Hello and welcome to Friday. Let’s dive into your tech news briefing for the last time this week.
1. Optus touts revamped auto call centre assistant
Optus this week announced its in-call voice assistant, which it touts as making it easier and quicker for customers to engage with them. Using the Optus Voice Assistant, customers say why they are calling, and the AI tech routes the call to the right expert. If you’re thinking this sounds just like any absolutely useless automated call centre tech, don’t worry, so am I. But Optus reckons it’s smarter and more intuitive. “Customers save over 30 seconds using the Optus Voice Assistant instead of the phone menu,” Optus said.
2. Optus class action gets underway
Staying on Optus for a sec and law firm Slater and Gordon has issued proceedings against Optus on behalf of current and former customers whose personal information were compromised in the company’s data breach. The statement of claim, lodged in the Federal Court, accuses Optus of breaching privacy, telecommunication and consumer laws as well as the company’s internal policies by failing to protect or take reasonable steps to protect customers’ personal information from unauthorised access or disclosure, failing to destroy or de-identify former customers’ personal information, and failing to ensure that only those who had a legitimate reason for having access to customers’ personal information could access it.
3. A warning for Vivid fans
Our friends over at PEDESTRIAN.TV is reporting that Sydney’s Vivid festival, described as “an annual festival of light, music and ideas”, forgot to secure the domain vivid.com. Why is that a big deal you ask? Well, vivid.com links to porn. Per the report, the info was shared on Triple M’s Rush Hour With Gus, Jude and Wendell Thursday morning, with PTV’s writer saying she “factchecked this by searching the URL on my work computer”. Thank you for your service, Laura. As she said, if you’re truly looking for details about Vivid Sydney and not just gunning for a wank, make sure you head to VividSydney.com.
4. SpaceX Starship Rocket finally flies, blows up
It finally happened — and it was as spectacular as we hoped. SpaceX’s Starship megarocket blasted off from the Boca Chica, Texas, launch pad, lifted upwards by a record-breaking 16.5 million pounds of thrust. The rocket managed to survive MaxQ, the moment when a rocket experiences the greatest aerodynamic pressure, and continued upwards toward space. Things turned sour shortly before the four-minute mark, however, when the rocket began to exhibit erratic flight behaviour. The rocket blew up, presumably the result of a self-destruct command issued by SpaceX ground control.
Starship successfully lifted off from the orbital launch pad and climbed to an apogee of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico pic.twitter.com/PcmHRscp6w
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023
5. Landmark agreement for Aussie space centre
Australian space launch company Equatorial Launch Australia, owner and operator of the Arnhem Space Centre (ASC) on the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory, has reached an agreement with American space transportation and rocket manufacturing company Phantom Space Corporation, naming the ASC as Phantom’s dedicated launch site. The agreement will not just allow Phantom to launch from the site, but also offers the potential for commercial and sovereign customers from the Asia Pacific region to also use the site.
BONUS ITEM: Your Friday bonus item is something we saw earlier in the week that is still haunting us. Taxidermy bird drones. Wow.
Dead birds get new life: New Mexico researchers develop taxidermy bird drones https://t.co/I6ZucIk2WH pic.twitter.com/gySX9iGH3F
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 16, 2023
Have a fabulous weekend.