In an episode of Brooklyn 99, Amy Santiago uses the term ‘FOMOW’ to describe what happens when she takes the day off work to attend a dentist appointment. FOMOW stands for ‘fear of missing out on work’. Well, friends, this is what happened to Gizmodo Australia when we took a four-day break for Christmas.
A bunch happened in the four days we weren’t in front of our laptops, so let’s catch up on all of it as we deal with our FOMOW.
Our Prime Minister is now on TikTok
A new content creator made his way to TikTok this week, PM_Scomo. This is of course despite previous criticism of controversial Chinese-owned platform.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison debuted on TikTok by uploading a selfie video with family pet dog Buddy.
@pm_scomo From our family to yours, Merry Christmas!#australia #merrychristmas #mydog #christmaseve
He followed up a day later with another vid:
@pm_scomo Merry Christmas, Australia!Thanks to all those who are out there volunteering and keeping us safe over Christmas and the summer. #merrychristmas
As our friends over at Pedestrian said:
We’ve lived through a new COVID variant, we’ve dealt with the constant looming threat of a text message from our state’s health department, and we’ve survived the annual stress of having to convince our aunties and uncles that climate change is in fact, real. But just when you think you’ve dealt with all 2021 has to throw at you, it just keeps on coming.
As of December 25, you can now choose to punish yourself by watching our Prime Minister’s insincere attempts to reach out to the youth™.
PM_Scomo might be one of the cool kids now on TikTok, but he’s disallowed any duets, stitches, mentions, saves or even comments on his uploads.
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Incorrect COVID results
More than 400 COVID-19 positive people were incorrectly notified that their PCR test results were negative on Saturday night. Saturday night, if you recall, was Christmas.
In a statement on Sunday afternoon, SydPath Medical Director Professor Anthony Dodds said that “last night we incorrectly messaged 400 patients who had been swabbed at our centres from December 22 to 23, advising them they had tested negative to COVID-19”.
Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital pathology confirmed on Monday an additional 995 people were prematurely sent an SMS advising them their test was negative, when their true result was yet to be determined.
At the time of publish, there was 11,201 new cases of COVID-19 in New South Wales alone. This figure is overwhelming, but it does contain some of the backlog from the Christmas break.
Instagram account helps with the gruelling PCR wait
Queues for COVID testing have been hell all across Australia, but one Sydney-based Instagram account has been helping us find the shortest lines possible.
For Sydney locals, Instagram account Bondi Lines (@bondi_lines) has come to the rescue over the break in sourcing live updates on how long queues are in certain parts of Sydney, so you can go to the least congested COVID testing clinics or at least know what you’re in for.
As Pedestrian TV explains, starting off as an account that tracks how long lines to get into local nightclubs are, Bondi Lines has now expanded its reach to include COVID testing lines. The info is in the account’s story, so we can’t share an example.
IiNet outage thanks to severe Perth heat
iiNet over the weekend experienced a national outage affecting potentially thousands of people across the country.
https://twitter.com/iiNet/status/1474961103599718408
In a tweet on Boxing Day, TPG Telecom-owned iiNet said its operations were affected by extreme weather in WA. The data centre issue left its email and web servers offline from around mid-morning on Christmas Day.
The state has been experiencing severe summer heat, with Perth recording its hottest Christmas Day on record.
A new entry-level NBN tier
In an article published by itNews last week, we learned NBN Co quietly released a paper late on Wednesday that contains the new price construct presented to an ACCC-convened roundtable at the end of last month.
NBN intends to make “up to” 25Mbps its new entry-level broadband tier and scrap variable consumption-based charges on higher speed services under a “transformational” shift.
One of the big changes, according to the report, is the reset of the most basic NBN speed tier for broadband, from a 12/1Mbps speed profile to 25/5Mbps.
Now the FOMOW is over, we can go back to bringing you the tech news as it happens.