Good morning to everybody except for Microsoft, which has chosen to update my Windows 11 taskbar with an AI-powered widget. I removed it immediately. How about some tech news?
1. Over 1 million telco complaints made in Australia in 2022
Both the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) have released reports detailing telco complaints made over the course of 2022. As reported by the ACMA, complaints totalled 1,037,823 between 2022 and 2023. But, the data covers the period in which Optus suffered its data breach (Optus has previously indicated publicly that it received a large number of complaints during that period), so the data is definitely skewed. Additionally, the TIO said it received 66,388 complaints, which was a decrease of 16.5 per cent year on year. Complaints that were escalated were also down, by 10.2 per cent, to 9,429. The most complained about type of service was mobile, accounting for 31,649 of the total.
2. Any Threaders in the room?
As reported by Tech Crunch, Instagram’s new Twitter (X?) competitor Threads is not looking to amplify news on the platform. “We’re not anti-news. News is clearly already on Threads. People can share news; people can follow accounts that share news. We’re not going to get in the way of any either. But, we’re also not going go to amplify news on the platform. To do so would be too risky given the maturity of the platform, the downsides of over-promising, and the stakes,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said. Threads usership has dipped since it was initially launched, and considering that Twitter was once a great platform for news sharing, it’s certainly a shame to hear.
3. New lawsuit accuses TikTok of casino-like tactics
Utah’s governor and attorney general are adding their names to the lengthy list of mostly Republican lawmakers gunning for TikTok. This week, Utah AG Sean Reyes sued the company for allegedly creating casino-inspired addictive features that harm children and for misleading parents about its commitment to safety on the platform. TikTok’s infinite scroll and “For You” recommendation algorithm, Reyes alleges, lures kids in and leaves them “unable to escape.” “We will no longer tolerate TikTok misleading parents that its app is safe for children,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox said in a statement. “Social media companies must be held responsible for the harms they are causing.”
4. Google allegedly paying big bucks to be Apple’s top search engine
How much is it worth to be the iPhone’s default search engine? Somewhere between $US18 and $US20 billion a year. According to a Bernstein analyst, that’s how much Google is paying Apple to keep its top spot, representing roughly 15 per cent of the iPhone maker’s annual operating profits. Bernstein analysts are looking into Apple’s exposure to the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, originally reported by The Register. One of the major interest areas of the case is the payments it makes to Apple, classified under the Information Services Agreement (ISA). “We believe there is a possibility that federal courts [will] rule against Google and force it to terminate its search deal with Apple,” the Bernstein report outlined.
5. Qualcomm goes X
As reported by Digital Trends, Qualcomm is expected to rebrand its PC platforms to ‘Snapdragon X’ (no relation to Twitter’s rebrand X). New logos and designs will come along with the design, with Qualcomm’s original Snapdragon 8cx platform previously compared to Apple’s M-series chips. “Snapdragon X series platforms build on our years of experience engineering heterogeneous compute architectures across the central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU) and NPU. Now, harnessing our next-generation custom Qualcomm Oryon CPU, a quantum leap forward in performance and power efficiency will anchor Snapdragon X and — when combined with our NPU — will deliver accelerated on-device user experiences for the new era of generative AI,” Qualcomm said in an announcement post.
BONUS ITEM: Hamster rave. That is all.
maybe tiktok isn’t so bad after all pic.twitter.com/8iRozezaDm
— Kota Kotonya🔫🐱ASMR VTuber (@KotaKotonya) October 7, 2023
Have a wonderful day.