ACCC tells ZeniMax to give people refunds for all the bugs in Fallout 76
ACLU takes the FBI to court to expose its secret use of facial recognition
Federal government plan to get agencies using digital processes by 2020 has failed
New UniFi switches & LTE WAN failover device
Cheap 4TB portable HDD, Huawei 4G wi-fi router, Nintendo Switch, Sony 85" TV, Xiaomi dashcam, Sonos Beam, refurb Samsung S10 5G, $500 off any smartphone & Telstra plan, free stuff for STEM students from GitHub
The ACCC has thrown the book at ZeniMax over the shitty release of Fallout 76. If you recall when this much hyped game came out, it was full of bugs. Someone on Reddit made a list. There's so many bugs the game was virtually unplayable until a few rounds of patches filtered through. Many people were pissed off and wanted a refund, but ZeniMax (the publisher of Fallout 76) said no. Those pissed off Australian consumers complained to the ACCC and after months of negotiation, ZeniMax has been forced by the ACCC to offer anyone who contacted them about a refund between 24 November 2018 and 1 June 2019, a full refund. The ACCC says that when you buy something, software included, there are "automatic consumer guarantees" that can't be ignored. Has this kinda thing happened before, where consumers are get a refund for poorly made software?
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the DoJ, DEA and FBI for information about how these US government agencies are using facial-recognition on US citizens. The ACLU submitted a freedom of information request 10 months ago and didn't get a response, so now they're taking it to court to get a fuller picture of how all that CCTV footage slurped up by government agencies is being used. In a blog post, the ACLU outlines what it does know - that the FBI is "collecting data about our faces, irises, walking patterns, and voices, permitting the government to pervasively identify, track, and monitor us. The agency can match or request a match of our faces against at least 640 million images of adults living in the U.S. And it is reportedly piloting Amazon's flawed face recognition surveillance technology". The publicly known stuff is bad enough - imagine what they're doing that is not public.
A review of the federal government's Digital Continuity 2020 policy by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has found it to be, unsurprisingly, fucked. This policy was cooked up in October 2015 and was a government wide initative for agencies to "shift to entirely digital work processes, interoperable systems and improved information governance arrangements by 31 December 2020". The ANAO reported that the "Australian Government is unlikely to achieve the objectives of the Digital Continuity policy by the end of 2020" and blames the National Archives of Australia poor administration of the policy, having been "largely ineffective in monitoring, assisting and encouraging entities to meet the targets of the policy". Look at me, look at my surprised face. How could this ever happen. I have no idea.
I know a few of you have Ubiquiti gear at home, so you might like to know that they have some new UniFi stuff! They announced range of 2nd generation UniFi switches a few days ago, with the headline feature being "near silent cooling", something us home users will likely appreciate. They've also got little displays on the front that show live stats and look pretty in your server rack. Today they announced UniFi LTE - an LTE modem that integrates with the UniFi controller for an easy to deploy fail-over solution if your main internet connection shits the bed. It's powered via PoE, has sockets for an external antenna and can support 150/50 LTE (not the fastest but enough). Not sure on Australian release dates and pricing for this stuff, but keep an eye on UBWH and Scorptec - they usually get this stuff in first.
Seagate 4TB portable HDD - $119.20 from Good Guys on eBay
Loads of free services & learning materials for students via GitHub
Huawei E5577 4G wi-fi modem (locked to Optus & Optus MVNOs) - $29 at Big W
Nintendo Switch 2019 model - $379 at Target
Sony KD85X8500G 85" 4K TV - $3196 from The Good Guys eBay store
Xiaomi 70mai 1S 1080p dashcam (2019 model, English version) - $54 at GearBest
Sonos Beam soundbar - $479 at Klapp AV (other Sonos stuff on sale too)
$500 off any smartphone at The Good Guys if you go on a 12m Telstra $65/m contract
Refurbished Samsung S10 5G - $929 from Phonebot
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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.