Issue 1542 - Tuesday 8th February, 2022

In Today's Issue

• ALP promising to fund a digital licence for kids if they win the election
• Meta/Facebook threaten to quit EU market if US-EU data sharing regulation isn't sorted
• Busy day at the news factory, more production than usual
• Valve Steam Deck hits the hands of select YouTubers
• Cheap easel style TV stand, WD 5TB portable HDD, Tenda mesh wi-fi 4-pack, refurb Voll speakers, iPhone 13, Google smart home stuff, Ryzen CPUs

The News

ALP promising to fund a digital licence for kids if they win the election

A federal election is looming, so that means regular policy brain farts in an attempt to win votes. One particularly aromatic idea is the ALP's "digital licence". Remember pen licences as kids? Well it's that, according to Shadow Minister for Education Tanya Plibersek, but "for the digital age". It's backed by the Alannah and Madeline Foundation who developed two programs - "Licence+ is billed as an online learning experience that is supposed to build general digital intelligence, while the Literacy Lab is a gamified resource for teaching media literacy". If the ALP win the election they'll spend $6m to run the program in every school.

Meta/Facebook threaten to quit EU market if US-EU data sharing regulation isn't sorted

A little gem was hidden in Meta's latest SEC filing - if the USA and EU can't come to an agreement over how companies can legally store the data generated by each other's citizens outside the country, Meta "will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe". What a tantalizing prospect, Europe becoming a Facebook free zone, imagine that! The EU reckons data on US servers isn't safe from mass surveillance by the yanks and they won't consider a law regarding the storing of EU resident's data valid unless a US law makes EU data "essentially equivalent to those required under EU law" on US soil.

Busy day at the news factory, more production than usual

• A study in The Lancet Public Health has beyond all reasonable doubt declared COVIDSafe a total dud. There were more false positives than actual cases found and only 17 close contacts (out of 25,300) identified that conventional contact tracing missed. Time to remove it from the app stores, shut the servers down and cancel those maintenance contracts I reckon.
• The eSafety Commissioner and DTA are working together to develop an online age verification system for "sexually explicit content". It's getting tacked on to the existing trial for online age verification of alcohol purchases and access to gambling sites, with a report due by the end of the year. Neither eSafety or the DTA made this public - it's only known thanks to an FoI request.
• The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner sued Meta in 2020 over privacy breaches related to the Cambridge Analytica dumpster fire. Meta wants the case thrown out, arguing "it does not carry out business or collect or hold personal information in Australia, so it cannot be sued under the country's privacy laws". This week the full bench of the federal court said Meta's claim is "divorced from reality" and allowed the OAIC's case to proceed.
• Tesla has been subpoena'd again by the SEC over Elon Musk's tweets. This time it's about his infamous tweet asking if he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares, which led to a 16% drop. The SEC hasn't said what's caught their eye in particular, but said they're "seeking information on our governance processes around compliance with the SEC settlement, as amended". Elon's tweets are supposed to be vetted by Tesla, as per their deal with the SEC, remember.
• The Dutch competition regulator (ACM) has fined Apple another 5 million euros and will do so every week (up to 50 million) as they are not satisfied with the amount of information Apple has provided to them in order to assess if they're complying with the order. The ACM isn't happy that dating apps can't use Apple's IAP system as well as 3rd party services and the fact developers have to submit a request to Apple to be allowed to use 3rd party payments.

Something I Saw On The Internet

Valve Steam Deck hits the hands of select YouTubers

Valve's Steam Deck is finally about to ship and a couple of YouTubers (GamersNexus, Linus Tech Tips, and The Phawx) have spent some quality time with the new handheld gaming device. The games Valve allowed them to demo seem to work well. The Steam Deck's guts are basically an AMD Ryzen laptop based on the Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU, so it's not a surprise that at 1280x800 games zoom along more or less at 60fps. Build quality seems fine, with everyone content with the fit and finish, as well as the buttons and joysticks. Haptic feedback sucks, but Valve said a software update will fix that. Battery life seems to be the main downer. None of the three YouTubers managed to get the claimed runtime 8 hours of runtime Valve purports. Depending on the intensity of the game, playtime at 60fps is more around 2-ish hours.

Bargains

The End

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