Digital Rights Watch has a handy blog post outlining how to make a submission to the government's review and reform of the Privacy Act. Huge changes are coming about how businesses handle our data, so if you've got opinions on this (I know many of you do!), direct it at the government ASAP. Submissions close March 31st.
It doesn't need to be anything fancy. They even set up a handy form that makes submissions simple. As Digital Rights Watch explains, "it doesn't have to be long! A one page letter documenting your support for bold reform is enough". Check out the blog post and give the government a piece of your mind.
Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank have teamed up to test a system called Scam Indicator that can listen in on phone calls in real time and alert the bank to detect and thwart "certain high-risk scam situations". From CBA's blog post, it sounds like Telstra has an API that CBA can access when something on their end happens (an unusual transfer, a log-in from a weird location, dunno, they doesn't say) and check if the customer is on the phone at the same time. If they are, CBA can then block accounts or other actions as they reckon the combination of both these scenarios (on the phone, doing something odd banking related) means there's a high likelihood of someone getting scammed. I guess they have to do something, but listening in on all my calls? Not sure about this one.
It's Apple update day. iOS 16.4 brings some new features like push notifications for web apps in Safari (finally), support for the PS5 controller, loads of new Shortcut Actions, previews for Mastodon in iMessage, Voice Isolation (cuts out background noise) for cell calls not just FaceTime calls, "tilt and azimuth support" for the Apple Pencil's hover feature, more countries get access to the Emergency SOS via Satellite feature (not Australia) and most important of all, 21 new emoji. All the other Apple stuff like macOS, Watch, Apple TV and even the Studio Display (which is controlled by an iPhone 11 without the radios!) got updates too but there's not much exciting, mostly bug fixes.
Queensland Liberal minister Garth Hamilton reckons "kids are being recruited online by videos" of other kids committing crimes like carjackings and house burglaries which feature "pumping soundtracks and modern music and great graphics". He thinks this is unacceptable and submitted a private member bill to federal parliament seeking to extend the the eSafety Commissioner's already enormous powers, to respond to complaints from the public about glamourising crime, along with the stuff they're already supposed to tackling like cyberbullying, non-consensually shared intimate images, adult cyber abuse and illegal and age-restricted content. Queensland Police have also asked eSafety in the past to do something about these crime videos too.
Last weekend I saw a funny photo on Twitter of his holiness the Pope wearing a puffy white jacket, with a caption to the tune of "the boys in brooklyn be dying for this drip" or something. It was amusing to me as I like jokes involving the Pope because I'm a bad Catholic. Anyways, it did not occur to me that this image was generated by AI. I fully believed the Pope would get around in such a jacket and his face looks like Pope Francis. It wasn't until today when I read that article that I realised it was created by Midjourney v5 and the "tell" of it being an AI image is a hand holding a fucked up looking coffee cup - which was cropped out the first time I saw it. We are through the looking glass here, people.
[View from mezzanine] IBM Quantum System One at Cleveland Clinic (IBM Research / Flickr)
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