Typo for the ages printed on 46 million new $50 notes
An anonymous tipster with eagle eyes, a magnifying glass and, presumably, a little free time, alerted radio stations to a typo on the new $50 banknote that has escaped everyone’s attention since 46 million of them were rolled out in October last year.
The RBA has confirmed the word “responsibility” is incorrectly spelled “responsibilty” – without the third “i”.
The error is in a near-microscopic quote printed above Edith Cowan’s shoulder. It appears three times in a row.
The total value of the misprinted notes is $2.3 billion. The RBA issued a statement on Thursday morning saying it was aware of the typo and that it would be corrected in the next print run.
It is not yet known for how long the RBA has been aware of the error.
Australian banknote author Mick Vort-Ronald said printing errors were common, but typos were not. He said he had never seen this before in his 43 years of writing about banknotes.
“You have to ask whose responsibility it is to check the spelling,” Mr Vort-Ronald said.
He said some errors were worth thousands of dollars, but that this note was unlikely to be worth any more than $50.
Optus most likely RSP to suffer a fixed-line outage
Optus fixed-line internet is more than three times as likely to suffer an outage than rival internet service providers, according to a report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
Measuring Broadband Australia report today (May 7th) and for the first time covered the average number of outages that lasted more than 30 seconds for each major retail service provider (RSP) of NBN services.
Each RSP was able to keep its number of daily outages below 0.5 with the exception of Optus, which reached just under 1.6 outages per day in February.
The average download performance for each telco was just that –average – with only 6.4 percent difference between the slowest and fastest RSP.
Premium for up to 6 people residing at the same address for $17.99/month. One device per primary account holder, while supplies last. Sub-accounts ineligible. AU only. Shipping & handling by Google: a Google account and Google-approved form of payment required to redeem a device. Offer ends 14 May 2019, devices must be redeemed by 31 May 2019. Terms apply.
Tech bros drink ‘Liquid Death’ instead of booze
The product, which is the brainchild of former Netflix creative director Mike Cessario, is a non-carbonated, unflavored water sourced and canned in the Alps and packaged in tallboy cans.
According to Liquid Death’s site, the beverage lets you “murder your thirst.” It also has natural electrolytes and minerals and sells for $21.96 for a 12-pack.
On Tuesday, the company announced an additional $1.6 million in funding from other tech-world types, including Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Away co-founder Jen Rubio.
According to The Washington Post, bottled water was the most successful mass-market beverage category in 2018, with nearly 14 billion gallons sold.
As of now, you can only buy Liquid Death online.
‘A big year for e-sports’: Gamers descend on Sydney for IEM
Gamers from around Australia and overseas converged on Sydney earlier this week as part of an international competitive video gaming tournament that is rapidly shaping up as one of the country’s top e-sports events.
The Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) event was held from April 30-May 5 at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, drawing thousands of spectators to the stadium and millions more watching online.
Sixteen teams, including three from Australia, took to the stage, with players from the USA, UK, Brazil, Holland and Sweden
In a strongly contested grand final, US team Liquid defeated Swedish team Fnatic 3-2 in a best of five match scenario, collecting a $A143,000 prize in the process, while a show match between Australia and the UK — dubbed “The Caches” — was held before the grand final, with Team Australia beating the UK.
first-person shooter Overwatch was included in the line-up as part of the Overwatch Contenders season 1 finals, with Melbourne-based team Order defeating the Sydney Drop Bears to take out the top spot and secure a berth for the Overwatch Pacific Showdown in Shanghai later this month.
there were about 8000 visitors each day, with up to 260,000 concurrent viewers streaming the event online at one point, with a total viewership exceeding last year and likely to be somewhere in the region of 15 million viewers
Joes Podcast Notes
Google reveals that 10 percent of devices are using Android 9 Pie, thats nine months after its been released.
- Google has announced that 10.4 percent of the total of all the Android devices is running Android Pie, which is the latest version of the mobile OS that the company officially released last year on August 6th.
- Apparently Oreo still makes up the largest percentage of Google’s current install base, with a combined 28.3 percent across Android 8.0 and 8.1,…. then followed by Android Nougat at 19.2 percent and thats for versions 7.0 and 7.1 together. Android 6.0 Marshmallow is at 16.9 percent, and Android Lollipop at 14.5 percent (thats 4.1 and 4.0 together). Android Pie is only at 10.4 percent — it comes in fifth place..
Discuss what versions we have on our phones and if updates are available .. how often.
Google Pixel 3A: A midrange phone with a flagship camera starting at $399
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05/googles-cheaper-pixel-3a-is-official-starting-at-399/
- As one would expect, The cheaper Pixel 3A and 3A XL is cheaper thanks to a plastic back instead of glass black, it has a cheaper SoC instead of the flagship Snapdragon 845, it has no water resistance, and no wireless charging, and a downgrade to a single front camera instead of the normal + wide-angle dual front camera setup as you would get in the Pixel 3.
- The smaller Pixel 3A has a 5.6-inch, 2220×1080 OLED display and a 3000mAh battery, while the bigger Pixel 3A XL gets a 6-inch, 2160×1080 OLED with a 3700mAh battery. Both devices have a 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a USB-C port. You still get NFC, stereo speakers, squeezable “Active Edge” sides that call up the Google Assistant, an eSIM chip, and an always-on ambient display mode.
- The Pixel 3A and 3A XL comes to market with a 3.5mm headphone jack, a feature lacking in the more expensive Pixel 3. This phone also gets three years of Google’s Android updates as well.
- Both devices have identical designs and look a lot like the smaller Pixel 3. There are sizable top and bottom bezels with rounded display corners. The back features a two-tone design, just like the flagship Pixel 3, and still has a rear-mounted capacitive fingerprint reader. They come in the usual black and white color options as well as a third-option called “Purple-ish” which looks just like the white option with only the slightest hint of purple.
Ask Jordon his opinion on this lesser spec pixel would he get one?
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Nest devices will lose IFTTT support this August
https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/05/08/nest-devices-will-lose-ifttt-support-this-august/
- When google purchased smart home accessory-maker Nest back in 2014. It announced tighter integration of the brand into its hardware division at Google I/O this year, including the rebranding of the Google Home Hub as Google Nest Hub and the announcement of the new, larger Nest Hub Max. That new found closeness is coming at a cost.
- Nest accounts are migrating over to Google accounts, and the company is retiring the Works with Nest API in August, consequently breaking direct IFTTT integration with the current Nest products.
- Before transferring Nest data to a Google account, users will have to remove all existing Works with Nest connections — which will then render any IFTTT recipes that involve Nest devices inoperable.
- Nest will retain Google Assistant integration, so Assistant routines that include actions like adjusting Nest thermostats will still be possible.
- According to Nest’s FAQ about the transition, preventing third parties from requesting direct access to Nest devices helps keep user data more private.
- There’s no announced deadline by which Nest users have to migrate to Google accounts, but the Works with Nest integrations will only continue to function until August 31 at the latest.
- Nest notes that some partners may end support earlier, however.