In this edition: Meta, BYD, the Consumer Data Right, Peter Thiel, Australian data centres, Nintendo Switch emulators, Claude and Deloitte. Plus, deals on Google Pixel smartphones, Anker wall chargers and Samsung soundbars.

The News

Should we cut EV subsidy scheme for being too popular?

The knives are out for the tax benefit used by 100,000+ Australians to get an electric vehicle (The Driven). A 2022 policy that removed fringe benefits tax from EVs under $90,000 was projected to be used by just 5,000 people. But it's ended up helping 20x that amount, with about half of them reporting having income over $150,000 (AFR, $). During that time, EV market share has gone from 1.4% to 8.3% (AFMA). Now the subsidy is being reviewed by the government (AFR, $). Even some climate think tanks want to means test it (AFR, $) while others want to scrap the scheme altogether. 

The Sizzle: This EV subsidy scheme is being attacked as "a handout for high income earners" (Sky News) which is just your normal culture war bullshit opposed to anything that isn't guzzling fuel. The point of the policy is to get people into EVs, including wealthier workers! Even with Australia's EV uptake increasing to 12%-ish of new sales (EV Council), we're still behind the rest of the world (IEA). Also, the spike in EV purchases is creating a bigger (and cheaper) second-hand EV market.

I'm all for fiddling with the settings especially as Australia is getting cheap — and pretty sexy — EVs like BYD Atto 3 or the Geely EX2. But if the problem with the scheme is that too many well off people are transitioning to EVs, maybe the answer should be "well, how do we make it even easier for low income people?"

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Meta has cartoonishly evil plan for launching facial recognition on its smart glasses

Out of everything Metaverse-related, Meta's major — and really only — hit has been its smart glasses. There's already been some predictable privacy nightmares with people using them to film unsuspecting others (ABC News). Now, Meta reportedly is considering rolling out facial recognition in the glasses to let you scan the faces of anyone you see and recognise the face of anyone with whom you're Facebook friends (Futurism). Meta's internal memo has a cartoonishly evil part where it says that all the fucked up stuff happening in the US will distract people from protesting the feature...

Related reading: Here's an interesting paper by Australian researchers about smart glasses and what we'll all have to contend with as they get more popular 

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North Korea is tricking job applicants into running malware

Here's a new thing that you've got to worry about when you're applying for a new job: bad guys are creating companies so they can make potential hires do "interview tasks" that will install malicious dependencies (Bleeping Computer). Researchers from Reversing Labs believe that North Korean hackers set up fake crypto companies, created job listings, all so they could get candidates to unwittingly install malware on their own computers. As if the job market wasn't already scary enough... 

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World:

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Oh, Also

Consultants caught cheating on in-house AI training with AI

Look, a consulting firm other than Deloitte has had an AI-related fuck-up: KPMG found that more than two dozen staff had used AI to cheat on in-house training courses (AFR, $). Incredibly, this included a partner who cheated on an AI-related course. Chef’s kiss! 

The best bit is that KPMG has just run "sponsored" article (AKA a paid article) in the AFR titled "AI gives graduates an edge, opening new career pathways" which includes quotes like how "KPMG Australia has embedded AI into its graduate program, so trainees can gain the skills, judgment and ethical grounding to apply AI confidently and responsibly and drive improved outcomes for clients." Another chef's kiss!

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The End

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