Telstra loses appeal on Optus’ “Empires End” ad campaign
The Supreme Court of Victoria has dismissed Telstra’s appeal against a previous ruling made regarding an Optus ad campaign that ran earlier this year.
Telstra had alleged that Optus’ now shelved “Empires End” advertising campaign was misleading and deceptive, with the court ultimately siding with Optus in May.
The campaign in question references the results of a 2017 mobile network benchmark commissioned by P3 Connect. The ad spruiked that Optus was the leader in voice and data performance.
The ads appeared online and on large digital banners that read “Empires end. That’s what they do” with an image of a telephone box half-buried in sand in the background.
“We are disappointed with the decision. We have Australia’s best mobile network and we connect millions more Australians than anyone else,” a Telstra spokesperson said
Google to spend US$1 billion on new campus in New York
Google is investing more than US$1 billion on a new campus in New York, becoming the second major technology company after Amazon to pick America’s financial capital to expand and create thousands of jobs.
The 1.7 million square-foot campus, called Google Hudson Square, will include leased properties at Hudson Street and Washington Street, the company said in a blog post on Monday. The new campus will be the main location for Google’s advertising sales division, the Global Business Organization.
Google hopes to start moving into two Hudson Street buildings by 2020, followed by a Washington Street in 2022 and will have the capacity to more than double its New York headcount, currently more than 7000, in the next 10 years.
Apple to build new US$1 billion campus in Texas
Apple said plans to spend US$1 billion to build a second campus in Austin, Texas that will house as many as 15,000 workers, amid a broader push by many US companies to create more jobs at home.
The 133-acre campus in Austin will employ workers across various functions including engineering, R&D, operations and finance. The city is already home to the second largest number of Apple employees outside its headquarters in California.
Apple will also set up sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City, California and hire over 1000 employees each in these locations, while also expanding operations in Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado over the next three years.
announced at the start of the year it would invest $30 billion in the United States, taking advantage of a tax windfall stemming from US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax reforms.
jobs at the new Austin centre would include engineering, research and development, finance and sales functions.
NBN Co expects December data usage hike to reach 21 percent higher than rest of the year
NBN Co has revealed that data consumption for the month of December is set to be 21 percent higher than the average yearly data usage for the rest of the year.
The network provider said households were predicted to consume 245 GB of data compared to the average 203 GB. It is also one-third more from December last year at 183 GB, or close to double from 2015 at 128 GB.
Australian Federal Court penalises another dodgy domain reseller
The Federal Court of Australia this week gave a number of orders to Domain Register Pty Ltd after finding it had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct.
Perth-formed Domain Register Pty Ltd sent 437,819 forms to more than 300,083 .com.au domain owners between January 2011 and May 2014 offering to supply a .com domain name registration for two years for $249.
The court found the new domain names being offered were deceptively similar to those already owned by the recipients and that the forms were deliberately designed to look like invoices or bills for the renewal of held domain names.
Domain Register was also ordered to offer $249 refunds to the 9851 “invoice” recipients and publish public notices in The Australian, The Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph and Courier Mail newspapers, as well as on its own website that detailed its deception, subsequent penalties and how misled buyers could request a refund.
Elon Musk unveils prototype high-speed LA transport tunnel
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-46622582/elon-musk-launches-high-speed-underground-tunnel
Elon Musk has unveiled a prototype underground tunnel in Los Angeles which is designed to transport cars at high speed around the city.
The tunnel is only a mile (1.6km) long at the moment but the goal is a network to ease chronic traffic congestion.
Modified electric cars would be lowered into the tunnel and travel at speeds up to 150mph (240km/h), Mr Musk says.
The tunnel has been built by Mr Musk’s Boring Company, which boasts state-of-the-art engineering techniques.
The plan envisages modified cars being lowered into the tunnel network by lifts and then slotted into tracks on the “loop”.
“The profound breakthrough is very simple: it’s the ability to turn a normal car into a passively stable vehicle by adding the deployable tracking wheels, stabilising wheels, so that it can travel at high speed through a small tunnel,” Mr Musk said.
“The way the loop will work is you will have main arteries that are travelling at 150mph and when you want to go to an exit, you will have an off ramp,” he added.
“So you can travel the vast majority of your journey without stopping at 150mph and only slow down when you get to your exit, and then automatically transfer from one tunnel to another. It’s like a 3D highway system underground basically.”
On Tuesday he said his Boring Company had built the tunnel segment for $10m
adding that traditional tunnel-building technology would have cost up to $1bn.
The tunnel runs beneath the municipality of Hawthorne, where the Boring Company and SpaceX are both based.
Twitter user hacks 50,000 printers to tell people to subscribe to PewDiePie
A Twitter user using the pseudonym of @TheHackerGiraffe has hacked over 50,000 printers to print out flyers telling people to subscribe to PewDiePie’s YouTube channel.
The messages have been sent out yesterday, November 29, and have caused quite the stirr among the users who received them, as they ended up on a bunch of places, from high-end multi-functional printers at large companies to small handheld receipt printers at gas stations and restaurants.
The only condition was that the printer was connected to the Internet, used old firmware, and had “printing” ports left exposed online.
The message the printers received was a simple one. It urged people to subscribe to PewDiePie’s YouTube channel in order for PewDiePie –a famous YouTuber from Sweden, real name Felix Kjellberg– to keep the crown of most subscribed to YouTube channel.
The printer hack is just the latest effort from PewDiePie and his fans to get new followers, efforts which also include the YouTuber putting out a NSFW rap video.
Joes Podcast Notes
20/12/2018
Google kills off Allo to focus on Messages app.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-kills-off-allo-to-focus-on-messages/
- Google has confirmed that it is killing off its smart messaging app Allo in an effort to put more focus on google’s other app called Messages. Allo will continue working until March 2019, with users having the option to export their conversation history into Messages before they close it down.
- Google wants every single Android device to have a great default messaging experience so It has been working closely with the mobile industry to upgrade SMS and MMS so that people around the world can more easily group chat, share high-res photos, and get read receipts on any Android device,”
- There is more than 175 million already using Messages on Android phones every month, thanks to the Google’s partnerships they have created with 40 carriers and device manufacturers worldwide.
- A recent update to Android Messages, which is Google’s default SMS app for Android users, sheds some exciting new features for its users and it’s a hit of what Google may be planning to provide its users for a robust messaging platform and something that’s ready to compete with the likes of Apple’s iMessage service.
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With all this talk about 5G
Sydney And Melbourne Now Have 5G mobile, But You Can’t Use It till 2020
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/12/sydney-and-melbourne-now-have-5g-but-you-cant-use-it/
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- Four companies have won the highly valuable 5G spectrum in the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s latest spectrum auction in the 3.6 GHz band.
- According to the Authority the new licenses will be valid from March 2020 to December 2030.
- There was 350 Lots of Licences on offer,
- – Telstra bought 143 lots.
- – Mobile JV Pty Limited (which is a joint venture arrangement between subsidiaries of TPG Telecom Limited and Vodafone Hutchison Australia Pty Limited) bought 131 lots
- – Optus Mobile Pty Ltd won 47 lots
- – Dense Air Australia Pty Ltd won 29
Licences won at auction will commence in March 2020 and will extend until 13 December 2030. However, arrangements exist to enable earlier access to the band, provided that there is no interference caused to the existing licensees. - To see a list of frequencies and locations see this link – https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/3-6-ghz-band-spectrum-auction-results
- A telstra announcement said there are now 187 sites around Australia that have been 5G-enabled with another 13 to be upgraded before the end of this calendar year.
Telstra said,
“Over the coming months Telstra will continue expanding its 5G coverage with plans to roll out the technology and grow coverage to more cities, regional centres and high traffic areas,” this in turn will also helps increase 4G speeds as well.
- Telstra also announced that it is already using some of the spectrum across the country – including spots in Melbourne and Sydney.
Well that’s great and all , but it’s no use to the consumer because no 5G handsets are out yet anyway.
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The LG TV that rolls itself in and out of a box
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/lg-rollable-tv-release-date-2019-report-2018-12
- LG has unveiled its 65-inch rollable OLED TV prototype at CES 2018, so there’s a good chance we’ll hear more in early January when CES 2019 kicks off. (for now here is a little about it)
- The TV display itself is rolled up like a poster in its own enclosure when not in use. It un-rolls and raises itself upward or down with a press of a button.
- Now this may seem like a novelty item to some, but LG thinks there are some actual realistic applications for a rollable TV.
- One reason is it can be hidden from view when not in use, doing away with the large rectangular black screen that can affect a room’s decor.
- The TV display can automatically roll itself down to the native aspect ratio of the movie you’re watching, therefore eliminating those letterboxing black bars you might see above and below the actual picture.
- The other this this TV can do is it can be rolled down only a little bit when displaying things like music information that’s playing or displaying only the weather.
Insert Point of discussion here.
I wonder if it could be Google or Alexa enabled ?
You think it’s gonna take off or die like the curved screen ?
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Now Google Assistant will warn you if your flight is going to be delayed
- Google Assistant will now tell you when it predicts your flight will likely be delayed, informing users even before airlines confirm the delays.
- The new flight delay prediction feature for Google Assistant comes ahead of this year’s holiday season when flights are more likely to be delayed.
- Users can ask Google Assistant, “Hey Google, is my flight on time?” or ask questions about a specific flight, such as “What’s the status of my flight.
- Users could expect to see a message along the lines of: “Due to a delayed incoming flight, there is a good chance that your flight will be delayed by at least 30 minutes.”
- Google only sends a flight delay alert if it’s 85 percent confident that the flight will be delayed. It uses historical flight status data and machine learning to predict airline confirmations.