In This Issue

News

Singapore forces Facebook to issue “correction notice” on a user’s post it didn’t like

Singapore recently introduced a new law desgined to combat fake news and yesterday, that law was used by the Singaporean government to force Facebook to publish a correction notice on a post about the arrest of a whilstblower. The post was from a user Alex Tan, who lives in Australia and initally refused the Singaporean request to correct his post. When that was ignored, Singapore told Facebook to add a message at the bottom of Alex's post saying "Facebook is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information". They did it and the the "note" is visible to Singaporean users only. Well there you, that's a thing now. Government mandated corrections on social media.

Google back in the EU antitrust crosshairs over data collection & use

EU antitrust regulators are reloading their shotguns and are waiting on reinforcements for a fresh raid of Google. They confirmed over the weekend that they've "sent out questionnaires as part of a preliminary investigation into Google's practices relating to Google's collection and use of data". There's not a lot of info about what kind of data the EU is concerned about Google collecting, or how they're using it, but I don't think you have to dig deep to find out how massive Google's data hoarding goes. If you've forgtten, in the span of 2 years, the EU fined Google a total of €8.25 billion for abusing its market power in three, seperate, cases. The fines don't mean much (Google is insanely profitable), but it's nice to see on paper, neatly outlined, all the ways Google stifles competition.

Optus fined for misleading customers about NBN disconnections & QLDer downloads 26TB in a month

Optus has received a $6.4m fine after the ACCC took em to court for lying to customers about their internet getting cut off unless they move to the NBN. Optus sent out emails saying "make the switch, before it's too late" to customers that had at lesat 18 months until the existing service they're using was disconnected. THe Federal Court reckons these emaisl were misleading or deceptive and the false sense of urgency may have prevented customers from shopping around for better deals. Also NBN related, someone in QLD has set a new record for the most data consumed in a month on a residential connection - 26TB. That's basically downloading 24/7 for an entire month on a 100mbit connection!

Not News

Gallium nitride based USB chargers are small and light

The cost of producing gallium nitride (GaN) transistors/chips has come down enough that their use is now sensible in commodity geart like USB chargers, with the main benefit of turning what used to be a big honking power brick into something the footprint of a credit card. I don't exactly know what makes GaN semiconductors special that enables the size reduction (sending electricity through a rock is black magic), but what I do know is that there's 100W USB-C multi-port chargers that fit in a jacket pocket and 18W USB-C chargers that are the same size as Apple's 5W iPhone USB charger. Right now they're still a bit pricey versus the traditional chargers, but as volumes increase, price will go down and maybe eventually they'll go mainstream.

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😁 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.

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.​