Australia
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Amazon Australia starts taking orders
While Amazon Australia didn't open by Black Friday as rumors predicted, the marketplace is live in time for the Christmas shopping season. It started taking orders on Tuesday (local time) and offers free shipping across Australia for orders over $50 AUD (or about $37 US).
Australia investigates Facebook and Google over media impact
Internet giants may be trying to make nice with publishers, but that's not completely reassuring to Australian regulators. The country's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is investigating Facebook, Google and other "digital platform providers" to see if their search engines and social sites are harming competition in the news space. It wants to know if the long-term shift to digital news is unfairly limiting conventional publishers' ability to produce content, and whether the "information asymmetry" between internet services, advertisers and the public is damaging.
Tesla's giant battery farm is now live in South Australia
With a little lot of help from Tesla, Australia is now home to the world's largest lithium-ion battery. Back in March, Elon Musk told Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes that he could create a 100MWh battery storage farm within 100 days -- otherwise, his company would do the job for free. The Twitter pledge was in response to ongoing power shortages in South Australia, which were causing blackouts and political uncertainty about the country's push toward renewable energy sources. The batteries were delivered and installed before the summer -- well ahead of Musk's self-imposed deadline -- and today, they were switched on for the first time.
Alexa and Echo will land in Australia and NZ in early 2018
Amazon just dropped its umpteenth Alexa skill, this time for Destiny 2 fans. Already in the tens of thousands, the digital assistant's tricks span shopping, news, smart home controls, pop trivia, kiddie pastimes, and now video games. But while a growing number of regions have access to Amazon's Echo family of smart speakers (including recent additions India and Japan), they're still missing in some spots. Now, it seems Alexa's global expansion is picking up speed, as the digital helper is (officially) heading Down Under. Amazon has announced that Alexa and Alexa-enabled devices will land in Australia and New Zealand in early 2018.
Australia may offer facial recognition data to telecoms and banks
The concerns over government facial recognition systems don't just revolve around the possibility of Orwellian control -- it's that they may share that data with others you don't completely trust. Australia is learning this first-hand. The Guardian has obtained documents showing that the country's Attorney General office is talking to telecoms and banks about testing private use of the Facial Verification Service in 2018. Companies would need to get your permission and would have to show that they're honoring Australia's Privacy Act, but they could otherwise use it to fight fraud or otherwise verify the identities of their customers.
The FTC is looking into Uber's latest data breach
This week, Uber revealed that a security breach that happened in October of 2016 exposed personal data from around 57 million customers and drivers. But rather than inform the affected individuals, the company instead chose to pay off the hackers that stole the data in order to keep them quiet. Now, Reuters reports that the FTC is looking into the data breach and Uber's subsequent mishandling of the situation. An agency spokesperson told Reuters, "We are aware of press reports describing a breach in late 2016 at Uber and Uber officials' actions after that breach. We are closely evaluating the serious issues raised."
Tesla completes its giant Australian Powerpack battery on time
Tesla has completed its 100 megawatt Powerpack battery backup system in South Australia within 100 days (easily), as Elon Musk had promised. That means the company essentially won the "bet," and won't be on the hook for the entire cost of the project, estimated at $50 million. More importantly, it means that some 30,000 homes in South Australia will have a power backup in case there's no breeze at the Hornsdale Wind Farm located about two hours from Adelaide.
Amazon Australia could sell more than books come Black Friday
Amazon's Australian marketplace is going live "really, really soon," the company's local CEO, Roco Braeuniger, announced at a recent event. Apparently, "really, really soon" could mean next week: According to CNET, the e-retail titan has told third-party sellers in a letter to get their goods ready, because it's hoping to launch the Australian marketplace by Black Friday. Amazon has yet to confirm the launch date, but it makes sense that the company is aiming to start things with a bang.
Facebook explains bizarre revenge porn prevention program
When Facebook revealed its experimental porn prevention program in Australia, it raised a lot of eyebrows. After all, you'll first need to upload your sensitive images if you don't want them to get posted by anybody else. Now, Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis has defended the test feature in a post that also explains how it will work in detail. She clarified that it's "completely voluntary" and that Facebook will still remove any intimate images you report, hash them and prevent them from being uploaded again. This method is merely an "emergency option" for people who want to proactively prevent their photos from being shared.
Facebook's revenge porn prevention test has users upload photos
The Australian government and Facebook have teamed up in the fight against revenge porn. As the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports, alongside Australia's Office of the eSafety Commissioner, Facebook has launched a pilot program aimed at not just curtailing the spread of revenge porn once it begins, but preventing it altogether.
Amazon Prime Video is available on Xbox consoles worldwide
There's more to the Xbox One X than just 4K gaming. Beyond playing UHD Blu-rays, the console will stream media from your provider of choice in 4K, too. That includes Amazon Prime Video, which is now available worldwide on Xbox consoles following its launch last year.
Alphabet brings burritos-by-drone delivery to Australia
Apparently, Project Wing brought airborne burritos to Virginia Tech last year as preparation for something bigger. Alphabet X's experimental project is now dropping burritos (and medicine) from the skies of Australia as part of a series of tests to figure out how to run a drone delivery service efficiently. Project Wing Co-Lead James Ryan Burgess said they've teamed up with Australia Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez and pharmacy chain Chemist Warehouse to drop off orders to testers living in a rural area. These testers usually have to take a 40-minute round trip by car to get to the nearest grocery or restaurant, making them the perfect subjects for Wing's experiments.
Australia tackles revenge porn with a national reporting tool
Companies like Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Facebook have in the past made attempts to help victims of revenge porn, but it's still a big problem as recent incidents have made very clear. Well the Australian government has been working on a way to address the issue, Gizmodo reports, and the result is a national portal to help victims of revenge porn.
Dubai airport will scan your face as you walk through a video tunnel
A lot of passengers come and go through Dubai airports and by 2020, they're expected to play host to some 124 million people. So in an effort to increase the efficiency of security checkpoints, Dubai International Airport is installing a tunnel outfitted with 80 facial recognition and iris scanning cameras, The National reports. The tunnel's walls can display things like virtual aquariums or deserts as well as advertisements and passengers would just have to walk through as they normally would. At the end of the tunnel, a display will either tell the passenger to have a nice trip or will alert officials to take another look.
Australian police posed as child abusers for a dark web sting
Where do you draw the line when trying to catch child abusers? That's what authorities have to decide when they run sting operations on the dark web. When Norwegian newspaper VG investigated one of the biggest child exploitation sites on the dark web, Child's Play, they found that it had been run by Australian police for three months. The special unit out of Brisbane, dubbed Argos, had undercover detectives posting and sharing abuse materials on the site. The newspaper held off on reporting until now, a year later, to allow the police to finish its investigation.
Solar car race kicks off 30th anniversary with a fresh challenge
It's a special moment in the history of clean energy: the 30th anniversary World Solar Challenge has begun. A total of 42 solar-powered cars (the largest field to date) left Darwin, Australia on October 8th to travel roughly 1,880 miles to Adelaide. The race officially lasts a week, but it's likely going to end considerably sooner for the front-runners -- the world record holders, Tokai University, took just under 30 hours in 2009. As it is, technical hiccups knocked out several competitors in the first day of racing.
Australia will establish its own space agency
Australia is very much a participant in the space industry with about 11,500 people working in the field. However, it has never had its own space agency -- and that may put it at a disadvantage next to the US, Canada and other countries that have concerted space strategies. The government hopes to fix that. It just unveiled plans to create Australia's first national space agency. There aren't many details at this point (more are expected later in the week), but acting industry minister Hon. Michaelia Cash argues that it's necessary to keep pace with a space industry that's "growing rapidly."
Apple slowly lets its 'TV' streaming app expand beyond the US
Apple's 'TV' app has begun showing up outside the US, signaling the start of the rollout it promised during its latest iPhone event. According to MacRumors and 9to5Mac, the app has already appeared for some users in Australia and Canada ahead of tvOS 11's official release later today, September 19th. Apple launched the TV app in 2016 to serve as a browsable hub for all the shows from your other apps, such as Hulu and HBO Now. It was designed to give you a way to easily find movies and series to watch without having to switch streaming services.
Drones will watch Australian beaches for sharks with AI help
Humans aren't particularly good at spotting sharks using aerial data. At best, they'll accurately pinpoint sharks 30 percent of the time -- not very helpful for swimmers worried about stepping into the water. Australia, however, is about to get a more reliable way of spotting these undersea predators. As of September, Little Ripper drones will monitor some Australian beaches for signs of sharks, and pass along their imagery to an AI system that can identify sharks in real-time with 90 percent accuracy. Humans will still run the software (someone has to verify the results), but this highly automated system could be quick and reliable enough to save lives.
Australian courts order ISPs to block 59 pirate websites
Australian authorities will make it much harder to keep up with the latest on Game of Thrones. They're expected to crack down hard on dozens of pirate websites that serve unauthorized movies and TV shows within the next couple of weeks. That's because federal courts down under have handed down rulings for two separate cases, both ordering major telcoms and internet service providers (ISPs) to block a total of 59 websites and 127 domains. That's a huge number to block in one go and might actually help mitigate piracy in the country.
