Pile of internal Facebook executive emails dumped online by UK journo
New NBN board member & ACCC speed test results
Uber’s robocar plans take another damaging hit
More new Ubiquiti UniFi gear you might find interesting
Cheap Orico USB 3.0 SATA enclosures. Nintendo Switch Lite, Canon EF 50mm F1.8 lens, ThinkPad E595
7,000 pages of confidential internal Facebook communications have been made public as part of Facebook's on-going lawsuit with Six4Three. You might remember Six4Three as the company pissed off with Facebook for changing their API and breaking their photos-of-chicks-wearing-bikinis app. During this lawsuit, Facebook gave Six4Three's lawyers a bunch of documents under the condition it would remain private, but it's all ended up in the hands of a UK journalist who has now dumped em all online. The linked Arstechnica article and Business Insider have highlighted some of the dirty laundry, such as Zuck wanting to block ads from competitors and shutting off API access to apps like MessageMe that are "stealing" Facebook's users. No doubt there will be more revelations about Facebook’s bullshit as other journalists dive in to the documents.
Yet another ex-Telstra executive has been appointed to the NBN board. Kate McKenzie comes from Chorus, who own 70% of New Zealand's fibre broadband network, and used to be Telstra's COO back in 2016. A more cynical person than me could argue that an ex-Telstra board member would make it easier to grease the wheels for Telstra's inevitable ownership of a large chunk of the NBN. Also NBN related, the ACCC has found via its latest broadband measurement report that FTTN premises only get 80% of the speed they pay for, compared to 90% on FTTC & HFC and 89% on FTTP. The same report found that Optus is the new fastest ISP, averaging 88.5% of advertised speed across its customers. Dodo and iPrimus (Vocus resellers) were the worst, at 79.4%.
After yesterday's damaging NTSB report on Uber's robocar murder, there's additional bad news for Uber's self driving car ambitions. In a mandatory financial report, Uber disclosed that an "independent software expert recently made adverse findings as to certain functions in our autonomous vehicle software", that will "likely result in a license fee or in design changes that could require substantial time and resources to implement, and could limit or delay our production of autonomous vehicle technologies". Who would that licence fee be payable to? Waymo, their main competitor, because the software is using techniques Anthony Levandowski stole on his way out from Waymo to go work for Uber. Suck shit Uber.
Ubiquiti has been on a tear releasing new products the past fortnight. A few days ago they showed off the UniFi Dream Machine (aka UDM) that's a UniFi controller, 4x4 802.11ac AP and 4-port gigabit switch in an inoffensive white cylinder. Useful for home users that want a little bit more control and flexibility than Ubiquiti's AmpliFi range. Today Ubiquiti released the UAP-BeaconHD, a mesh node for your UniFi setup. Instead of connecting the access point back to your switch via an Ethernet cable, it uses a 2nd wi-fi radio to act as backhaul to a wired UniFi access point. Handy for expanding wireless network coverage somewhere you can't get a cable to.
2x Orico USB 3.0 SATA 2.5" SSD/HDD enclosures - $12 from Apus Express on eBay
Nintendo Switch Lite - $249 from The Gamesmen on eBay
Canon EF 50mm F1.8 STM III camera lens - $143.20 from Camera Store eBay (AU stock)
ThinkPad E595 (15.6" FHD, Ryzen 5 3500U, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM) - $745 from Lenovo
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