Australian banks are going to invest $100m in a "confirmation of payee" system so "customers know who they are dealing with, mitigating the possibility of people being manipulated into paying a scammer when the name does not match" - something I can't believe has taken this long to happen and should hopefully avoid a common scam technique where bank details are changed on an invoice or in an email but the name of the account remains the same. Banks will also "adopt further technology and controls to help prevent identity fraud, including major banks using at least one biometric check for new individual customers opening accounts online by the end of 2024" and "introduce warnings and payment delays to protect customers" such as "more questions, warnings and delays from their bank" when sending "money to someone they haven't paid before or raising payment limits".
Heads up for the hardworking people down in the IT support dungeon - there's an update to the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD)'s Essential Eight Maturity Model. The big change is Maturity Level One now includes a new minimum standard that requires multi-factor authentication to "something users have and something users know, or something users have that is unlocked by something users know or are" and cannot be opt-out. Also in Maturity Level One, Internet Explorer 11 has to be disabled or removed and systems must be patched within 48 hours "when either vulnerabilities are assessed as critical by vendor" as well as when working exploits exist. The ASD's website has the full list of changes to all the Maturity Levels. Thanks TRS-80 for posting this in The Sizzle's Slack group!
It's still the Thanksgiving holiday season in the US so news is thin on the ground. Here's some recent-ish stuff from my bookmarks that didn't make cut when it was fresh but is still interesting a few days later:
HDTVTest's TV Shootout is back for 2023! A bunch of colour experts got in a room to do a blind test of various flagship TVs to see which one they like look of best. Watch the video, but if you can't be bothered to do that despite all the effort Vincent went to in order to arrange this test (shame on you) - the favourite TV was once again a Sony OLED, the A95L. The 65" XR65A95L isn't cheap in Australia at $4500 compared to $1,500 for a still nice 65" TCL 65C845 Mini LED TV I think most of us wouldn't really tell that much of a difference with unless we were looking for one, but that's the price you pay for perfection. There's also not much of a difference between the Samsung, Panasonic (which aren't on sale in Australia), LG & Sony TVs in the eyes of the experts, but they preferred the Sony's colour accuracy and HDR performance.
Cracked gallium arsenide solar cell films, 50x magnification. Dennis Callahan, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Department of Applied Physics & Materials Science (2011 Nikon Photomicrography Competition)
📻 I Can Climb Mountains - Hell Is For Heroes
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