dump
- Cheap refurb iPad mini & Lenovo mini PC, Oura Ring, Samsung S24 FE, DJI gimbal, Samsung SSD, Dell 27" 4K monitor, Timezone double load credit, TCL 85" TV, Apple gift cards, Plex Pass, fancy PS5 controller, Nvidia graphics cards

## The News

### Massive Cyber Security Bill is now law, get around it

The ALP has managed to turn one of their computer related bills into law this week - the Cyber Security Bill. If you're unfamiliar with the bill, one of the more interesting things it'll introduce to Australia is a set of 33 mandatory requirements for "IoT devices", aligning Australia with Europe's ETSI EN 303 645 "Cyber Security for Consumer Internet of Things: Baseline Requirements" standard to raise the bar on security, software updates, vulnerability handling and so on. It'll also require "certain businesses to report ransom payments", establish a Cyber Incident Review Board (CIRB) to "conduct no-fault, post-incident reviews of significant cyber security incidents in Australia" and loads more. Press release here.

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### Yet another story of automated Facebook moderation gone wrong

Story in the ABC today about the "Bundaberg Gays and Surrounds" Facebook group having posts removed because the moderation bot thought them sharing a post about Non Binary People's Day was malicious software. The mods of the group requested a review of the post removal, which led to the entire group being closed down and the moderator's accounts restricted so they couldn't even post on their personal accounts what the fuck happened. Really crap for the gays of Bundaberg and of course there's no recourse and Meta hasn't commented, but innocent groups shitcanned due to automated moderation happens all the time unfortunately. It's easy to yell "don't use Facebook!" but people are gonna use it just due to the sheer number of people there.

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### Macquarie Dictionary's word of the year is enshittification

The Macquarie Dictionary (a true blue Aussie book of words for us little battlers unlike the pretentious Oxford dictionary) has declared their word of the year for 2024, enshittification - "the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking". Macquarie chose this word because it "captures what many of us feel is happening to the world and to so many aspects of our lives at the moment". It's a word I use regularly as a shorthand for the current state we find the internet now compared to the internet of my youth. If you haven't seen it yet, Cory Doctorow (the "inventor" of the word) gave two good talks at this year's and last year's DEF CONs discussing what we can do about enshittification.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Five item bookmark dump

- There's a shitload of macOS software on sale for Black Friday this year, as listed by Michael Tsai.
- Someone made a little USB-C dongle that can be used as a sliding adjustment switch thing on the side of a laptop.
- A comic book that'll teach you to solder could be a useful thing for someone that doesn't know how to solder stuff.
- I Don't Have Spotify is a website (that can also be self-hosted) that generates links to other music streaming services that aren't Spotify, like so.
- This 3D printed Mac Pro-esque case for the new Mac mini is very cute and the files to make it with your own 3D printer are freely available.

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## Bargains

- Refurb Apple iPad Mini 5 64GB with LTE - $259 from Coles
- Refurb Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q mini PC (i5-10500T, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $312.70 from UN Tech's eBay store
- Oura Ring Gen 3 - US$249 + US$15 shipping from Oura
- Samsung Galaxy S24 FE 128GB - $975 at The Good Guys
- DJI Osmo Mobile 6 Gimbal - $122.87 from Amazon
- Samsung 990 PRO 4TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD - $407.21 from Amazon UK
- Dell S2721QS 27" 4K IPS monitor - $250.46 from Dell
- Double load credit promo running again at Timezone arcades
- TCL 85C855 85" QD-Mini LED 4K TV - $2730 + delivery from Appliance Central
- 20x Everyday Rewards points on Apple gift cards at Woolworths
- 25% off Lifetime Plex Pass - $119.99 via Plex
- PS5 DualSense Edge Wireless Controller - $288.15 at Amazon
- MSI GeForce RTX 3050 6GB low profile GPU - $255.20 from Amazon UK
- PNY GeForce RTX 4080 Super - $1499 from Shopping Express eBay store

## Image Of The Day

On Sol 422 (April 28, 2022), Mastcam-Z took this scenic landscape image during a routine dust devil searching activity. In the image, you can see the delta front on the left and the Isle Royale and Santa Cruz mountains in the distance. In the center, you can see the previous tracks of the Perseverance rover's wheels (for scale, the tracks are 2.2 meters apart). The rover has been breaking Martian driving records, completing the longest autonomous drive ever by any rover on Mars at 509.75 meters on Sols 350-352. This feat is enabled by the rover's onboard auto-navigation system which can autonomously detect obstacles in the driving path such as large rocks or steep slopes. (Mastcam-Z)

## The End

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