Good morning. We’re almost to the end of the week. Let’s get into the tech news.
1. Man charged with allegedly sending millions of scam texts
The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that a Sydney man has been charged with allegedly sending more than 17 million scam texts to Australians, including texts posing as Australia Post and toll company Linkd. Police allege that two active ‘SIM boxes’ and dozens of SIM cards were found at the man’s home. He will appear in court on January 17.
2. Food safety regulator says cell-grown meat ‘safe to eat’
As reported by the ABC, Australia’s food safety regulator has assessed meat grown from quail cells, and has deemed the food safe to eat. The meat comes from a Sydney-based company called Vow, and with the regulator’s assessment, it has now passed the first stage required for selling lab-grown meat to consumers.
3. Telstra on track to hit 100% renewables by 2025
Telstra has announced a sixth Power Purchase Agreement, in which Telstra agrees to pay for electricity directly from a wind or solar farm. The sixth agreement is with a solar farm in Bundaberg Queensland, operated by Global Power Generation, with the telco saying that it is now on track to meet one of its climate goals – renewable energy generation equivalent to 100 per cent of its consumption by 2025.
4. Tesla defends its ads as free speech
As Tesla has issued a recall for cars using its autopilot technology in the U.S. (to patch a defective system that monitors drivers while autopilot is functioning), the company has defended its advertising of the feature as ‘free speech’, according to court documents made public by The Register. Teslas are not fully autonomous vehicles yet, but the company allegedly advertised them as though they are. California’s DMV accused Tesla of fraud for saying its vehicles had “full self-driving capability,” among other false claims from the car company. Tesla published disclaimers saying current models “require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous” on its website. In court documents recently made public, Tesla is making the argument this court case should be thrown out altogether because its claims are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
5. Well, that was unexpected
Reuters is reporting that Disney and U.S. telco Comcast have increased their spending on Instagram, after pulling ads from Twitter (X) and after brain genius Elon Musk told advertisers to go f&*k themselves. Disney’s advertising on Instagram has increased by about 40 per cent, while Comcast is spending 6 per cent more on ads. Paramount and Snapchat have also started spending more on Instagram. The everything app is going great.
BONUS ITEM: Speedrunning is an incredible thing.
The speedrunning community is beautiful and varied, but no speedrun tops the “Crank Dat” speed rub, where runners remake the beat to Soulja Boy’s song, which was made using all stock FruityLoops presets, as fast as possible. https://t.co/bJuLRFNAns
— alex goldman (@AGoldmund) December 13, 2023
Image: Telstra