Well, well, well - Facebook grew a goddamn spine and have banned Donald Trump from posting until the inauguration of Joe Biden on the 21st of Jan, with Zuck justifying it by saying "we believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great". Don't start to think Zuck and Facebook have any morals though, as it's clearly a move to look virtuous whilst also covering their arses now that the Democrats are in political control and starting to regulate the hell out of his business. Facebook's move did give others a push to take out their trash, with Twitch banning Trump from streaming on its platform and Shopify closing down Trump's merch store.
After yesterday's decision from WhatsApp to force users into sharing data with Facebook, Signal has seen a massive bump in new users. So much so, that they problems sending out verification codes to fresh registrations. Elon Musk (who btw is now the world's richest man, thanks to massive hype in Tesla shares fueled by 0% interest rates and newbie investors on app sharing trading platforms) put out a tweet saying to use Signal, which probably helped boost Signal adoption too. Meanwhile, WhatsApp further clarified the changes being made, saying that nothing is changing with how user data is shared with Facebook - because they've been sharing it for years now. What's changing is business interactions on WhatsApp are now being shared with Facebook too. Either way, there's never been a better time to use Signal.
Australian Digital Health Agency - the people responsible for My Health Record - are having a whinge that privacy standards are too high, submitting a response to the Privacy Act review. In their response they reckon that the definition of a privacy breach for MHR is too broad, because they have to notify users if there's a potential for a breach, not just when there has been a breach. This, apparently, has lead to "dozens of breaches", so they want MHR to be regulated the same as any other business under the Privacy Act instead of the higher level of regulation they have now. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) told em to fuck off, saying the lower threshold for MHR breach notifications is like that on purpose.
Streaming video seems simple - an MP4 file played over the internet - but fuck me dead it's difficult, with so many moving parts to ensure a video plays back smoothly over an unreliable internet connection, even when millions of people want to watch the same thing, live. MuxVideo (some video streaming API, I dunno) wrote up a nice overview, literally called "How video works", explaining how video is captured at the source, processed, delivered and played back over the internet. What was once the domain of satellites, broadcast towers and multi-million dollar setups is now available to plebs like us, how cool is that?
📻 Ajan takana - Mara Balls
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