### Issue 1965 - Wednesday 1st November, 2023

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## In Today's Issue

- Artist lawsuit against Midjourney & DeviantArt hits a snag
- SolarWinds CISO charged by SEC for covering up infamous SUNBURST cyberattack
- Aussie EV charger manufacturer Tritium is in awful financial shape
- Windows 11 2023 update is out, jury finds Autopilot wasn't to blame for fatal crash, QLD's digital drivers licences are ready
- Cheap Boost Mobile, Elgato Stream Deck, TP-Link 2.5 GbE switch, eBay Plus membership, refurb Dell micro PCs

## The News

### Artist lawsuit against Midjourney & DeviantArt hits a snag

Artists suing Midjourney and DeviantArt for copyright infringement have had big chunks of their case dismissed by a US District Judge. According to The Hollywood Reporter's interpretation of the judge's comments, "among the issues are whether the AI systems they run on actually contain copies of copyrighted images that were used to create infringing works and if the artists can substantiate infringement in the absence of identical material created by the AI tools". However, the part of the artist's case that claimed Stable Diffusion was trained on their copyrighted images without their permission was allowed to proceed. The same legal team is also suing GitHub, Microsoft an OpenAI on behalf of developers facing the same issue as the artists as their code is sucked into an algorithm without their permission.

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### SolarWinds CISO charged by SEC for covering up infamous SUNBURST cyberattack

Remember in 2020 when SolarWinds fucked up so badly that it led to a full on breach of the US federal government's internal communications by Russian state sponsored hackers? You know it was bad when your mistakes get their own Wikipedia article. Well the CISO of SolarWinds at the time has been charged by the US SEC for "fraud and internal control failures relating to allegedly known cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities", who allege "from at least its October 2018 initial public offering through at least its December 2020 announcement that it was the target of a massive, nearly two-year long cyberattack, dubbed 'SUNBURST,' SolarWinds and Brown defrauded investors by overstating SolarWinds' cybersecurity practices and understating or failing to disclose known risks". Note that it's not the attack itself the CISO is in trouble for, but the covering up and failure to handle it properly that the SEC has a beef with.

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### Aussie EV charger manufacturer Tritium is in awful financial shape

Two articles from the AFR in the last few days about Brisbane based EV charger company Tritium shitting the financial bed. Their IPO on the NASDAQ saw them valued at A$2b just two years ago but today they're worth only A$59m. That's a huge drop in value considering the massive demand for their products. Things are so bad that that Tritium is asking the QLD government for a $90m "equity injection", which if it doesn't get, runs the risk of whoever does provide them with that $90m demanding they shut down their Brisbane HQ and factory to run the entire business out of the USA where most of their demand is. The articles don't go into much detail as to why Tritium is in such bad shape, only detailing that gross margin is -2%, "a clear sign that costs exceeded sales".

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Windows 11 2023 update is out, jury finds Autopilot wasn't to blame for fatal crash, QLD's digital drivers licences are ready

- The Windows 11 2023 Update (aka Windows 11, version 23H2) is now live for all Windows 11 users. It bundles up most of the features from the September update into one big yearly release of Windows 11. I'm unsure if this was part of the September update, but Explorer now handles RAR, 7z & tar files natively and the Snipping Tool can do screen capture as well as redaction/extraction of text in an image.
- A Californian jury has found that Tesla's Autopilot was not to blame for a 2019 crash that killed the driver and severely injured the passengers. The jury was convinced by Tesla's argument that Autopilot "was not capable of causing the car to veer as suddenly as it had in the accident" and that the driver had "alcohol in his blood", but "not enough to be considered intoxicated under California law".
- Queensland's digital drivers licence app is now live on the Apple & Google app stores. The transport minister is so proud of it, he said that "Queensland's Digital Licence app will set the standard for mobile driver licence apps across Australia and the world". Unless you're super keen you might want to wait a little while before diving in as there's some teething issues with registration, with 5800 signing up "overnight" bringing the system to its knees.

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## Bargains

- Boost Mobile 365-day SIM with 170GB data, unlimited calls & SMS - $173 from Auditech
- Elgato Stream Deck Plus - $259 from Amazon
- TP-Link TL-SG105-M2 5-port 2.5 GbE network switch - $99.90 from PCLive's eBay store
- eBay Plus - $9.99 for the first year for inactive & new subscribers (eligible for $20 cashback via TopCashback too)
- Refurb Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro (i5-8500T, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, wi-fi, Windows 11) - $230.10 from Bneacttrader's eBay store
- Refurb Dell Optiplex 7070 Micro (i5-9500T, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, wi-fi, Windows 11) - $300.30 from Bneacttrader's eBay store

## Image Of The Day

Air France Concorde on display in the Boeing Aviation Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum / Flickr)

## The End

📻 Frog Single - Buster Chrome

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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.