Twitch admitted to a huge data breach - 125GB of data lifted from 6,000 internal Git repos. As Protocol puts it, this leak is "far from an average, run-of-the-mill leak. This breach involved hundreds of gigabytes of sensitive company data, including platform source code, internal tooling and future product plans, like an Amazon-owned competitor to Valve's Steam marketplace codenamed Vapor". What people are finding most interesting is that the a list of all creator payouts from August 2019 to now was in that data too. Someone called "CriticalRole" made a little over US$9.5m. Good for them. Probably a good idea to change your Twitch password if you have one, and set up 2FA on it if you haven't already.
Alphabet's drone dreams are growing bigger as Wing partners with shopping centre mega-corp Vicinity to run a drone delivery service from its Grand Plaza centre in Logan, QLD. Go check out the pics in the article - there's a roof full of QR codes the drones land and take off from, that'll deliver the fine people of Logan food from Sushi Hub, Boost Juice, and Chatime plus over the counter goods (no prescriptions) from TerryWhite Chemmart. Apparently the fine people of Logan love Wing, getting "10,000 cups of coffee, 1,700 children's snack packs, 1,200 roast chickens, 2,700 sushi rolls, and 1,000 loaves of bread" delivered since the start of trials there in 2019.
Paul Fletcher, our federal Communications Minister, went in front of the National Press Club yesterday to gloat about how he's a big strong man when it comes to Big Tech (and promote his newly released short book). In his speech he conflated the braveness of Frances Haugen's whistleblowing on Facebook to his government's spineless passing of the News Media Bargaining Code and Online Safety Act, and talked about eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant's theory that tech companies should be designing their products like automakers design cars - with safety in mind. You can read the Minister's full speech on his website. It'll make ya vomit, but this is the bloke in charge of regulating our precious internet. Makes sense for us to know what's on his mind.
Youse enjoyed that NFT story about the ape illustrations yesterday, so today I bring you yet another "WTF NFT": Visionrare. It's essentially fantasy football, but for startups. You invest paper money in these startups and their real world growth/decline gives you a score/more imaginary paper money. Nothing wrong with that - fantasy share trading is a thing and kinda fun with no risk involved - the difference with Visionrare is that you use real money to buy NFTs representing "shares" these businesses. You do not get equity in the business, the businesses are not involved in any way! Far be it from me to tell people how to spend their money, as I've burned cash on some dumb shit in my time, but fuck me dead this is some dumb shit.
📻 Cheer Up London - Slaves
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