The US government, at multiple levels, is very interested in Peiter "Mudge" Zatko's whisteblowing on Twitter's infosec house of horrors. The SEC wants to know if the claims of intentional misreporting of bots is legit as Twitter has told investors it's not a problem. The FTC has a consent decree with Twitter as part of their punishment in 2011 for misusing emails and phone numbers that Mudge reckons are still being abused. The DOJ is very interested in claims Indian spies were employed and given high level access to Twitter's infrastructure. Meanwhile, Twitter's management is brushing all these allegations off as "foundationally, technically and historically inaccurate". You'd think Elon Musk's lawyers would love this, but Mudge's claims are mostly irrelevant to Musk and Twitter's beef and could help Twitter more than it helps Elon.
I avoid writing about the Big Tech companies and their battles with unions in the US as it's mostly a sideshow for Australians - but Apple is currently tangled up in a fight with unions over here. The Australian Services Union and the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union have filed a claim with the Fair Work Commission that Apple is "unlawfully denying entry to one of its stores to officials hoping to speak with staff" and "blocking a request for more time to consult with members". Apple wants to sneak through a new agreement that'll give workers a pissweak 2.5% pay increase despite inflation running at 6% and Apple making tens of billions of dollars in profit every quarter. Solidarity comrades!
David Osmond has spent the last year running weekly simulations of a 100% renewable energy grid for the Australian National Energy Market. He used actual and real time generation and demand data for the last 12 months, but scaled up the amounts of sun, wind and storage to see if it's possible to power Australia off renewable energy alone. The good news is that it's totally possible for Australia to be 100% renewable and only a very achievable 5 hours (24GW/120GWh) of storage is necessary. It doesn't take into account stuff like fancy HVDC transmission lines from the NT or WA into the east coast grid, which could reduce the need for storage even further. David had a long chat with a YouTuber about his work if you're interested in learning more.
📻 God Hates a Coward - Tomahawk
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