Bits: daily tech news bulletin

Byteside needs to consolidate its focus to give ourselves the best chance of building a sustainable media business. So Bits, unfortunately, has to go back on the shelf. We hope it will return, but whatever happens we thank you so much for your support through its first three months.The core Byteside podcast will continue with guest hosts and interviews every week.Search 'Byteside' in your podcast app or hit the relevant link below to add it to your app of choice:Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/itunes/1482077503Overcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/overcast-podcast-player/id888422857Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1482077503Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5hY2FzdC5jb20vcHVibGljL3Nob3dzLzA0NzA5ZTVkLWU0ZTQtNDk0Ny1hYmNmLTYyZDM3MmIyZTFiNgSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43tUBmO4DknkGbd4Hw9dlbRSS: https://rss.acast.com/bytesideAnd get loads more written content at www.byteside.comGet our weekly newsletter at newsletter.byteside.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Yesterday afternoon, a major outage occurred that impacted a wide range of Australian institutions, including major banks and their mobile apps, Virgin Australia airlines, Australia Post and more. Soon after cyber attack theories had been raised, it was learned that CDN Akamai had a routing error that impacted around 500 of its customers. All up the incident caused disruptions for around six hours.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/akamai-routing-error-caused-widespread-outages-566103The controversial Online Safety Bill will pass parliament with the Labor party once again claiming to be "not happy" but going to support it anyway. Since before the election in 2018, Labor has held a consistent position of claiming to be upset or disappointed or unhappy with legislation related to important digital protections like privacy, encryption and censorship, but to pass the laws anyway because they never want to open the door to an actual fight over civil liberties. What's the point of an opposition again?https://www.innovationaus.com/labor-not-happy-about-supporting-online-safety-bill/In better local news, Aldi Australia has become the first retailer in the country to power all its operations with 100% renewable power. The German supermarket chain's local operation announced it has achieved the target six months ahead of schedule, using solar installed on its own premises as well as purchased power from wind farms and other renewable energy purchases. According to Renew Economy, Aldi is the 67th biggest user of electricity in Australia, with 555 stores and eight distribution centres. So this really is a great example to the nation on big business getting the right thing done.https://reneweconomy.com.au/aldi-claims-first-place-in-major-retailer-race-to-100-pct-renewables-in-australia/Up in space, China has successfully sent a first crew to its new orbital space station with a team of three astronauts to the Tiangong station where they are setting up living quarters for the next three months. China has said it is open to future collaboration with other nations on its new station which is expected to be in orbit for over ten years. The ISS is scheduled to retire in 2024 though it can potentially be extended out to 2028.https://www.sciencealert.com/first-astronauts-have-just-arrived-at-china-s-space-stationIn entertainment news, Carrie Fisher is set to receive a posthumous Walk of Fame star which raises the question of how on Earth this didn't happen during her lifetime? The easy answer is no one bought one for her to promote a film, which is how it usually happens. Other great names scheduled to be added to the walk in 2022 include Ewan McGregor, Willem Dafoe, Regina King, Francis Ford Coppola, Salma Hayek, and Bob Odenkirk.https://www.themarysue.com/carrie-fisher-is-getting-a-star-on-the-hollywood-the-walk-of-fame/In videogames, Blizzard has announced World of Warcraft's next major patch, Chains of Domination, will go live on June 30, with the next raid opening its doors on July 7. Players will also be able to unlock flying in the patch in that second week and then the next race for mythic world first will kick off on July 14.https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/23686104/shadowlands-the-chains-of-domination-content-update-goes-live-june-29For those after some esports to watch this weekend, DOTA 2 is finally feeling the excitement again with the ESL One Summer tournament taking place. We're into the thick of qualifying for The International which did not take place in 2020 so fans are ready and eager for things to get serious once again. Hearthstone also has its Masters Tour Dalaran taking place which you can catch on YouTube, and a reminder that we are just a few weeks away from Battle Arena Melbourne on the second weekend of July for the biggest FGC tournament in Australia.https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/esports/tournament/masters-tour-dalaran/https://www.esl-one.com/dota2/summer/That's your Bits bulletin ... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, the Western Australian government has introduced legislation to limit the use of COVID check-in app data after the WA Police Force accessed the information in two investigations of serious crimes, which is allowed under the existing rules. To ensure users feel confidence in always using the check-in system, the new rules definitively limit the use of this data to the explicit purpose of contact tracing. WA Premier Mark McGowan told parliament that the new law was only being introduced after the Police Commissioner refused to adhere to a request to no longer access the register.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/wa-moves-to-plug-legislative-gaps-after-cops-access-check-in-app-data-566021https://www.itnews.com.au/news/wa-police-refused-request-to-stop-accessing-covid-check-in-app-data-566033In other COVID news, Victoria has now launched its online vaccination booking platform. Until now a hotline phone service was the only way to book appointments, with the online system delayed since the start of the year. Users can now go online via coronavirus.vic.gov.au to check their eligibility and book their appointments.https://www.innovationaus.com/victoria-launches-online-vaccine-booking-platform/Ahead of exciting new Windows 11 news next week, Microsoft has named CEO Satya Nadella as the new Chair of the Board of Directors. The current chairman, John Thompson, has been in the role since Bill Gates stepped down from the position in 2014 at the same time Nadella became CEO. Thompson will remain a member of the board. Meanwhile, leaks seem to indicate the launch of Windows 11 might not be too far behind the big announcements set to be made next week, with fully functional versions of the next generation OS appearing online as part of the leak.https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/16/22537683/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-chairman-bill-gates-john-thompsonSpotify has launched its new live audio chatroom service, Spotify Greenroom, a rebranding of a tool created by Betty Labs called Locker Room. You can log into the service using your Spotify login and find chatrooms related to topics of interest or launch your own chatrooms. The tool will also allow users to record rooms they create to turn them into podcasts. It's yet another reason why Clubhouse is facing greater and greater competition while the overall shine on these audio chatrooms is starting to fade and, as I've said since early on, it really seems more like a feature than a platform. I expect at some point Greenroom will integrate directly into the core Spotify app rather than live out on a limb the way it currently does.https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-06-16/get-to-know-some-of-the-features-in-our-live-interactive-audio-offering-greenroom/Internet advertising machine Facebook is ready to turn the serenity and solitude of virtual reality into a new space to thrust floating advertising units into your enraptured eyeballs, with news it is starting to test advertising inside Oculus headsets. Naturally, the company says it is a "small" test and is all about unlocking new business models for the platform and for the game developers who produce VR experiences. I'm sure the advertising units won't be too awful... at the start... Facebook also says it won't use information from within your VR experience to target ads toward you. Again... that's a "during this test" statement, not a "never" statement.https://www.oculus.com/blog/testing-in-headset-vr-ads/Amidst media investigations into businesses gaming the Amazon user review system to earn high ranking in search results, Amazon has stated in a blogpost that the greatest blame should lie with social media platforms. It might sound like a cop out, and no doubt there's more Amazon could be doing on its own end, but the company's post said it reported more than 300 groups to social media companies in Q1 2020 that were using the platforms to organise campaigns to cheat the review system, yet it took a median time of 45 d... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Australian Signals Directorate, our national spy agency, wants to see laws introduced to compel organisations to cooperate in the event of a hack or ransomware attack, after a recent incident saw a company refuse assistance and ultimately become reinfected within months of the first attack. ASD Director-General Rachel Noble told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security that the unspecified incident was a nationally-known case with a nationally-known company that had serious implications, but even two weeks into the incident they would only take general advice from the ASD. Noble believes improved legislation would give them power to demand better cybersecurity standards in the corporate world, halting weak attacks so that the government only has to worry about high level threats.https://www.zdnet.com/article/nationally-known-australian-company-lawyered-up-to-resist-asd-help/Australia's transport union has accused Amazon of firing delivery drivers who spoke with union officials during a site inspection, and that further site visits have had union staff refused entry. In a Senate inquiry hearing last week, the union said it believes third-party Amazon Flex contract workers now fear reprisal for any public criticism of the tech giant's work standards or processes. The visit in question took place last year at a NSW distribution centre. Amazon told Innovation Aus that it has never terminated workers in connection with speaking to a union, and that it allowed dozens of union visits to its facilities in 2020. More widely, other unions have told the inquiry they feel Amazon is engaging in anti-union behaviour, a problem widely reported in recent years when its US workers made moves to unionise.https://www.innovationaus.com/amazon-workers-sacked-for-talking-to-union-twu/A Melbourne renewable energy company, AgBioEn, is working with La Trobe University and LAB3 to run trials for turning crop waste into bio diesels and jet-fuels, as well as into soil nutrients that can be ploughed back into fields to improve future crops. The trials are set to take place through the next three to four years, with an aim to produce 150 million litres of fuel per year through the process. On the technology side, LAB3 is assisting with the development of IoT devices and drones to test and monitor crops, with data and analytics running on Azure Cloud platforms. https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/features/agbioen-sparks-renewables-revolution-with-data-and-ai-injection/Australian DIY graphic design service Canva is teaming up with another Australian company, Snap Print and Design, to offer easy access to ordering prints through its platform from local Snap franchises. Options include business cards, brochures, stickers, posters and more. It's an interesting alternative to many other online print services that deliver from overseas or require designs to be uploaded in specific design formats that many average users may not understand, so seeing an end-to-end solution come together with such a partnership is a noteworthy option to see in the market.https://printonline.snap.com.auIKEA has officially unveiled its latest collaboration with networked speaker company Sonos, with the rather dazzling new Symfonisk wall art speakers that simply look like art but can push big sound for any room. The speakers can be hung on any wall, with a fabric cover that is available in a range of art designs to choose from, both simple and bold. Like any Sonos speaker, they can join your wider network of speakers around the home and are controlled via an app, with essential play-pause and volume controls hidden behind the frame on one edge. Sadly, the speakers are available in Europe and North America starting July 15 but will not come to Australia until 2022. US pricing was announced at $199 per speaker with alternate art options selling for $19. Locally you can buy the IKEA Symfonisk bookshelf speaker and table lamp speaker for $149 ... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's virtual E3 season, with dozens of major games announcements over the weekend. Here's just a few of that caught our eye.Bethesda's Starfield had its first game footage, though still incredibly vague apart from the obvious "you'll be on spaceships visiting far away worlds" vibes. But the big news was the confirmation this game is the first Bethesda title to be announced as a full Xbox exclusive, scheduled for release on November 11, 2022. It was notable that the combined Xbox and Bethesda event was opened not by Microsoft's Phil Spencer but by Bethesda's Todd Howard, a big statement on the unification of the massive developer with the platform giant.In another crucial development during the Xbox event was the consistent foregrounding of how most every game was announced as day one on Xbox Game Pass, pushing the subscription service as the primary mode of access to Xbox first-party games, but also that Xbox Cloud Gaming is no longer being mentioned as a side project but as one of the 'platforms' games are being launched on. At every end screen where platforms were mentioned, Xbox Cloud Gaming sat clearly alongside Xbox Series consoles and Windows 10 PCs. That pre-announcement of the increased cloud delivery format made it easy to just slide this in everywhere, but it is perhaps the most important development for the future of Microsoft's gaming business – as a service you join, not a box you buy.Elsewhere in E3 news, dozens of games have had announcements and dates across the various conferences, including Left 4 Dead spiritual successor Back 4 Blood coming on October 12, Halo Infinite still coming 'this year' but getting an entirely free multiplayer mode, a Jack Sparrow crossover in Seat of Thieves, Ubisoft announced a new Mario + Rabbids game coming next year, Diablo II Resurrected is coming September 23, Rainbow Six Extraction is coming September 16, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands – a Borderlands fantasy D&D inspired spin-off – is coming early 2022, Forza Horizon 5 is taking this show to Mexico, and perhaps my personal favourite of the show so far is a vampire shooter called Redfall from the team behind Dishonored.The Federal Court has approved the $112M settlement in the robo-debt court battles, with presiding judge Bernard Murphy has delivered an unequivocal rebuke to the federal government, calling it an unlawful program. "The proceeding has exposed a shameful chapter in the administration of the Commonwealth social security system and a massive failure of public administration... It should have been obvious to the senior public servants charged with overseeing the robo-debt system and to the responsible minister at different points that many social security recipients do not earn a stable or constant income..." The settlement means the federal government does not have to admit any liability regarding the scheme.https://www.zdnet.com/article/federal-court-approves-au112m-compensation-in-settlement-for-robo-debt-failure/NBN Co is considering whether to pursue a request to have its monopoly broadband provider status revoked in markets where it is facing competition from 5G services. The National Broadband Network is held to a special access undertaking agreement until the year 2040, which must have any changes or updates cleared by the ACCC. The NBN points out that one in three homes are not using the NBN, calling this a reflection of the dynamic nature of the market and not that the NBN is delivering a poorer quality of service than alternatives in many locations. NBN has a long term target of of 73-75% uptake, which has been pushed outward over the years from an original target of 2021 out to today's target of 2024.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nbn-co-says-5g-competition-is-challenging-its-monopoly-status-565686Google has just opened up Google Workspace for everyone that has a Google account, allowing people to go beyond just collaborating on documents and folders toward a much more unified space for p... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As WWDC wraps up for Apple developers, the Apple Design Awards have been announced, a great promotion for some of the best apps across iOS and macOS. I'm quite sure most people don't browse the App Stores like they once did, so checking out these lists is a great way to find some new gems. There's lots of games, plus powerful and helpful concepts like 'Be My Eyes' that helps identify objects in the camera view, a sleepscape app called Loóna, and other winners for categories like Inclusiveness and Social Impact. Shout outs to Aussie Sp!ng from SMG Studio for being a finalist.https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/Microsoft held another pre-E3 video event overnight, with Head of Xbox Phil Spencer and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella walking us through the future of Xbox gaming – which very much includes the end of needing to own an Xbox to play. Xbox has foregrounded new options like Xbox Cloud Gaming a lot recently, and it will officially launch locally later this year. They also announced efforts to get Xbox streaming built into smart TVs so that all you'll need is a controller and an Xbox Game Pass subscription to play, with Microsoft's global data centres playing a big role in delivering this new cloud focus for Xbox.https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/06/10/whats-next-for-gaming-highlights/We don't often do shout outs about hot tech deals, but the HyperX end of financial year prices look really good if you're after some new gaming peripherals. Prices include a 55% discount on HyperX Alloy Origins keyboards, down to $104, and 50% off the HyperX Cloud Flight wireless headset making it $145. They deals are all at JB Hi-Fi. On a related note, Kingston, the former owner of HyperX, has launched the new name for its gaming focused memory chips for PC hardware – look for the Fury brand if you liked HyperX components in your PC builds.https://www.jbhifi.com.au/collections/hyperxhttps://www.kingston.com/en/solutions/gamingIn other product updates, Wacom Intuos drawing tablets now have 'Works with Chromebook' certification, which is a super helpful option for people who are in Chromebook land in school environments or just like the price-performance ratio you get on those devices. Wacom has always been the leader in creative input tablets so this is a nice step for the Chromebook platform to get these in the mix.https://estore.wacom.com/en-AU/chromebookIn software, the latest updates to Norton's security software sees the Norton Game Optimiser claim some big upgrades. For years Norton has silenced notifications and other nuisance activity when it detects gameplay is happening, and now Norton claims Game Optimiser will isolate resource-hungry apps running in the background, including pushing them ti a single CPU core to ensure games get everything else for themselves. These days Norton can also do things like monitor the dark web for signs of your usernames, email addresses and even gamertags, so there's lots going on here. There's even a new Crypto mining mode coming if that's your passion.https://au.norton.com/products/norton-360-for-gamersAustralia's League of Legends Circuit Oceania had a great first season to kick off the year, and now the competition has partnered with Doordash as the naming rights sponsor for the second half of the 2021 championship. The sponsor will also be attached to replay and other segments during broadcasts, but overall a positive for the upstart competition that has kept the scene alive and thriving in 2021.https://lco.gg/2021/06/11/the-doordash-lco/If you're looking for something to participate in this long weekend, there's an ongoing Tony Hawk Pro Skater Ultimate Jam competition taking place, run by Order esports in partnership with Activision and 7+, for anyone who thinks they've got skills to show off in the classic skating game. You can enter speed runs, combo runs and straight up 'score the most points' runs, with... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

El Salvador has voted to make Bitcoin a legal tender currency in the country, the first country to do so. It sounds wild on its surface, but the legislation says it aims to add regulation to Bitcoin's use in the country. The country's other legal tender currency is the US dollar, and Bitcoin would make sending money to family back home from overseas potentially cheaper than many traditional banking transactions. Still, the wild fluctuations in crypto make this a risky choice, so we'll see how this progresses in the months and years ahead.https://www.axios.com/el-salvadore-first-country-adopt-bitcoin-legal-tender-vote-2bdd819b-620b-4385-af6b-261676883628.htmlNvidia and Perth ISP Pentanet have teamed up for the Australian launch of the GeForce Now game streaming platform. The service has been available overseas for a short while, allowing users to access the games they own through various online game platforms and play them via cloud streaming. This also includes getting maxed out experiences like RTX features even if your computer doesn't have the power to run games at that level. The full service aims to launch in October but there are special beta access 'quests' happening starting today. You can get all the details at cloud.gg.https://cloud.gg/Fans of secure email that isn't used as part of an elaborate personal data tracking scheme have been well aware of paid email platform Protonmail since its launch seven years ago, but yesterday the service announced a major upgrade to the experience of using ProtonMail over the web. The service serves 50 million users and allows fully encrypted emails as well as encrypting all messages, contacts and other data at rest. If you've never checked it out, this freshened up experience is a good time to take a look.https://protonmail.com/blog/new-protonmail-announcement/Ratchet & Clank is getting rave reviews as one of the first truly 'Next-gen' games to hit the Playstation 5, so if you've managed to get one you probably need to own this game. But the big news of the day is that a number of developers who worked on the game have said they never had to 'crunch' to get the game finished. Crunch, or enforced and often extended overtime periods that can sometimes run for months on big game development projects, is a huge issue in the games industry, so hearing that a new big budget title has managed to respect the talent and humanity of its team sounds like even more reason to celebrate the game.https://www.vg247.com/2021/06/09/ratchet-and-clank-rift-apart-crunch-free-insomniac/The pre-pre-announcements ahead of virtual E3 have begun in earnest, with EA dropping a big reveal for Battlefield 2042 overnight. The big news everyone is talking about is that the game will have no campaign, and it's weird to mention it but also no Battle Royale. Just all out 128-player Battlefield action set in the near future, complete with dynamic weather, including sandstorms and tornadoes, with a bunch of game modes both returning and new. It will launch on October 22 for all the consoles new and previous gen, but not the Switch.https://news.ea.com/press-releases/press-releases-details/2021/Battlefield-2042-Marks-the-Return-of-All-Out-Warfare-in-New-Unmatched-Epic-Scale-Experience/default.aspxWe're five years deep into the Overwatch journey this month and while fans are very much excited about Overwatch 2 and desperately wishing for a launch date over there, Blizzard has announced that cross-play will be coming to the game as a beta release to let people play against each other across PC, PlayStation, Switch and Xbox. This also includes a new global Battle.net update that brings friend lists across all territories into a single list, where previously people were separated into different global regions.https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/23684155/And, finally, wonderful news for fans of the classic anime Cowboy Bebop, with word that the original... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In one of the most remarkable digital policing operations ever seen, the Australian Federal Police in conjunction with America's FBI managed to essentially run an encrypted messaging app for criminals, collecting masses of information and evidence over years before a massive worldwide sting broke up mafia and gang operations. Operation Ironside was a dazzlingly bold concept – literally running the app the criminals used to communicate in real time. It has led to thousands of arrests across the world in everything from drugs to human trafficking. Expect the movie in 2022.https://therecord.media/fbi-and-australian-police-ran-an-encrypted-chat-platform-to-catch-criminal-gangs/Things weren't running quite so smoothly last night for many major websites, unfortunately, with Content Distribution Network Fastly having a major outage. CDNs help big websites run close to wherever their users are around the world, but in this case when something goes wrong it means no one can access the services that the CDN supports. Everything from Amazon to Reddit, BBC to Buzzfeed, disappeared behind a 503 error for two hours. An eternity in Internet time.https://www.byteside.com/2021/06/fastly-just-showed-us-how-cdns-keep-the-internet-alive-until-they-dont/Moving to another network with a poor reputation for uptime, the NBN is working to clarify the way 'fair use' rules are managed on the network. Users are already subject to potential removal from the network for abusing 'unlimited' download limits, but the rules have always been managed under vague terms like "inappropriate and excessive" use. According to iTnews, the new move aims to build clearer rules that focus on activities like unauthorised stress testing or volume testing, and NBN is set to call for the industry to build a consensus on the rules for how to both identify and remedy such problems.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nbn-co-looks-to-enforce-fair-use-for-fixed-line-users-565550Apple's developer conference continues through this week, with more new features being spotted amongst the many updates on show for its app developer community. One we missed yesterday is an API to make it easier for app makers to perform object capture for augmented reality, with tools to quickly and effectively turn a series of photographs of a real world object into a 3D model.In audio technology, Apple is also aiming to make it easier for apps to include audio recognition technology, and not just on Apple's own platforms. You might already know the Shazam app that can identify songs by listening to something playing near you. Apple has owned Shazam since 2018, and is opening up the Shazam backend technology for third-parties, including those creating apps for Android.https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/06/wwdc-2021-shazamkit-lets-apple-and-android-developers-add-audio-recognition/An exciting update was announced overnight to the intriguing handheld game console Playdate. The retro-style monochrome handheld with a crank on the side has been in the works for years, and is set to be up for pre-orders in July for US$179. But the big news was a free no-code tool for making games for the platform called Pulp. Via a web browser anyone can put together graphics, sound, animations and scripts to create real games for the Playdate. A great way to ensure game making is accessible and creative for this weird little platform.https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/382905/Panic_unveils_Pulp_a_free_nocode_tool_for_creating_Playdate_games.phpIn bigger games news, the first part of Minecraft's massive Cliffs and Caves update has gone live in the game, adding new underground environments for fans to explore. New creatures, new blocks, new light sources, new things to make fans run the latest update and make their world feel fresh all over again. Meanwhile in Fortnite, Season 7 begins today and I feel like Season 6 just started last week so if you want to get in on the alien... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The National Broadband Network has suggested the first major overhaul to how its pricing is structured for resellers, with the existing price structure an eternal point of argument due to the Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) charge which puts excess charges for data consumption onto resellers with no real association to the cost of providing the service. So NBN has tabled a new proposed pricing scheme that removes CVC while increasing base charges, with indexed increases in charges at rates above annual inflation. That's a big catch, and major telcos are cautiously considering the proposal, with the clear concern that a new method of enforcing the same or greater pricing is still far from ideal.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nbn-co-offers-to-axe-cvc-in-exchange-for-yearly-price-hikes-565579Turning to the pandemic, the system for giving Australians a verification of their COVID-19 vaccinations is now at the ready, with word the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) will be updated as part of every Australian's myGov account and linked with Medicare, with a COVID vaccination certificate available from next week once people have received their second shot. All healthcare providers will be required to upload vaccination data into the system from July onward within 10 days of vaccination taking place.https://www.zdnet.com/article/covid-19-vaccine-digital-certificate-coming-this-week-for-australians/In global tax news with big implications for the tech industry's use of clever accounting to dodge paying taxes, the G7 nations have agreed to a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% to build consistency and, with consistency, reduce the incentives to apply complex practices to offshore revenues based on spurious loopholes over where the IP of a company resides.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-06/g7-agrees-to-tax-multinationals-more/100193646Apple has kicked off its second virtual WWDC early this morning with a keynote video event featuring all the big new software updates users and developers should expect when iOS 15, watchOS 8 and macOS Monterey launch later this year. Last year was a major overhaul of the basics, and this year sees a lot of new features big and small spread out across iPhones, iPads and Macs. FaceTime is getting one of the smoothest systems we've seen for syncing music or videos remotely, and you will also now be able to schedule a FaceTime call and share it with Android and Windows friends. AirPods will be able to read notifications, Spatial Audio is coming to AirPods while watching your Apple TV, Siri will be arriving in third-party devices, iCloud is getting VPN and Hide My Email features for free and support for your custom domains for the first time. And in privacy updates Mail will now block tracking pixels and Safari will hide IP addresses to make it even harder for you to be tracked without your consent. Loads more we'll unpack on this week's Byteside podcast (yes, it's back this week).In a dazzling display of optimism, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has announced he intends to be aboard the first ever crewed flight to space for his space company Blue Origin. The sub-orbital New Shepard flight is set to take off on July 20, and as mentioned in the previous line this is the first EVER crewed flight for the spacecraft, making it an incredibly dangerous endeavour. SpaceX has been sending crews to the ISS multiple times now and even Elon Musk still hasn't decided to take a joyride. And he's crazy.https://www.cnet.com/news/jeff-bezos-will-fly-on-blue-origins-first-crewed-rocket-to-space/In gaming, Dungeons & Dragons has revealed the first details of the next campaign adventure setting, The Wild Beyond The WitchLight, which brings players into the Feywild for the first time in the current 5th Edition of the game. We don't know much yet, but the cover suggests a circus setting that probably has some dark hidden secrets behind the scenes. They... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Twitter has officially launched its subscription service today, but only for those of us here in Australia and in Canada. Twitter Blue is available through the iOS version of the app for $4.49/month, but right now you're not getting all that much for your money – which might be part of why it's only launching in two countries to start with. You'll get the ability to 'undo' a tweet, which is essentially a delayed send to give you a moment to reconsider your tweet or check for typos. You also get new bookmarking features and a special reader mode for reading things like long threads. Maybe one day it will have some features worth paying for, but right now it's distinctly underwhelming.https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/introducing-twitter-blue.htmlIn an update on the efficacy of the federal government's COVIDSafe app, the Digital Transformation Agency has clarified some recent numbers given to Senate Estimates last week that were inaccurate and now confirm that the much promoted 'sunscreen' for Australia has identified zero new contacts or exposures in 2021. The app has in total helped to find 17 close contacts in total, with a further 544 identified by manual contact tracers in NSW after the app confirmed someone had been a particular location. The app costs $70,000 per month to run with the cost reducing to $60,000 per month from July.https://www.innovationaus.com/covidsafe-hasnt-found-any-contacts-this-year/The Verge is reporting that Facebook is going to end its policy that protects politicians from being held to the same content moderation rules as others. Historically, Mark Zuckerberg himself has said that Facebook should not police speech by politicians, but the social network has also had increasing requests from those in power to silence dissenting voices, creating a power imbalance when the site chooses to adhere to legal requests on one hand and protect misinformation of politicians on the other. The changes may be part of the response to the Facebook Oversight Board that is due on June 5, which demanded Facebook hold all users to the same rules and be more transparent about its decision making processes.https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/3/22474738/facebook-ending-political-figure-exemption-moderation-policyThe EU has announced it will make a unified digital identity service for citizens to prove identity and share documents across the region. The digital wallet will allow Europeans to link ID and personal information like drivers licenses, medical details and bank accounts into a system that can easily be shared and verified in whichever member state they need to work with or live in. Businesses will eventually be required to support the digital identity system across Europe. The first draft framework will be proposed by September 2022.https://www.cnet.com/news/eu-digital-wallet-will-allow-for-easier-more-secure-cross-border-identity-checks/In special Byteside news, we have a delicious giveaway running over on the website right now to celebrate the launch of The Elder Scrolls Online Blackwood expansion next week. Bethesda ANZ teamed up with Melbourne Hot Sauce to create the official 'Hot Sauce of Oblivion'. To enter just visit the Byteside website and go to the competition page where confirming your subscription to the newsletter will get you in the draw. The link is also in the show notes of this podcast.https://www.byteside.com/2021/06/elder-scrolls-online-blackwood-expansion-launch-hot-sauce-giveaway/In other videogames, Hearthstone has a new Wailing Caverns mini-set that released today, with 35 new cards that can be purchased as a full set rather than through random packs. It costs $19.95 or 2000 gold and it'll undoubtedly shake up the status quo...https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/news/23676206/prepare-yourself-adventurer-the-wailing-caverns-mini-set-is-hereWhich leads to esports, with the Hearthstone Grandmasters Season 1 for the year... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We now have a date for when the next generation of Microsoft Windows will be revealed, with the official invitations going out for the event on June 24, or just after midnight on the 25th here in Australia. CEO Satya Nadella and Product Chief Panos Panay will reveal all. My bet is a shift away from selling boxed Windows software and onto a free new upgrade to a single unified version for all users. We'll find out if I'm right in three weeks time.https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/eventTwo Australian broadband providers owned by the same parent company have been fined by the Australian Federal Court for making misleading claims on NBN evening speeds. The action, brought by the ACCC against Vocus-owned Dodo and iPrimus, found the brands chose the best speeds it had observed on its network to promote its services between March 2018 and April 2019. Justice Murphy said in the decision that the companies chose not to use industry best practice methodologies which it admitted did not give due ground for "Typical Evening Speed" statements. Dodo will have to pay $1.5M and Primus $1M in fines. As noted by ZDNet, the latest ACCC broadband speed report places Dodo and Primus last among all resellers for average download speeds.https://www.zdnet.com/article/dodo-and-iprimus-penalised-au2-5m-for-misleading-nbn-evening-speed-claims/Samsung is starting a new campaign to promote its Galaxy A Series smartphones as 'A for Awesome' with a target toward Gen Z teens and young adults. Normally I wouldn't consider this particularly newsworthy, but the campaign is including some nice profiles of young Australians achieving greatness in their fields, from 16-year-old skateboarder Ethan Copeland, pop duo Cat & Calmell, and social entrepreneur Daniel Flynn. It's also a positive to see a big campaign for more affordable devices. The campaign also includes some Snap AR lens action to get even more of that Gen Z attention.In science, NASA is tired of only having a bunch of cool robots exploring the surface of Mars and is turning its attention back to Venus with not one but two missions planned for later this decade. Announced overnight, the VERITAS mission will orbit the planet to deliver the most detailed map yet of the Venusian surface and search for volcanic activity, while the DAVINCI+ probe will enter the planet's atmosphere to investigate the chemistry of the atmosphere. The missions will launch between 2028 and 2030.https://www.businessinsider.com.au/nasa-discovery-program-new-missions-to-explore-venus-2021-6In entertainment, excitement for pulp adventure fans with word that the fourth Indiana Jones film begins filming next week. Harrison Ford returns with new castmates Mads Mikkelsen and Phoebe Waller Bridge, with shooting to begin at Bamburgh Castle in Britain. Yes, I said fourth film. Let's stick to that story.https://www.avclub.com/hold-onto-your-fedoras-indiana-jones-5-is-in-productio-1847016657Over in Fortnite, the place where the multiverse is slowly but steadily taking shape, as the end of Cahpter 2, Season 6 approaches it seems players are being abducted by aliens at the moment. Given lots of recent excitement over military UFO sightings why not go and get a taste of being hoovered up for experimentation through Epic's Battle Royale?https://www.gamesradar.com/fortnite-aliens-ufos-alien-abduction/Zero Latency, the Australian multiplayer virtual reality arcade experience, has now officially launched its Far Cry VR experience. It's the first partnership with a major franchise and sends players to a tropical island for their VR gaming session. You can book your experience via the Zero Latency website at its centres in Brisbane, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Perth and Sydney, or at one of its dozens of overseas locations if you're elsewhere on the planet.https://zerolatencyvr.comAnd, finally, retro gaming fans will be checking their wallets now that... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In a response to a report on age verification for online gambling and pornography, the federal government has said it will consider whether work on a national digital identity system should be extended to include such verification processes. The Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs recommended that the Digital Transformation Agency explore extending any identity system to include third-party verification tools for online services and the recommendations have been met with "in principle" support.https://www.zdnet.com/article/canberra-considers-its-digital-id-for-use-in-verifying-age-before-accessing-porn/A global meatpacking company, JBS Foods, with operations in Australia, has had its plants shut down in Australia and North America this week after what is now known to be a ransomware attack. This follows the recent attack in on a fuel pipeline in the US which found that even after paying the ransom it was faster to restore from backups than using the decryption process supplied by the attackers. As targets increasingly seem to include critical services like fuel, food and health, governments are being called on to do more to fight back – including taking action against cryptocurrency avenues that are used for ransom demands.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/cyber-attack-on-meatpacker-jbs-foods-is-ransomware-565357In a great example for one possible future of the ridesharing industry, a cooperative of 2,500 New York drivers has created a new company that will give everyone better rates of pay and claims rides will be cheaper for users. It launched this past weekend, with drivers being paid 10% above minimum wages for the industry as well as profit share via dividends to the collective ownership group. Sounds like what ridesharing should actually sound like.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/technology/nyc-uber-lyft-the-drivers-cooperative.htmlMore Computex news, with Nvidia revealing its latest top of the line GPUs with the RTX 3080 Ti cards claiming another 50% increase in performance over the previous flagship 2080 Ti cards that were also a huge leap over the previous era. Nvidia pointed to a lot of new games adding ray-tracing support with Doom Eternal looking particularly shiny. Nvidia also revealed some big advances in how its processing power will be used in enterprise data centres and in AI processing.https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/05/31/computex-keynote/In AMD's Computex news, the company was bullish about its own new RDNA2 GPUs, which it announced will be heading into Samsung smartphones through a new collaboration on Exynos processors, which will enable ray-tracing and variable rate shading on mobile phones. Its new processors will also be heading into new Tesla Model S and X infotainment systems which will deliver processing power not far behind a PS5, enabling people to play the latest AAA games inside the car... which they probably really shouldn't be doing?https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2021-05-31-amd-showcases-industry-leading-innovation-across-the-high-performanceIn other tech news, the gaming division of Kingston Technology, HyperX, has been acquired by HP. HyperX has built a big business in PC gaming peripherals like headsets, keyboards and mice. HP has its own gaming brand, Omen, so it will be interesting to see whether the brands remain separate or unify in coming years.https://press.hp.com/us/en/press-releases/2021/hp-inc-completes-acquisition-of-hyperx.htmlIn science, wonderful news for Australian fauna with word that Tasmanian devil babies have been born in the wild on mainland Australia for the first time in 3,000 years. The cute carnivores have been breeding in captivity in a special rewilding project for the past decade and in 2020 the first group was released from captivity into a sanctuary where the first group of joeys have been... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Victorian government purchased a vaccination booking system from Microsoft in January this year for $6M and it is still not in use. According to InnovationAus, the booking system is an existing Microsoft product that was purchased on a six-month contract, which at the time was said to only need fine tuning before launch. Four months later, Victorians are still using a 1800 phone line to make bookings, a system that has not kept up with demand during the 1b expansion phase of vaccination rollout. The issues did not receive much attention until the latest outbreak brought renewed attention to making the vaccination rollout as efficient as possible.https://www.innovationaus.com/victorias-6m-microsoft-vaccine-platform-delays/After the recent changes at CSIRO that saw Data61 drop the trustworthy systems group, UNSW has stepped in to ensure funding for the group continues through the next six months to give it time to build new partnerships and funding – making it even clearer that the team was being dropped with zero notice or support. The team's work on the secure embedded L4 microkernel has been seen as a major breakthrough technology development – a first of its kind, with iTnews reporting the team has had interest in being acquired by companies in China and Singapore. Data61 dropped the team after deciding it did not fit with a new mission of pursuing artificial intelligence technologies as a seemingly myopic new focus.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/unsw-gives-dumped-data61-sel4-research-group-funding-lifeline-565274It's Computex week, which means we miss visiting Taipei but we're still getting news from the likes of Acer, Asus, Gigabyte, Nvidia and Intel. Today we see the latest 11th Gen Core updates from Intel with new U-series mobile processors for its thinnest, lightest designs. Recently we got the new chips for gaming laptops so this is the latest we'll find in many new Intel Evo branded laptops that deliver great performance in ultrathin bodies with 'all day' battery life.https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/better-processor-thin-light-laptops.html#gs.28en9vChinese hardware manufacturer Xiaomi has unveiled a new HyperCharger technology that can charge a large 4000mAh battery in its Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra smartphone in just eight minutes, and even charge in just 15 minutes over a wireless charge pad. If you've ever forgotten to put your phone on charge before going to bed, this kind of tech can make a big difference when you've just got 10 minutes before you have to run out the door.https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/30/22461435/xiaomi-fast-charging-world-record-200w-wired-120w-wirelessAmazon is quietly launching a new feature to allow Amazon devices to share their internet connections with other nearby Amazon devices that are not part of your own network, and it has some worried about everything from privacy to bandwidth. The feature, called SideWalk, is quietly opt-out, so users need to know to go and switch it off in their system settings to avoid being included in the plan. SideWalk seems to only be launching in the USA at this time. Amazon does seem to have clear security protocols in place around this technology and at some point in the future we do have to embrace mesh networks for the full power of 5G and internet of things technologies to take root, so I'm not against seeing this happen as long as the right processes and protections are in place?https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/amazon-devices-will-soon-automatically-share-your-internet-with-neighbors/TCL has launched its new TV range this week, with its latest refresh bringing integrated Google TV across the new range, as well as mini LED and quantum dot tech in the backlighting systems. Dolby Vision is also supported, including a Dolby Vision IQ tech that reads the lighting in the room and adjust the HDR picture output to suit the conditions. Here at Byteside we'll continue to tell people to ignore 8K TVs... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The amazing service that lets you check if accounts related to your email address have ever been compromised, Have I Been Pwned, is moving to an open source model to allow for greater collaboration with the wider cybersecurity industry. Created by Australian Troy Hunt and managed largely on his own since inception, the changes are allowing organisations like America's FBI to add its discoveries to the database to allow for greater transparency of who and what has been compromised. If you don't already have the website bookmarked, you really should. It's a handy way to show people just how many times their personal details have already leaked to the darker parts of the internet.https://www.zdnet.com/article/have-i-been-pwned-goes-open-source/The NSW Police Force has announced it is Australia's first enterprise customer of the SpaceX Starlink satellite broadband service. Starlink launched in Australia very recently and offers speeds between 50 and 150Mbps, faster than NBN Skymuster satellite services. The initial rollout in Australia covers Victoria and the southern regions of NSW. iTnews reports that the NSW police deal may include mobile use in a new concept police vehicle design.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nsw-police-signs-up-to-starlink-satellite-internet-service-565225In a court case in the USA, documents have revealed just how overtly Google has tried to make privacy settings difficult for users to access. The Arizona attorney general sued Google last year over illegal location data collection, and internal documents discovered during the case show the company viewed the use of privacy settings as a "problem", and that led to moving settings deeper into the system settings to make them harder to find. The documents also suggest Google also pressured Android partners to keep these privacy settings as concealed from users as possible. In one quote a Google staffer says: "So there is no way to give a third party app your location and not Google? This doesn't sound like something we would want on the front page of the New York Times."https://www.businessinsider.com.au/unredacted-google-lawsuit-docs-detail-efforts-to-collect-user-location-2021-5If you're not entirely put off by that Google story, there's good news for Chrome browser users. The latest update, version 91, is now up to 23% faster thanks to some changes in the way it executes Javascript – it actually spends less time 'optimising' the code, after finding that the optimisation step was taking longer than just getting the code executed. A better balance gives a faster result. Just remember that if you have 50 jillion tabs open sometimes you do need to restart your browser to make sure it gets the updates it needs to keep running faster and, very importantly, get any security bugs ironed out. Also don't forget you can get all the best bits of Chrome without the privacy invasive Google parts through the Brave browser.https://blog.chromium.org/2021/05/chrome-is-faster-in-m91.htmlIn science, Japan has announced it plans to send a robot to the moon and in true Japanese style it is sending a transformer. The cute robot was designed by the Japanese space agency JAXA along with input from Sony and toy-maker Tomy, with a ball-shaped robot for easy transport that will then pop open to allow a camera system to take pictures of the lunar surface for soil analysis. Here's hoping the toy version won't be too far behind the official mission.https://www.engadget.com/japan-transformer-moon-robot-171933181.htmlOn the red planet, NASA's Curiosity rover has captured images of a rare cloud cover event on Mars, making for some weirdly familiar photos. Analysis suggests the clouds were very high up in the Martian atmosphere and were likely made of carbon dioxide ice crystals – think dry ice floating in the sky.https://www.engadget.com/nasa-curiosity-rover-cloud-photos-202447024.htmlFinally, in esports, the Valorant Masters... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Australia's Human Rights Commission has tabled a report to the federal government with recommendations on the place of technology in today's human rights environment, with the report urging all tiers of Australian government to pause the use of facial recognition and AI technologies in any area that has decision making power about individual members of society. Human Rights Commissioner Ed Santow told parliament that protections and transparency measures should be put in place before such tools are used in areas of such personal impact. The three year investigation made 38 recommendations in all, including the recommendation that an AI Safety Commissioner role should be created to oversee such tools in Australia.https://www.innovationaus.com/hrc-calls-for-an-ai-safety-commissioner/A survey of global CIOs conducted in March this year has found that three in four still feel less than fully prepared to tackle the digital transformation journey that was thrust upon most organisations during the pandemic. Most critically, the Genpact research found that only 30% of CIOs said that technology was involved with managing employee safety and wellbeing, ranking HR last in a priority stack even in the midst of such a transformation in how and where staff is now operating in the corporate environment.https://www.genpact.com/lp/digital-transformation-cio-research-ngFor Twitter fans, the company has announced that users can now join Twitter Spaces from the desktop version of the app as well as from web browsers, making it easier to listen in on these new audio room chat sessions. They cannot yet create a new Spaces session from these platforms. Also at Twitter, the pricing of subscription service Twitter Blue has been revealed – we took a look in the iOS App Store and now see a local price of $4.49 listed as an in-app purchase. Still no word on exactly when there'll be a button to activate this purchase, and what features they're going to offer to make it worth the price.In battery tech, there's another metal taking aim at industry leader Lithium to improve both the cost and storage density of the rechargeable market. Researchers have found that Zinc holds the promise to be both cheaper and safer than Lithium-ion tech, but it's been a tough road to scale them up from their primary use in tiny single-use cells used to power things like hearing aids. A story in Science points to the rapid research advancement to overcome the obstacles and put this far more readily available metal to smarter work.https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/batteries-used-hearing-aids-could-be-key-future-renewable-energyTaiwanese tech giant Acer announced its latest hardware line up overnight. Lots of new devices running the latest Intel 11th-gen Core processors as well as models with the AMD 5000 series chips. The ConceptD laptop range for designers looks particularly impressive, with clever convertible designs targeted toward creating art directly on the screen with up to 4K Pantone-validated displays in my favourite screen ratio 16:10. Also the new Acer Aspire Vero incorporates recycled plastics through its manufacturing process and uses more recycled paper in its packaging. Plus gaming fans have lots of new Predator hardware to drool over too.https://www.acer.com/ac/en/AU/content/nextatacer-2021Home fitness technology company Zwift is partnering with the IOC to run an official Olympic Virtual Series Virtual Cycling event running throughout June. Cycling's world governing body is also involved, with Zwift users able to participate in mass virtual rides through the platform along with special podcast rides with some of the world's greatest cyclists, including Australia's own Anna Meares. Zwift is a different take on home exercise programs, more like a massively multiplayer online game where you ride or run in shared virtual environments – the company recently launched a new island inspired by the Japanese countryside called Yumezi. If... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Commonwealth Bank is set to trial a feature that will let its customers view the balances of all their accounts within the CommBank app – including balances of accounts at other banks. Under Australia's new Consumer Data Right, which officially became law last year, open banking rules do allow customers to share data with additional financial services at their choosing. CDR was focused on finance at launch but energy and telco industries will soon also have to offer visibility into other apps on behalf of customers.https://www.zdnet.com/article/commonwealth-bank-customers-to-see-balances-from-other-banks-in-app/The studio with a James Bond movie sitting on the shelf after holding it back due to the pandemic is now set to become part of the Amazon empire, with news the internet giant will buy MGM Studios for US$8.45 billion. Amazon has invested heavily in original productions, so the MGM move seems aimed at bolstering its catalogue of content that it won't have to license to use. MGM also plays host to a lot of classic movies, which you can often find in greater supply on Amazon's streaming service than others. The buyout may not be smooth sailing, however, with some in the US government saying they want to look at what it means for industry competition.https://www.vox.com/recode/22451787/amazon-mgm-james-bond-streaming-netflix-analysisUSB has unveiled its next major update, with USB-C 2.1 aiming to support larger powered devices over the same simple port. The update makes no changes to data speeds or other features, just the move to increase power supply from 100W maximum to 240W. The option will be known as Extended Power Range, or EPR. This tier of power throughput will allow for devices like 4K monitors to be directly powered over USB-C as well as to let higher powered gaming laptops to move onto the USB-C standard for power supply.https://www.cnet.com/news/usb-c-power-upgrade-delivers-a-whopping-240w-for-gaming-laptops-and-other-devices/Facebook has announced it will limit the distribution of all posts from personal accounts that regularly spread disinformation. It's important to remember I am sharing that headline in the year 2021 and not back in 2015 and it is definitely a thing Facebook announced this week. Better late than never, but also it doesn't include politicians because they live outside its rules yet share the dirtiest lies of all. Another reminder that Facebook is a blight on civilised discourse.https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/26/22455076/facebook-misinformation-individual-users-hiding-postshttps://about.fb.com/news/2021/05/taking-action-against-people-who-repeatedly-share-misinformation/In hardware launches, the latest Nokia Android phone hits the market on June 3. The Nokia X20, made by HMD Global, is touting two-day battery life alongside its quad camera system and 5G. The phone also comes with three-months of screen replacement warranty and because it runs nice, clean stock Android OS it gets three years of updates guaranteed and it doesn't have as much cruft as some other brands throw into their handsets. The X20 can be pre-ordered now at JB Hi-Fi and will be sold there as well as Officeworks, Big W and Harvey Norman and it'll cost $599.https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_au/nokia-x-20In videogames, Minecraft Dungeons has just launched its latest downloadable expansion, Hidden Depths, sending your heroes under the ocean to deal with the forces of corruption. We gave Dungeons a great review – think of it as family friendly Diablo and you're in the right place. The game is also celebrating an anniversary event starting today, which includes special trials and rewards over the next two weeks.https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-dungeons-turns-onehttps://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/hidden-depths-dlc-out-nowFor PC gamers, there's been a lot of new keyboards announced in recent days – especially in sizes that won't eat up... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Wednesday, May 26, I'm Seamus Byrne.The Victorian government has passed an extraordinarily backward new law overnight, adding a new per kilometre charge for electric vehicle drivers in the state. Aside from the horrible choice to start charging taxes on a class of vehicle that Australia desperately needs to better promote to improve environmental outcomes on our roads, the 2.5c per km fee has to be manually tracked and reported via a website, adding a level of nuisance and friction to those who are leading the way with EV adoption. Penalties will apply for anyone who fails to adhere to the new reporting system. We try to avoid editorialising here in the daily bulletin, but this is a terrible decision at a time when every measure to ease a transition toward reduced carbon emissions is required to save the planet.https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/bills/zero-and-low-emission-vehicle-distance-based-charge-bill-2021https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/consumer/2021/05/17/victoria-ev-tax-cash-grab-lobby/Microsoft's Build 2021 conference is happening this week, but the biggest news of all may be being held back for a little later on. During his keynote address, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella teased that a very big new update for Windows is coming soon. Quote: "Soon we will share one of the most significant updates to Windows of the past decade... I'm incredibly excited about the next generation of Windows." With a "very soon" also used, perhaps we'll learn more around the time the next major update to Windows 10 drops in June, which includes much discussed updates to system icons, system default fonts and other UI features.https://www.windowscentral.com/satya-nadella-teases-big-updates-coming-soon-windows-build-2021In other operating systems, Google has officially put its third operating system Fuchsia into the real world, with news the Google Home Hub has been updated to be based on the Fuchsia OS. There's been no fanfare around the shift and for years the Fuchsia team has been working to put the system into different aspects of the Google ecosystem, so this quiet push to the original Nest Hub (and not the second gen version either) is an interesting move.https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/google-launches-its-third-major-operating-system-fuchsia/Imaging giant Epson has announced a partnership with National Geographic to promote the need to protect the world's permafrost regions, collaborating with its explorers and researchers to encourage us all to find ways big and small to fight climate change. The announcement arrives alongside Epson's launch of its latest Heat-Free Technology for its ink-jet printers, which sees a big reduction in energy consumption, especially compared with laser printers. The new range of EcoTank printers includes new six-colour photo printer models at up to A3 size that skip the old ink cartridges to deliver thousands of prints with a lot less fuss.https://www.epson.com.au/heat-free-technology/https://www.epson.com.au/v2/ecotank/In video games, news from late last week we missed saw a major announcement for fans of competitive modes of Overwatch, with news that Overwatch 2 will be shifting the game from 6v6 to 5v5. The game is dropping a second tank class from the standard team composition and while it might not seem like much on the surface it will see a huge shift in the style of play typically seen in the game where tanks and shields have slowed the regularity of kills in the game's modes. Overall this single announcement gives Overwatch 2 the biggest boost in appeal as it will significantly change the flavour of PvP in the game.In local esports, the ANZ Premier League of World of Tanks wrapped up over the weekend, with North Sydney Sentinels taking out the title against the Brisbane Bulldogs at a final event at Fortress Melbourne. Overseas, the Valorant Masters is underway this week in... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The NSW government has announced the digital driver's license available through the Service NSW app has been adopted by over half of all eligible drivers. Launched in November 2019, Minister for Digital Victor Dominello announced that three million drivers, 53% of all licensed drivers in the state, have now added a digital license to their app. The digital license is now accepted by police in every Australian state and territory and other states are now launching similar options. NSW still recommends drivers carry their physical license when travelling beyond NSW borders.https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-than-half-of-nsw-drivers-have-adopted-a-digital-licence/A report into how Australian copyright infringement routines have changed has been published by the federal government with some interesting findings. The report, published last month, surveyed over 2,400 internet users aged 12 and over, and found that the majority of those who had encountered ISP blocked piracy websites simply gave up on the content – including not accessing it via legal means either. 59% took this approach, while 21% said they found a legal route to access what they were looking for.https://torrentfreak.com/when-aussies-face-a-blocked-pirate-site-59-simply-give-up-dont-try-legal-options-210520/https://www.communications.gov.au/documents/2020-consumer-copyright-infringement-surveyRegulators are finally getting involved in the cryptocurrency arena and it looks set to test the limits of investors and speculators in the blockchain world. Last week the US Treasury announced all crypto transactions worth over $10,000 must be reported to the country's tax service, the IRS. China has also begun to hone in on a crackdown, with some of the world's biggest Bitcoin mining operations based within its borders. Ars Technica reports the Chinese government is close to issuing an outright ban on mining. Prices of the top currencies have been highly volatile over the past two weeks, most a long way down from all-time peaks in mid April but still fluctuating wildly from day to day.https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/china-advances-its-war-on-bitcoin-cracks-down-on-mining/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/crypto-payments-above-10000-would-be-reported-to-irs-under-treasury-plan/Over on YouTube, the classic viral video "Charlie Bit My Finger" will now be deleted from the site after the owner of the video sold an NFT of the clip and earned US$761,000. Its owner said they were already considering removal after the video was flagged as 'made for kids' by YouTube, so the NFT sale apparently puts an end to the video's journey from amusing clip to 884 million view juggernaut. Of course, I'm sure no one will ever see it on YouTube ever again because no other account would ever repost such a clip. That never happens on YouTube.https://www.tubefilter.com/2021/05/24/charlie-bit-my-finger-nft-sale-removed-from-youtube/https://youtu.be/_OBlgSz8sSMElsewhere in the battle for digital dominion, demands for social media platforms to be accountable for misinformation have been growing in recent years, but now some legislators are pushing back against platform efforts to remove or label content as misleading. Florida has just pushed a new law that aims to ban platforms from suspending politicians, like Trump, and allows them to sue platforms for doing so. Meanwhile in India, Twitter has seen its offices raided by police as the government demands answers on why a government spokesperson's tweet was labelled as "manipulated media". A knife edge time for balancing freedom of speech with outright lies from politicians.https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/delhi-police-raids-twitter-india-offices/articleshow/82912102.cmshttps://www.businessinsider.com.au/florida-republicans-want-fine-social-media-companies-banning-politicans-2021-4Microsoft has updated its Xbox Cloud Gaming app for Android to add support for... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

CSIRO's digital division, Data61, is in the midst of another restructure that is seeing 70 jobs lost from the research organisation. One of the victims of the changes is the loss of a world-leading team that has developed a highly secure computing microkernel, seL4. According to reports, the team has been disbanded with staff either exiting Data61 or being moved into an AI division. Members of the team were told last week it no longer fits the agency's strategic goals. The seL4 work will continue through an independent body.https://www.innovationaus.com/data61-dumps-world-class-sel4-security-team/ABC iView has begun an advertising campaign that tells users they will soon be required to create an account to continue using the public broadcaster's streaming service. The ABC says the requirement will be in place in July and is aimed at improving personalisation of the service for better recommendations, creating watch lists, and tracking of which shows and episodes a user has or has not watched. But privacy advocates decry not maintaining an optional approach, and that in the end the best security is to hold as little personal data as possible.https://www.innovationaus.com/abc-may-lock-out-iview-users-for-personalisation/Spotify has added offline music downloads for users of the Apple Watch. A lot of apps seem to have had a hard time getting Apple Watch audio downloads up and running, so it's a great milestone to see Spotify get support in place. It makes it easy for Spotify users to leave their phone behind when going out with just their Watch for exercise or just wanting to operate a little lighter during the day.https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/21/22447222/spotify-adding-feature-music-downloads-offline-apple-watchTwitch has been inundated with popular hot tub streams in recent weeks, with some streamers using a loophole in rules around 'contextual attire' to wear skimpy bikinis in paddling pools they've setup in their streaming rooms. On Friday, to better accommodate such activity while managing wider user and advertiser expectations, Twitch announced a new "Pools, Hut Tubs, and Beaches" category exclusively for these kinds of streams. The company admits it is a first step solution to manage controls for viewers and advertisers while not being overly censorious toward streams that can be seen as sexually suggestive.https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/05/21/lets-talk-about-hot-tub-streams/In entertainment, talk of a Highlander reboot is heating up as word emerges that Henry Cavill is in talks to tackle the lead role. The new film is set to be directed by Chad Stahelski, who directed the John Wick films. Whether the lead role will hold to the name Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod remains to be seen. Just remember, they only ever made one film.https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/05/21/lets-talk-about-hot-tub-streams/In esports, China's Royal Never Give up aka RNG won the Mid-Season Invitational event in League of Legends overnight, while in Rainbow Six Siege the Six Invitational in Paris was won by Ninjas in Pyjamas, defeating Team Liquid in a tight 3-2 series win. Three of the top four teams were Brazilian, showing the regions dominance in the game.https://dotesports.com/rainbow-6/news/nip-defeat-liquid-in-si-2021-grand-final-cementing-brazilian-rainbow-six-siege-dominanceAlso at the final, Siege announced the next season of the game, Operation North Star, will add a new operator to the game, Thunderbird, a healing defender, as well as a rework to the Favela map and more active play after death with control over drones and better camera controls. Operation North Star launches in June.https://www.dexerto.com/rainbow-six/rainbow-six-operation-north-star-details-operator-map-rework-1555554/That's your Bits bulletin for Monday. I'm Seamus Byrne from Byteside, thanks for joining me. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After two years of teasing us with a stunning new display concept, LG has announced that you will soon be able to place an order for its amazing rollable OLED TV. It's an amazing piece of technology, with the screen disappearing into a cabinet that is also a large speaker cabinet for the television. The TV also offers a Line View that opens the screen just a small way to show things like music track information and photo galleries. Starting in July, those with $130,000 to spare can place their order for a custom unit to be made and delivered to their home. And LG says they know there's a queue of folks ready to buy one. It's an amazing piece of tech and I thank these early adopters for buying them so one day we can all get a cheaper model in future.After taking its verification program into a secret bunker for a long time, Twitter has announced it is rolling out a new verification program for users of the platform that will include categorisation of the account, whether as government, entertainment, news and journalism, sorts and gaming, and more. The option to get verified will become available directly within the app's account settings area.https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/relaunching-verification-and-whats-next.htmlIn entertainment, one of the biggest action titles to ever go direct to Netflix, Army of the Dead hits the streaming service tonight. No exact timing offered, just that it launches 'today' but we expect if you settle in after dinner you should be able to find it. It's a Zack Snyder fest with an all out zombie invasion of Las Vegas and it should be a rollicking good time if that sounds like your thing. It's at 74% on Rotten Tomatoes which sounds like a great score for this kind of schlock fest.The most epically successful Dungeons & Dragons live play show, Critical Role, has revealed that its second campaign will come to an end with the conclusion of its current story arc. The team is heading into a final battle with a former teammate and DM Matthew Mercer revealed this will indeed wrap up the campaign. The Mighty Nein campaign began in 2018 and has run for 138 episodes so far, while the first campaign, Vox Machina, ended after 115 episodes. While it may bring an end to the campaign, Mercer did say it is unlikely to be the end of the story.More fun stories today, this latest sees Lego announce it will release a special 346-piece set called "Everyone Is Awesome" to celebrate diversity in all its forms. The set presents a rainbow flag alongside the trans flag colours plus black and brown colours, with 11 monochrome minifigs that line up across the model. The set will sell for $60 and launches on June 1 to coincide with Pride Month.https://www.cnet.com/news/lego-everyone-is-awesome-set-celebrates-lgbtqia-community-in-time-for-pride/Turning to esports, this weekend sees a huge line up of major international events in esports, with the final stages of the Rainbow Six Siege Six Invitational taking place in France, while the League of Legends Mid Season Invitational will also crown a champion on Sunday night. And for Overwatch League fans the next phase of its competition, dubbed the June Joust, kicks off with a format that excludes some heroes from the selection pool to shake up the meta.If you're after something you can compete in yourself, Red Bull has just announced a 2v2 CS:GO tournament with registrations opening today. It's called Red Bull Flick, with Steel Series and AOC (the monitors, not the politician) partnering up on the competition that will feature custom maps designed for map control game modes in a futuristic map setting. Sign up and start practising this weekend! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Thursday, May 20, I'm Seamus Byrne.Microsoft has announced a year long process for taking Internet Explorer off life support. In August, Microsoft 365 will stop supporting Internet Explorer, and on June 15, 2022, most versions of Windows 10 will officially put the 25 year old web browser out to pasture. IE arose in the '90s to beat the OG dominant integrated browser, Netscape Navigator. Microsoft Edge is already considered the new home for default browsing on Windows 10, and it will include an Internet Explorer emulation mode for those who really, really need one.https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/05/19/the-future-of-internet-explorer-on-windows-10-is-in-microsoft-edge/Meanwhile, at Google, the Chrome browser is soon to test the inclusion of a 'Follow' feature that will allow users to get updates direct to the new tab page from websites with RSS feeds. Yes, many may remember that Google killed its beloved Google Reader back in 2013, and now in 2021 it's bringing back an RSS Reader direct within Chrome. If you haven't been using RSS lately, it's still alive and well thanks to great tools like Feedly, though some sites have stopped offering RSS altogether, sadly. But not Byteside - smash that follow button when it appears in a browser near you.https://9to5google.com/2021/05/19/chrome-follow-rss-feed/Twitter has released the results of an investigation into whether its cropping algorithms had an inherent racial bias and found that it really did preference white people and women. In recent weeks, Twitter made a move to support showing the full image in a tweet instead of offering a crop at all, and it turns out this is because the company considered its options and decided no crop was better than sticking with an algorithmic bias in its cropping tool. Twitter's Director of Software Engineering, Rumman Chowdhury, said "One of our conclusions is that not everything on Twitter is a good candidate for an algorithm." Listen up, Silicon Valley.https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2021/sharing-learnings-about-our-image-cropping-algorithm.htmlSpotify has announced a series of five pre-recorded live concerts set to take place every week for five weeks starting May 27. The concerts will be offered as a livestream only and users will need to buy tickets to attend the virtual performances, priced at $19 each. Bands include The Black Keys, Bleachers, girl in red, Rag'n'Bone Man, and Leon Bridges. It's an interesting experiment, and in similar fashion Zoom has announced the launch of paid virtual events to allow organisations to hold conventions and conferences via its platform, with ticketing and registration processes as well as multi-session planning and virtual lobbies for networking. The effort to make online events more like the real world continues apace.https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-05-19/must-see-your-favorite-artists-perform-with-spotifys-virtual-concert-experience/https://blog.zoom.us/coming-soon-zoom-events-virtual-experiences/Apple has announced a wide set of software updates to expand its already impressive accessibility offerings for users of its products. Updates include SignTime, which will allow users to book a sign language call via video link for online shopping and support, and iPad eye tracking to allow for device control with eye movement. A new AssistiveTouch mode is being added to Apple Watch that will allow a cursor to control the screen via subtle muscular movements. And there's even a new Background Sounds mode to play white noise or other subtle sounds for neurodiverse folks who prefer to have distracting noises reduced. New VoiceOver support for images, and new Memoji to show people with Cochlear implants or oxygen tubes, plus more. All up a very impressive accessibility... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Wednesday, May 19, I'm Seamus Byrne.Google I/O kicked off overnight, the company's festival of new toys, and this year we see a very new look for Android ahead of the launch fo the version 12 update. They're calling it a "Material You" design, and the colours of the whole OS, including settings and menu areas, will change to follow your theme. Google also showed off new features for Google Workspace, including better video meetings layouts, and there are many upgrades to how Google Photos will work, including creating animations from still shots and creating a locked folder where you can keep photos that you don't want to see when you're scrolling through your library.https://events.google.com/io/?lng=enhttps://www.theverge.com/22439777/android-12-design-features-widgets-first-look-googlehttps://www.theverge.com/2021/5/18/22435419/google-io-2021-event-recap-biggest-announcements-pixel-android-12-wear-os-workspacehttps://techcrunch.com/2021/05/18/google-photos-update-adds-new-memories-and-a-locked-folder-previews-cinematic-moments/On the hardware side, Google announced it is unifying its WearOS with Samsung's Tizen platform along with more input from Fitbit to bring Android wearables back into a more cohesive platform experience. WearOS 3.0 is claiming to be 30% faster than the current version and will get features like an offline music mode for YouTube Music. Another big hardware concept revealed was Project Starline, that uses a booth full of cameras to create 3D models in real-time so you can feel like you're sitting across from a real person.https://www.cnet.com/news/google-and-samsung-are-combining-to-reboot-android-watches-with-a-dose-of-fitbit-too/https://www.wired.com/story/google-project-starline/Here at home, the Fair Work Commission has ruled that a Deliveroo rider should be classified as an employee in a landmark ruling against gig economy contractor arrangements. The rider brought an unfair dismissal case against the delivery company after they had been kicked off the platform in April last year. The case looked at the way the booking system gives preferential treatment to riders who operate in more employee like ways, contrary to the argument that these platforms are all about freedom and flexibility for workers. Deliveroo says it will appeal the decision. https://www.innovationaus.com/deliveroo-loses-test-case-as-rider-ruled-an-employee/Microsoft has officially given up on launching a dedicated lightweight version of Windows known as Windows 10X, instead opting to incorporate the ideas developed as part of the project into future updates to the core Windows 10 operating system. The original idea was to build a dual-screen optimised version of Windows, which then refocused on being a competitor to Google's Chrome OS that has been a big hit in education markets. Microsoft says some features from its development work on Windows 10X is already making its way to the core OS, including optimised on-screen keyboard designs and enhanced voice typing.https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-officially-acknowledges-windows-10x-isnt-happening/With all the attention on the energy usage of cryptocurrency transaction processing, the world's second biggest crypto by market cap, Ethereum, has announced plans to change the way it operates in order to reduce power consumption by 99.95%. The concept shifts the security process from a "Proof-of-Work" system to a "Proof-of-Stake", a technical shift that Ethereum claims testing shows will generate the massive reduction in power consumption – and that consumption will not rise when the value of Ethereum does, as has been the case in the past. In one comparison, they suggest that if Bitcoin power usage today was the equivalent of the height of the Burj Khalifa, then current Ethereum usage is the height of the Tower of Pisa, and the new power consumption for Ethereum after the... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Tuesday, May 18, I'm Seamus Byrne.Leading today's bulletin is esports, with an amazing result in the wee hours this morning as Perth's Pentanet defeated one of the world's biggest brands in esports, Cloud9. Cloud9 was the North American champion team at the Mid-Season Invitational event we've been covering in recent weeks, and while Pentanet had already lost its 7th game and could not progress in the tournament the team played with the same flair and meme-filled attitude they've brought to the whole tournament that has won them fans around the world. Think Perth Wildcats beating the LA Lakers and we're in the right ballpark. A joyful moment for the local League of Legends scene. The European hosts of the MSI 2021 broadcast celebrated Pentanet's win with a Red Bull shoey. They bow out but take many hearts back to WA from this event.https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/Mid-Season_Invitational/2021/Rumble_StageNBN Co has once again had to push back the timing on selling new hybrid-fibre coaxial connections, but now it's not due to shortages in termination equipment. This time it's due to NBN's system for assigning work to contractors is having major problems. NBN contractors have held protests across the country in recent weeks due to the new work scheduling system causing major delays in jobs, which has reduced how many jobs they can complete in a day or causing delays to starting jobs for customers. More widely, internet service providers have also been complaining about the issues, which is also impacting on fault rectification appointments as well as new connections. For HFC, no new date for resumption of connections has been offered by NBN.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nbn-co-pushes-back-hfc-sales-restart-as-workforce-system-bugs-bite-564658In NSW, the state government has announced a trial to make it easier to find a parking spot on Sydney streets. The smart kerbsides trial will run in Liverpool for 12 months, giving app-based visibility of where parking spots are available in real time. The app can also manage "park now, pay later" services to only charge drivers for the time they actually spend at a parking spot. Further, Liverpool Council Mayor Wendy Waller says the data related to the trial will help in planning for pedestrian and cycling flows and other aspects of road safety and parking availability.https://www.zdnet.com/article/nsw-to-undergo-trial-of-smart-kerbsides/In music news, Apple has announced it is launching a new lossless audio quality tier as a free upgrade for its entire music catalogue. Starting in June, people can choose to stream music at up to 24-bit 192 kHz lossless audio quality, with support for Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos for musicians who choose to support such listening formats. Apple's AirPods and most wireless earphones do not support lossless formats because they use Bluetooth connectivity that requires compression, but AirPods will support the new Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos features. At the same time, Amazon has also updated its services to now deliver Amazon Music HD service to all Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers for free. The HD version of its music service was previous $5 more per month.https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/17/airpods-apple-music-lossless-audio/https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/9573513/amazon-music-hd-unlimited-hi-fi-price-streamingMicrosoft has today launched a personal edition of its Teams collaboration software, which has evolved rapidly during the pandemic as a workplace collaboration platform. Think of it as a Slack competitor, letting you share documents, make digital video and audio calls, and generally chat with friends and family under this new product option. If you use a lot of Microsoft products, this is worth checking... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Monday, May 17, I'm Seamus Byrne.The Australian Signals Directorate, in response to Senate Estimates questions, has told parliament that it knows who was behind an attack on parliamentary email servers in March, but it is not saying who that was publicly as it feels that is a matter for the government. ASD said it was an unsophisticated attack, but that due to a lack of two-factor authentication on access it was more successful than it should have been. Users were forced to implement 2FA when they were allowed back into the system.https://www.zdnet.com/article/asd-knows-who-attacked-the-aph-email-system-but-isnt-revealing-who/eBay has announced it is closing its "adults only" section of the website in what it calls a move to enhance "safety" on the platform. The site maintained a dedicated section of the site as a home for such items, but this will end in one month's time. However, some exceptions are being carved out for sex toys and collectible magazines. The move continues a trend that makes it harder for sex-related content and services to find a place in legitimate marketplaces.https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kvb7z/ebay-is-banning-hentai-and-other-adult-contentRumours of Twitter launching a subscription service have been around for a long time, but now more details have been revealed by hidden feature hunter Jane Manchun Wong. The service is set to be called Twitter Blue, with a suggested price of US$2.99 per month. The paid service will offer features like Bookmark Collections, an Undo Send timer on tweets, and improved news reading experience. No word on timings or what other features may be included, but there's certainly no mention of that edit button many users crave.https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/15/twitter-blue-subscription-service/A report by US non-profit organisation Center for Countering Hate has found that the vast majority of disinformation about vaccines and COVID on social media were distributed by just 12 people. An analysis of activity between the start of February and mid-March showed that 65% of anti-vaccine content on Twitter and 73% on Facebook originated with the same 12 people across a network of accounts they control. Despite repeated violations of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter rules, nine of the twelve remain active on the platforms.https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxesFrom the serious to the more entertaining, a security researcher has published proof of concept code for a major security flaw in a computer system that, thankfully, no one should be worried about. The flaw allows for arbitrary code to be executed on a 1967 design for a Universal Turing machine designed by the late Marvin Minsky. While the conceptual hack has the air of entertainment, researcher Pontus Johnson suggests it speaks to a fundamental question of security design – where in the design process does security enter the picture?https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/11/turing_machine_0day_no_patch_available/In videogames, the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival over the weekend offered a surprise for local fans, with news that an Oceanic data centre is set to open later this year. Launching seven years into the life of the game, such a server will see much improved latency and a potentially improved sense of local community for players from this region. No specific date was announced, but it is expected to launch ahead of the game's new expansion, Endwalker, which was given its launch date of November 23 this year.https://www.shacknews.com/article/124389/final-fantasy-14-adding-new-oceania-online-data-centerIn esports news, Pentanet.gg has struggled in the Rumble stage of the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational, with an 0-6 record over the weekend. Four games remain to be played and while it's still mathematically... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Friday, May 14, I'm Seamus Byrne.The federal parliament has been asked by a parliamentary committee to trial a ban on smartphones during question time to improve the perception of how business is conducted in the House and the attentiveness of parliamentarians. The House Standing Committee on Procedure called for public submissions and a survey on improving Question time that started in 2019 , with respondents feeling conduct was poor and real questions were not being answered or even asked, and that parliament was setting a bad example for society, especially children, about how debate should be conducted. Mobile phones were first allowed into the Chamber in 2015, and after many public responses mentioned phones being a 'bad look' the committee has proposed a trial to restrict their use. Whether the trial will even take place remains to be seen.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/parliament-asked-to-trial-a-mobile-phone-ban-in-question-time-564503Eftpos is aiming to roll out a network of QR codes to create new opportunities to pay for goods and services through the payment platform, with its recent acquisition of Beem It providing the basis for the new move. Beem It was previously owned by Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, and Westpac. Eftpos has lost a lot of ground in digital payments, with most tap and go payments associated with Visa and Mastercard instead of the traditional Cheque or Savings options that used Eftpos to perform the transaction, so providing new avenues to grow its share of transaction opportunities is a big deal. As people have become more comfortable with QR codes over the past year, Eftpos thinks Beem It could become useful in both physical and online payment processing.https://www.zdnet.com/article/eftpos-uses-beem-it-acquisition-to-build-out-qr-payment-system/SpaceX has signed a deal with Google to provide its Starlink satellite broadband services to Google's Cloud data centres. The deal will see Google's cloud services get the added assurance of an additional connectivity option that is fast and gives a boost to redundancy, while Starlink will sell Google Cloud services to its customers through its channels. Starlink made a similar deal with Microsoft Azure last year.https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/13/22433982/elon-musk-spacex-internet-connectivity-deal-google-cloudIn Europe, Google has been fined over €100M for abusing its competitive advantage to control the Android Auto interface. An EV charging station app called JuicePass was barred from being available on the Android Auto interface, effectively stunting the app's ability to grow its audience and utility in the market. The app had been blocked for two years and the court has ordered Google allows the app to be available through Android Auto. Google says it disagrees with the finding and is considering its options.https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/13/google-hit-with-123m-antitrust-fine-in-italy-over-android-auto/Elsewhere at Alphabet, CNET has reported that YouTube recently banned dozens of channels that were posting videos related to the QAnon delusion after they were brought to the company's attention. The channels had been evading detection by deleting their own videos within days of posting, using YouTube more like an ephemeral video platform. In all, 40 channels were removed after CNET's Rich Nieva had shown the evidence to the YouTube while questions are raised about the tricks channels are deploying in their effort to spread disinformation while generating views to earn ad revenue.https://www.cnet.com/features/qanon-channels-are-deleting-their-own-youtube-videos-to-evade-punishment/For Final Fantasy fans, this weekend sees a virtual fan festival taking place to celebrate the massively multiplayer Final Fantasy XIV. The game's next major expansion, Endwalker, is arriving in coming months and the event will reveal more details while... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Thursday, May 13, I'm Seamus Byrne.Tesla has announced it is changing its stance on trading Bitcoin for its cars, announcing it will no longer accept payments in the cryptocurrency. Tesla CEO Elon Musk cited concerns over the environmental impact of the mining process used by the world's most prominent and highest valued cryptocurrency. The change comes just seven weeks after Tesla began accepting Bitcoin and even saw its first quarter profits boosted by an increase in the value of its Bitcoin holdings, worth $1.5 billion. Musk said the company will not sell any of its holding and is looking for alternate cryptocurrencies that have lower energy requirements for their use.https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22433153/tesla-suspend-bitcoin-vehicle-purchase-cryptocurrency-elon-muskA wireless security researcher has published a paper that finds a wealth of security vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi at both a design and implementation level, dating back to the origins of Wi-Fi in 1997 through to the latest versions on the market today. The flaw is only exploitable at close range, but enables an attacker to trick the security protocols into allowing data to be decrypted and read. 75 devices were tested across all major operating systems and all were affected by at least one of the flaws. The good news is that the flaws were disclosed to the industry and patches have been rolling out over recent months. Yet again, make sure you check your computers, smartphones and your router are updated to the latest versions to stay safe out there.https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/12/krack_hack_wifi/The Epic vs Apple battle continues, and not just in the courtroom. Apple has emphasised that its tight control of the App Store ensures safety standards are well managed, but revelations in the case have suggested the company has at times allowed malicious apps to slip through the net. For example, in 2015, internal emails showed Apple had found 2,500 apps were downloaded 203 million times by 128 million users. As a form of rebuttal to these concerns, Apple has announced via its newsroom blog that while some things may slip through a lot has been caught along the way. The post says that in 2020 alone, $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions were stopped in the App Store, with 3 million stolen credit cards blocked from making purchases. Over 200,000 apps were rejected for privacy violations, 48,000+ were rejected for having hidden features and over 470,000 developer accounts were banned permanently.https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-over-1-5-billion-in-suspect-transactions-in-2020/In more exciting Apple news, benchmarks are beginning to flow through as people get a chance to test the new M1-based iMac. Geekbench test scores suggest the entry-level M1 iMac is performing around 56% better than the previous top of line 21.5-inch Intel models. These were last specced in 2019 so they're running older 8th Generation Intel Core processors. For the high-end 27-inch Intel iMac, the new M1 iMac runs faster in single core tasks but not for multicore, so users with those models should stay where they are until any potential iMac Pro appears in future.https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/12/m1-imac-benchmarks/In science, a new study published in Nature this week has showed that brain-computer interfaces are making it possible for humans to type words into a computer by just thinking about writing the words in handwriting. The study worked with subjects whose hands were paralysed due to spinal injuries, and they achieved typing speeds of 90 characters per minute at an accuracy of 94% or 99% with autocorrect switched on. This is considered a big improvement over systems that focus on controlling a cursor or other typing mechanism.https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/neural-implant-lets-paralyzed-person-type-by-imagining-writing/In games, an... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Wednesday, May 12, I'm Seamus Byrne.The federal budget happened last night, and over the past week the government pre-announced many aspects that are important to technology and digital culture industries, including the tax offset scheme for videogames and the new AI centre at the CSIRO. Unfortunately the university sector continues to be treated with disdain by the government, with almost 10% of further cuts that will see yet more jobs lost in the sector. And never forget the government's continued negligence on climate change.https://www.innovationaus.com/local-tech-gets-overlooked-by-govt-again/Intel has unveiled its 11th-generation H-Series Core processors for high-end mobile performance overnight. Codenamed Tiger Lake, the new hardware is aimed at people who want to take serious gaming or graphics processing on the go. Alongside the news, NVIDIA also unveiled its mobile edition RTX 30 Series GPUs alongside Intel's announcements, with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Gigabyte, MSI and Razer all having new high-end laptops ready to roll based on the new hardware combination.https://www.anandtech.com/show/16668/intel-launches-11th-generation-core-tiger-lakeh-eight-core-10nm-mobile-processorshttps://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/05/11/geforce-rtx-studio-laptops-3050-ti/To go with your shiny new gaming laptop why not grab a shiny new VR headset? HTC is holding its ViveCon virtual event this week and revealed the new Vive Pro 2 and Vive Focus 3 headsets. The Vive Pro 2 is a big upgrade over the previous generation, with a 120-degree field of view, 120Hz refresh rate and 2448x2448 pixel resolution for each eye. The Focus 3 features similar specs but is a wireless all-in-one VR system that requires no PC and no sensors and is targeted toward business users.https://uploadvr.com/vive-pro-2-vive-focus-3/Good news for smart home technology today, with a leading interconnectivity standard getting a brand overhaul ahead of full rollout to the market. The tech is now called Matter, with a logo that will appear on supporting hardware. Matter is being supported by Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant standards and can run over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, or Thread networking technologies.Matter is run by an industry alliance, formerly known as Zigbee and now the Connectivity Standards Alliance, that is sponsored by Apple, Google and Amazon, the project is open source and royalty free, and market leaders like Philips are saying they can send software updates to existing products to support Matter.https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/amazon-google-apple-back-alliance-to-certify-smart-home-devices-that-work-together/Ebay has announced it will allow the sale of NFTs on its platform, adding yet more legitimacy to selling all manner of digital things as collectible tokens on blockchains. NFTs are typically bought and sold using cryptocurrencies, but that doesn't have to be the case, so eBay may lead to a mainstreaming of the concept. eBay has also recently said it is looking at the possibility of accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment in future.https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/ebay-taps-into-nft-frenzy-allows-sale-platform-2021-05-11/The little space probe that could, Voyager 1, keeps on delivering fascinating new insights into the great beyond, with a new report in Nature Astronomy looking at how its instruments are now detecting the constant drone of interstellar plasma waves. This is valuable insight into the nature of particles and plasma in the very-nearly-full-vacuum beyond our solar system. Launched in 1977, it is now over 22 billion kms from home and sends data back at a rate of 160-bits-per-second from its 70 kilobytes of memory.https://phys.org/news/2021-05-space-voyager-plasma.htmlIn games news, for those lucky enough to have gotten their hands on a PlayStation 5... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Tuesday, May 11, I'm Seamus Byrne.In the local side of the battle between Epic Games and Apple, the ACCC has asked the court to allow it to weigh in on the matter. The Australian case was paused by Justice Perram until the US proceedings that are now underway have concluded, though Epic appealed the decision. The ACCC has applied to participate in this appeal process, asking to make a submission regarding public policy on whether the case here in Australia is different to the case in the US.https://www.zdnet.com/article/accc-wants-to-appear-in-epic-apple-lawsuit-to-provide-its-public-policy-views/A major malware attack on a US oil pipeline has caused big concerns over recent days, but the hacking group behind the attack has apologised and claimed it will do more to vet companies it targets in future. The group, known as DarkSide, says it is apolitical and just wants to make money, not to cause problems for society. The organisation says it has a code of ethics that say it will not attack healthcare and other critical infrastructure targets. This pipeline situation still returns to the fact many organisations still desperately need to improve their security hygiene to stay safe from attack.https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/darkside-ransomware-will-now-vet-targets-after-pipeline-cyberattack/Facebook has announced it is testing a notification to ask users if they'd like to actually read an article before they share it. The company says the test will run with a small percentage of users on Android phones. The move comes roughly one year after Twitter started doing the same thing, and Twitter has reported improvements in how people engage with content and sharing by giving them a nudge in this way. An improvement, but not a panacea.https://www.vox.com/2021/5/10/22429240/facebook-prompt-users-read-articles-before-sharingIn AI research, you might remember Google's DeepMind project from when it became a god of games like Chess and Go, and then shifted gears and learned how to beat the world's best at StarCraft. Well now the AI project has partnered with football club Liverpool to see if it can apply its digital brainpower to improving strategy and tactics on the soccer pitch. With the sensor data and detailed video footage now deployed on players and around the game, Liverpool provided DeepMind with three seasons of granular player data. The research paper looked at AI 'ghosting' techniques to make predictions and see if the predictions were replicated in what happened in the real world. Let's keep an eye out for any new tricks Liverpool throws at the game next season.https://www.wired.co.uk/article/deepmind-football-liverpool-aiIn science, astronomers recently announced the observation of a star that was trapped by a supermassive black hole and has slowly been ripped apart at its edge. It is officially known as tidal disruption but more lovingly called "spaghettification". Previously such events were mostly noticed via fast radio bursts but this research is the first time the filaments of a star being wrapped around a black hole have been more directly observed.https://www.space.com/spaghettified-star-observed-near-black-holeIn video games, if you've been hoping to get your hands on a PlayStation 5 when demand slows down, Sony suggests you're not going to be casually walking into a store to grab one until sometime in 2022. Silicon supplies remain constrained, and while the company has increased production since launch, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said they do not expect to be able to drastically increase supply until well into 2022. So far the company has sold 7.8 million PS5 consoles and expects to sell another 15 million this financial year.https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/sony-says-ps5-could-be-difficult-to-find-into-2022/Also in games, those eager to scratch the nostalgia itch for the... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Monday, May 10, I'm Seamus Byrne.A big moment for Australian esports overnight, with Perth's Pentanet.gg becoming the first local team to make it out of the group stage of an international League of Legends competition. Pentanet split its victories with main group rival Unicorns of Love, 2-2, resulting in a play-off match to decide who would progress. Pentanet secured the victory and made history for the Oceanic region. At the end of 2020 League of Legends closed down the local region's official league, with top Australian talent largely moving to the USA to continue their careers. A new association formed to create a new local competition and to see Pentanet succeed on the world stage after such uncertainty and change is a spectacular moment for the local esports scene.https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/Mid-Season_Invitational/2021The federal budget takes place tomorrow, and a pre-announcement late last week saw the government reveal it aims to establish a new National AI Centre to coordinate AI expertise and help drive adoption of AI opportunities across Australian businesses. The centre will sit within CSIRO's Data61. A number of additional initiatives were also announced, including encouragement for more AI-related graduate programs as well as programs to encourage the use of AI in regional Australia to solve both local and regional problems.https://www.innovationaus.com/govt-to-establish-50m-national-ai-centre/In a submission to a parliamentary enquiry into digital surveillance, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has argued there is no legitimate reason for using encrypted communications and that such tools are used almost exclusively by criminals. In a submission that seemed to ignore Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Signal, and other everyday encrypted communication tools used by millions of Australians, the ACIC in no way made a distinction between other dedicated forms of criminal communication. In a statement to iTnews, however, ACIC did clarify it was focused on very specific tools in its argument. Hopefully it explains that to parliament better next time too.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/crims-using-encrypted-platforms-almost-exclusively-acic-claims-564255Social audio service Clubhouse has now launched on Android after a year of exclusive access for iOS users. After a lot of attention at the start of 2021 which slowed in recent months as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Discord have all launched similar services, the Android launch maintains the platform's invite-only focus. Whether it's too little, too late will be seen in coming weeks.https://www.joinclubhouse.com/blog/welcome-android-usersIn what sounds like a meme but is apparently very real, SpaceX has announced it will launch a lunar mission in 2022 named DOGE-1, which the Elon Musk led space company says is being funded entirely by Dogecoin. The mission will send a cubesat payload into lunar orbit, but details on why remain vague. The press release says Geometric Energy Corporation is the organisation funding the mission.https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/spacex-to-launch-doge-1-to-the-moon-301287016.htmlIn more substantial science, researchers at the US National Institute for Standards and Technology have observed the effects of quantum entanglement at a macroscopic level. A pair of tiny aluminium drums, one-fifth the width of a human hair – positively gargantuan in quantum terms – were seen to move in a highly correlated fashion that could only be explained by entanglement. The research has long-term potential in continued development of quantum network and communication technology.https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-entanglement-has-now-been-directly-observed-at-a-larger-macroscopic-scaleFinally, in other esports results, ESL crowned the Season 12 ANZ Champs winners for CS:GO, with Order defeating Dire Wolves for... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Friday, May 7, I'm Seamus Byrne.IBM has today revealed the first 2nm microchips have been produced as part of the ongoing race to shrink chips ever smaller. Using the Extreme Ultra Violet production technique has enabled the continued scaling down beyond 7nm sizes, which TSMC has dominated in recent years as it has pushed to 5nm and 3nm processes. IBM says it expects the 2nm chip to give 45% more performance at the same power level as a 7nm chip, or use 75% of the energy at the same performance levels.https://www.anandtech.com/show/16656/ibm-creates-first-2nm-chipThe Tokyo Olympics has announced it will have a Twitch channel for this year's games. In an extension of its partnership with US broadcaster NBC, a channel will run on Amazon-owned Twitch during the games, including live broadcasts, highlight shows, and Olympic-themed games and competitions featuring other Twitch creators. It doesn't seem so long ago the Olympics wanted to ban every form of streaming possible, so this effort to reach a younger audience that doesn't care about linear TV will be an interesting experiment.https://www.adweek.com/media/nbc-olympics-twitch-team-up-on-150-hours-of-content-from-tokyo-2020/Twitter is trialling a new Tip Jar feature for users to be able to add a tipping payment option to let followers to drop them some fiscal encouragement. Tip Jar supports Bandcamp, Cash App, Patreon, PayPal and Venmo, and Twitter takes no cut of the tip. The tipping option is inside a user profile view, but Twitter says it will also be available directly from within a Twitter Spaces session. Right now it's limited to certain users to switch it on but anyone will be able to send tips to those lucky folks starting today.https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-tip-jar.htmlLots of space news lately, and this latest is a big one, with news NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab is funding a phase two of research into creating a Lunar Crater Radio Telescope on the far side of the moon. As part of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program, the concept is exploring sending robots to the moon to build a telescope out of wire mesh suspended across a giant crater, which would be shielded from Earth's radiation and potentially reach back into the darkest history of the universe.https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-thinks-that-giant-moon-crater-telescope-idea-might-work/In videogames, the Epic vs Apple court case has revealed some future plans at Epic Games for its Rocket League franchise that will see the full game head to mobile. We already know about Sideswipe after its recent announcement, which is a 2D version of the game designed just for mobile play. But a 2021 planning presentation revealed in the court fight suggests a rebuild of the core game will see the main Rocket League become a full cross-play experience – Epic pulled it off with Fortnite, so it makes sense it can make it happen for Rocket League too.https://www.gamespot.com/articles/rocket-league-could-be-coming-to-mobile-in-addition-to-spin-off-game-leaked-epic-games-doc-shows/1100-6491100/In tabletop games, Magic The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons have teamed up more than once already – they're owned by the same company, of course – but we'll soon hear more about the first full D&D themed Magic set. Instead of a Core set for the collectible card game this year the game will get 'Adventures in the Forgotten Realms' in its place. We've also now heard there will be four new Commander decks designed around the new set, so there will be a LOT of ways to explore the crossover. More details are expected in late June.https://dotesports.com/mtg/news/mtg-adventures-in-the-forgotten-realms-releases-with-4-new-commander-preconshttps://wpn.wizards.com/en/products/adventures-forgotten-realmsAnd in esports, Pentanet's start to its MSI run in Iceland got off to a shaky... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Thursday, May 6, I'm Seamus Byrne.Digital Economy Minister Jane Hume has announced that the upcoming federal budget will include a tax offset for videogame development in Australia for the first time. The support will take the form of a 30% refundable offset, in line with the wider screen industry offset for film and television production. The games industry has long asked for equal positioning with the wider screen industries, and with this announcement industry body IGEA has recognised the offset makes it one of the most attractive in the world and will encourage greater investment in the local industry. A very good day for the Australian videogames sector.https://www.screenhub.com.au/news-article/news/digital/jini-maxwell/30percent-federal-tax-offset-for-videogame-development-announced-262507https://igea.net/2021/05/igeas-response-to-the-australian-governments-landmark-announcement-of-video-game-development-funding/A partnership between Dementia Australia and Deakin University has today led to the launch of an AI bot that presents itself as having dementia. The new AI bot, named Ted, was created as a tool to train carers to better manage interactions with individuals who have dementia in a more comfortable environment, with full speech-to-text interaction and a motion captured performance for Ted that makes the interactions feel as much like a real world situation as possible.https://www.byteside.com/2021/05/dementia-australia-ai-bot-aims-to-help-us-better-understand-dementia/Overseas, the Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body created by Facebook to try to take some of the heat off its more controversial moderation decisions, has upheld the suspension of former President Trump from the social network. But the Board also took the time to demand Facebook make a real decision about his future on the platform, arguing the company's indefinite ban does not sit within its own rules and it must either put a time limit on the ban or declare it permanent. A decision that suggests the board does not want to be a scapegoat for Facebook making firm decisions in its own right.https://oversightboard.com/news/226612455899839-oversight-board-upholds-former-president-trump-s-suspension-finds-facebook-failed-to-impose-proper-penalty/SpaceX has this morning achieved its first successful landing of its Starship prototype, SN15. After a series of explosive failures, SN15 launched and flew ten kilometres into the sky before a freefall back to Earth followed by a manoeuvre to flip the vehicle and gently touchdown in an upright position. The Starship design aims to be a fully reusable rocket that can carry 100 tons of cargo and passengers to the Moon and Mars.https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-sn15-launch-landing-successMicrosoft is currently in the process of deciding on a new default font for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel, offering up five new typefaces to the world while it considers which will be the new default. Since 2007 the default has been Calibri, arriving in the time of Windows Vista. Calibri's designer, Lucas de Groot, told Wired he feels it is a relief to see Microsoft move on. All five of the new font options are available to anyone using Microsoft products connected to its cloud service.https://www.wired.com/story/calibri-default-font-microsoft-moving-on/In video games, Nintendo has announced an exciting new game making tool for Nintendo Switch called Game Builder Garage. The software aims to give easy, accessible game programming education and experience to anyone who wants it, and make these games shareable too. Guided lessons eventually lead to a free programming mode and then you can share your creations online or download games made by others. I'm getting Scratch programming vibes with the flair of Nintendo. That sounds amazing and it goes on sale June 11 for... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Wednesday, May 5, I'm Seamus Byrne.Officeworks has removed Apple AirTags from store shelves over child safety concerns. After initially going on sale, the products have been removed from shelves and from the online store, including AirTags accessory products. The ACCC confirmed to Gizmodo Australia that it is aware of concerns over accessibility to the button battery inside AirTags, but did not say it was involved with the decision. AirTags are still available from most other major Apple retailers.https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/05/officeworks-has-pulled-apples-airtags-from-sale-over-safety-concerns/Telstra has been hit with a $1.5M fine after it stopped porting phone numbers in March last year due to the impact of COVID-19 on its offshore operations. The Australian Communications and Media Authority issued the fine after finding Telstra unilaterally cancelled transfer requests for months, and once it resumed transfer processing in July it was still dealing with a backlog of requests until October. ACMA says it took into consideration the pandemic when deciding on the size of the fine, which could have been as much as $250,000 per infringement.https://www.zdnet.com/article/telstra-pays-au1-5m-fine-after-preventing-number-porting-due-to-covid-hitting-offshore/Privacy-focused encrypted messaging service Signal has had its advertising account blocked by Facebook after running ads on Instagram that showed users just how much information it could access about them through Facebook's ad platform. Using Facebook's ad targeting systems, it displayed text like "You got this ad because you're a newlywed pilates instructor and you're cartoon crazy, you're into parenting blogs and you're thinking about LGBTQ adoption." Heaven forbid users are told directly how they've been targeted like that...https://www.slashgear.com/facebook-shut-down-signals-ads-because-they-exposed-too-much-04671574/In better news at the same company, Instagram has added a new caption feature to make videos more accessible with no sound. Rolling out today, you can now choose a Caption Sticker option from the Sticker tray and Instagram will run a speech-to-text conversion and apply it to your video. The feature will be available for Stories first and will head to Reels at a later date.https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/04/instagram-adds-a-captions-option-for-stories-and-soon-reels/If you haven't gotten around to performing a final farewell to Adobe Flash, Microsoft has announced it will shift the update that removes it from Windows 10 systems from optional to integrated with the standard cumulative patch cycle in June and July. Adobe officially discontinued Flash on December 31, 2020 and while it brought the early web to life with amazing interactive features far before HTML could handle it, Flash became a hotbed for malicious activity in its twilight years.https://www.zdnet.com/article/adobe-flash-microsoft-lays-out-plans-to-remove-it-from-windows-10-pcs-for-good/In space, the NASA Parker Space Probe has now reached speeds faster than any human made vehicle in history. Late last week the probe made its closest approach yet to the Sun at a distance of 10 million kilometres and was travelling at a speed of 150km per second. New Scientist pegs that speed at around 0.05 percent of the speed of light. Over a series of fly bys over the next four years, and using a slingshot manoeuvre around Venus on each loop, it is expected to top out at around 200km per second.https://www.newscientist.com/article/2276358-nasas-parker-solar-probe-has-gone-faster-than-any-spacecraft-ever/Disney did indeed make some reveals overnight for Star Wars Day, with a range of art releases and a new Bad Batch series on Disney Plus. But the most exciting reveal is a 'real' lightsaber that will appear as part of special performances at the Star Wars Galactic Cruiser resort set... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Tuesday, May the 4th be with you, I'm Seamus Byrne.A new partnership between the CSIRO and venture capital group Main Sequence is launching a new space industry startup, Quasar Satellite Technologies. The technology aims to enabled ground stations to communicate with hundreds of satellites at a time, with the potential to sell 'ground stations as a service' for the growing satellite market. The Australian technology set to underpin the new company comes from the development of Phased Array Feed technology used to in the Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project – which was developed by the CSIRO team that invented Wi-Fi.https://www.innovationaus.com/quasar-is-csiros-latest-venture-science-bet/After its recent decision to end talks for a sale to Microsoft for over $10B, Discord has announced today it has taken investment from Sony Entertainment and will make Discord available within the PlayStation Network by next year. Today, Discord includes basic integration with Xbox – you can see what someone is playing, but not communicate with them. The PlayStation integration will go beyond that and allow communication as well, including from PlayStation consoles to Discord users on PC or mobile. The companies did not disclose the investment amount.https://venturebeat.com/2021/05/03/playstation-invests-in-discord-and-plans-integrating-with-psn-in-2022/Facebook is using some concerning language to try to convince its iPhone users to let it keep tracking users across other apps and websites. The prompt is slowly rolling out for users who have upgraded to iOS 14.5, with Facebook making its pitch for both Facebook and Instagram users to say Yes to tracking. Alongside its argument that user tracking helps deliver more personalised ads and supports businesses that rely on showing you ads, it has also included a statement that it helps keep its services free of charge – a surprising suggestion given it has never explored a paid business model before. If this forced it to offer a paid, ad-free version of Instagram, sign me up.https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/02/facebook-instagram-att-prompt-free-of-charge/Yahoo and AOL are on the move once again, with news owner Verizon is selling the two venerable internet companies. Verizon announced it is selling the pair to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for US$5 billion, and together they will rebranded as "Yahoo". No exclamation point. Verizon will keep a 10% stake under the terms of the deal. Verizon originally paid $4.5B for AOL in 2015 and $4.4B for Yahoo in 2017.https://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-is-selling-aol-yahoo-rest-of-media-group-for-5-billion/Twitter has announced it is opening access to its Spaces audio-room system to all Twitter accounts with over 600 followers. The company also pointed to new features it is aiming to add to Spaces, including ticketed events, co-hosting options, scheduling and reminders, and accessibility improvements. While we're mentioning Spaces, today at 2.00pm Sydney time, Byteside will be hosting a Space chat while we record an episode of the High Resolution podcast as we discuss last night's 4 Corners episode about monetisation problems in the videogames industry.https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/spaces-is-here.htmlIt's being reported that an internal audit at Amazon reveals the company warned its leadership in 2015 that thousands of its staff had unauthorised access to third-party seller data, and that at least one employee had definitely used this access to improve sales of its own products. News outlet Politico reported that it had seen the audit, which warned some of the most senior figures at Amazon over lax IT access policies and that a similar report from 2010 had also issued warnings of these issues. In November last year, the EU charged Amazon with using third-party seller data to improve its own retail... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Get the new daily Byteside newsletter with all this and more at newsletter.byteside.com.The ACCC has given authorisation for Country Press Australia to collectively negotiate with Facebook and Google to receive payments for their news content appearing on their digital platforms. The authorisation allows the group of 160 regional newspapers to engage in discussions together as well as share information on their individual negotiations with the search engine and social network. The authorisation also lets the ACCC avoid moving to a 'designation' step that would start a clock ticking under the media bargaining code that could lead to Facebook walking away from Australia again given its previous comments about its preference to leave rather than be forced into any binding agreement here.In local battles against scammers, late last week the Australian Federal Police announced it has conducted searches of a business in Wollongong, NSW, to investigate fake tech support services that are allegedly being used to access computers remotely and force victims to buy useless software to fix problems they created on the device. The investigation is part of Operation Rayko, an ongoing effort to takedown these fake Microsoft support services.Overseas, the EU has charged Apple with anti-trust violations, arguing that it has given its own music service an advantage over competitors by forcing them to use its payment system and taking a cut of their fees. The argument points to an unfair market where Apple can charge a certain price but for a Spotify to compete at the same price it is earning less money because of the 30% charge it is required to give to Apple. The argument seems targeted toward allowing alternate payment gateways in App Store ecosystems.Up on Mars, the success of the first four flights of NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter has led to the helicopter being given a new mission. Its original month long testing program is being extended a further month, with new tests aiming to explore its capacity to scout ahead of the Perseverance rover and help it identify targets for soil and rock sample collection to be stored for collection and a return trip in future for lab analysis back on Earth.Elsewhere in US space programs, NASA has told SpaceX to halt work on the US$2.9 billion contracts it was awarded to develop a lunar lander system for the Artemis missions. Billionaire battles seem to be brewing as Jeff Bezos owned Blue Origin protested the contract that was award to Elon Musk's SpaceX, with another company, Dynetics, also protesting the deal. America's Government Accountability Office will examine the contract award process and decide on whether changes should be made. Jeff Bezos has made a number of complaints regarding government contracts that were awarded during the Trump era as excluding his companies due to Trump's personal animosity toward Bezos.In video games, Riot Games, maker of League of Legends and Valorant, has updated its privacy policy to allow it to record in-game voice chat. The company says the aim is to crack down on harassment in its games, and it promises to only listen to audio recordings as part of responding to reports being filed for abusive behaviour and hate speech. The company says if you don't want to be recorded, you will need to turn off your use of voice chat.Finally, from esports results over the weekend, the Rocket League Championship Series Oceanic Major crowned its winner with Perth's Ground Zero taking out the title over Cringe Society in a clean sweep final, dropping just a single round through the entire finals series. In Rainbow Six Siege, Australia's Six Invitational qualifier Wildcard Gaming has been unable to travel to the event in France, which starts next week. Meanwhile, Pentanet.gg, our representatives at the League of Legends Mid-Season... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The NSW government is proposing personal injury insurance options for gig economy delivery services as part of a consultation by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority. After a number of injuries and deaths to food delivery riders in recent months, options are being suggested to ensure the companies they perform deliveries for are providing appropriate protections for compensation and support while on the job. Submissions are open to provide feedback on the options being put forward until May 28.In energy science, researchers from RMIT have analysed the capacity of government-owned airports to host large-scale rooftop solar systems as a venue for increased solar capacity in the national grid and found there is enough space to generate enough power to run 136,000 homes. The team found airports are ideal venues for solar with so much clear rooftop space on offer – the study calculated 2.61 square kilometres in total. The study was published in the Journal of Building Engineering.Google is rolling out a new update for Assistant that will allow users to help train the service to pronounce and recognise tricky names. Right now you can help it pronounce your own name, but with the update you will be able to help it pronounce names of other people in your contact lists. Google says this is for English language only for now with hopes to expand the update to other languages in future.In videogames industry news, Microsoft has announced it will reduce its cut of revenue from PC games sold through the Microsoft Store from 30% to 12% starting August 1st. The move brings Microsoft into alignment with the Epic Store which has been pushing for better deals for developers since its launch in December 2018. However the change right now only applies to PC games and not games sold on the Xbox. This leaves Steam on its own continuing to take a 30% cut, with its sliding scale reducing to 25% after $10 million and 20% after $50 million.In meme culture, the Disaster Girl herself has earned US$500,000 this week. Zoe Roth is now 21 but is most famous as a 4-year-old who looks far too pleased about a fire raging across the street. She decided to NFT the original image, taken by her father, and earned 180 Ether or roughly $495,000 and retains the right to 10% of future sales. Cool for Ms Roth, but don't forget that NFTs are still a big digital mess.In Dungeons and Dragons news, Jeff Goldblum has been announced as a cast member for the next season of the Dark Dice actual play podcast. He is said to be playing an evil elven sorcerer named Balmur who is searching for his daughter's missing locket. The next season of the Dark Dice podcast kicks off on May 12.And, finally, if you're looking to watch esports this weekend there's plenty to see, with Activision Blizzard's Overwatch League and Call of Duty World League continuing at the global level plus Dreamhack Masters Spring competition continuing in CS:GO. Plus every weekend there's Couch Warriors FGC to watch and you can also register now for Battle Arena Melbourne BAM12 now which takes place May 29-31. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

An Adelaide man has been arrested for replacing QR codes on official COVID-19 check-in signs with alternate codes and, in a unique bail condition has been required to not carry "loose QR codes" anywhere. A QR code scanned by a phone camera can resolve to any online destination, and the man allegedly was replacing the codes with links to anti-vaccination material. He was charged with interfering with operations related to COVID-19, which is a crime under South Australian emergency powers. The man faces a maximum penalty of a $10,000 fine.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has released its second interim report as part of its digital platform services inquiry, focusing on issues of Apple and Google App Stores and their dominance of digital distribution. In a statement, ACCC chair Rod Sims argues there are significant issues of market power, and the ACCC wants to target a number of issues, including transparency in how apps are made discoverable within the marketplaces, not allowing Apple or Google to use information about third-party apps to advantage their own, and allowing the use of third-party payment services for in-app purchases. The ACCC also wants to force better processes for payment disputes, subscription traps and other app scams. The report is part of the ongoing five year inquiry into digital platforms.In other Australian digital news, the Commonwealth Ombudsman has chastised Australian Federal Police for a "cavalier" attitude toward telecommunications data, in a report that found the AFP may have unlawfully accessed location information hundreds of times. The Ombudsman found ACT Policing was only fully compliant with access rules for location pings from mobile towers in 9 out of 1,713 cases over four years. The AFP was also under fire for failure to rectify or even disclose the issue after it knew it was in breach of the rules. The issues may bring convictions based on this evidence into question.CES is set to return to real-life face-to-face action in January 2022, with the Consumer Technology Association naming January 5 to 8 as the dates for the event's return to Las Vegas. The US has been rolling out vaccinations at an impressive pace, but the event's tradition of welcoming the consumer electronics companies and industry members from across the world may be put to the test as the pandemic continues to run out of control in many parts of the world. I still expect I'll be watching along from home again next year.We've largely tried to avoid NFT discussions here because we have issues with the way the technology currently operates, but a number of major announcements require mentioning. The CEO of Hasbro has indicated the company may consider NFTs for franchises like Magic The Gathering, while an NFT artwork of Chadwick Boseman has come under fire for commodifying the actor around the Oscars after his death last year. The initial flurry of NFT craziness doesn't seem to be behind us just yet.In entertainment news, someone has posted a review to Rotten Tomatoes that has ruined Citizen Kane's perfect 100% fresh rating. While the review was a new addition, it comes from a 1941 review in the Chicago Tribune from the time of the movie's original release. The film is noted for having received mixed reviews at the time of its release, but the new arrival drops the film to a 99% rating. The only film that remains on 100% certified fresh? Paddington 2.And finally, Netflix is launching a new 'Play Something' feature to get you over your decision fatigue and just, well, Play Something. The new button has been in testing since last year and aims to automatically start playing shows and movies based on the user's taste. The feature is rolling out worldwide today. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Australian MP and walking brown-note Craig Kelly wants to introduce laws to stop Facebook banning his effort to consistently lie to Australians and troll the planet via its social media platform. Kelly invoked the concept of freedom of speech, which we have no right to in Australia, and claimed banning him permanently from spreading his brand of viral misinformation is some kind of threat to democracy. The MP used Twitter and various major media services to talk at length about how his freedom of speech had been removed. Kelly now plans to push for legislation to do something or other about his ban from his favourite platform. Let's assume it's to enact a bill of rights for Australian citizens and not just to demand his personal right to scream nonsense online.It's earnings report season for Silicon Valley companies, which is a good time to point out Bits generally avoids the boring business questions of who raised what, who earned what and stats like EBITDA, ARPU, and growth stats galore. We're here to look at the impacts of all things digital on the world around us and the act of working and living every day. We also don't really do rumours, sticking to substantiated products, services and news that is happening right now or in the very, very near future. If you like all that, keep listening, and go get the Byteside newsletter which is turning into a companion daily newsletter starting next week.OK, one quick nod to the financials... Microsoft is up 44% year over year, Alphabet is up 35% year over year, and AMD is up 93% year over year. Go read the specialists if you want more of that kind of thing today or in the future.Spotify has announced a paid podcast subscriptions service, launching today for podcast creators in the USA. Spotify is launching the service with no fees until 2023 after which it will take 5% of subscriptions, a much lower cost to creators than Apple's 30% for the first year and 15% after that. Podcasters will need to use Spotify-owned Anchor to upload their podcasts and can tag any show as 'subscriber only', with episodes available via Spotify and other podcast services. Spotify says it aims to roll the service out for creators worldwide in coming months.In science, Australian researchers have published a study that finds bushfire smoke concentrations could be monitored using mobile phone signals. The team from Monash University found that radio link fluctuations could be observed and help predict smoke concentration levels at ground level and alongside satellite remote sensing it could help to improve early warnings for resident evacuations and wider firefighting efforts.In weird entertainment decisions, Saturday Night Live has announced Elon Musk will be hosting the show when it returns to screens in May. The noted not-actor actual-shitposter is expected to read awkwardly from cue cards while looking disappointed when the audience doesn't laugh at the jokes he's flubbing throughout the show. Expect Dogecoin to increase in price and volatility around lunchtime on Sunday, Australian time.In video games, Fortnite has continued its steady takeover of all of pop culture and entertainment with today's launch of a Neymar Jr skin. The famed Brazilian football star can be unlocked through this season's Battle Pass and includes simple and superhero style skins as well as football emotes and other in-game bling. Other recent arrivals in Fortnite include Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, Lara Croft and Raven from Teen Titans. Keep watching Fortnite if you're wondering how a Metaverse grows via Tim Sweeney's fever dream video game development operation. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It has been one year since the launch of Australia's COVIDSafe app and after being launched as "digital sunscreen" by Prime Minister Morrison the app has identified 17 cases and 81 close contacts in New South Wales at a cost of just under $7 million. The app has been downloaded 7 million times, with reports suggesting only 3% of those who tested positive for COVID having downloaded the app. Regardless, COVIDSafe was plagued by poor Bluetooth signal management processing that volunteer developers helped to rectify before the problem returned in a major update late last year. The federal government refused to shift to the Apple/Google Exposure Notification Framework because it did not create a central accessible database like COVIDSafe did. Another case study in poor federal government technology projects.While chip manufacturing shortages continue, the move toward smaller, faster, more efficient chips has not. Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC, one of the dominant chip makers of the past decade's smartphone revolution, has released an update stating it is on track to move to 4 nanometre and even 3 nanometre scale production in 2022, with 2 nanometre development and even smaller progressing well. A tough year ahead for availability but good to know that isn't slowing down next generation processor scales and the even more amazing chips they will bring.Apple has released the latest updates for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch this morning, which includes a major overhaul to how tracking and privacy work for apps. Now you will be asked if you want to allow an app to track your activity across other apps and websites. Facebook has been fighting against these changes, saying they will hurt small businesses that rely on Facebook for targeted advertising. Which is a way of saying that Facebook relies on tracking you everywhere you go online to deliver cheap targeted advertising. Our usual suggestion is to wait a day or two before you update to make sure there's no hidden bugs lurking out there.Also in Apple updates, macOS 11.3 has been released, which includes a suite of its own updates and improvements. Most importantly, it includes a patch for a zero-day security flaw that would allow apps to run without triggering any security prompts or warnings. So make this update a high priority.Facebook has rolled out a new music player in its app that allows Spotify music and podcasts to be streamed directly through the Facebook app. The mini player can be embedded in posts and then it will drop to the bottom of the screen and continue streaming directly within the app rather than taking you out to Spotify. At a technical level, it seems the Spotify app is still managing the audio, so if you don't already have Spotify installed you won't get the fancy new experience. As with most new features on Facebook, it takes time to propagate across billions of users so it will slowly reveal itself over coming days.For design fans, a hat tip to the gorgeous set design used for yesterday's Academy Awards ceremony. The event was very different to recent shows, taking place in an intimate, COVID-safe setting within the amazing Art Deco environment of Los Angeles Union Station. The set was designed by architect David Rockwell with an aim to harken back to the style of early 1930s ceremonies. If you don't watch the Oscars, check out photos of the room where it happened. It was top shelf Hollywood glamour.In video games, Capcom is releasing a special 60-minute demo this weekend for the upcoming Resident Evil Village release. The demo was originally going to be available for just 24 hours, but after very reasonable complaints the company has extended the demo to run from May 1st to May 9th. The full game's official release date is May 7, that's Friday week. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sad news in the infosec world, with news security researcher Dan Kaminsky died over the weekend at age 42. In 2005 he uncovered the Sony BMG Rootkit debacle, and in 2008 he found and disclosed design flaws in the fundamental infrastructure of the entire internet. He is widely remarked upon as a lovely, conscientious, compassionate and supportive member of the community who will be deeply missed.If you're a casual crypto investor wondering what happened to your portfolio over the weekend, a sell-off wiped $200B off the markets after reports suggested US President Biden may increase capital gains taxation rates. The sell-off caused Bitcoin to fall below US$50,000 while cryptocurrencies across the board generally saw large drops in value.Also in the US, Apple failed to have a court case dismissed over the definition of the word "Buy" in its iTunes Store. The case argues the word is misleading because access can be terminated at any time and is therefore not ownership. Two cases related to the argument are currently underway, with one focused on the question of misleading use of "Buy" while another relates to an AppleID that was terminated with US$25,000 worth of iTunes, App Store and other purchases in the account. Interesting arguments that are fundamental to our experience of digital stores of all stripes today.In space, astronauts have been sent to the International Space Station over the weekend on a reused SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, marking a third successful launch for NASA in 11 months using SpaceX rockets and capsules. The launch took place Friday and arrived at the ISS on Saturday. The four astronauts will spend six months aboard the space station while the previous crew will return to Earth later this week aboard the Dragon capsule.Another shout out to our Martian friends, with news NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter has performed its third flight overnight. This time the drone flew 50 metres from its point of origin and then back again. The footage from the Perseverance rover only shows the first slice of the flight now that Ingenuity is starting to perform longer flight tests around the area. Ingenuity tests will run for another few weeks before the project concludes and Perseverance will move onto other missions on the red planet.Videogame history at the Oscars today, with the best short documentary award going to Colette, produced as an in-game feature of the VR game Medal of Honour: Above and Beyond. The film looks at the history of French resistance fighter Colette Marin-Catherine, one of the last surviving members of the French resistance. It is the first time a videogame has won any award at the Oscars, so congratulations to Respawn Entertainment, who also makes Apex Legends and in recent years also made Jedi: Fallen Order.In global esports results, the Mythic Dungeon Invitational global finals in World of Warcraft were won by Echo over the weekend. The Europeans won in dominant fashion, never dropping a dungeon on their route to victory. They defeated Perplexed in the final, a second European team showing big regional dominance.Closer to home, the E-League FIFA 21 tournament over the weekend saw Newcastle Jets top the ladder after two big days of matches, closely followed by Western Sydney Wanderers. In Valorant, the Order Army took out the Closed Qualifier Grand Final and wins first seeding in the Oceania Tour Stage 2 finals. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Russia has confirmed it plans to leave the International Space Station after 20 years of co-operation in space. The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, confirmed the Russian space agency intends to exit the ISS in 2025 and is working on developing its own orbital station with a target launch of 2030. Russia also recently signed an agreement with China to develop a separate station to orbit the moon.In better news from space, the NASA Perseverance rover has successfully converted CO2 to oxygen in an experiment on Mars yesterday. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilisation Experiment, known as MOXIE, pulled carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and converted it into enough oxygen to keep an astronaut alive for 10 minutes. An exciting proof of concept for potential human missions in the future.From one Moxie to another, with the CEO of secure messaging app Signal, Moxie Marlinspike, revealing that one of the key tools used by law enforcement to hack smartphones is itself incredibly insecure. Signal's CEO got access to a Cellebrite device and not only found it featured a number of poor programming errors that made it prone to attack, he showed how easy it was for him to set a phone so that if it was scanned by a Cellebrite unit it would force code to execute and potentially alter the unit, or reports generated by the unit – creating a big question over the integrity and validity of Cellebrite as reliable legal evidence. Hacking the hackers is always entertaining to watch.A product testing outlet in the US has shown how a motivated driver can easily fool a Tesla into driving with no one in the driver seat. Consumer Reports took a Model Y to a test track and got it driving in Autopilot mode by buckling the seat belt under the driver when they first got into the vehicle and adding a weight to the steering wheel to simulate the weight of a driver's hands. They could then slide into the passenger seat and speed up in the already engaged Autopilot mode. Other manufacturers have been adding features that monitor the driver's attention while they use assisted driving modes.Australia's own Rode microphones has launched a new software package to turn its NT-USB mini microphones into a powerful podcasting studio wherever you need one. The new RodeConnect software is free for Mac and PC and allows four NT USB-mini microphones to connect via USB and record through a virtual interface a lot like the hardware Rodecaster Pro I'm recording this bulletin through right now. It even makes it easy to add remote callers into recordings or to include music or effects too. And that price again – free.Sony has confirmed a new Video Pass for PlayStation Plus subscribers is being trialled in some parts of the world. Right now, that place is specifically Poland. 20 movies and TV shows from Sony's own studios are being made available there. PlayStation is removing purchase and rental of a large library of video content from the platform later this year, so an integrated free offer from Sony's own back catalogue would make a lot of sense.In other video games news, this weekend you can dive into the new MLB The Show 21 baseball game and Nier Replicant which have both launched this week, while Blizzard has kicked off a further round of the Diablo Immortal alpha for lucky testers in Australia. I'm one of those lucky people.And if you're still shopping around for games to play, Steam has just launched deeper Categories to its digital games store. Top level categories like action, RPG and strategy now have seven sub-genres to help you find exactly what is a fit for your specific tastes. There are also theme categories to help you find horror, sci-fi, mystery or other games, and special sections for finding games to match the multiplayer, co-op, party game or single player support you're looking for. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has joined forces with its UK and German equivalents in an agreement to prevent tech giants from using mergers and acquisitions to maintain market dominance. In a join statement, the three groups state that stronger control over mergers is required to create room for competition in the market, particularly in new areas of innovation.Microsoft has added new settings to Outlook that can enforce breaks between meetings in an effort to overcome the problem of wall-to-wall meetings and general digital overload. The setting can make meetings start five minutes after the usual hour or half hour, with Microsoft's own research suggesting even small breaks can have a positive impact when people are feeling overloaded. Now if only they could automatically mute everyone at the scheduled end time to stop overrun that would be good too.The EU is moving forward with its proposal to impose strict rules upon the use of artificial intelligence. Seen in draft form last week, the plan aims to outlaw the use of AI for general social scoring, the use of remote biometric detection in real-time policing, and more. The rules also demand compulsory transparency obligations whenever AI is used to interact with humans, to generate or manipulate content, like with deep fakes, or to perform social or emotional detection. If the rules go ahead they're expected to have widespread impact on AI technology initiatives across the world.In Britain, the country's former children's commissioner is taking legal action against TikTok over the collection of personal data about child users. The lawsuit, brought by Anne Longfield, claims the company's collection of personal information, phone numbers, location data and the videos themselves may be illegal in the absence of transparent consent of parents given children cannot give legal consent. The case claims to represent millions of British children. No word on why the case singles out TikTok over Instagram or Snap.In backyard science, it's the right time of year to catch the Lyrids meteor showers, with the best time to head outside and take a look around one hour before sunrise over the next few days. Expect to catch meteor sightings with the naked eye every 3-5 minutes. Look toward the north to spot them.In video games, Xbox owners can now play free-to-play games online without needing to pay for an Xbox Live Gold subscription to do so. The change was flagged earlier in the year by Microsoft, but the change is now officially in the system after a number of recent adjustments to Xbox networking arrangements.And if you're hunting for something great to play on PlayStation and you had held out on buying Horizon Zero Dawn, the Complete Edition of the game is now free for all PS4 and PS5 owners. Sony's PlayStation at Home program has made a number of games available over recent weeks from its back catalogue for free – you have a few more hours to grab nine others before they exit the offer.Finally, Australian esports organisation Order, mentioned on Bits recently for Valorant tournament management efforts and a number of team victories, has raised $5.3M in new investments as it aims to establish itself as a local leader in the esports scene. It has also appointed a new CEO, Marc Edwards, and revealed plans for a dedicated facility in Melbourne's Collingwood. The team has a number of big brand partnerships with Puma, Optus, Alienware and Logitech. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It seems Australian Kmart shoppers can expect to see roving robots while you walk the aisles, with news the retailer will roll out a fleet of robots named TORY in every store by the end of the year. The robots roam the store scanning RFID tags to track stock levels of items to make it easier to keep inventory tracking in order. The robots are likely to do their work outside peak hours, so if you want to see one you might need to stalk the store in quieter periods of the day.Apple's Spring Loaded event took place in the early hours of today, with major announcements being new iPad Pros and new iMacs based on the company's M1 Apple Silicon processors. The new iMacs look like giant iPads and include seven colours like the early colourful days of the iMac and a big performance jump thanks to the M1. It comes in a new 24-inch screen size that fits into the space of the old 21.5-inch model. Orders go live April 30 for mid-May delivery and the iPad Pro starts from $1,199 and the iMac starts at $1,899.More from Apple's event, the company launched new Air Tags for tracking objects and keys via Apple's Find My tracking system. Air Tags can be customised with initials or emoji and accessorised to suit keyring, luggage tags or other bag attachments and it uses Ultrawideband tracking to direct you to the tag with detailed direction sensing. Air Tags will cost $45 for one or $149 for a pack of 4, with the leather keyring accessory costing more than the tag at $55 and there's even an Hermes option for $529.In the living room, Apple updated its Apple TV product to support high frame rate HDR and a new remote that includes a better clickpad control surface that you slide in a circle to scrub back and forth in a more natural fashion than the current minimalistic mess of a remote.Lastly from Apple, the company is launching a major update to its Podcasts app to include a subscriptions system to allow fans of shows to support creators directly within the app. The Subscriptions option will launch in 170 regions around the world starting in May. Apple will take a 30% cut of subscriptions for the first year and 15% in following years. This will launch with iOS 14.5, which Apple also announced will be arriving next week.Turning to wider tech news, discussions of Discord being bought by Microsoft have apparently ended, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the company is returning to a plan to go public after turning down Microsoft's offer that was reportedly over $10B. During discussions it is reported that Discord discussed a sale with at least three companies before deciding to continue on its own for now. In entertainment, Marvel's Secret Invasion TV series is building an army of casting talent, with news Oscar-winning actor Olivia Coleman and Khaleesi Emilia Clarke will join Samuel L Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn and Kingsley Ben-Adir in the Skrull focused show for Disney Plus. No release date has been announced.And in videogames, longtime Blizzard Entertainment leader Jeff Kaplan is leaving the company after 20 years. Kaplan joined Blizzard as a prominent Everquest raid leader to join the World of Warcraft team before the game launched, eventually leading the WoW team before taking the lead on Overwatch. Leadership on Overwatch 2 will pass to Aaron Keller. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Australian federal and state ministers have agreed to look at a national system for sharing data and digital identity. The system would allow for unified access to digital services across the country and includes related discussions on the creation of a Commonwealth COVID-19 vaccination credential of some kind. The idea of completely unified personal information has often been met with deep concerns in Australia, and recent changes to leadership structures now sees the federal Digital Transformation Agency under the remit of one of the architects of the robodebt scandal, Minister Stuart Robert, where national data was wilfully misinterpreted to punish Australians on unemployment benefits.Facebook has upgraded its Transfer Your Information tool to make it easier to export your posts and notes into formats more useful than a giant data dump. Now, the tool can be used to export your history of Facebook posts to Google Docs or to formats suitable for Blogger and Wordpress. Data portability is a big issue for the future of the web and social media, particularly around closed platforms like Facebook.In other social news, Facebook along with Reddit have both announced upcoming releases of audio room features in a direct challenge to audio-room social service Clubhouse. The debate over whether Clubhouse would be a standout killer service or just a feature is developing quickly, and new statistics suggest Clubhouse sign ups are slowly quickly after excitement peaked in early March.In science, researchers in China have developed a new cryogel sponge technology that slowly releases stem cells into joints. In testing on mice, the technique has been found to reverse the effects of osteoarthritis, a positive step forward for a condition with only pain relief as a management option for human sufferers.Up on Mars, NASA's Mars helicopter experiment went off without a hitch, with Ingenuity hovering for 30 seconds and landing again as hoped. Viewers of the livestream got to hear word of the telemetry data coming through to confirm the event had taken place correctly and it was quickly followed by a photograph from the helicopter's navigation camera where you could see its own shadow and then with video footage of Ingenuity's flight from the Mars Perseverance rover.Microsoft has announced its xCloud game streaming service will arrive on iOS and PC starting later today with access via web browsers. Initial access will be limited to an invite-only beta for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. xCloud streaming has already been testing on Android and Apple had refused to allow it on its App Store because it was in breach of its store rules by allowing access to games that had not been approved for release on the store. Because for some reason what's OK for video streaming is not OK for games...In other game news, Sony has stepped back from its earlier decision to close the digital stores for the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita. Back in March the company said it would close these stores along with the PSP, but a vocal enough backlash from fans has led to a change of heart for the PS3 and PS Vita. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said "Upon further reflection, it's clear we made the wrong decision here." The PSP didn't seem to have enough friends out there, because its store will still close on July 2.And in games for good, NRMA Insurance has teamed up with legendary Minecraft design group Blockworks to develop a special custom-map to explore natural disaster preparedness here in Australia and includes unique Australian animal designs. The Climate Warriors map is available for free through Minecraft Marketplace or Education Edition. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The ACCC won a major court battle over Google and its location data tracking in the federal court on Friday, with Google found to have "partially" misled Australian consumers. The case by the ACCC argued Google was in breach of Australian consumer law when it continued tracking location data after users had switched off Location History on their Android phones while another Web Activity setting remained on. Justice Thomas Thawley's decision found that some users would have been misled to believe such data would stop being collected with this setting switched off while others would not have, and found Google in breach of sections 18, 29.1.g and 34 of Australian consumer law. In other Google battles, last week we mentioned Brave browser opting out of Google's new FLoC advertising technology due to privacy concerns and it seems many others are also declaring they will block the trackers from their browsers. Mozilla's Firefox, Microsoft's Edge, and Vivaldi in the browser space and search engine DuckDuckGo has also released a browser extension to block it for you. So it seems Google and its Chrome browser will be on their own with FLoC.Back in Australia, the federal government on Friday announced it has selected 81 regional locations that will receive funding to improve wireless connectivity. A combination of federal, state and local funds will see $180M spent on improved infrastructure to suit the needs of the location, whether mobile coverage improvements or fixed wireless installations. Few details were offered at the announcement, with the government set to play the announcables game to be able to mention the funding as often as possible over coming weeks and months.In an environmental progress report on Friday, Apple released details of its efforts to achieve a number of its own sustainability goals, from energy programs to changes in its manufacturing processes. The stand out detail is Apple claiming a saving of 861,000 tonnes of copper, tin and zinc ore by no longer including power adapters with its latest iPhones. The decision to leave out a charger came under fire and legal action in some parts of the world.In tech pioneers, a fond farewell to Chuck Geschke who passed away at the age of 82 over the weekend. Geschke was the co-founder of Adobe Systems back in 1982 and served on its board until last year. He and his co-founder John Warnock created the software that built the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980s and the still critical PDF document format. Stories of his death widely speak of a humble and earnest business leader who will be greatly missed by friends and family.In space, NASA has chosen SpaceX to fly humans to the moon once more. An exclusive contract has been awarded that will see a SpaceX Starship carry two astronauts to the moon as part of the Artemis missions. Timing could be as soon as 2024.In video games, Amazon has been forced to cancel the Lord of the Rings game it has been working on after a contract dispute with its Chinese development partner. The game was originally announced in 2019 as a free-to-play MMORPG. Amazon is still set to release its Lord of the Rings TV series which is currently filming in New Zealand and costs a reported half a billion dollars for the first season alone.In esports results, the Nova Valorant tournament run by esports organisation Order resulted in a win for Order's own team which no doubt made for awkward glances for some, while Order also secured a 3-1 victory in the ESEA CS:GO season final against The Chiefs. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Proposed European regulations on artificial intelligence seek to ban the use of algorithms and AI in a range of context's the directly impact on social and individual use cases. The proposal seeks to outlaw what it calls high-risk AI use, including AI used in algorithms being used in recruitment or credit assessment, those designed to manipulate human behaviour, opinions or decisions, in facial recognition for surveillance, and in social scoring systems, amongst other predictive scenarios as well. Experts told the BBC the draft is vague, full of loopholes and needs a more nuanced approach than high and low risk concepts of AI.Google Earth, the tool closely related to Google Maps but for exploring the planet via satellite imagery, is adding historical 3D time lapses that show changes in the Earth between 1984 and 2020. The result is an at times shocking view of the effects of climate change. The tool has previously included many 2D time lapses but this is new 3D viewer was developed in conjunction with NASA, ESA, the USGS and the European Commission.Tesla has come under fire for a surprise and dramatic increase in the price of its solar roof tile business. One customer told The Verge their signed contract for a $35,000 installation was being replaced by a demand for $75,000. Other customers said they had already spent thousands preparing their home for the installations when they received price increases in the tens of thousands of dollars. Tesla says the adjusted pricing is to account for individual roof complexity.Logitech has officially ended the era of the Harmony remote control. The brand's universal remotes were the standout option for unifying devices in the home under a single controller long before Wi-Fi was embedded everywhere, and Harmony remotes were the most reliable units in a market that could often be flakier than you would hope. For those who own and love theirs, Logitech says it will continue to support the existing remotes for "as long as customers are using it."In science, researchers have successfully created chimeric embryos that added human stem cells to monkey embryos to study coexistence of animal cells. Controversy runs deep in such studies, with similar pig-human and sheep-human studies conducted in the past. The study concluded within 20 days with all embryos destroyed – only three had survived until that point in the research.In games, the latest expansion for Magic the Gathering has launched in the digital version of the collectible card game with the physical card version becoming available next Friday. The new set, Strixhaven, is set in a university of magic and includes five colleges with distinct styles of cards to explore. For old school fans of the game, the set includes Mystical Archives, bringing back some classic spells from the past, including some from the very beginnings of the card game in 1993.In esports, Stage 1 of the APAC region competition for Rainbow Six Siege is wrapping up tonight, after the APAC South stage champion was decided last night and APAC North champion is decided this evening. Team Elevate from Thailand topped the APAC South group in dominant fashion, with Australia's Knights and Chiefs Esports taking 2nd and 3rd. The North division concludes tonight, with top two Cloud9 and Cyclops playing to see who will win the group. Australia's Fnatic had a poor stage, currently sitting fifth on the ladder.In other esports, Overwatch League returns this weekend for 2021, and for Valorant fans, you can tune in this weekend to the Order NOVA Invitational playoffs and the Grand Final taking place in Sunday at the Order Army Twitch channel. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Australian hacking company Azimuth Security has been revealed as the company that gave the FBI the tool it needed to hack the iPhone of the San Bernadino shooter in 2016. The battle between the FBI and Apple went to court as Apple refused to build a backdoor into iPhone security systems, and the case was suddenly dropped in March 2016. At the time another company was believed to have assisted law enforcement, but The Washington Post and Vice have both reported the Sydney-based company used a series of exploits to perform the task.Samsung has unveiled it is set to run a new 5G network in Australia, based on 5G mmWave technology. Samsung Network Business will commence as a network vendor this year, and the company already operates 5G networks in a number of other countries, including Japan, Korea, Canada, the US, and New Zealand.HP has announced its Instant Ink program is now available in Australia. The subscription service lets owners of recent and future model printers sign up to a monthly plan that sends ink anytime replacements are needed, with pricing based on the number of pages you want to print each month. Prices start from $1.99/month for 15 pages with a rollover of up to 45 pages, Or $9.99/month for 100 pages with 300 pages of rollover, or for small businesses $39.99/month for 700 pages. HP says it aims to remove the fuss of buying inks at a store, with new inks arriving at your door before you run out and old cartridges are sent back for return and recycling.Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase has listed to the NASDAQ stock exchange in the US, achieving a stock price of US$328 at the close of trading. The company's market cap reached over $100B before slowing to $88B by the end of the day. A good reminder that the gold is almost always in the picks and shovels.Researchers at the University of Washington are conducting a study to see if Apple Watch is capable of detecting respiratory illnesses like the flu and the coronavirus. The study is focused on the Seattle area and if participants get sick during the six month program they will be sent a home testing kit to see what illness they have caught to help assess what data points may help predict future cases.Parallels Desktop software has received an update to support Apple Silicon and allow users to run Windows 10 ARM Insider Preview and to run Intel-based apps as well. The update also claims a 30% increase in performance compared to Windows 10 virtual machines on an Intel Core i9 processor, and uses 2.5x less power than on an Intel-based MacBook Air.YouTube is running a pilot program to allow content creators to upload alternate audio tracks to offer dubbed language options on their videos. A recent video by YouTube superstar MrBeast was uploaded with a Spanish language dub. Similar to captions, users can toggle language from within an Audio Track menu.Nvidia has announced it has had a very big quarter for GPU sales, with pandemic-related demand, gaming system upgrades and cryptocurrency mining leading to a 70% increase in its earnings over the same period last year. However, for anyone in the market for a new graphics card at the moment, the company expects it will be supply constrained throughout 2021 so expect them to be hard to find and for prices to stay high. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The NSW government has announced plans to work with Sydney quantum computing company Q-CTRL to look at innovation opportunities around the state's public transport networks. In particular, the idea is to look at ways quantum computing could assist in real-time updates during congested periods, like during events like New Year's Eve. Q-CTRL is a commercial operation that spun out of Sydney University.Google has been preparing to rollout a new alternative to third-party tracking cookies in web browsers but many privacy-focused services are already pushing back. Google calls its new system FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) and says it is interest-based advertising and is privacy-friendly. However this week makers of the privacy-focused web browser Brave, which is based on the code Google's Chrome browser is based on, has stated it will block FLoC in its browser, arguing FLoC is harmful to web users, it will tell sites about your browsing history and make you easier to be tracked across the web. Brave argues Google is driving a false concept of privacy which needs to be defeated. Other organisations, including Electronic Frontiers Foundation, have similarly come out strongly against FLoC.Another security story today, as researchers found that WhatsApp makes it all too easy to deactivate someone else's account even if they have two-factor authentication switched on. This doesn't let someone take over your account, but as a way to disrupt your access it's very serious. The problem allows someone to fail to setup WhatsApp using your phone number, but then by contacting support they can have your account deactivated – by using any email address at all. The issue has been flagged with WhatsApp so hopefully a fix will arrive soon.Spotify has announced a new hardware unit to make it easier to enjoy Spotify in your car. And it's called Car Thing. The Car Thing is launching in the US-only as a limited release, but what makes it noteworthy is tactile features alongside voice commands to make it easy to use without looking. There's a big knob and a smaller back button, plus four preset buttons that will launch assigned playlists or podcasts. Being what Spotify calls an exploration, odds seem likely this will never reach Australia.In products we can buy, Microsoft has launched its new Surface Laptop 4 along with a headset, speaker and webcam to up its in-house conferencing game. Options on the laptop include AMD Ryzen processors as well as Intel Core, though not the newest Ryzen 5000 series which many would have hoped for. Microsoft maintains its uniquely tall 3:2 screen size here and is claiming up to 19 hours battery life on this latest rollout.On Mars, NASA has had to delay the first flight of the Ingenuity helicopter after pre-flight tests revealed the need for a software update. The flight had been hoped to take place last weekend and then today, but the delay is expected to be into next week at this stage. Good luck up there, team.Google has announced it is shutting down its Google Play Movies and TV app from smart TVs including Samsung, LG, and other brands. If you own movies or TV shows through the Google platform you will now be directed to access it all through the YouTube app.Finally, there's a new Transformers toy that needs a mention, with Hasbro unveiling the new Optimus Prime Auto-Converting Programmable Advanced Robot. Yes, as the name suggests it does the transforming all by itself, along with voice commands, driving features and its own app. If you want it, you'll need US$700 to get it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Food delivery business Menulog is set to roll out an employee model for delivery drivers in Australia in a big move to change the poor labour practices of the gig economy. Contractor models have been found to pay less than minimum wages and created poor working conditions and job security. The employee program will begin in the Sydney CBD and the company will work with the Transport Workers Union to set its pay rules.After LG's recent decision to exit the smartphone market, the company has announced a 'three year pledge' to deliver Android OS updates for owners of its handsets that are still out in the market. The promise aims to ensure every owner of its premium model devices will get three major Android system updates from the year they purchased the device. This includes G-series, V-series and VELVET devices from 2019 onward and LG Style and K series phones from 2020.Microsoft has acquired speech technology company Nuance, most famous to many for its Dragon Naturally Speaking software products that enabled high-quality speech to text ahead of many others. The company owns a number of other AI technologies in the space, and was where Apple's Siri originated – even more interesting in light of Microsoft's reduced focus on its AI assistant Cortana. The deal is said to be US$19.7B, Microsoft's fourth big acquisition in recent years after buying game developer ZeniMax, business social network LinkedIn, and software developer platform Github.Nvidia opened its GTC conference overnight, announcing its first CPUs for data centres. NVIDIA Grace CPUs are Arm-based and NVIDIA boasts the processors will be 10x faster than today's fastest servers for AI, neural networks and high performance workloads. NVIDIA also announced new RTX graphics processors for desktops, laptops and workstations for high-end use by artists, designers and engineers.In science, researchers at the Australian National University have applied adaptive optics technology to a new laser system for identifying and removing space debris in Earth's orbit. The system mounts to telescopes and beams visible light to create artificial stars out of space junk for easier identification and removal.In entertainment, Sony has made a deal with Netflix that will break the Disney+ stranglehold on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The deal will see many Sony films go exclusively to Netflix after cinema release for 18-months, and will include Spider-Man and Venom sequels as well as a further Marvel-based film, Morbius. It will also make Netflix the place to find the Uncharted film and Ghostbusters Afterlife.Security research group The Secret Club announced it found a remote code execution flaw in Source Engine video games from developer Valve. Source Engine games include the popular esport shooter Counter Strike Global Offensive. Secret Club says it was reported to Valve five months ago with no response. The flaw is triggered through a Steam invite and loading an infected game server. In the absence of a fix, players are encouraged to disable messages and invites from non-Steam friends.Finally, Australia's most successful esports professional, Ana, is returning to OG to get back into DOTA 2. Ana, originally from Melbourne, has won DOTA's The International twice, part of the only team to have ever achieved the feat in the world's most lucrative esports tournament. The team won in 2018 and 2019 and Ana had retired from the team after the second win. After a recent poor performance by OG at the Singapore Major, Ana's position in the team opened up again and the team announced his return over the weekend. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Vodafone Australia was hit by a nationwide outage on Friday that lasted from around 11am to after 9pm Eastern time. Vodafone acknowledged both calls and data were being affected on its 4G network, though no specific description of what went wrong has been offered yet.Google has accidentally revealed an internal project that allowed it to use data from past ad purchases on its advertising platforms to win bids when buying ads for itself. In documents submitted as part of an anti-trust case against Google in Texas, an unredacted document revealed Project Bernanke helped the company make $230M in 2013 by putting its own tools at an advantage over others through access to its own internal data. Control of both selling and buying within its dominant ad platform is seen as a major aspect of Google's monopoly power in the search advertising market.In the legal battle between Apple and Epic Games, internal emails reveal that senior Apple Executive Phil Schiller believed releasing Apple's iMessage app for Android would hurt the company. Epic aims to build a picture of a monopolistic Apple and argues this means it is a known point of 'lock in' for users. In the US, apps like WhatsApp have not caught on as widely as elsewhere in the world so many more Apple users do stay within the iMessage app.A study by researchers at University of Southern California has found that job advertisements appearing on Facebook have a gender bias. Their analysis showed Facebook was using existing skews in gendering of job types and company demographics to show ads on a gender skewed basis. A similar test of LinkedIn found that the business-focused social network was actively ensuring its job ads were displayed with no such gender skew.In Earth science, researchers from Southern Cross University have found a methane-eating bacteria in Australian paperbark trees that may have potential for cutting down greenhouse gases. The discovery found the microbes are abundant and mitigated a third of methane emissions from paperbark – a result of new research into methane emissions caused by trees.In the oceans, researchers are finding more species of fish are migrating away from the equators as seas grow too hot. The problem could see mass extinctions in ocean environments as diversity is reduced in equatorial regions while the growth in diversity elsewhere will include invasive actions and see other species reduce in numbers or die off. The study suggests that, apart from the importance of climate change mitigation, changes to fishing and mining is critical to help manage these problems.In games, Bloomberg has reported that Sony is focusing its PlayStation developers on blockbuster games only at the expense of riskier, quirkier projects. The report says there will be no Days Gone sequel, while another studio is working on a full remake of The Last Of Us just 8 years after the original and less than three years since the release of the Remastered version for PS4.And finally, Pentanet GG won the inaugural LCO series defeating Peace 3-1. The team will represent the Australian region at the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational in Reykjavik, Iceland starting May 6. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Senior members of the Australian government have been targeted in phishing attacks this week, with news Health Minister Greg Hunt and Finance Minister Simon Birmingham have been attacked, as well as Australian ambassadors overseas. The attackers impersonate the officials on WhatsApp and Telegram services, contacting people from their stolen address books to find out about people living in Hong Kong. The AFP continues to investigate and is educating MPs on how to deal with phishing attacks.Component shortages continue to grow in impact, with a report from Nikkei Asia that Apple MacBook and iPad production is being delayed due to shortages of parts like mounting components and display parts. Apple is known to run a very tight supply chain that avoids warehousing, so while devices are set to remain available the report suggests some production plans are being delayed until later in the year. Optus has announced a new feature for its phone and broadband customers that will offer a simple app interface to shut off internet access across both mobile and Wi-Fi for a set period of time. Dubbed Optus Pause, the tool in the My Optus app will allow choosing devices and a time period after which connectivity will be restored – a helpful idea for some who need to enforce some offline time in their lives.Australian researchers have published a study on using drones to herd sheep as a positive improvement over traditional methods. The research out of UNSW Canberra and published in Scientific Reports found that drones that approached carefully while emitting certain tones could herd sheep with less stress on the animal. Drones are already in use on farms, but this research helps understand the positive impacts on animal welfare.During an online presentation at the Game Developers Conference recently, Intel has announced a new AI tool that aims to remove toxic language from a livestream in real-time. It's called Bleep, and the settings screen shows options for a series of sliders that control how much toxic language is OK across fields like misogyny, racism, sexism and more. There's even a toggle for the N-word. If only we could deal with the toxic culture that created a need for something like this in the first place.Lenovo has announced its latest gaming smartphone, the Legion Duel 2. The phone features multiple USB-C ports that can be used simultaneously to fast-charge the device's huge battery in just 30 minutes, as well as two cooling fans to let the phone run its processors at high speeds while gaming. It's a beast of a handset and for those wondering if it's overkill, remember that mobile has become the primary gaming platform across many parts of the world – the Legion phone is part of a competitive market with Asus and Xiaomi also eager to win.In esports, the League of Legends LCO Grand Final will take place at 6pm Saturday night, with the top two teams of the Split, Pentanet.gg and Peace, set to face off. The final series saw the Chiefs make a big run into the semi-finals from the bottom of qualification, but Peace held them off to secure their place in the final. You can watch the best of five match live on Twitch.This weekend also sees the final of the Asia Pacific Predator League taking place, with events in both PUBG and DOTA 2. Australia's Team Immunity is expected to place highly in the PUBG final, taking place Sunday afternoon. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Big news in science today, with particle physicists closing in on a fifth fundamental force of nature. During magnetic experiments on sub-atomic Muon particles at Fermilab in the USA an unexpected wobble was observed that could upend the entire Standard Model of physics. There remains a 1 in 40,000 chance the observation was a statistical anomaly, so experiments will continue to achieve a level of confidence that will make it a valid discovery. If true, the result opens up potential new explanations for many remaining puzzles in physics, from dark energy to potential undiscovered sub-atomic particles.Elsewhere in science, researchers have debunked the 2016 NASA Eagleworks test results that found evidence of thrust generated by the hypothetical EmDrive technology. The concept claimed to generate thrust with no exhaust using electromagnetic radiation in an asymmetric cavity – a result that breaks the fundamental law of conservation of momentum. New testing has found the original test introduced heat into the engine mount, resulting in a change in how the measurement scale was calibrated. An improved test showed that, as expected, the EmDrive produces no thrust whatsoever.Twitter has declared its ban on President Trump's tweets also means the US National Archive cannot preserve them in the same way they preserve tweets of other government officials or accounts. The archive wants to be able to make the tweets available in the same way other accounts were shifted to accounts now controlled by the archive, but Twitter stands by its position that the ban on his account must remain in force regardless. A tricky situation for the idea of preservation of historic records in all their forms.In cybersecurity, research has found that Microsoft and Zoom were the most commonly impersonated companies in phishing attempts during 2020, accounting for 80% of such attacks. Phishing attacks come in many forms, aiming to encourage a user to click a link in an email that takes them to a compromised web location. Amongst brand-impersonation attacks, Microsoft was a dominant 70% of attacks, Zoom at 9% and Amazon at 7%.Apple has announced its Find My service, which lets users track the location of their Apple phones, tablets, and laptops, will soon expand to incorporate third-party device tracking. The tracking system includes real-time information for network connected devices and last-time-seen location markers for devices that connect to networks via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The first new devices will include e-bikes from VanMoof, Belkin Soundform wireless earbuds and Chipolo tracking tokens.The Verge has spotted a filing at the US Federal Communications Commission that reveals Sonos is working with IKEA on a new wall art speaker system. The companies have worked together on bookshelf and table lamp speakers already, and the filing suggests an updated version of the lamp may also be on the way. To date speakers integrated into art have been prohibitively expensive, so the potential for a new affordable offering in this space is very intriguing. Sonos has just launched its new portable speaker, the Sonos Roam, and you can read the Byteside review now at byteside.com. Spoiler: I loved it.Live streaming platform Twitch has announced it will now ban streamers for harassment that takes place beyond the confines of its platform. The Amazon-owned service aims to crackdown on streamers being associated with any forms of abuse or criminal acts, whether they happen on Twitch or not.Finally, Google just released a fun AR app that lets you tunnel through the Earth to see what's on the other side. If that's a dream you've always held in your heart, the Floom experiment is worth a look.https://experiments.withgoogle.com/floom See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.