Apple update day

Big day of Apple updates - everything Apple sells got a version bump. Apple has a "what's new in iOS 18" document and there's a great in-depth review from MacStories if you really want to learn what this new version can do on the iPhone and iPad. Six Colors has a long review of macOS Sequoia (aka macOS 15), which I also have not installed yet because I'm busy actually using my Mac and like to wait until the .1 update for new major releases, then do a clean install. All the Apple Intelligence stuff on iOS and macOS will come with the .1 update too. MacRumours has a list of what's new in watchOS 11, tvOS 18, visionOS 2 and even HomePod Software 18.

OAIC says data breaches at their worst since 2020

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner released the latest iteration of the notifiable data breaches report yesterday, which reveals that 527 breaches took place between Jan and June of 2024 - a 9% increased compared to July and December 2023 and the highest number since 2020. Shit is getting worse, not better! The OAIC's press release highlighted the MediSecure breach for impacting around 12.9m Australians, making it the record holder for most impacted people since the notifiable data breaches scheme came into effect. Government and health were the two most represented sectors (19% and 12% of breaches), which is concerning as they have some of the most important info.

CBA makes its own AI chatbot, TikTok brings weak defence to lawsuit banning it in US, Mumsnet sues OpenAI for ripping it off

• Commonwealth Bank has begun testing its Hey CommBank chatbot, "a ChatGPT-like generative AI tool that can answer customer questions in a conversational style based on data held by the bank", with employees of CBA that are also customers being the unfortunate souls to have to eat this dog food first.
• TikTok's lawsuit against the US government forcing it to sell itself to an "approved buyer" because it's a "national security risk" has kicked off in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. TikTok's defense is basically that selling itself to an approved buyer is equivalent to a ban and that's against the First Amendment of the US Constitution - the right to free speech.
• Mumsnet noticed OpenAI's bot scraping its massive parenting forum and asked them to cough up a licensing fee. OpenAI entertained the idea for a while, but decided against paying because "we pursue partnerships for large-scale datasets that reflect human society and do not pursue partnerships solely for publicly available information" - so now Mumsnet is suing OpenAI.

iOS 18 supports RCS messaging, not yet in Australia

One of the features I'm looking forward to most on iOS 18 is RCS support. It's supposed to bring features like high quality sending of photos and videos between Android and iOS phones instead of using the ancient MMS standard or needing a third party app like Telegram or WhatsApp. Whirlpool has a long thread about local support for RCS and unfortunately, none of our telcos support it yet. Telstra kinda do, but only for Android to Android messaging, not iOS. 9to5Mac has instructions on how to enable RCS on your iPhone and how to check if your telco has sent your device an appropriate carrier profile with support for it.