The Helpdesk

London A.I. Lab Claims Breakthrough That Could Accelerate Drug Discovery

• An artificial intelligence lab in London has built a computer system to map out complex proteins in less than a few hours -- a process that has previously taken years to do manually
• DeepMind, a lab owned by the same parent company as Google, said on Monday that its system had solved what is known as “the protein folding problem.” Given the string of amino acids that make up a protein, the system can rapidly and reliably predict its three-dimensional shape.
• The breakthrough arrives too late to make a significant impact on the coronavirus. But researchers believe DeepMind’s methods could accelerate the response to future pandemics. 
• It is hoped this new AI can help scientists gain a better understanding of genetic diseases along the lines of Alzheimer’s or cystic fibrosis.

Government's cut-price cyber defence leaves departments open to attack

• John Davidson at The Fin writes:
• Australian government departments are “making themselves easy targets for criminal and state-based hackers, a report has found.”
• The report, based on a survey of many of Australia's top Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs)
• Australian government departments are under-investing in cyber security
• Compared to private enterprise, government departments are investing less than half the money per employee on securing their technology and data.
• Not surprisingly, The financial services sector was the top-spending industry, averaging $3038 per employee, the CISO Lens Benchmark 2020 report found.

ACCC consulting on Google's pending FitBit acquisition

• The ACCC is seeking feedback on a proposal made by Google concerning its acquisition of Fitbit
• Under the proposed undertaking, Google has said it will not use certain user data collected through Fitbit and Google wearables for its advertising purposes for 10 years. 
• The search giant has also proposed that this ban could be extended by a further 10 years if the ACCC deemed it to be appropriate. 
• ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said “Our decision to begin consultation should not be interpreted as a signal that the ACCC will ultimately accept the undertaking and approve the transaction," 
• Google announced the $2.1 billion deal a year ago but it has not gained final regulatory approval for the deal in Australia or the European Union.

Facebook Buys Customer-Service Software Maker Kustomer

• Facebook Inc. has acquired Kustomer Inc., a New York-based software company that helps businesses manage customer conversations from multiple services on one dashboard.
• The deal was valued at more than $1 billion, said a person familiar with the deal who asked not to be identified because the terms were private.
• The social media giant made the deal to bolster efforts to monetize its messaging business, which is expanding to include customer-service products that help companies interact with people via chat apps, like WhatsApp and Messenger.

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COVIDSafe app to get overhaul to capture all close contacts

• Testing by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) on behalf of the federal health department has shown 100 per cent performance, scoring “excellent” in all operating modes.
• Local iOS developer Quentin Zervaas points out in a passionate twitter thread: 
• In order to achieve “Excellent” for 2 locked iPhones (or as they claim, “100%”), there needs to be a third person nearby with an Android phone running COVIDSafe to facilitate key exchange.
• The app will be posted to github, for full transparency
• The new contract tracing API is available now to look at on Github, as it is made by VMware. The API is called Herald 
• Continues Zervaas: “This is the system the NHS abandoned because it worked nowhere near as well as the Google Apple framework
• He’s linked to a BBC article showing why Herald was rejected by the NHS:
• Contact-tracing app: First version worked on more phones

Black Friday online shopping comes in $9B, $3.6B on smartphones

• Adobe, which is following online sales in real-time at 80 of the top 100 retailers in the U.S. said US consumers spent $9 billion online on Black Friday
• That’s up 21.6% on a year ago. Adobe had originally forecast sales of between $8.9 billion and $9.6 billion.
• Cyber Monday - today - is expected to be bigger again 
• No local numbers yet, but so far I’ve resisted the bargain hunt

Telstra set to pay AU$50m for unconscionable sales to 108 Indigenous Australians

• Telstra has copped a $50m fine from the ACCC for unfairly targeting indigenous Australians with post paid phone contracts
• Staff in five Telstra licensed stores manipulated credit assessments, such as saying the customers were employed, to sign them up. 
• Once the debts were accumulated, Telstra then referred a portion of them to debt collectors.
• The average debt was $7,400 per customer
• According to the ACCC chair Rod Sims said.
•  "Many of the consumers spoke English as a second or third language, had difficulties understanding Telstra's written contracts, and many were unemployed and relied on government benefits or pensions as the primary source of their limited income. Some lived in remote areas where Telstra provided the only mobile network."
• "This case exposes extremely serious conduct which exploited social, language, literacy, and cultural vulnerabilities of these Indigenous consumers," 

Raspberry Pi Used To Hack Tesla Model X SUV Key Fob

• In a story that Elon Musk fans will take with grace and good humour, Tesla’s key fob has been defeated with a $40 Raspberry Pi 
• According to this Tom's Hardware story, a Belgian PhD student managed to wrest full control of a Tesla Model X SUV, by way of hijacking the Bluetooth keyfob and reprogramming it, using a Raspberry Pi.
• Tesla has since issued a software update to protect against that kind of attack
• Since the attack is done via Bluetooth, control could be gained wirelessly from 5 meters away.
• According to the article this is the third time the same student "has...
  

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Netflix to face local content quota under proposed Australian TV reforms

• Netflix and other global streaming services could be forced to spend millions of dollars on Australian programs and films under major changes to media laws proposed by the federal government 
• Federal Communications and Arts Minister Paul Fletcher will launch a green paper with the proposed reforms today
• Fletcher said the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic had reinforced the need for regulatory action to help the TV industry.
• A 2017 inquiry recommended subscription streaming services invest 10 per cent of the revenues they earn in Australia in new local content
• Free to Air Networks currently have to screen 55% locally made content

Coronavirus Victoria: State government-backed universal contact-tracing app that centralises QR code data collection set to be rolled out next week

• The Victorian state government is expected to launch a QR Code app next week, to help people check in at businesses and venues around the state
• The app is being launched by Service Victoria and was custom built by Melbourne startup Two Bulls.
• An anonymous source said “There's a huge advantage for the government because it means that the data is fed directly to the Department of Health and Human Services"
• This also means the data will not be available to the venues themselves, to use for marketing
• The Victorian government's app has been trialled successfully by 100 venues, including Officeworks, which has been using the app to check in customers at five of its stores.

Exclusive: Foxconn to shift some Apple production to Vietnam to minimise China risk

• Foxconn is moving some iPad and MacBook assembly to Vietnam from China at the request of Apple Inc
• Apple is moving production to minimise the impact of a Sino-U.S. trade war.
• This move has been expected for a while now, not just from Apple but from many large US based tech companies, that have the majority of production coming from China
• Taiwanese manufacturers, wary of being caught up in the tit-for-tat trade war, have moved or are considering moving some production from China to countries such as Vietnam, Mexico and India.
• The Vietnamese Foxconn plant currently manufactures Sony TVs
• Foxconn is spending $1b to upgrade its plants in India, to produce more iPhones there  

Microsoft productivity score feature criticised as workplace surveillance

• Microsoft has been criticised for rolling out a new feature to track users productivity in its Office 365 products
• The reports show how often employees are using Office Products like Outlook, Word and Excel, and how often they’re in meetings, based on their calendar
• I saw a glimpse of this at my old workplace, and really found it quite disgusting, and I’m glad to see this being reported. 
• “The word dystopian is not nearly strong enough to describe the fresh hellhole Microsoft just opened up,” tweeted David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of the office productivity suite Basecamp. 

Ant’s Bargain bin - what have you found for black...

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ABC and SBS added to Mandatory News Code 

• The ABC and SBS have been included in the draft code of the federal government’s bill that seeks to force Google and Facebook to pay news publishers for their content
• Labor, the Greens and several crossbenchers suggested the public broadcasters should be added to the ranks of Australian news publishers to benefit from the code
• If passed, the legislation would force Google and Facebook to share revenue from news links with news publishers or pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
• Google was quick to create a new video of that woman on the bus explaining why the code was a bad idea… 
• Facebook has maintained a public silence since announcing on 1 September it would block Australians from sharing news, but is understood to be in confidential negotiations with the government. 
• BUT they are advertising for a Digital News Curator - suggesting they still expect to have news to curate. “Curate credible news and video content from a diverse set of publishers, broadcasters, public figures, and influencers, covering a wide range of subject areas, including news, health, entertainment and sports” 
•  https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2304152225/  

OANN suspended from YouTube after promoting a sham cure for Covid-19

• YouTube has suspended the conservative news outlet One America News Network from posting new videos for a week and from making money off of its existing videos after it promoted a sham cure for Covid-19.
• The video was removed under YouTube’s policies to prevent the spread of Covid-19 misinformation, which prohibit saying there is a guaranteed cure to the virus. 
• OANN has been suspended for “repeated violations” of this policy, said a YouTube spokeswoman, Ivy Choi.
• OANN has had remarkable growth following the US election, as many Trump voters and Trump himself accused Fox of costing him the election 
• In the Trump orbit, Fox News has become too left leaning… 

Salesforce to Buy Slack? 

• According to the Wall Street Journal, Salesforce is in “advanced stages” to buy  Slack, the wildly popular workplace collaboration tool 
• The companies could reach a deal within days—in time for Salesforce to report its third-quarter financial results on Tuesday
• Slack is currently valued at 17 billion, and resisted selling to Microsoft four years ago. Microsoft went on to make Teams, a Slack-like competitor. 
• With Microsoft out of the bidding, and Apple not interested, Salesforce could be the only company with both the cash on hand and the reason to purchase Slack 
• While Slack has the name recognition of Zoom during lockdown, its stock has only modestly improved, while other remote work tools around it have skyrocketed 
• This might suggest that Slack has exhausted its pool of paying customers 
• The size of the deal could be massive, as Salesforce is happy to open its wallet. They bought Tableau for $15 billion and Mulesoft for $6.5 billion. Slack would be Salesforce’s biggest ever...
  

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Telstra puts the brakes on its start-up accelerator

• Telstra will no longer be welcoming founders into its start-up accelerator Muru-D after the telco reviewed how it engages with the sector. 
• Muru-D was started in 2013, since then 140 startups across 17 cohorts have graduated from the accelerator. 
• But the telco says things have changed & “ there are now many start-up accelerators from venture capitalists, global accelerators, university and government partnerships to help early stage companies develop their initial product.” 
• Instead of investing in start-ups Telstra will use muru-D to provide start-ups with access to its technologies and “work selectively with more mature start-ups on partnerships with Telstra as either a supplier to us or as a go-to-market partner.”
• That means no new seed funding.
• How should corporations engage the start-up sector? 

COVIDSafe data 'incidentally' collected by intelligence agencies in first six months

• The collection happened “in the course of lawful collection of other data” allowed under the Privacy Act. 
• The collection is considered incidental because it was not possible to collect the data covered by a warrant without inadvertently collecting the COVIDSafe data.
• COVIDSafe uses bluetooth to log proximity, not location data but the app requires a user to upload some personal info like name, age, postal code, and phone number.

The case for getting your parents off Facebook 

• NYT opinion writer Charlie Warzel asked two baby boomers, who he had never met, for the passwords to their Facebook accounts so he could see what their newsfeeds looked like around the US election. 
• He found “an information hellscape” 
• “Touching family moments are interspersed with Bible quotes that look like Hallmark cards, hyperpartisan fearmongering and conspiratorial misinformation” 
• And as Cam Wilson points out at Gizmodo, Facebook is still taking ad money from anti-vax groups in Australia, despite saying it would ban Anti-vax ads 
• Facebook Keeps Taking Money To Promote Australian Anti-Vaxx Content Despite Their Ban

Twitter to relaunch account verifications in early 2021, asks for feedback on policy

• For the last few months, Twitter has not been giving out the blue tick to users, as it put the verification system on hold 
• The system will relaunch in 2021, with an emphasis on companies, community groups, and activists, not just the twitter famous
• Twitter says an account must be “notable and active,” and the badge won’t be awarded to any accounts with incomplete profiles. You also must not have broken any twitter rules in the past six months  
• Twitter is asking for feedback on the system 

And a brief follow up for yesterday...

NSW Launches Safework Taskforce on food...

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UberEats rider Bijoy Paul killed in incident on Sydney road

• First to some sad news, an UberEats rider died in hospital after he was hit by a car in Sydney on Saturday morning while completing a delivery. 
• Overnight, another uber rider was killed in redfern 
• Uber Eats rider killed in Sydney is the fifth food delivery death in two months
• The deaths have sparked an outpouring of grief from his fellow riders and calls for more protective equipment and better insurance from the sector's union.
• A NSW government report released earlier this month found gig economy workers receive only limited safety advice from food delivery platforms, suffer abuse and often fear reporting incidents.

• 5 food delivery rider to die on Australian roads in the past three months. 

Another apology from Facebook 

Facebook apologises for misleading advertisers

• Facebook has said sorry to Australian advertisers for miscalculating metrics such as how many people clicked on an ad or how much users prefer one advertiser over another. 
• The social media giant is giving free "credits" to multiple local advertisers to make up for the stuff up. 
• Zoe Samios reports, A Facebook spokeswoman claimed it had affected 0.1 per cent of the local advertising market, but multiple industry sources said that a number of companies across large advertising agencies were affected. 
• The incident casts further doubt over the accuracy of the way Facebook measures its own performance. 

France is delaying Black Friday

France Postpones Black Friday 

• The giant sale is scheduled for Friday 27th of November and by now you’ve probably received some marketing emails in your inbox. But the French will have to wait a little longer to indulge in the festive consumerism. 
• The NYT reports, The French government declared it was postponing Black Friday, as it moved to quell a nationwide rebellion by shopkeepers who say that Amazon has been stealing business from them during France’s coronavirus lockdown.
• Amazon has agreed to the delay and the sale, which it popularised in Europe, will be pushed back by a week, to Dec. 4 with restrictions planned to lift on Dec the first. 
• The pandemic has solidified Amazon’s dominance in the retail sector, while small businesses have been getting crushed. 
• FWIW, these are made up events and can be changed therefore I’d like Australian retailers to pick a new name for the sale. Call it five weeks until Christmas… 

Inside YouTube’s plan to win the music-streaming wars

• Protocol has an interesting report on Youtube’s strategy to win the music streaming wars. 
• “Not that long ago, YouTube was at best a frenemy to the music industry. It would gleefully announce the billions it was paying in royalties, only for industry bodies

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Remember #CensusFail? 

Census 2021 cyber security measures only 'partly appropriate', audit finds

https://www.zdnet.com/article/australian-2021-census-preparation-gets-marginal-pass-mark-from-auditor/

• The Census happens again next year, and the ABS still has work to do to avoid a repeat of 2016 mistakes. 
• As a quick reminder, the official story is the 2016 Census was downed by a series of distributed-denial-of-service attacks
• ZDNet points out the 2021 census is moving from on-premise servers to Amazon’s AWS - which should at least help with load
• An Auditor general’s report, released yesterday found that the ABS systems were “partly effective” and “largely appropriate” -  faint praise indeed. 
• But the report concludes the ABS “has not put in place arrangements to ensure that improvements” on governance, reporting, change management or infrastructure. 
• Anyone who works in IT will be shaking their damn head at this. 

Want an electric car? Head to Canberra. 

A follow up on electric cars from last week(?) 

• Getting a look at what progressive electric car policy would look like in Australia, with the ACT announcing that it will offer electric car buyers free rego and interest free loans up to $15,000 
• Currently, the ACT already provides a stamp duty exemption to electric car buyers, as well as a 20 per cent discount on registration.

ACT to offer electric car buyers free registration and $15,000 loans 

The ACT is set to be the most electric vehicle-friendly jurisdiction in Australia, offering interest-free loans and free rego

Apple’s iOS 14 Privacy features Delayed until 2021 

Apple doubles down on upcoming iOS 14 privacy features, slams Facebook for collecting 'as much data as possible'

• One key feature of iOS 14 is App Tracking Transparency
• This will allow users to see how often an app tracks it’s location, and what other apps and services the app then shares that data between. 
• Today, many free apps send a lot of information back to large advertising companies - mainly Youtube and Facebook 
• if you have a free weather app on your phone, unless it’s from the bureau of meteorology, it is undoubtedly selling your location history. 
• Petey’s Sniff Test: how big is your app? 
• Many apps also use “crash analytics” packages offered for free from Twitter and Facebook, which also report back to their respective makers on app usage. 
• Apple said the delay is to give time for developers to make changes necessary in their apps - perhaps some developers would be as shocked as users would be at how much data their apps are leaking back to other companies. 
• In its letter, Apple singled out Facebook as a company that “tries to collect as much data as possible” on its users
• Facebook has told advertisers they could see a “drop in revenue of 40%” when the privacy tools come online.

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Apple reduces its cut for indies

Apple will reduce App Store cut to 15 percent for most developers starting January 1st

• Apple has announced one of the biggest changes in App Store history 
• Called the App Store Small Business Program, any developer who earns less than $1 million a year will now pay Apple 15 percent, not 30 percent (of app revenue & in-app purchases) 
• The cynical view is Apple is making these changes as a public relations play
• Epic Games is suing Apple in Australia and the US, in part over the 30% cut, which Epic Games calls an “unfair Apple tax” 
• According to the New York Times, this change will cover 98% of developers on the App Store - which means the majority of money is made by the other 2% of developers… 

Google Takes on The Banks 

Google Pay gets a major redesign with a new emphasis on personal finance

• Google  is launching a major redesign of its Google Pay app on both Android and iOS today.
• Google Pay can store credit and debit cards, as well as voucher and loyalty cards
• The bigger news is Google is partnering with Citi Bank to create it’s own virtual bank
• The new app will feature many of the key benefits of “app banks” - like savings goals and spending habits 
• The new app is not currently available in Australia - perhaps waiting on a local partner

Trump will still have power on Facebook next year

How Twitter and Facebook plan to handle Trump’s accounts when he leaves office.

• Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg fronted congress again yesterday, and revealed how the companies would deal with a post Trump world
• Dorsey confirmed Trump would lose all the protections his account currently enjoys on Twitter - suggesting that Trumps false tweets would be rejected, rather than mislabeled as false 
• Zuckerberg said Facebook would not change how they currently moderate Trump 
• Some other interesting tibits from the hearing: 
• Zuckerberg had to again defend his stance on not banning Steve Bannon, after he called for the beheading of government officials 
• And when asked if social media can be addictive, Twitter’s Dorsey said yes, Zuckerberg said the “data was inconclusive” 

Jack Dorsey says social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook can be addictive — Mark Zuckerberg says the research is 'inconclusive'

Another Day, Another MVNO

Optus launches Singtel's Gomo mobile brand in Australia

• Last week saw the launch of TPG and Vodafone’s low cost sub-brand, Felix
• Today Optus launched it’s new MVNO, Gomo 
• Like Felix, Gomo is just one plan, but it’s much more generous than Felix
• For $25 a month, you get 18gbs of data, uncapped, and the data rolls over 
• Felix gives “unlimited data” capped at 5 megabits per second
• Gomo is offering the first month for $1 for the first five thousand...
  

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New M1 Mac Reviews: 

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/

Faster video and audio editing, encoding 

Crazy battery life 

Rosetta 2 shows no tax to the system 

Staying with Apple, and Epic Games is suing Apple in Australia

Epic Games is Now Suing Apple in Australia

Epic is claiming that Apple’s refusal to allow alternative payment options on its platforms, such as the App Store, is a breach of Australian consumer law.

“This is much bigger than Epic versus Apple – it goes to the heart of whether consumers and creators can do business together directly on mobile platforms or are forced to use monopoly channels against wishes and interests,” Epic founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney, said in a statement.

The games company is also suing Apple in the US.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/google-and-facebook-rejected-1-in-5-data-requests-from-law-enforcement-in-2019-20201117-p56fa5.html

Lisa Visentin in SMH: 

“Facebook and Google are rejecting one in five data disclosure requests from Australian law enforcement bodies, amid rising concerns among security agencies about platforms adopting end-to-end encryption.

The tech giants defended their data disclosure practices at a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday, where they were also grilled about the adequacy of their measures to protect users from abusive content on their platforms

Both Google and Facebook said they rejected about 20 per cent of data disclosure requests from Australian law enforcement agencies in 2019 on the grounds the requests were too broad or had no legal basis.” 

Twitter launches disappearing 'fleets' worldwide - Software 

 Twitter’s “Fleets” feature is now rolling out to all iOS and Android users. Despite Twitter marketing Fleets as “disappearing” Tweets, they’re really yet another version of the popular “stories” feature found on most social media platforms 

It’s always fun watching companies announce something that is so clearly a rip off of something else, and bend over backwards to pretend they came up with the idea themselves. 

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Robodebt Settlement

The federal government agreed on Monday to pay $112 million in compensation, interest and legal costs to up to 430,000 people who were affected by the scheme, which recouped alleged welfare overpayments calculated through a flawed method.

Former ABC reporter Ariel Bogle tweeted: Wonder if this is the biggest-ever settlement related to government-by-algorithm, even globally?

Another fun reaction from Dan Nolan, Comp Sci ethics courses are going to replace the ariane 5 with robodebt for being an insanely costly disaster

at least if they make people do ethics courses anymore… 

Github brings back youtube-dl 

The worlds’ largest code repo has reinstated youtube-dl.

A quick reminder, youtube-dl is an open source tool that allows users to download video from the popular video service, as well as from ABC iView, SBS on Demand, and other streaming platforms. 

“Today we reinstated youtube-dl, a popular project on GitHub, after we received additional information about the project that enabled us to reverse a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown. “ 

“Nonetheless, developers who want to push back against unwarranted takedowns may face the risk of taking on personal liability and legal defense costs. To help them, GitHub will establish and donate $1M to a developer defense fund to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims. 

Big Sur “Bricking” 2013 and 2014 Macbook Pros

macOS Big Sur Update Bricking Some Older MacBook Pro Models

A large number of late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro owners are reporting that the macOS Big Sur update is bricking their machines. A MacRumors forum thread contains a significant number of users reporting the issue, and similar problems are being reported across Reddit and the Apple Support Communities, suggesting the problem is widespread.

Until it is clear what may be causing the issue and Apple releases a fix, late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro may wish to hold off on installing ‌macOS Big Sur‌.

Felix Launches

TPG's New Felix Mobile Brand Has Only One Plan

The telco is positioning itself as a simple service with just one plan available - $35 a month with “endless” data, but that data is capped at 5mbp speeds. 

That’ll be fine for social, email, browsing, and even some video watch, but don’t expect HD on Netflix

Very clever marketing as Australia’s first “zero carbon telco” - and the service will plant one tree per customer per month. 

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