Tech News: 5 Things to Know in Australia Today

Tech News: 5 Things to Know in Australia Today

TGIF.

 

1. Elon accused of insider trading

Billionaire Elon Musk’s ever-present interest in the meme crypto Dogecoin keeps nipping at his heels. On Wednesday, the folks suing the multi-company exec for $US258 billion over his efforts to inflate the price of Dogecoin now say Musk had prior knowledge of Doge’s ups and downs, and even had a “fiduciary relationship” with the meme coin. The lawsuit was originally brought by investors of Musk’s companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and Boring Co. Read alllllll about it over here.

2. Buy and Audi and WFC

It’s one thing to enable video-calling in a car so you can FaceTime your kids, for example, if you’re out on the road for work a lot, but it’s another for that video-calling feature to be a business software tool. That’s when the personal-work line gets disgustingly blurry. Anyway, Audi wants you to work from your car. Brought to our attention by The Verge, select 2024 Audi and future VW Group vehicles will have Webex available to download from the automaker’s in-car app store. Gross.

3. Amazon touts WA expansion

Construction of Amazon Australia’s new fulfilment centre in Perth is nearing completion and the company reckons it’ll be open this year. The new facility is located in the Jandakot Airport Commercial Precinct, more than double the size of the company’s existing site near Perth Airport, which it will replace when it opens. The takeaway here is that the centre will increase Amazon’s operational footprint in WA by more than 60 per cent. Also, the centre is around 20,000 square metres – around the same size of the WACA – with capacity to house over 3 million items sold on Amazon.com.au.

4. ACCC goes after flower delivery site

The ACCC says it has instituted proceedings in the Federal Court against Meg’s Flowers Pty Ltd for allegedly breaching the Australian Consumer Law by making false or misleading representations that it was a local florist, when this was not the case. It is alleged that between 1 January 2019 and 10 February 2022, Meg’s Flowers represented on 156 location-based websites and in 7,462 Google Ads that it was a local florist supplying flowers in suburbs and towns across Australia. In fact, Meg’s Flowers is a national online business which distributes flowers through its corporate warehouses and subcontractors, and does not operate local florist stores.

5. Koala wants to bring back the chill

Netflix last month brought its password-sharing crackdown to Australia, but furniture company Koala wants to bring the chill back. It says all purchases of a Koala Mattress, Sofa Bed, or Sofa (from today through Sunday) will come with a 6-month Netflix subscription voucher paid for by Koala independent of Netflix. “The offer is in support of Aussies who may be scrambling for streaming solutions after having received a formal boot from their once-shared Netflix accounts”. If you want to save $70, go buy a $750 mattress.

BONUS ITEM: This random internet person is asking the right questions. I’d genuinely love to see yours – what is something that you use a lot that you wish a company would just fix/do instead of the crap they bring you instead? Tweet ’em to me via @ashabeeeee.

Have a wonderful weekend.


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