Digi, the main industry body/lobby group in Australia for tech companies like Google, Apple, Meta, TikTok and others, has booted Twitter/X from its membership group. Reset Australia noticed X's "removal of a public user reporting mechanism" that resulted in Australians losing the ability to "report misinformation about politics mere weeks before a referendum" and reported this to Digi. After X ignored Digi's requests to explain itself, Digi kicked em out for breaching the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, saying that X's "refusal to engage in any way with the process was disappointing and irresponsible". I expect no less from X's current management to be honest.
The ACCC's seventh interim report as part of the Digital Platform Services Inquiry highlights the need for "targeted consumer protections and service-specific codes to prevent anti-competitive conduct by particular designated digital platforms - i.e: Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft. The report doesn't accuse any of these services of anti-competitive conduct, but instead recognises that "platforms with significant market power can use practices like bundling or tying of products, pre-installation and default settings to limit customer choice or deter innovation from competitors". The report also proposes "new mandatory obligations on all digital platforms to address scams, harmful apps, fake reviews, including notice and action requirements and stronger verification of business users and reviews".
The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (why the hell are all these things in the same department???) released the terms of reference for its investigation of Optus' network outage a few weeks ago. It'll focus on a few areas - what happened to 000, what role the government plays in responding to these types of outages, consumer protections, complaints handling, how other networks can assist when one network goes down and what Optus and the other telcos are doing to make sure this doesn't happen again. Unfortunately, "the technical causes of the Outage, and the manner in which Optus remediated the Outage" is not in this review's scope - that's what I wanted more detail on the most! Anyway, a report based on this review should be handed to government by the 29th of February 2024.
Cisco has given Ukraine's state-owned electricity grid operator Ukrenergo "modified versions of the Cisco Industrial Ethernet 5000 series switches" with an internal crystal oscillator that can uses "enhanced clock recovery algorithms" and "modified switch code to provide an accurate time holdover when GPS was unavailable" due to jamming of GPS signals to thwart missiles and other military activity. The plan was hatched "over dinner at an upscale steakhouse near Stanford University in February" where Ukrenergo execs told Cisco execs about the constant GPS jamming "disrupting visibility for Ukraine's power grid operators, who relied on GPS-based clocks to relay information about power flow from one location to another".
Advertisement for CD Week, that appears to be a weekly subscription to get a CD sent to your home with the latest software on it? (Jongleur / Internet Archive)
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