Robodebt Settlement
The federal government agreed on Monday to pay $112 million in compensation, interest and legal costs to up to 430,000 people who were affected by the scheme, which recouped alleged welfare overpayments calculated through a flawed method.
Former ABC reporter Ariel Bogle tweeted: Wonder if this is the biggest-ever settlement related to government-by-algorithm, even globally?
Another fun reaction from Dan Nolan, Comp Sci ethics courses are going to replace the ariane 5 with robodebt for being an insanely costly disaster
at least if they make people do ethics courses anymore…
Github brings back youtube-dl
The worlds’ largest code repo has reinstated youtube-dl.
A quick reminder, youtube-dl is an open source tool that allows users to download video from the popular video service, as well as from ABC iView, SBS on Demand, and other streaming platforms.
“Today we reinstated youtube-dl, a popular project on GitHub, after we received additional information about the project that enabled us to reverse a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown. “
“Nonetheless, developers who want to push back against unwarranted takedowns may face the risk of taking on personal liability and legal defense costs. To help them, GitHub will establish and donate $1M to a developer defense fund to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims.
Big Sur “Bricking” 2013 and 2014 Macbook Pros
macOS Big Sur Update Bricking Some Older MacBook Pro Models
A large number of late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro owners are reporting that the macOS Big Sur update is bricking their machines. A MacRumors forum thread contains a significant number of users reporting the issue, and similar problems are being reported across Reddit and the Apple Support Communities, suggesting the problem is widespread.
Until it is clear what may be causing the issue and Apple releases a fix, late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro may wish to hold off on installing macOS Big Sur.
Felix Launches
TPG's New Felix Mobile Brand Has Only One Plan
The telco is positioning itself as a simple service with just one plan available - $35 a month with “endless” data, but that data is capped at 5mbp speeds.
That’ll be fine for social, email, browsing, and even some video watch, but don’t expect HD on Netflix
Very clever marketing as Australia’s first “zero carbon telco” - and the service will plant one tree per customer per month.