Following through on its threat if the mandatory media bargaining law was passed, Facebook blocked Australian publishers from "sharing or posting any content on Facebook Pages", blocked links and posts from being viewed by Australians from international publishers (e.g: Reuters, New York Times, BBC) and blocked the ability for individual Australians to view or share news content worldwide. Unfortunately non-news pages, like the Bureau of Meteorology, Queensland Health, various charities and others were accidentally hit with Facebook's ban. Google on the other hand, stitched up a deal with News Corp and is unlikely to carry out its threat of blocking us from using Search. Casey Newton has a good take on this, being American he takes a bit more of an outsider look than local media who all have skin in the game.
Chalk up yet another surprise thanks to COVID - Chromebooks taking a market share lead over Macs. Apple's computers are now relegated to third place. I couldn't determine if this is all time or active users, or simply 2020 shipments (I think it's 2020 shipments), but of all the computers sold in the world, units running Windows make up 80.5%, Chrome OS 10.8% and Macs 7.5%. According to the market intelligence firm IDC, the jump in Chromebook sales has been building for years, but the latest jump is due to an increase in schools handing them out to kids learning from home and workplaces wanting cheap, basic and easy to manage laptops for remote workers.
The University of Cambridge's Centre for Alternative Finance has created the Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. It tires as best as it can to measure how much electricity Bitcoin mining uses, which can then possibly measure how much CO2 mining Bitcoin is responsible for. As of mid-Feb 2021, the Bitcoin network is sucking down around 16 gigawatts. To put that into comparison, the entire Australian NEM is generating 21.5 gigawatts. I use the phrase "as best as they can" here as it's impossible to fully know exactly where a Bitcoin was mined and where the source of electricity used to mine that Bitcoin came from, but a rough guide is better than no guide.
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