The Privacy Act update finally hit Parliament today. The Attorney-General's press release says the legislation brings "a new statutory tort to address serious invasions of privacy, development of a Children's Online Privacy Code, greater transparency for individuals regarding automated decisions, streamlined information sharing in the case of an emergency or eligible data breach and stronger enforcement powers for the Australian Information Commissioner", plus making doxxing a criminal offence - that's it. Stuff that would actually made a difference, like a right to be forgotten or the ability for individuals to take legal action when a data breach/misuse occurs just aren't in there. Digital Rights Watch is disappointed and so am I. Let's hope the Greens and other independents manage to kick up enough of a fuss to get some of the other recommendations included before it's passed.
The government also introduced the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill. This law will gives ACMA the ability to monitor "digital platforms with new information gathering, record keeping, code registration and standard making powers" and introduces "new obligations on digital platforms to increase their transparency with Australian users about how they handle misinformation and disinformation on their services". Right now ACMA has no power to demand content be taken down, but they're taking the same approach eSafety took with the Online Safety Act all those years ago, starting off with gutless voluntary industry codes that will inevitably turn into mandatory codes after a long series of consultation periods (that get ignored) when government cops heat for some social media viral bullshit that hits mainstream media and the people government listens to gets upset about it.
Google's added a feature to its Play Integrity API that allows apps to block themselves from being sideloaded. Sideloading apps is awesome on a deGoogle'd smartphone as it allows you to get apps on your device without requiring a Google account - but with this change in policy from Google, if an app developer wants their app to only be available via the Play Store, they can now enforce that. Some apps are kinda useless without Google's APIs (mostly banking and streaming media apps from my experience), but many of the apps that are just web-wrappers and chucked on the store work fine on a phone running LineageOS or GrapheneOS. Sideloading is also really handy if the app you want isn't on Google Play in your country and this will make it more of a pain in the arse to get those apps if enabled.
I don't talk about Windows apps much here as I use a Mac most of the time and have done so for about 20 years, but I recently remembered Directory Opus from my Windows days and was delighted to learn it's still kicking on and it's made in Australia. Best way to describe it is like a replacement for Explorer, but on steroids. Insanely configurable, great image/file previews built-in, dual-pane file browsing, tabs, batch renaming and a shitload more. There's similar Mac apps too if you're into that kinda thing, like Forklift and Path Finder. I hope this genre of application never dies, even if Microsoft and Apple wish you'd forget that the filesystem exists and dump all your stuff on their cloud services.
The diagram below shows the guidance system of the Minuteman III missile (1970). This guidance system contains over 17,000 electronic and mechanical parts, costing $510,000 (about $4.5 million in current dollars) (Ken Shirriff)
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