Horrific/Terrific

Whistleblowers reveal that Facebook blocked public services pages in Australia following ‘link tax’ law

One billionaire used to own Twitter and now another one might — what does this mean?

Alex Jones is filing for bankruptcy | Clearview tech used to scan the faces of dead soldiers | Binance has a swastika now?

Zuckerberg’s metaverse will suffer from 47.5% transaction fees | Elon Musk attempts to buy Twitter | Wikipedia bans crypto donations

The Business of Technology and how little control you have over it

Meta are developing internal currency | Twitter are developing an edit button | Quantum computers are developing EV batteries

A new kind of social engineering that hackers won’t shut up about | Space Lawyers! | Meta pay the GOP to make TikTok look bad

Google Cloud has fired staff from Looker and replaced them with contractors | Why was the Amazon MGM acquisition not challenged by the FTC?

Update on the online harms bill | Is Nadine Dories okay? | Windows 11 and ads

Coinbase reach new levels of hypocrisy with their unique sanctioning style

I’ve been trapped in Paris with covid and also there’s a war on so this week has hit a little different ngl

Second Sight retina implants now obsolete and switching off inside people’s heads | Meta’s rebrand marathon never ends | A movie ticket service that tracks your eyes while you earn crypto

The US proposes antitrust legislation for app stores | The EARN IT Act threatens encryption | The DOJ seizes some bitcoin

What the hell is Joe Rogan doing? | Crisis Text Chat are using their mental health data for profit

Unprecedented: a politically motivated ransomware attack! | Meta are building a supercomputer and giving up Diem | Microsoft acquires Activision

Apple deem new antitrust bills to be a security threat | Crypto ads in the UK to be regulated | The metaverse will harvest your emotions, oh dear...

Attack of the Tulip | Signal CEO quits over MobileCoin | Autonomous, very stupid, bumper cars

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos want to privatise the solar system, transform the Earth into a museum, and turn us into space slaves or something idk...

From ransomware to space debris — we just love forging peril, and do not have time for solutions!

My other Bored Ape is your Bored Ape | Some regulators have been defrosted to administer ineffective fines | Your car is your final tech prison

Hello Earth dwellers. We did it: it’s the final day of the year. 2021 can now kindly follow the arrow → 🗑️. I actually started Horrific/Terrific in December 2020, so that means your favourite weekly tech blast is one year old — wow! I usually rate the week out of five

I will be back in your inbox on the 31st | FYI it’s the time of giving so please donate to my bank account, kthnx

Killer robots! | No more sun! | A new AI ethics institute!

Apple just can't survive without that 30% | Dorsey quits Twitter to live in a Block | More space junk

Listen: if you pay ransoms, you are funding ransomware — is that what you want??

IBM have created an eagle | an infrastructure bill! (but for surveillance) | How now brown DAO?

Sorry kids, I only had time for one segment this week (it's about Bitcoin, lol)

None of us actually know what it means to have a metaverse | why are there so many crypto ads??

$130m in crypto stolen, very easily | Bitcoin is not decentralised, sit down bro | It's Meta now

A very hackable grid | Please walk out of Netflix... not Tesco | The Metapurse

There's already a fucking lithium shortage, GREAT | Unsurprisingly, there's an algorithm ruining lives in India | I'm tired of complaining about Ring, someone else did it for me this time

Something doesn't feel like infrastructure until it disappears | the Facebook outage is more than just an opportunity to make memes

China and crypto have a conscious uncoupling | please can we stop SPACing everything | build the metaverse 'responsibly'

Google is going to save The Congo with wifi | The FTC demonstrate how ineffective they are, once again | Your iPhone could be your therapist

In Apple VS Epic there are no winners | What is XCheck? | Facebook has Ray-Bans now

How Bitcoin is about to destroy the world, starting with El Salvador

I speak to a tech union rep about this whole Apple pay equity thing | Snapchat have a really dumb AR feature I want to tell you about | Apple go into orbit

Unbanning porn | the FTC refile their silly lawsuit | MUM's the word!

My inferior human body as too much power over my even more inferior human brain

An algorithmic bias bounty | Etherium has begun forking | Apple to pass photos of your kids to law enforcement

Quantum madness! Time crystals! The future is finally here! | Facebook are working on making encryption irrelevant

The Metaverse is the new blockchain | The universe is the new playground | The billionaire is not an astronaut

Pegasus has proved that the only way to ensure phone security is by not having a phone | Yet another billionaire goes to space

How about some net neutrality? | A rich man goes to space | I was wrong about Audacity

Bitcoin.org held for ransom; forced to pay in Bitcoin | no one cares who invented Bitcoin anyway | Audacity is probably not spyware, relax

Too many satellites — cannot social distance | The FTC fail to prove Facebook are a monopoly | 4g on the Underground

Virtual Reality adverts | China's digital currency threatens Bitcoin | Have you noticed? Operating systems SUCK

An algorithm that solves discrimination | Tim Berners-Lee's NFT | Protect yourself from ransomware attacks by buying Bitcoin

The day the internet stopped | Bitcoin now legal tender | Health app == doctor

People are calling this a ransomware crisis | Windows 11 | Microsoft do some greenwashing

Proof of RAKE (as in raking it in) | Tinder introduce a 'please think twice' feature

Google announce new technology to scare and annoy | Tesla and Bitcoin need to take a break | Thank you for those search results... how about a chat?

Australia switching all WhatsApp users to business accounts | A crowd-sourced surveillance network

Having a .tech TLD makes you COOL, no arguments | Twitter's scroll to success | Signal's suppressed ad campaign

Please change the world, but ignore that the world even exists | Tesla's triple whammy | Now you can deepfake a great lake

A capitalist's love letter | A wilful misunderstanding of data portability | ban facial recognition

Prioritise AI, forget everything else | A responsible ML initiative | A very wealthy robot

The Augmented Army | What's the Winklecost of a Winklevoss? | an unsurprising Turing Award winner

A FLoC of disgusting low fat cookies | upload, meditate, repeat | lucrative exploits

So much hearing, yet no listening | Wrist Flex | Anything can be a toilet

Horrific/Terrific is taking leave from Substack | asset theft | a nifty alternative to sim-swapping

Google's plan to phase out cookies will only make them STRONGER, and make me SICKER | Do you need to buy/sell NFTs or are you already a massive douche?

Feeling left out? Form a tech consultancy! | Juicy delicious super Tweets | Cambridge Analytica Lite

Pixelated assets | heat your home with bitcoin | gig worker = lame. Quest taker = much better!

Cars with drivers disgust me | Self-sufficient Fire Sticks | No, you need to PAY for those links

BUY DOGECOIN | Working through your feelings with a ransomware attack | Twitter Pro

Apple VS Facebook | Google VS Microsoft | Amazon VS your face

Signal awarded with Best New App of 2021 by NASA | a forking bad time | The Big Society but for Misinformation.

Deplatform, decentralise, desocialise, denazify | I'm so done with mining Bitcoin on Earth, get me out of here

Facebook keeping things 'balanced' | AWS went down, pets go hungry