Good morning, hope you’re staying dry this miserable Thursday. Here are a few things happening in the tech world to brighten your day.
1. The Google Pixel 7 is upon us
At Google’s I/O developer conference in May we got a glimpse of the company’s 2022 flagship, the Google Pixel 7, and its bigger sibling, the Pixel 7 Pro, but at its Made By Google event, happening overnight (12am on October 7 AEDT), we’ll get a better look at the next generation of Pixel phones. Check-in with us tomorrow for all the details on Google’s latest batch of Pixel devices.
It’s all coming together! Watch to see the latest additions to our family of devices.
Join us live for #MadeByGoogle ’22 tomorrow at 10am ET: https://t.co/DOFG0pz5LJ pic.twitter.com/OEVePzNXu2
— Google Pixel (@GooglePixel_US) October 5, 2022
2. Google settles U.S. ‘location data’ case
Staying in Google town and two years ago, the Arizona Attorney General sued Google for allegedly tricking people into giving up their location data, even after they tried to turn off the company’s location data settings. Google agreed to pay $US85 million (a little under $120 million) to settle the lawsuit this week and fix an incorrect description of what its Location History setting actually does. If it sounds familiar, that’s because there was a similar case in Australia. In August, Google agreed to pay $60 million in penalties to settle claims that it misled some users about personal location data collected through Android devices for two years.
3. Overwatch 2 launch not going as planned
One of the biggest games of the year is off to a rocky start, with Overwatch 2 plagued by problems, including a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that impacted launch day play. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra announced on Twitter yesterday that the Overwatch 2 servers were undergoing a “mass” DDoS attack. Things haven’t gotten much better, with a second DDoS attack and servers still not exactly stable.
We’re steadily making progress on server issues and stability, as well as working through a second DDoS attack. We’re all hands on deck and will continue to work throughout the night. Thank you for your patience – we’ll share more info as it becomes available.
— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) October 5, 2022
4. Prison security firm next data breach casualty
The Guardian is reporting that current and former employees of a security firm that provides services for prisons across Australia (including previously the federal government’s offshore detention centre on Manus Island) have had their personal information stolen. The firm, G4S, said it had been the subject of “a cyber incident” that gave an unauthorised third party, “or malware program”, access to its systems. The breached data includes tax file numbers, bank account information and medical checks.
5. Capital One hacker gets merely 5 years
Still on data breaches and if you cast your mind back to 2019 when U.S. bank Capital One had 100 million credit card users’ accounts hacked, you’d remember it was one of the largest breaches for its time. Well, today, ex-Amazon software engineer Paige Thompson, the woman who cost the company at least $US270 million (around $380 million in Aussie terms), was sentenced to time served and just five years’ probation in a Washington court.
BONUS ITEM: Today in ‘Elon Musk is the main character’, we bring you X, the ‘everything app’. Someone should tell him to log off.
Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022
See you bright and early tomorrow for Made By Google.