Renewable energy in Australia got a big kick up the arse this week. On Wednesday the federal government announced the first batch of projects in its "Rewiring The Nation" initiative. $1.5b of "concessional financing" to build offshore wind in Victoria, $750m via the CEFC to fund a huge VIC-NSW grid interconnect (VNI West) and together with the Victorian and Tasmanian governments, will fund 20% of the Marinus Link subsea cable between VIC and TAS. Yesterday the Victorian government said it'll introduce a 95% renewable electricity generation by 2035 target. To meet that goal, it'll bring the State Electricity Commission back and fund it with $1b to build a shitload of state-controlled (so co-funded with private owners with the SEC owning 50%+) renewable energy projects. Did Daniel Andrews read Saul Griffith's The Big Switch recently??
Texas reckons Google has unlawfully "collected millions of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry, from Texans through its products and services like Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max" without user consent - a violation of the state's laws. Hate to say it considering Texas' recent history on internet laws (HB-20 anyone?) but they're on the right track here. Google might ask for permission from the actual user of the product, but it also collects and builds datasets on people associated with that user (i.e: family members, friends, etc) that did not give permission. Google recently agreed to pay $100m class action settlement in Illinois for the same thing, but says "AG Paxton is once again mischaracterizing our products in another breathless lawsuit" and "will set the record straight in court".
Thanks to a Washington Post article, we have some insight as to how Elon Musk will run Twitter when he inevitably owns Twitter. Musk has pitched to investors that he will "get rid of nearly 75% of Twitter's 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000". Twitter was planning to sack 25% of staff and introduce the horrible practice of stack ranking before Musk rolled in, but 75% is pretty harsh. You'd hate to be the crew left behind, whipped by management daily to do the work of 3 people, so Elon Musk loses $30b instead of $40b when he sells Twitter to Verizon in 2025. During yesterday's Tesla earnings call, Musk was asked about Twitter and admitted he and his investors were "obviously overpaying". According to the article Twitter and Musk are "expected to close the purchase by next Friday".
The ABC has an excellent low barrier to entry article explaining what hackers do with the data they pilfer from places like Optus and Medibank. It explains phishing, targeted scams and the legal situation that forces companies to hold so much data, then barely punishes them when they don't store it properly. It ends on the sober fact that there's pretty much nothing we can do as individuals to stop data breaches, only limit the fallout after the fact. You and I already know this stuff, but if you've ever run into someone not so tech savvy that cracks the shits whenever they have to enable 2FA or whinges whenever they're told to use a unique password on every website, they'd find this article useful.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
Sandra Lerner, co-founder of Cisco.
Image credit: Stanford Innovators
📻 Tool - Forty Six & 2
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