The News

EU says it’s ‘watching’ as Australia celebrates the teen social media ban before it’s even begun

The head of the EU says it is “learning” from Australia as Anthony Albanese spruiks the teen social media ban at the UN (ABC News). The Prime Minister held an event promoting its “flagship” tech policy, which included a speech from a mother whose 15 year-old child died by suicide after being bullied on social media (SMH, $). European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen threw her support behind the “bold” ban.

The Sizzle: A close read of von der Leyen’s language shows that she’s supportive — but stops short of calling for the same measures.

The reason I’m making this distinction is that I think it’s pretty remarkable how hard the government is selling this policy considering it hasn’t happened yet. I think regardless of whether you’re for or against the ban — opinions vary, even among the tech savvy — everyone knows the implementation of this policy is a major, major unanswered question that will influence its success. I’m going to write some more about this but, suffice to say, this feels like counting your chickens before they hatch.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

What the hell is going on with RubyGems?

There’s some drama happening in the world of open source development as the non-profit supporting the Ruby programming language has been accused of a “hostile takeover” of some volunteer-run projects. A couple of days ago, someone purportedly sidelined the group of people maintaining RubyGems (put simply, a pretty popular tool used widely by those using Ruby) and installed group Ruby Central as its owner (here’s one version of events in a PDF). It was sold as improving “governance” of the project, but some people have accused Ruby Central’s actions as pushed by its major corporate sponsor Shopify (Joel Drapper). Now people are quitting Ruby Central (GitHub)

The Sizzle: There’s a lot going on and I’m not super familiar with the situation, but the big takeaway here is about the perverse incentives of open source tools: things like RubyGems are enormously popular (4 billion gems downloaded in May!) and are used to make a lot of money. And yet, exceedingly few people support their development financially or otherwise. This makes them vulnerable to takeovers like this, which are bad for everyone!

TL;DR: There’s a responsibility for big players to throw a bone to the people watching over the few lines of code that the entire world depends on.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

There’s never been a better time to buy a mechanical keyboard

Plummeting costs and growing options has prompted the Verge to declare that “we’re living in the golden age of affordable mechanical keyboards”. Their article lists a bunch of the options, like the “Toyota Corolla of Keyboards” Keychron V1 Max and the “tinkerer’s dream” Meletrix Zoom75 Tiga.

The Sizzle: It’s time to confess. I’m still using a gazillion year old Apple Magic Keyboard (no number pad). But recently, I bought a standalone mechanical number pad for my wife because her work laptop doesn’t have one and she’s always typing numbers.

Anyway, I started playing with it when it arrived and… it was like semi-religious experience? I felt sick going back to the Magic Keyboard. So, do you have a mechanical keyboard? Show me your gear or post it in the Slack/forum!

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

Turn your Casio into a cyborg smartwatch

The CASIO F-91W is a timeless classic. Fun fact: its popularity with terrorists — who reportedly use its timer for bombs — means that the US intelligence agencies once considered it a sign that someone could be al-Qaida (Guardian).

But for those people who want a little bit more, Ollee is selling a replacement mainboard that gives it Bluetooth and fitness tracking capabilities. You can buy a DIY kit or a readymade upgraded Casio (although if I’m being honest, I feel like the appeal of the Casio is that it is a dumb watch).

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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