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Hmmm.

Maybe this is the network security architect coming out, but there has to be a good reason why Facebook has completely done an about face (180 degree turn for you non-military types) on its decision to ban news article postings on Facebook – https://gilchrist.cloud/?p=150

This from the website Macrumors:

The company banned all news sharing last week in response to a proposed Media Bargaining Law, which aims to level the playing field between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms in terms of bargaining power.

The law would allow Australian news publications to negotiate for fair payment for their journalist’s work, effectively forcing companies like Facebook and Google to pay for news content.

However, Facebook said on Tuesday that it had been reassured by discussions over the weekend with the Australian government about negotiated amendments to the bargaining code, adding that it was “satisfied” with the agreement they had reached.

“After further discussions, we are satisfied that the Australian government has agreed to a number of changes and guarantees that address our core concerns about allowing commercial deals that recognize the value our platform provides to publishers relative to the value we receive from them,” Facebook’s VP of global news partnerships, Campbell Brown, said in a statement.

“Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation. We have come to an agreement that will allow us to support the publishers we choose to, including small and local publishers,” Brown said.

Australian authorities plan to introduce further amendments to the proposed law so that the government may not apply the code to Facebook if it can demonstrate a “significant contribution” to local journalism, and a two-month mediation period before enforced arbitration comes into effect, allowing parties additional time to reach a private deal.

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had told him the ban would end “in the coming days”, following the talks. “Facebook has re-friended Australia,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

Despite Facebook’s reversal, its original decision to ban news shared on its platform attracted negative headlines about the company around the world, and prompted other governments to consider moves to curtail its power. Canada has said that it is considering similar changes in its media law, while British politicians also called voiced concerns about Facebook’s actions in Australia.

However, Facebook did receive support from some quarters when it complained that Australia’s proposed law had been badly drafted. For instance, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the web, said he was concerned that forcing companies to pay for certain content could make the internet “unworkable.”

“Specifically, I am concerned that that code risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web by requiring payment for linking between certain content online,” Berners-Lee said.

My thoughts on this are that it could be just Facebook having a think about being enormous arse hats about this, OR there’s something that’s just not adding up, and the Australian Liberal party (these clowns that have been in power FAR too long and who seem to think that they can operate outside of the laws in Australia) has done something dodgy – AGAIN.

Yesterday, Facebook followed through on its threat to ban users from sharing news on its platform in Australia, in response to proposed media laws in the country that the company claims “fundamentally misunderstand” its relationship with publishers who share news content.

This – from the website MacRumors.com:

The move is a retaliation to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) proposed Media Bargaining law, which seeks to redress the balance in terms of the bargaining power between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms.

The law would allow Australian news publications to negotiate for fair payment for their journalist’s work, effectively forcing social media companies to pay for news content.

Facebook and Google have had three months to negotiate with Australian media organizations to find a solution, but those discussions have failed to reach an agreement. Facebook concluded that the law “seeks to penalize Facebook for content it didn’t take or ask for,” while an inquiry last month saw Google go so far as to threaten to pull its search engine from the country entirely.

Facebook’ decision means Australian news publishers are no longer able to share stories on the platform, while Facebook users won’t be able to see or share international news to local Facebook users. At the same time, Facebook users overseas won’t be able to read or share Australian content.

Announcing the change in a press release, Facebook explained its reasoning behind the nationwide content block and its total opposition to the proposed change in law:

The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content. It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.

This discussion has focused on US technology companies and how they benefit from news content on their services. We understand many will ask why the platforms may respond differently. The answer is because our platforms have fundamentally different relationships with news. Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.

In fact, and as we have made clear to the Australian government for many months, the value exchange between Facebook and publishers runs in favor of the publishers — which is the reverse of what the legislation would require the arbitrator to assume. Last year Facebook generated approximately 5.1 billion free referrals to Australian publishers worth an estimated AU$407 million.

For Facebook, the business gain from news is minimal. News makes up less than 4% of the content people see in their News Feed. Journalism is important to a democratic society, which is why we build dedicated, free tools to support news organisations around the world in innovating their content for online audiences.

Australia’s communications minister Paul Fletcher hit out at the decision, telling Australia’s ABC News this morning that Facebook needs to “think very carefully about what this means for its reputation and standing.”

“They’re effectively saying, on our platform, there will not be any information from organizations which employ paid journalists, which have fact checking processes, editorial policies,” said Fletcher. “They’re effectively saying any information that is available on our site does not come from these reliable sources.”

The fallout from the ban is already impacting a range of Facebook-hosted organizations in the country, with the ban curtailing access to the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Queensland Health, and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services WA. Other pages for charities, politicians, sports groups, and other non-news organizations have also been affected.

However, the Australian government is standing by the law, which passed the lower house of parliament on Wednesday. It has broad cross-party support and will be debated again in parliament on Thursday, according to the BBC.

“We will legislate this code. We want the digital giants paying traditional news media businesses for generating original journalistic content,” said Treasurer Josh Frydenberg who added that “the eyes of the world are watching what’s happening here”. He said he’d also had a discussion with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg which had been “constructive”.

So I don’t want to tell people what to do, but I’m sticking up a giant middle finger to facebook, and I’m seriously considering not using it again.

Well, it seems that that State Government’s 5 day lockdown has indeed done it’s job – slamming on the brakes on the spread of the severely contagious UK variant of the Corona virus.

Victorians on a whole can be proud that when everyone just fucking does what is asked of them!

Ladies and Gentlemen, please if you’re easily offended read no further because I’m about to let loose with a string of obscenities that would make a sailor blush.

And here it comes.

What in the useless, tiny cocked, selfish, cock-wombled, shit, arsehole and or cock guzzling fucking useless bullshit is this about?

I wrote on here on the 1st of January 2021 – and here’s the article to prove it https://gilchrist.cloud/?p=122 – that surely common scense must prevail.

On Sunday, December 27th, I was walking Ollie (my golden Labrador) at Parkdale beach, which has subsequently been deemed a hotspot for corona virus.

Yesterday (December 31st), I was informed that I should get tested for corona virus.

After nearly 5 fucking hours in a car, I did indeed receive an oral swab, and a nasal swab (that fucking well felt as if it touched my brain).

This morning at 6:19am, I received a negative result for covid-19 – thankfully.

My rant is this. Why, oh why do I, who’ve dutifully performed the requirements of the first and second lockdowns which lasted 4 fucking months, have to put up with fucking micro cocked wankers who risk a fucking third lockdown by spreading an incredibly contagious virus like covid-19?

Yes, there is a vaccine for this now – HOWEVER, it will be many months before it’s widely available.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/us-coronavirus-survivor-receives-first-double-lung-transplant/51e6fee3-4bc2-4368-a17c-6a212ff41054

Take a good look all who doubt what Corona virus can do to your organs.

Do the right thing, and if you’ve got any, ANY symptoms, please sweet Jesus please isolate yourself and get tested!

For those of you who don’t know what Siri is, Siri is a virtual assistant that is part of Apple’s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS operating systems.

Supposedly Siri won’t ever activiate unless my Siri enabled devices hear the magic phrase: “Hey Siri…”

So why do I say “fucking Siri” whenever Siri randomly chimes in – FUCKING UNEXPECTEDLY – when I’m watching TV, or on the phone, or just talking to friends and neighbors? Simple – I never said to my device: “Hey Siri…”

The link on Macrumors regarding Siri – found at https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/10/apple-siri-recording-lawsuit-dismissed/ and The Guardian newspaper clearly stated that:

The class action lawsuit was first filed in August 2019 after it became known that Apple had employed contractors to listen to and grade some anonymized ‌Siri‌ conversations for product improvement purposes.

Those contractors told The Guardian that they overheard confidential medical details, drug deals, and other private information from accidental ‌Siri‌ activations, and some expressed concern that users were not adequately informed about the recordings.

All of the allegations in the lawsuit were based on information that was included in the original story from The Guardian highlighting Apple’s use of contractors to analyze ‌Siri‌ data, with the plaintiffs providing no proof that their own private data was accidentally collected by Apple and misused.

The Guardian article does not plausibly suggest that all Apple’s devices were subject to accidental triggers and review by third party contractors, much less that such interception always occurred in reasonably private settings. The article discusses frequency of accidental triggers primarily in relation to the Apple Watch and the HomePod speakers, neither of which are owned by the Plaintiffs.

Moreover, the article expressly states that only a “small portion” of daily ‌Siri‌ activations including were sent to contractors and that they included both deliberate and accidental activations. Finally, although the article describes private communications among the recordings sent to contractors, Plaintiffs allege no facts to suggest that their own private communications were intercepted by accidental triggers.

Well now, this is interesting. Apple claims to have the privacy of users of their Apple products fairly securely and wound up tightly.

But do they?

Apple goes on about how the value their users’ privacy, but as an Apple user, all I have to go by is Apple’s word.

This is a slippery slope that Apple chooses to be on, and it’s also very thin ice. One mistake by Apple, and their credibility is gone.

The article on the Macrumors site – https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/29/app-store-privacy-labels-accuracy-report/ and the article in The Washington Post goes on to say:

The Washington Post‘s Geoffrey A. Fowler recently did a spot check and discovered “more than a dozen” apps with “either misleading or flat-out inaccurate” privacy labels. One of these apps was a game called “Satisfying Slime Simulator,” which Fowler said was sending his iPhone’s advertising identifier and other device information to companies like Facebook, Google, and Unity, despite its privacy label indicating “No Data Collected.”

Fowler listed several other apps with “No Data Collected” labels that he found to be covertly collecting user data, such as Rumble, Maps.me, and FunDo Pro. He also found the popular game Match 3D to be “sending an ID for my phone that could be used to track me to more than a dozen different companies,” despite having a label that claimed it only took “data not linked to you.” Match 3D has since updated its label to reflect “data used to track you.”

In response to the report, Apple said it “conducts routine and ongoing audits of the information provided” and works with developers to correct any inaccuracies, adding that “apps that fail to disclose privacy information accurately may have future app updates rejected, or in some cases, be removed from the App Store entirely if they don’t come into compliance.”

This issue will be partially addressed by Apple’s upcoming enforcement of a privacy measure it calls App Tracking Transparency. Starting with the next betas of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14, developers will be required to get a user’s permission to track their activity across other apps and websites and access their device’s random advertising identifier, known as the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), for targeted advertising and ad measurement purposes.

Apple said that, at the software level, App Tracking Transparency will prevent developers from accessing a user’s IDFA unless they grant permission, preventing an app from silently tracking their activity in this manner. However, there are still other ways for apps to track users, so the accuracy of privacy labels will still not be guaranteed.

A very slippery slope indeed Apple. O_o

Wow Apple, you just can’t seem to learn from your mistakes can you?

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/19/airpods-max-excessive-battery-drain/

This comes from the Macrumors website:

Complaints range from high battery drain while the headphones are in use to significant battery loss when the headphones are meant to be idle. MacRumors reader VL_424 explains:

Been using my AirPod’s Max since Launch Day, over the last few days I’ve been running into some severe battery drain.

For example, last night I took the headphones out of the case with 85% battery, used them for about 15 minutes, put them back into the case.

This morning I get a notification via my iPhone that there was only 5% left. I wasn’t even attempting to connect to the ‌AirPods‌, I was airplaying to the HomePod in the room. It’s strange that the AirPod Max’s were even awake as they were still sitting in the case.. anyone else experiencing problems like this?

So why can’t Apple let the end user decide what do to with their super expensive AirPod speakers?

Does Apple think that the decision to power off the AirPods are beyond the comprehension of owners?

There’s more too.

Many MacRumors readers are seeing high levels of battery drain overnight, sometimes in double digit percentages, but most are seeing approximately 10 to 12 percent battery drain per day when the headphones are not in use. There have also been reports from some users who saw their headphones drain completely over the course of the day. From MacRumors reader DaSal:

The standby battery life really is poor. I’ve only had these for about two weeks and it’s already happened that I wanted to use them only to find out they completely emptied overnight. You can’t actually store them at 30% and assume you can use it next time you want to.

Some users believe that the issue may be related to the ‌AirPods Max‌ not disconnecting from devices when placed in the case or when entering low power mode. From MacRumors reader Broken Hope:

Seems to be an issue of them not disconnecting from all devices properly.

I got mine yesterday, used them with my phone, got annoyed that my Mac kept saying that the ‌AirPods‌ were nearby and disabled auto switching on my Mac, when I put them away for the night my Max’s were still showing in the battery widget on my Mac, thinking it was a glitch I went to work, I’ve come back and my Max’s have drained to 27% since yesterday evening.

With no power off option it seems that the ‌AirPods Max‌ are going to drain somewhat overnight even in low power mode, but given the number of reports about excessive battery drain, it seems that there could be a software bug that Apple will need to address in the future.

Like ‌AirPods‌ and ‌AirPods Pro‌, Apple is able to push over-the-air firmware updates for ‌AirPods Max‌, but to date, there have been no new firmware releases.

Your move Apple.

Today is the 20th of January.

Whilst I’m sitting at home in Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA, I know that in a few short hours the tenure of the 45th President of the United States of America will end – finally!

To all who bleat on and on about how this election was stolen from Donald John Trump and the GOP (that’s Grand Old Party for those who don’t know) – it wasn’t by the way, but who am I to say, I say it’s about time that the USA can finally regain some of its dignity again.

To Joe Biden and the Democrats, please do the right thing and fix the mess that Donald Trump has made in his 4 years.

Wow.

So you may have notices that my site has been, well fucked for about 10 days.

This has been because of 2 reasons.

The first, is that I’ve got a new job with a major Australian bank.

The second, is despite my efforts and my desire to start again, I was determined to not be beaten by this unexpected clusterfuck of a bug when I did security patches.

This morning, I finally found it, and low and behold, it was such a simple fix that I’m just blown away that:

1. This occurred in first place by the version of CentOS, and
2. No one else knew how to fix it (until now).

So instead of getting an http error message 500, this site is now working.

If anyone is remotely interested in the fix – hit me up via my email address here.

Beware, I’m about to rant at the selfish, tiny cocked knobs that don’t want to respect the covid-19 situation we are in at the moment.

Victoria had 60 blissful days of zero locally obtained infections due to a strict quarantine – until just before Christmas.

The tiny cocked knobs that won’t respect just how infectious covid-19 can be are to blame. These same tiny cocked knobs are a combination of aeroplane workers from America who believe that to quarantine themselves somehow goes against the constitutional rights, the self opinionated anti-vaxers, and incompetent Australian government officials who are too spineless to insist that everyone, regardless of what they do and where they are from must go into 14 days quarantine.

On Sunday, December 27th, I was walking Ollie (my golden Labrador) at Parkdale beach, which has subsequently been deemed a hotspot for corona virus.

Yesterday (December 31st), I was informed that I should get tested for corona virus.

After nearly 5 fucking hours in a car, I did indeed receive an oral swab, and a nasal swab (that fucking well felt as if it touched my brain).

This morning at 6:19am, I received a negative result for covid-19 – thankfully.

My rant is this. Why, oh why do I, who’ve dutifully performed the requirements of the first and second lockdowns which lasted 4 fucking months, have to put up with fucking micro cocked wankers who risk a fucking third lockdown by spreading an incredibly contagious virus like covid-19?