### Issue 1250 - Monday 16th November, 2020

## In Today's Issue

- SpaceX sends 4 astronauts to the ISS, first crewed mission on behalf of NASA
- Austrian court demands Facebook delete naughty comments worldwide, not just Austria
- Robodebt class action settled, 400,000 people to get a pissweak $280 compo
- x86 emulation on the M1 SoC is speedy, OCSP is probably more good than bad, Big Sur is bricking some 2013 & 2014 MBPs
- Cheap Samsung SSD, Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 2, 65" 4K Aldi TV, Kogan Mobile 365-day SIM

## The News

### SpaceX sends 4 astronauts to the ISS, first crewed mission on behalf of NASA

SpaceX launched a rocket containing a capsule holding three NASA astronauts, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, heading for the International Space Station this afternoon - the second time SpaceX has flown humans into space. It is the first operational mission to the ISS in NASA's Commercial Crew Program. From now on NASA will pay SpaceX and Boeing to take people into space. This mission will arrive at the ISS tomorrow and hang out there for 180 days. The Dragon 2 capsule, named Resilience, will splash back down to earth and be used again. I like the mission patch - nice little nod to all the other NASA crewed missions (Space Shuttle, Apollo, Gemini, Mercury) at the bottom.

### Austrian court demands Facebook delete naughty comments worldwide, not just Austria

A politician in Austria sued Facebook over some bullshit people posted about her and the court said that not only does Facebook have to hide the comments so Austrians can't see it, but delete them worldwide. That's a bit of a problem as the comments would not be defamatory/illegal/infringing/whatever in many other countries, so should an Austrian court have the right to dictate what foreign users see? Facebook appealed it and lost, so in Austria at least, they've got nowhere else to go. Sure, most of the world has had to suck on the USA's big one whenever they pass a bullshit law, but at least these companies are American so there's some justification there. On the other hand, you operate in that country, you gotta abide by their laws. Once again, Facebook finds itself in that gap between a rock and a hard place.

### Robodebt class action settled, 400,000 people to get a pissweak $280 compo

The Centerlink Robodebt saga has come to a sad and sorry end, with the government settling a class action lawsuit a day before it was set to go to trial (obviously to avoid their incompetence going on full display in court). The government previously agreed to pay $721m back to people and agreed to drop claims made using the flawed system. All up 400,000 welfare recipients will get $112m in compensation - a measly $280 each for the incredible stress they endured. I bring this robodebt stuff up here as it's a perfect example of what goes wrong when technology is used as a hammer to solve a problem when more nuance and a human touch was required. It should be in textbooks so people learn not to use an algorithm the way the Commonwealth did.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### x86 emulation on the M1 SoC is speedy, OCSP is probably more good than bad, Big Sur is bricking some 2013 & 2014 MBPs

- According to MacRumors, running the Intel version of GeekBench via macOS's built in emulation (Rosetta 2) is still faster than running it natively on most other Macs! Yeah I know it's just GeekBench and not totally indicative of what real-world performance is like, but it's very promising for those who need to run Intel-based apps on their Apple Silicon Macs while developers get their act together.
- Jacopo Jannone has taken a look at some of the privacy concerns raised after last week's Apple OCSP server outage. His summary is that despite Apple does verifying each app before it loads and checking the validity of the app over plaintext, it's still worth keeping enabled for the security it provides. Would be nice if Apple documented this stuff so it wouldn't be a shock when discovered.
- Apparently Big Sur is bricking late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pros - "During the course of updating to ‌macOS Big Sur‌, their machines are stuck displaying a black screen. Key reset combinations, including NVRAM, SMC, safe mode, and internet recovery, are all reportedly inaccessible after attempting to install the update, leaving no way to bypass the static black screen". That sounds bad.

## Bargains

- Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 2TB with free copy of Assassin's Creed Valhalla - $449 from Futu Online's eBay Store
- Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 (Ryzen 7 4700U, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, 14" 1080p) - $1099 from Lenovo
- 65" 4K TV - $599 at Aldi
- Get up to $100 of Kogan credit to use on the store when buying a 365 day Kogan Mobile SIM

## The End

📻 Mozzies - Dogbuoy

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