Bits: daily tech news bulletin

Discord could be up for sale, with sources at VentureBeat and Bloomberg suggesting the group communication platform could have a US$10 billion price tag hanging on the door. Bloomberg's sources suggest Microsoft could be the main company in talks to make a purchase, while further sources suggest the company may be considering the alternate option of going public. Discord built its reputation within the gaming community but during the pandemic began to broaden its focus to wider communities and businesses as a free alternative to communication platforms like Slack.

In local news, this week Telstra announced exactly how it plans to split itself into separate entities, with a notice to the ASX outlining a separation into four distinct companies – ServeCo, InfraCo Fixed, InfraCo Towers, and Telstra International. All four entities will be owned by Telstra HoldCo, which is the company shareholders will own shares in. Telstra expects the changes to be finalised by the end of 2021 and will put the company into a position to make a play for buying the NBN.

Australia's biggest ever hybrid solar and battery farm has begun construction near Uralla in Northern NSW. The project will result in 720 Megawatts of energy generation, costing $768 million and taking around three years to complete with some parts going live earlier during a staged rollout. Eventual capacity should serve 250,000 homes. The project is set to continue to allow sheep to graze the same lands the solar farm is built upon.

New research shows that Google's ratio of zero-click searches has grown to almost two-thirds of all search during 2020. Data from a panel of 100 million users via SimilarWeb and research firm SparkToro places the percentage of searches worldwide that lead to no clickthrough to another website at 65%. Zero click searches indicate Google provided enough information on the resulting page that no further click was necessary, which feeds into wider arguments around the search engines control over the presentation of information online.

Elsewhere at the Alphabet company, YouTube is testing a new feature that can automatically detect products that appear in videos on the platform and provide related content links, opening up new possibilities for online shopping via the video platform. This could also turn out to be even more annoying than all the pop up recommendations at the end of videos.

Microsoft has announced it will rename its Xbox Live service to Xbox network as a way to clarify the difference between the general online network service and the paid Xbox Live Gold membership service. On Xbox consoles having an Xbox Live Gold membership has been a requirement for all online play, but Microsoft announced in January it will soon change that so free-to-play games like Fortnite can be played online without a membership.

In entertainment news, Disney has announced two of its biggest releases for this American summer have been delayed but will also release on Disney+ the same day they go into movie theatres. Cruella will now release in May while Black Widow has moved to July, both becoming available as premium streaming options via Disney+ on the same release day as theatres. With Australian dates for Black Widow originally scheduled slightly ahead of US cinemas local release may be in cinemas for a number of days prior to Disney+ launch.

After its success with Pokemon Go, Niantic has announced a new partnership with Nintendo to create an augmented reality game based on Nintendo's Pikmin games. Pikmin games are a real-time strategy and puzzle game hybrid, letting you grow cute little creatures to help overcome obstacles.

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The Australian National Audit Office buried a report on Friday afternoon the revealed seven government departments and entities have not fully implemented mandatory cybersecurity risk mitigation strategies that were put in place eight years ago. The mandatory strategies are considered to be the absolute essentials for cybersecurity, such as whitelisting, patching, and restricting admin privileges. Two departments self-reported that they had fully implemented the strategies but were found to have not actually done so – the Attorney-Generals department and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

In the midst of ongoing chip shortages due to the pandemic causing supply constraints, a Japanese chip maker has announced a fire at one of its facilities has stopped production. Renesas says a plant near Tokyo, Japan, had to halt operations due to a fire incident. Renasas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata says an estimated month of downtime required to fix the facility will cost the company 17 billion yen, around $200M. Two-thirds of the chips manufactured at the plant are used by the automotive industry, a further setback where shortages have already been taking a toll.

Zoom, the video conferencing tool that became a verb in 2020, has announced it is releasing a software developer kit to allow other developers to build Zoom video services into their own apps. Zoom believes its video service has proven itself worthy over the past year and everything from games to online stores could benefit from integrating its SDK instead of building their own video systems from scratch.

Facebook says it removed 1.3 billion accounts between October and December last year along with 12 million pieces of COVID-19 misinformation published to the site. In a release of information on its efforts ahead of a US government hearing on the issues in coming days, the company also claimed it now has over 35,000 people working on the misinformation problem. And yet, it keeps happening.

Also at Facebook, the company's attempts to stop a $15 billion class action lawsuit have been rebuffed at the US Supreme Court. The class action is a claim against illegal tracking of users via Facebook Like buttons based on the way they worked between 2010 and 2011. Facebook was trying to limit the scope of the action before it goes ahead but this refusal will see the case move forward.

Still in the courts, Apple is facing its own class action suit over its butterfly style keyboards in MacBooks released between 2015 and 2019. The case argues the company knew minor fixes and modifications to the slimmer style of keyboard design were not an actual solution to an inherently defective product. The case, which began in 2018, has now been certified by a judge in California. Apple no longer uses the butterfly keyboard design.

In video games, feel good hit of the pandemic, Fall Guys, has released a new season and it's a crazy looking neon '80s space themed experience. If you've put Fall Guys to bed the new styles in this season look well worth a look. But maybe you're still busy with Loop Hero, in which case, good luck taking a break from that.

And in esports, Riot Games' Valorant has teamed up with Red Bull to launch a university esports tournament, the Campus Clutch. The event will take place in 35 countries, with qualifier events in Australia during April to find the team to represent the nation at a global final later in the year. Pandemic pending, no doubt.

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Google has teamed up with Lifeline Australia and Black Dog Institute to introduce a new self-assessment tool for people searching for information on depression. Users will now be offered a clinically validated questionnaire used by healthcare professionals to evaluate someone's status, and will be offered links to Lifeline and Black Dog for further support.

Samsung has announced it will be taking a year off from releasing a new Galaxy Note handset in 2021. 

At its annual shareholder meeting, Samsung mobile chief DJ Koh said quote "it could be a burden to unveil two flagship models in a year". Koh said the company still aims to release another Note in 2022. The company also joined the chorus of companies expressing concerns over chip shortages that it believes will begin to impact its business next quarter.

Facebook Groups is getting an algorithm overhaul in an attempt to get Groups to better police their content and reduce the spread of content from Groups that break its rules. Changes include banning individual users who consistently post violating content, and forcing all posts to be moderated in groups where regular rule breaking has occurred and adding warning labels to problem groups. The company will also remove civic and political groups from recommendations worldwide, a move that had already occurred in the USA.

How bad is streaming an hour of Netflix for the environment? A new tool developed by the University of Bristol in the UK is helping to do the calculations and in the process help Netflix and other digital companies reduce their carbon footprint. According to Wired, the DIMPACT tool will help companies in video streaming, advertising, publishing and business intelligence sectors analyse their emissions – including those of their suppliers and customers in the delivery and consumption of their services. The answer to that question according to DIMPACT is that Netflix uses roughly 100 grams of CO2 per hour, which is like driving your car around half a km.

Uber is now officially treating its drivers in the UK as workers. After it lost its efforts to avoid doing so in the British Supreme Court, the company has officially made the transition to paying workers a minimum wage, vacation pay and a pension scheme. However, while the Supreme Court had clarified that the wage timings should work for the whole time a driver is logged into Uber, the company is choosing to only pay drivers for the period in which they have accepted a ride until the passenger is dropped off.

What exactly do you own when you buy an NFT? Software Engineer Jonty Wareing analysed the blockchain reference points of a number of NFT sales, including the US$69M Beeple artwork sold by Christie's, and found the tokens are pointing to URLs that are hosted by the startups involved with selling the tokens. If these companies don't last, neither will the reference points. Site Check My NFT dot com has found many NFT links already fail to load.

In science, astrophysicists from Arizona State University have published a new study that gives the best explanation yet on the origins of the interstellar object 'Oumuamua that visited our solar system in 2017. And it is not alien technology. Their calculations show the object's interactions with our solar system and the way it moved past the Sun are a match for an object made from solid nitrogen ice. They believe it was knock off a Pluto-like body in another solar system around half a billion years ago.

Finally, in esports news, Rainbow Six Siege competition returns on Sunday March 21 with a new Oceanic Nationals format for 2021. The $100,000 tournament will take place over three stages across the year, with eight teams competing for the prize money as well as for qualification to seasonal international tournaments.

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The state of California has approved new laws under its Consumer Privacy Act to prohibit the use of 'dark patterns' in website design. Dark patterns are design techniques used to trick or confuse users into choosing options or service settings that suits the site best, whether through colours, layouts or confusing language. The new rules will also aim to institute a new standardised Privacy Options icon to make it easier for users to find such information.

In the face of sanctions in many Western markets, Huawei has announced it will start using its portfolio of 5G patents to begin charging royalties to major manufacturers including Apple and Samsung. The company announced a royalty rate of up to US$2.50 per device. According to Reuters, Huawei expects to earn $1.3 billion in revenue from patent licensing between 2019 and 2021.

Google has announced the Play Store will reduce its cut of revenue on the first million dollars earned by Android app developers. Last year Apple made a similar move while under pressure from the developer community over enforced use of the App Store payment system, reducing the percentage of revenue from 30% to 15% on the first $1M earned. Google's new offering is more generous, operating like a progressive tax so that all developers keep 15% of that first million while Apple takes 30% of ALL revenue once you cross the million dollar threshold.

Instagram has announced a number of measures to improve safety for teens on the service. New accounts being created by teenagers will be encouraged to make their account private rather than public, and the Facebook owned network will also block adults from direct messaging teens that don't follow them back. If an adult can message a teen but has been quote "exhibiting potentially suspicious behaviour" the recipient will be offered safety prompts helping them understand they don't have to reply, they can block and report the message, and other advice on safety.

Google has announced an upgrade to its Nest Hub, the company's 7-inch smart display device for the home. Apart from a number of general upgrades under the hood to make the unit performance snappier the biggest upgrade is a new radar chip that allows for gesture controls as well as a sleep sensing system that allows for detailed sleep analysis without a wearable required nor a creepy camera staring at you. The 2nd Generation Nest Hub launches March 30 priced at $149.

GoPro users are getting a new name for the app that connects the camera to your smartphone along with new features. In an update today, the app will now be called Quik - the name for another app also by GoPro that will be discontinued as of this change. Along with connecting and controlling your GoPro cameras, the app will also let you bring together video shot on any camera and perform edits, including some automatic edit features, as well as new themes and filters. An unlimited cloud backup service is also available as a subscription. This also means the software has potential for people who don't own a GoPro at all.

Rockstar Games, makers of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption games, has paid a community mod creator $10,000 after they made the online version of GTA load significantly faster. The modder discovered a bottleneck in the game's code that, once rectified, helped the game to load 70% faster. The company will implement the change into official code and made the payment as a thank you for their assistance.

Turning to esports, in the League of Legends Circuit Oceania, Perth's Pentanet continuing its unbeaten run with a ninth straight victory over third placed Dire Wolves. The LCO replaced the previous Oceanic Pro League after Riot Games closed its Australian office at the end of 2020.

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Fallout from the Microsoft Exchange server attack continues, with reports now indicating the exploit is actively in use in over 115 countries. Microsoft is also now investigating the possibility that the vulnerability was leaked shortly before the patch was made available on March 2nd, resulting in the steep rise in the use of the attack vector in the days prior to the patch.

Apple has announced it will discontinue its original HomePod, launched in 2018, to focus on its newer, smaller HomePod mini, launched in November last year. If you already own one, Apple says support will continue for the product through software updates. The launch of the HomePod mini seems to have revealed a strong preference toward this new smaller model, leading Apple to focus its efforts on this design into the future.

Also at Apple, the notoriously secretive Californian company is suing its former advanced materials lead for leaking trade secrets to the media. Simon Lancaster, also a former product design architect at the company, had been with Apple for 11 years before leaving in late 2019. The suit alleges extensive conversations with an unnamed media contact over more than a year, as well as the downloading of confidential documents on his final day of employment that would also assist his next employer.

Adobe has unveiled a new feature for Adobe Camera Raw called Super Resolution, which can quadruple the pixel count of a photograph using AI technology. Adobe says that the feature, available in the latest Creative Cloud update, will help improve pictures taken by many digital cameras and smartphones over the past two decades that look great on screen but do not look good in a large print format. 'Zoom and enhance' indeed.

In other image technology news, scientists at the University of Buffalo believe they have found a new way to detect deepfake faces. The system is focused on wholly synthesised faces created by Generative Adversarial Network models, which have been used widely in the creation of fake social media profiles. The team built a system to analyse the corneal specular highlights in the eyes, finding that GAN generated faces do not maintain appropriate symmetry. As ever, the eye remains the window to the soul.

A team from University College London believes it has created a working 3D computer model of the Antikythera Mechanism. The Ancient Greek device believed to be the world's oldest computer and astronomical calculator, was found in a shipwreck in 1901. Previous studies had solved how the rear of the device worked and now the new study, published in Scientific Reports, reveals how the front of the device combines Babylonian and Ancient Greek astronomies as well as mathematics from Plato's Academy.

Netflix is reported to be testing a crackdown on password sharing, with a prompt to verify users that they should only be using an account if they live at the same premises as the account owner. A check is offered to verify via email or text. In the past, Netflix co-founder and chairman Reed Hastings has over the years commonly stated the company was OK with account sharing. Perhaps when you feel you're reaching a growth ceiling it might start to become something to worry about.

And finally, in art news, Auction house Christies has revealed that the winning bidder on the US$69.3M purchase of an NFT artwork by Mike Winklemann, best known as Beeple, was the founder and finance of the largest NFT fund in the world, Metapurse. The fund offers a shared ownership structure for NFT artworks via the B20 crypto token and will create a virtual museum to house this and other digital artworks. The hammer price made Beeple the third most valuable living artist after Jeff Koons and David Hockney.

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