The ACCC has won its Federal Court case against Google, with the court finding that "unlike what Google claimed, turning off the Location History setting in Android did not stop the collection, storage and use of consumers' personally identifiable location data". Apparently this is the first time anywhere in the world a court has found Google guilty of this sort of bullshit. Now that Google got busted collecting data it said it wouldn't, the ACCC is asking the court to fine Google and force Google to inform users what happened and make it super clear on Android what data is or isn't collected.
The shortage of semiconductors will continue well into 2023 according to TSMC and Intel. This means its gonna be a pain in the arse to buy a fancy graphics card, high end CPU or any other piece of cutting edge electronics for a while yet. Apple is probably the least impacted company as they can afford to swing their giant gold plated balls around in TSMC's office and cough up the big bucks to make TSMC and other manufacturers devote as much manufacturing capability as they can to Apple, leaving everyone else that isn't a trillion dollar company waiting their turn. It's no surprise then that the sales of equipment used to fabricate semicondictors was worth US$71.19b in 2020, an increase of 19% from 2019.
Mercedes Benz has premiered its first full electric S-class. It's a bit of a big deal because the S-class is considered the benchmark for pretty much all other passenger cars. For the last 40 years its been the car with the fanciest features, the best build quality and envied by all the other car makers. MB's press kit has loads of info on the EQS plus hands-on first impressions from Autogefühl and others on YouTube. If dropping a lazy $250,000 on a Mercedes isn't in your future, maybe Audi's new Q4 e-tron, BMW's i4 Gran Coupe or a A$4,000 price drop on an Tesla Model 3 will do it for ya. Still too pricey? TrueGreen Mobility plans to import EVs made by Chinese company BYD into Australia for under $35k.
In Amazon's relentless quest for world domination, they moved from just selling books into publishing them too. Unfortunately they're being dicks about letting libraries have copies of books they publish. Amazon flat out refuses to licence or sell any of the e-books or audiobooks it's responsible for to libraries, presumably because they view library users as people who refuse to pay a monthly fee for Kindle or Audible, so fuck em. It's becoming more of a problem as big name authors go exclusively with Amazon for their latest works. What a damn shame.
📻 Sharp Tongues - Dead Pony
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.