Issue 123
Bizarro Devs is a monthly newsletter with the weird and wonderful tech news, tools, and websites.
👺 EXPOSING GOOGLE'S LATEST DODGY TRICKS WITH DATA. PLUS, TED LASSO'S SHORTBREAD
Heya,
In the captain's chair is front-end developer extraordinaire Cristi. Cristi is a lover of cats, so you know his internet skills are sublime. This month he found a bunch of great tools, news, and tidbits.
🙅♀️ Popular subreddits go private in protest against censorship.
🍕 Domino's thinks their robot car delivery car will help them make more dough.
🎧 Free audiobooks.
Enjoy,
Cristi & Chris.
📰 From the Newsroom
🙊 Australian Federal Court finds Google's "not a lie if you don't tell anyone" policy misleading.
The Australian Federal Court found that Google misled consumers about personal location data collected through Android mobile devices.
Way back in a more innocent time between 2017 and 2018, you might have thought that your Android ‘Location History’ setting was the data harvester. Nope.
Another "on-by-default" setting, ‘Web & App Activity,’ was also used to collect, store and use personally identifiable location data when it was turned on (which was pretty much always). Google didn't mention this.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC to locals) are seeking penalties, publication orders alongside an order for Google to publish a notice to Australian consumers to explain Google’s location data settings better. Assuming they know how it all comes together.
accc.gov.au
Reddit's most popular subreddits go private in protest against 'censorship'
Many popular Reddit pages went private, protesting against what they believe to be censorship on the site. It all started when Reddit's automated rules removed an article from The Spectator. After that, some Redditors were banned for mentioning the former British political figure and Reddit employee, Aimee Knight.
The subreddits include the massive r/Music with 27 million subscribers and 19 other subreddits with over one million subscribers.
Aimee Knight was involved in two high-profile scandals before being hired as a Reddit administrator.
While overzealous automation rules have shouldered the blame, the subreddits have reappeared, and Reddit has confirmed that Aimee Knight has been removed from her position.
gamerevolution.com
♨️ Domino's launch pizza delivery robot cars in a win for bot and human alike.
Halfway through April, Domino's started rolling out robot car delivery service to select customers in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. Days later, I applied for jobs that were Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston adjacent.
It's all pretty simple, customers can choose robot delivery and receive texts with updates on the car's location.
The security is solid with a numerical code received via text for order retrieval.
Once the car arrives, the customer enters the number on the bot's touchscreen, and the car doors open up to serve the food. Tip your driver with a quart of quality oil and the transaction is done.
cnn.com
⛓️ Ten Must See Links of the Month
Find free alternatives to any software with alternativeto.net
If you like your robots to answer questions, meet Wolfram.
Hacksplaning provides security training for developers.
Use Hipster sound to trick your brain into thinking you’re working from a restaurant, in underwear.
The ultimate guide to starting an online store with WordPress.
Facts to make you smarter with factslildes.
Librivox has public domain audiobooks. Search by author, title, subject, and language.
Adobe finally release a tool that doesn't require hours of torrenting. Remove backgrounds from any image.
10 great mental models for web professionals.
Learn how to remove any account that you don’t use anymore with account killer.
🎤 It’s How They Said It
That really is a lot of goddamned butter.
🧮 The numbers game
1966: The first time people were fooled by AI. Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA program simulated a psychotherapist and users took it very seriously.
320,000 mph (515,000 kilometers per hour): The speed of the Parker Solar probe as it passes by the Sun.
$5 billion: The money Verizon is getting for AOL and Yahoo.
30%: Apple's cut of digital goods sold through the App Store. Their court case against Epic started on Monday.
Outro
That's it for the week. If you have links to share, then my emails are always open. Simply reply to this email to land in my inbox.
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Have a great month, Cristi and Chris
