Level1 News February 22 2021: Patron Edition!

I introduced my wife to read receipts (She is a nurse instructor) She says she now gets near instant responses from people AND it has helped her "CYA" on a few occasions.

Jr Haas

I enjoyed watching the Mars landing on my PC accompanied by my Level1 Techs Mars Rover Desk Mat!

Texas viewer here! I'm in Fort Worth (45 minutes from Dallas) I didn't actually lose power or water, just internet and there was a boil notice on the water but it's over now. But I know a few people whos apartments flooded from pipes bursting! awful situation

Orion Rodriguez

You guys have completely misread the situation here in Australia, although I forgive you because there is a very intense propaganda campaign going on. The recent clash over the news media bargaining code was less about addressing monopoly power of the tech giants and more about subsidising another monopoly power, News Corp. the company owns 75-80% of all print media, our sole pay TV provider, and a major television network (we only have a few). They are a famously influential with Australia’s politicians, particularly from Australia’s right-wing Liberal Party who are currently in power. After Facebook pulled news from its platform, the Queensland masthead ran a full front-page headline suggesting Zuck was facilitating paedophilia by introducing end-end encryption. Rather than simply taxing tech giants, they came up with this idiotic bargaining code in order to achieve the politically unpalatable transfer of wealth from Google and Facebook to their cronies in news media. It allowed them to bribe their buddies, while making the redirection of this tax politically inaccessible. It only applies to Facebook and Google, and has no interest in the IP of news organisations with a revenue below I think $150k. Apparently, they don’t need protection. You will note, Google was also in the firing line for failing to comply here, and yet mysteriously, after coming to terms with News Corp specifically, all their problems went away. The “problem” was solved. A clear indication that no other news media matters. The big story here was that when Google was threatening to pull out of news in Australia, Microsoft’s CEO met with our PM to have Bing replace Google as a provider of both news and search in Australia. This is what ultimately led to Google’s eventual capitulation. Microsoft does not have to pay for news content at this time — because, reasons. Anyways, it is clear that this all is not about protecting intellectual property, but about subsidising the failing business models of traditional news media with a defacto tax, particularly News Corp, in a way that the Australia people cannot intercede in in the future. Within a few weeks, News Corp will return to their climate-change denying, welfare cheat, anti government intervention rhetoric. Scumbags. I’m a centre-right voter, too. The right wing party here always gets tech wrong. Always. They also killed our national broadband network that was to lay fibre to every premises with the famous line, “nobody will ever need more than 25mbps”. Sorry, I’m typing this on my phone and I’m very upset by this issue, clearly. Keep up the good work otherwise!