Good morning and happy Wednesday. Let’s dive straight in, shall we?
1. Regulator report into Aussie Broadband shows ‘IT system fault’ caused boo boo
Starting locally and iTnews is reporting that the ACMA has released an investigation report into Aussie Broadband from an incident that occurred back in April 2022. The incident impacted 3,248 customers and saw the provider send 5,287 “inaccurate usage notifications”. The ACMA report, iTnews notes, highlights an “IT system fault” at the telco caused it to mistakenly send thousands of excess data usage warnings on a single day. ACMA apparently commenced an investigation after a referral from a customer. Read more here.
2. U.S. court lets Instagram off the hook
Just how much copyright protection should an artist or photographer expect after they post their work on social media? It’s a murky legal question by itself that’s now made even murkier as an appeals court digs directly into the nature of HTML to say that—no—that embedded photo isn’t a copy of the original photo, but a link to where it’s stored. A California court laid out the case that sharing embedded images and enabling the sharing of embedded images isn’t necessarily copyright infringement. Rather, they’re just HTML code that makes the browser display the hosted image, not a direct copy of the content. TL;DR: Instagram is off the hook. Read more about it here.
3. Meta and Microsoft introduce Llama 2 AI (and it’s open source)
As the AI bubble continues to inflate—for better or worse—two titans of the tech industry, Microsoft and Meta, have unveiled the second generation of LLaMA, and they’re giving competitor OpenAI a run for its money by making it open source. Meta announced the new open-access Llama, which stands for Large Language Model Meta AI, in a blog post today. The corporation explained that letting people peer under the hood of Llama was an important step in making the AI safer, as a “generation of developers and researchers can stress test [it].” Llama 2 is now available for free for research and commercial use—Meta touts that Llama 2 was trained on 40% more data than the first model. Meta also named Microsoft as a preferred partner in Llama 2, with the AI being available with Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure.
4. NYPD testing drones that broadcast public safety warnings
The New York City Police Department is testing new drones that are designed to transmit audio messages to the public, such as announcements warning of dangerous weather or nearby emergencies, The Verge is reporting. The report said NYC’s emergency notification system announced on Twitter that the NYPD would be “conducting a test of remote-piloted public messaging capabilities” that day, following several weeks of heavy rain and rare flash flood warnings impacting the city. Read more over here.
5. A bizarre object washes up on WA beach
On Sunday, a canister-like object washed ashore in Green Head, Western Australia, triggering a mystery for both state and federal officials. Its origin has not yet been confirmed, but early speculation suggests it came from a rocket. The ABC reckons it could be an engine from a 20-year-old Indian rocket. As reported in The Guardian, the large cylindrical object appeared on a beach near Jurien Bay, roughly 220 kilometres north of Perth, with local residents alerting authorities on Sunday. A local couple, after spotting it near the water’s edge, used their four-wheel-drive vehicle to pull the metal cylinder onto the shore.
BONUS ITEM: This one comes courtesy of our friend Fergus – please enjoy learning about the high-stakes war of words over the right to use a whisky stone to make coffee.
Have a brilliant day.