Samsung caught by the ACCC bending the truth on how waterproof its phones are
ACMA finds that slow 2.4GHz wi-fi is why customers aren’t getting full NBN speeds
Facial recognition system used by London police has an 81% failure rate
Bitcoin electricity use keeps growing, now more than Switzerland
Cheap iPad 32GB with Optus data, Nintendo Wii, TP-Link powerline networking kit, Viofo A129 dashcam, Optus pre-paid starter kit
The ACCC is taking Samsung to the Federal Court because it reckons Samsung's advertising of Galaxy S10 smartphones is misleading customers as to its true water resistance. Samsung advertises the Galaxy S10 is being water resistant, with people jumping around pools and at the beach, but on its website says that the Galaxy S10 is "not advised for beach or pool use" and has been denying customers warranty claims for water damaged phones. Check out the examples the ACCC has collected of Samsung's advertising clearly showing people in and around water with their phones.
ACMA got VDSL 43 modems and tested em to see how each one impacted an FTTN/FTTB NBN user's performance. The test found that on the VDSL side of things, there was hardly any difference between the modems, but when it came to wi-fi performance things get a bit muddier. The report's conclusion determined that using 2.4GHz will be less likely to get speeds over 50 Mbps and to use 5GHz wi-fi instead. NBN unfairly cops the blame for shit internet when sometimes it's just crap wi-fi in the customer's home. So yeah, ACMA's recommendation for people facing slow FTTN speeds? Fix your wi-fi before whinging to us.
The London Metropolitan Police commissioned an independent report into the quality of its currently deployed facial recognition system and found that it had an error rate of 81% - 81% of the matches it made were incorrect. That's so unreliable, it's likely anyone charged with a crime via info the facial recognition system provided will challenge it in court and get off because of how crap it is. It's not news that facial recognition tech is immature right now, but it seems inevitable it'll be perfected sooner rather than later, it'll be deployed everywhere with ramifications we don't fully comprehend and shit will go wild.
Here's some shit info that'll ruin your day - all the energy used to mine Bitcoin is greater than all the energy Switzerland uses doing all the billion times more useful things Switzerland does (like chocolate, cheese and backpacks). Cambridge University has a Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, that estimates in real time how much electricity is required to maintain the Bitcoin network. It's a bee's dick in the scheme of things (0.25% of global electricity consumption), but it's doubled in the last 6 months. I don't know how much of that electricity comes from fossil fuels, but even 0.000001% is too much.
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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.