Georgia Iacovou - Horrific/Terrific

Good! Finally...

👍 Gatekeepers

Crypto crash (lmao) | Details on the upcoming Digital Services Act | I hope El Salvador are okay

Could have done without this

👎 Inadvertent Leverage

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

Could have done without this

👎 Clown Car

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ DisInfoWars

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

Could have done without this

👎 Monetise!

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

Members Area

🧱 There is too much software

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

Could have done without this

👎 Zuck Bucks

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

Good! Finally...

👍 Mercury Propellant

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

Could have done without this

👎 Cheap & Invisible

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

Sort of okay

🤷‍♀️ Online Harms

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

Could have done without this

👎 Evading sanctions

Coinbase reach new levels of hypocrisy with their unique sanctioning style

Special

🙅‍♀️ No Thanks

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

Could have done without this

👎 Abandonware

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ Act Week

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

Could have done without this

👎 Hey Joe

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ Unprecedented Demands

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

Good! Finally...

👍 Market Imposition

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...

Could have done without this

👎 Deceptive Flower

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

Members Area

Humans are the key dispensable resource driving the New Space Race

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...

Members Area

3 huge problems we are ignoring even though they will destroy us

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

Good! Finally...

👍 Pointless Fines

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

Could have done without this

👎 In Review

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

🛰 Seasons Beepings

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

Sort of okay

🤷 Automated Death

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

Sort of okay

🤷 3D Square

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

Could have done without this

👎 Uninsured

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ Qubit Barrier

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

⏰ NO TIME

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

Could have done without this

👎 Metacurse

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻 Creamed It

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

Could have done without this

👎 Walk Out

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ Electric Brine

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

Could have done without this

👎 System Failure

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

Good! Finally...

👍 It's Illegal

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ Laser Internet

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ Slime Scams

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

Horrific

🤮 Bitcoin Day

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

Could have done without this

👎 #AppleToo

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

Classic pin-up of a woman fanning a BBQ with her dress, and a big red 'x' covering her crotch

Could have done without this

👎 Only Bans

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

🤧 I am unwell

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ Forking Hell

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ Time Crystal

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

Sort of okay

🤷 Enterprise Metaverse

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

Could have done without this

👎 Zero Click

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

Good! Finally...

👍 Space Disgrace

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

Good! Finally...

👍 Sad Cobra

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

Could have done without this

👎 Cluttered Orbit

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

Could have done without this

👎 YuanCoin

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

Sort of okay

🤷‍♀️ Miscalculated Risk

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

👍 Failing Fastly

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

👎 Green Giant

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

🤷🏻‍♀️ Second Chance

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

🤷🏻‍♀️ Uncanny Moments

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?

👎 Decrypted Crime

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

👍 30% Epic

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

👎 Assisted Crash

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

🤷🏻‍♀️ Repetitive Motion

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

🤷🏻‍♀️ MS Health

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

👎 Award Bias

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

👎 FLoC Together

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

🤷 Wristbook

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

Substack 🔜🗑

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

Horrific

🤮 Minted Tweets

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?

👍 Sentiment Giant

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

🤷🏻‍♀️ Taxi Quest

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

👎 Link Tax

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

🤷‍♀️ This week was sort of okay, I guess?

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

👎This week was something I could have done without

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

Good! Finally...

👍 This week was good. Finally

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

Could have done without this

👎 This week was something I could have done without

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

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ This week was sort of okay I guess?

What data can they collect from your poo? | A full-stack ban | Stop complaining and just move to Signal

🤮 This week was Horrific

Don't just alphabetise, unionise | a machine imitating a human imitating an avocado imitating a chair

Big Tech

🤡 This week was [undefined]; get in the bin, 2020

Misinformation, abridged | Doing more learning with less bits | year++

Good! Finally...

👍 This week was good! Finally...

Christmas comes early for Google | An Elon Musk fail | Our lives are mostly online now — let's regulate!

Could have done without this

👎 This week was something I could have done without

A summary of the paper that lost Timnit Gebru her job | Facebook are forced to be transparent, for once

Sort of okay

🤷🏻‍♀️ This week was sort of okay I guess?

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