Hello and welcome to Wednesday. We’ve got a few things happening in tech land we’d love to share with you. Here they are.
1. Telstra and OneWeb seal satellite backhaul deal
Telstra has signed an agreement with OneWeb that’ll see the pair swap geostationary satellite backhaul in remote Australia to low-earth orbit satellite (LEO) services. Telstra said the agreement will see up to 25Gbps of LEO capacity being delivered to Telstra’s most remote mobile sites across Australia, and that OneWeb services will be used for future sites where satellite backhaul is the preferred or the only viable option.
2. Secret Tesla ‘Elon Mode’
There’s apparently a hidden feature in a Tesla called ‘Elon Mode’. Per The Verge, it was discovered by a Tesla software hacker known online as @greentheonly, who has been digging deep into the vehicle code for years. It’s understood the supersecret driver mode enables hands-free driving in Tesla vehicles.
Impressions after nearly 600 miles on 11.4.3 with Elon mode (could not get a non-Tesla car to try in time).
It went much better than the prior experiment obviously.
Many contributing factors. I was not as late so I did not mind as much (still ended up 5 minutes late solely— green (@greentheonly) June 17, 2023
3. Another reason to not use ChatGPT
BleepingComputer is today reporting that over 101,000 ChatGPT user accounts have been stolen by information-stealing malware over the past year. Cyberintelligence firm Group-IB reports having identified over a hundred thousand info-stealer logs on various underground websites containing ChatGPT accounts, with the peak observed in May 2023, when threat actors posted 26,800 new ChatGPT credential pairs. Yikes.
4. Warning labels for AI
Staying on ChatGPT for a sec and after Australian Minister for Science and Innovation Ed Husic met with the chief executive of ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, he indicated the government may mandate the labelling of AI-generated material to minimise the potential negative effects of the tech. Per SMH, Husic said Altman expressed an openness to the idea of mandatory labelling of AI-generated material, an idea included in a Bill passed by the European Parliament. “The use of generative AI to create images that are lifelike but don’t reflect reality, the use of chatbots levered off generative AI where people may not be aware of the fact they’re talking to tech rather than a human – these are serious issues,” Husic said in an interview.
5. Western Australia is getting a big battery
Renewable energy company Neoen has been awarded a contract to service Western Australia’s grid with a 197mW battery capable of four hours of energy storage. 224 2XL Tesla Megapack units will be placed near the town of Collie (on the country of the Wilman people of the Bibbulmun nation). The project originally received developmental approval in December 2022, but now it will be developed to connect to the Western Power Shotts Terminal substation, to service the state as a backup battery. The battery will begin operation from October 2024, and it will be the sixth Neoen big battery operating in Australia.
BONUS ITEM: Not a happy bonus item today, with the world at a standstill waiting to hear if everyone’s ok.
We’ll see you back here tomorrow.