UK decides not to make a porn watcher database/age verification scheme
US DoJ busts massive kiddie porn ring by tracing millions of Bitcoin transactions
Yahoo Groups is kicking the bucket December 14th, going silent Monday
Anandtech’s iPhone 11 & iPhone 11 Pro review is ready to geek out with
Cheap Amazon Echo & Dots, Olympus OM-D E-M10 II kit, Xiaomi powerbank, 4K Apple TV, iTunes cards, TP-Link 802.11ax wi-fi router, AirPods with charging case
The UK has dropped it's stupid idea to require people wanting access internet porn to verify their ID with the government, effectively creating a government "this is who looks at porn!" database. Unfortunately, the reason it's been dropped is due to technical difficulties in implementing such a far ranging scheme and not informing the EU of its plans. The actual concept of making everyone buy "porn passes" down the local shops so you can rub one out is still something the UK government is comfortable with. Maybe after the UK quits the EU they'll re-implement it, but I figure they'll have a million other more important things to take care of post-Brexit than making a porn ID system.
The US DoJ has taken down a huge pedo dark web site called "Welcome to Video" and busted all the perverts using it by tracing all the Bitcoin transactions flowing through the business. When someone signed up to Welcome to Video, they were assigned a unique Bitcoin wallet to send money to in order to buy videos. The DoJ was able to link unique wallet activities to the site's owner's wallet, which then allowed them to see all the other incoming wallet activities thanks to Bitcoin's public blockchain. All up, the sting arrested 337 Welcome to Video users across 11 countries and rescued at least 23 children being abused by the site's users. Finally, Bitcoin is good for something?
Verizon is going to delete all content that has been posted to Yahoo Groups starting December 14th and will stop people posting new content to groups as soon as 21st of October. All the files, polls, links, photos, calendars, conversations - basically everything except the ability to email other people in the group (but not keep a log of those emails on Yahoo's servers) will be shut off, presumably as a precursor to closing the whole thing down. If you've got anything in Yahoo Groups you'd like to preserve (they were very popular prior to Myspace/Reddit/Facebook as a place for people to shoot the shit and discuss topics), log in and download it ASAP.
Grab a cup of coffee and a comfy chair nerds, Anandtech has put up their typically very detailed review of the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. Starting off with the A13 SoC, they found that compared to the "Snapdragon 855, the new Thunder cores represent a 2.5-3x performance lead while at the same time using less than half the energy." Three times as fast for half the power consumption - amazing. The iPhone Pro's OLED display is one of the most accurate on the market. Battery life is industry leading. The triple camera setup, Deep Fusion (coming in iOS 13.2, tested here in beta) and night mode puts the iPhone back near the top (Huawei's P30 Pro is still the night mode king) of the heap.
2nd-gen Amazon Echo - $74.50 delivered from Amazon AU
Olympus OM-D E-M10 II with 14-42mm lens kit - $549 at JB Hi-Fi
Xiaomi 20,000mAh Power Bank 3 Pro (45W USB-C PD & QC 3.0) - $48.27 from Gearbite
32GB 4K Apple TV - $224.10 from Ausluck
2x Amazon Echo Dots (3rd-gen) - $79 delivered from Amazon AU
15% off iTunes cards at Officeworks & Target
TP-Link Archer AX6000 802.11ax wi-fi router & 8-port gigabit switch - $338.30 from Wireless1
Apple Airpods (2nd-gen) with charging case - $203.15 also from Wireless1
🎶 Optimistic - Radiohead
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