Back in November, Reset.Tech complained to Digital Industry Group Inc (aka DIGI) that "fact-checked falsehoods were not always being labeled despite claims in its transparency report and provided 152 examples of where Meta had failed to label a piece of content". DIGI is supposed to be the mob responsible for administering the voluntary Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, but it also a lobby group that pushes the interests of big tech companies like Meta, Apple and Google. It dismissed Reset.Tech's complaint this week, saying "Reset Australia produced no convincing evidence that Meta's transparency report contained false statements". Self-regulation doesn't work in other industries and doesn't work here either.
The AFP has arrested a bloke in Sydney and charged him with "12 counts of computer offences related to the RAT known as Firebird" - "10 counts to supply data with intent to commit a computer offence" plus "one count of producing data with intent to commit a computer offence and one count of controlling data with intent to commit a computer offence". According to Bleeping Computer, the Firebird RAT allowed for "stealthy access, password recovery from multiple browsers, and elevation of privilege through exploits". Dunno how much he earned from this endeavour, but probably wasn't worth it considering the skills he obviously has in software development.
Currently in my pile of books that I naively think I'll read one day, but we both know will likely never happen, is The Friendly Orange Glow by Brian Dear. It is a history of Xerox's PLATO system, "home of not only computer-based education but, surprisingly, the first online community, and the original incubator for social computing: instant messaging, chat rooms, message forums, the world's first online newspaper, interactive fiction, emoticons, animations, virtual goods and virtual economies, a thriving developer community, MUDs (multi-user dungeons), personal publishing, screen savers". That's right, all that stuff was basically invented by the folk at Xerox PARC over 50 years ago. The author's blog is a fun scroll-through if you don't wanna read the book.
Not a real iPhone, unfortunately (danamania / Flickr)
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