WA kid gets a visit from the police for exposing unencrypted medical data transferred via pagers
EV charging network Chargepoint ditches Australia, leaves 100+ chargers orphaned
Federal Court agrees with ACCC that Kogan are shifty bastards that price jack prior to sales
FTA TV DVR app Channels got a nice update if you’re still into recording FTA TV
Cheap 40" 1080p Soniq TV, Q Acoustics passive speakers, ALDIMobile data pack, Xiaomi 34" monitor, Sony Alpha A7III camera
A West Australian 15-year old is in some shit for exposing the fact that WA Health is using unencrypted pagers to send medical information. The kid seems to have made a website that sucks in pager info sent between medical staff at various WA hospitals and publishes it online. Despite pagers not being secure and everyone knowing they're not secure, staff still used the pagers to go into detail about medical issues they need to communicate with team members. The news sites are calling it a "hack" but really, it's all unencrypted radio that anyone with an antenna and $50 SDR can listen in on. I don't know why such a website was made, but hey, maybe it was a good thing as it drew attention to the fact medical info was spewing around the place unsecured.
If you're an EV driver in Australia you've probably used or seen a Chargepoint branded charger at some point. They were one of the very first companies to install public charging infrastructure here and have about 100 units around Australia, with some sites installed as recently as early 2020. Unfortunately it seems the US parent company has given up on Australia as a market and has abandoned us. Nobody appears to have a contract to support maintenance of the chargers, so as each one eventually develops a problem, nobody is fixing them. The software stopped working too, so site owners and users can't get any stats or view the charger status. I'm sure someone will probably adopt these orphaned chargers, but it's quite embarrassing it got to this state.
The UK-based App Drivers and Couriers Union have sued Uber in Amsterdam (the HQ of Uber for tax dodging purposes), "demanding to see the huge amounts of data the ride-sharing company collects on them and how this is used to exert management control, including through automated decision-making that invisibly shapes their jobs". The union wants to find out if Uber is discriminating or treating drivers differently (which is illegal), how driver actions affects their score and how the score affects them. Sounds fair enough to me - the fact Uber doesn't give their drivers full transparency shows how little they care. If the gig economy is going to be the future of employment, the power imbalance between your boss (the platform) who has all the data and you with bugger all data, needs to be fixed.
Free-to-air TV DVR system Channels got a major update recently. Version 4's client app (tvOS & iOS, Android & ) adds a kid's section so that lame content isn't in your main library, a kiosk mode to hide the settings options so nobody fucks with your setup, a list view (!!) instead of fancy thumbnails and a few other nice touches. Channels works with a HDHomeRun network connected TV tuner to do all kinds of TV show management. Very similar to how Plex does DVR but in my opinion, way nicer and more robust than Plex - particularly if you don't need the other stuff Plex provides and only want TV. Not part of version 4, but Channels also made a version of their server app that runs on the Raspberry Pi 4 that transcodes on the fly to adapt to different network conditions.
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Q Acoustics 3010i white passive bookshelf speakers - $299 from RIO Sound and Vision
ALDImobile data only SIM 30GB for 12m - $95 from ALDI
Xiaomi 34" 144Hz 3440×1440 curved gaming monitor - $599 delivered from Gearbite
Sony Alpha A7 III mirrorless digital camera (body only) - $2253.20 delivered from digiDIRECT’s eBay store using the code POFF10 after cashback
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