As expected, the Online Safety Bill has passed the Senate and take effect in about 6 months time. Amendments to include an exemption for sex-ed, art and harm reduction content, hiding content instead of deleting it and a compulsory independent review of the act were knocked back. This now means the eSafety Commissioner can order any R18+ content removed from the internet, "online abuse, image-based abuse and seriously harmful online content" to be removed within 24 hours and the creation of a digital age verification system for access to certain material. While making sure kiddies don't see "bad stuff" on the internet and cracking down on trolls and cyberbullies sounds good, we've lost a big chunk of freedom for something that might not actually do what it intends to.
The New York Times reckons Tim Cook personally called US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to voice his concern about the raft of legistlation heading Apple's way as the US government tries to control the big tech companies. "The antitrust bills were rushed, he said. They would crimp innovation. And they would hurt consumers by disrupting the services that power Apple's lucrative iPhone, Mr. Cook cautioned at various points, according to five people with knowledge of the conversations". Meanwhile in the EU, they've officially opened an investigation to "examine whether Google is distorting competition by restricting access by third parties to user data for advertising purposes on websites and apps, while reserving such data for its own use".
NSW is punching an additional $500m into a fund designed to implement heaps of digital projects across state government. All up they've got $2.1b to spend over a few years to do stuff like making an electronic health record, improving cyber security loads of government department and improving Service NSW. Also in the state budget is $400m for Investment NSW to "attract investment and foster innovation in the state". Half of it is for subsidies and grants, the other half for stuff like the Sydney Innovation and Technology Precinct near Central station, a Global NSW Strategy to attract overseas businesses to set up shop in NSW instead of other states, a $35m Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystem plan and general startup type stuff like that.
This short video of a pilot entering the Airbus A350's "server room" popped up on Hacker News today. The pilot doesn't explain much of what's in there, more just walks through it to get from the cockpit to the cargo area, but it legit looks like a server room in an office, with rack mounted servers and bundles of cabling. Got me thinking how much it would petrify me to be the person responsible for those servers, either the setup of it or the maintenance of it. I piss my pants managing relatively unimportant servers for mates, let alone a tin can in the sky carrying over 200 souls.
📻 Shit Luck - Modest Mouse
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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.