### Issue 1722 - Thursday 27th October, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft's quarterly financials are out
- Elon Musk takes a sink to Twitter while Tesla is under a 3rd criminal investigation
- DTA turn over 60% of staff last year, Apple pauses gambling ads on App Store & confirms iPhone to go USB-C
- Digital Rights Watch's take on the minor updates to the Privacy Act
- Cheap Macs, Death Stranding, Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon Echo Show 15, refurb iPhone 11, Nintendo Switch Pro controller, Baseus 100W USB-C charger

## The News

### Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft's quarterly financials are out

It's earnings season for big tech. Meta's year on year revenue is down a whopping 52% compared to the same time last year and Meta estimates revenue will decline again next quarter. Daily active users on Facebook are up slightly however, hitting 1.984 billion. Meta's share price is down 68% year on year, oof. Alphabet's revenue "only" increased by 6% this quarter compared to the whopping 41% pandemic induced revenue boost in the same quarter last year. Google Cloud is still losing money. Alphabet is planning for headcount to be "significantly lower" next quarter. Microsoft's profit took a hit as PC shipments slump 15%, impacting Windows OEM revenue, but they're still selling more Windows licences than pre-pandemic. Game Pass subscriptions are up 159% though.

### Elon Musk takes a sink to Twitter while Tesla is under a 3rd criminal investigation

Elon Musk has rocked up to Twitter's HQ with a sink ("let that sink in" fucks sake, he is so bad at comedy) and is referring to himself as Chief Twit. I'd say it's fairly certain Elon will take ownership of Twitter as agreed before the court imposed deadline of 5PM on October 28th. If not, the trial continues and I'm pretty sure Elon wants to avoid the trial. Meanwhile, Reuters has leaked that "Justice Department prosecutors in Washington and San Francisco are examining whether Tesla misled consumers, investors and regulators by making unsupported claims about its driver assistance technology's capabilities", but has stalled "because it is competing with two other DOJ investigations involving Tesla". Commit so many crimes they can't figure out what's going on in't the business model I'd choose, but I'm not the world's richest person.

### DTA turn over 60% of staff last year, Apple pauses gambling ads on App Store & confirms iPhone to go USB-C

- The Digital Transformation Agency's annual report says that "staff turnover reached 60.6% last financial year". Apparently that is "far higher than the Australian Public Service average and about 10% more than the agency's worst previous result". Can you blame them? The DTA sounds like a soul crushing place for any technologist.
- Apple has "paused ads related to gambling and a few other categories on App Store product pages" after yesterday's tweetstorm of iOS developers complaining about the tacky ads showing up on their App Store listings. Dunno how long Apple will "pause" these ads for, or what they're going to do to fix the problem.
- Apple's senior VP of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak has confirmed that the iPhone is getting USB-C, saying at a conference when asked about the EU regulations that "obviously, we'll have to comply; we have no choice". The entire conference interview is on YouTube and worth a watch if you're an Apple fan.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Digital Rights Watch's take on the minor updates to the Privacy Act

Digital Rights Watch has published an overview of changes coming to the Privacy Act thanks to Optus and their incompetence. Besides the already well publicised increase in financial penalties (whatever is greater - $50m, 30% of the company turnover or 3x the value of the benefit the company got from their conduct), the OAIC will get new powers to conduct assessments, expand the range of things it can tell a company to do if it breaches the Act and enhance information sharing between the OAIC and other government departments. The update will also remove a current exclusion for non-Australian companies, a popular loophole. Even if you don't have an Australian prescence, as long as you conduct business here (i.e: sell to Australians I guess) you must comply with the Act. As nice as these changes are, Digital Rights Watch wants "a direct right of action and a statutory tort for serious invasion of privacy" and hope it is included in a full review of the Privacy Act due later this year.

## Bargains

- 10% off Macs at JB Hi-Fi right now
- Death Stranding for PS4 - $21.93 from Amazon
- Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (32GB) - $249 from Amazon
- Amazon Echo Show 15 - $359 from Amazon
- Refurbished Apple iPhone 11 64GB - $499 from Coles (online only)
- Nintendo Switch Pro Controller - $79 from Amazon
- Baseus 100W GaN3 Pro USB charger - $65.04 from Baseus' eBay store

## Image Of The Day

IBM Quantum Dilution Refrigerator (IBM Research Flickr)

## The End

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