Good news! Bunnings and Kmart have joined The Good Guys in pausing their unconsented facial recognition experiments on shoppers. Bunnings re-iterated their bizarre argument that "an individual's image is only retained by the system if they are already enrolled in the database of individuals who are banned or associated with crime in our stores", but doesn't reveal how it built that database in the first place. The EFA explains in this post how Bunnings is shying away from the truth - either deliberately or because whoever they get to speak about it has no idea how the tech works. It's pretty hard to check if someone entering your store is "associated with a crime" without building a "faceprint" of every customer to compare against the faceprints of the ones you want to keep out.
In an ACCC submission regarding NBN's updated Special Access Undertaking, Telstra reckons they're able to "offer fixed wireless services in the 50-100 Mbps speed range at a lower price than what they are able to offer on the NBN" and that "price sensitive customers choose not to pay high prices for low-speed NBN plans (50 Mbps and below) and instead take up mobile and fixed wireless for broadband when suitable". You'd think Telstra would be happy about this as that's more margin for them, but even they admit it'll result in a shittier service for everyone as wireless networks get hammered. A group of challenger ISPs (MNF Group, MyRepublic, Southern Phones, etc.) even agree with Telstra! The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I don't normally write about video game community drama, much less about something as lame as EVE Online, but this story is too good not to mention. There's a bloke called Mittani who plays EVE Online and is so reviled, so loathed and generally hated, that people are celebrating his retirement from the game. He is quitting the game because of the harassment he is copping for ignoring "persistent sexual harassment and misconduct" in their game club or something. It doesn't matter, I just love the concept of being so hated by strangers that when you quit playing a video game people are happy about it. Imagine living that life, goddamn. Would it surprise you to learn that this drama was born and spawned in the bowels of Something Awful? No, no it would not.
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