Good morning, and a happy hump day to you. Today’s quite special, it’s the 400th edition of 5 Things. That’s 2,000 things! Too many of them were about AI and Elon Musk, but thank you for reading. Let’s get into the tech news.
1. Telstra outage resolved
Telstra mobile users were rocked by an outage yesterday over two hours, but things are now hunky dory. The telco claims that the outage occurred in small pockets of its network due to a software update.
Good news! The issue impacting some mobile voice calls was fixed at around 2.30PM (AEDT) today. The issue was caused by a software change. We’re sorry for the impact on your day.
— Telstra (@Telstra) March 19, 2024
2. Aussie Broadband Superloop takeover takes another hit
In failing to fully acquire Superloop, Aussie Broadband moved to take a 19.9 per cent stake in the company, which it is now moving to defend in court, iTnews reports. Superloop has told Aussie that it needs to scale its stake down to 12 per cent to avoid confrontation with Singaporean regulators. Aussie is seeking an injunction to overturn Superloop’s order to scale the stake back.
3. Deepmind AI co-founder tapped for Microsoft consumer AI
Former co-founder of Google’s Deepmind AI division, Mustafa Suleyman, has been hired by Microsoft to lead the company’s consumer AI division, the AFR reports. Such products in the consumer AI division include Copilot and Bing AI, with the group of products now consolidated under a single leader for the first time. “We want to make sure that this next wave is one that for the consumer Microsoft can really, really create incredible products,” Suleyman said.
4. Reddit at loggerheads with… Nokia?
Reddit is reviewing a letter from Nokia, alleging patent infringement, Reuters reports. “As we face increasing competition and become increasingly high profile, the possibility of receiving more intellectual property claims against us grows,” Reddit said in a statement. The company is currently pursuing an IPO filing.
5. Fitbit chatbot on the way
Yep, you read that correctly, Fitbit’s getting AI because everything has a chatbot now apparently. The chatbot will live in the Fitbit mobile app, and will supposedly be useful for asking questions about your results and creating graphics to learn more about your health. “This model is being fine-tuned to deliver personalised coaching capabilities, like actionable messages and guidance, that can be individualised based on personal health and fitness goals. For example, this model may be able to analyze variations in your sleep patterns and sleep quality, and then suggest recommendations on how you might change the intensity of your workout based on those insights,” Google VP of engineering and research Yossi Matias said in a blog post.
BONUS ITEM: Hell yeah.
Godzilla was recently made police chief of a Tokyo station for one day.
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) March 19, 2024
(via: @14_kaiju) pic.twitter.com/lhFmN2IGng
Have a lovely day, and thanks for staying with us. We’ve loved writing 5 Things for 400 editions now. Can’t wait for the next 400 things!
Image: Fitbit