All The News You Missed Over The Weekend: Australian Legalised Marijuana Could Bring In $300 Million A Year

Good morning! It’s a busy world out there. All The News You Missed Overnight gives you a guide to everything techy that happened while you were sleeping.

Telstra’s Turned On A Couple Of Solar-Powered Exchanges In Victoria
While Telstra may be considered by some as the devil incarnate, the company is doing its part for the environment — it recently switched a couple of its metropolitan exchanges in Victoria over to solar power. Hey, it’s got to stoke the fires of the demonic telephone afterlife somehow.

According to a press release from the organisation, Telstra’s Lyndhurst and Deer Park exchanges, located 35 and 17 kilometres from the Melbourne CDB respectively, now draw electricity from 30kW solar power systems. These will reportedly produce 40,000kWh of energy annually and account for 10 per cent of the exchanges’ power footprint.

Federal Government: Legalised Marijuana Could Bring In $300 Million A Year
Is the legalisation of marijuana in Australia a pipe dream? Maybe not, if the government takes the Parliamentary Budget Office’s latest estimates under consideration. According to a new report from the PBO, GST on marijuana sales could bring in over $300 per year in revenue — at least to start with.

The document, entitled “Legalising marijuana”, is available for public consumption from the Parliament of Australia website. The proposal outlines the potential monetary benefits of legalised marijuana sales, both in terms of GST collection and the reduction of enforcement costs.

These Confiscated Counterfeit Hoverboards Do Not Have A Bright Future
US Customs and Borders Protection has seized over 16,000 counterfeit hoverboards. The trendy death-wheelies are sitting in a warehouse in Chicago awaiting processing. Since they can’t be sold, they will be destroyed.

Of course, literally every hoverboard could be called “counterfeit” on the grounds that they don’t FREAKING HOVER, but that battle has been fought and lost.

Now Japan Has A Stealth Fighter Too
This is the X-2, Japan’s first domestically produced stealth fighter. Despite its not-so-stealthy paint job, it’s said to effectively avoid the gaze of enemy radar systems.

The X-2 — previously known as ATD-X, for Advanced Technology Demonstrator X — was manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the the Japan Air Self-Defence Force. The primary goal is to replace the country’s ageing fleet of fighter aircraft, and because Japan (or anybody else) cannot purchase Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors, they developed their own aircraft with similar characteristics, spending $US440 ($621) million so far.

The Walking Dead Is Getting Another Board Game
The world already has quite a few (and very good) zombie board games: Last Night on Earth, Dead of Winter, Zombicide… the list goes on. But if you officially slap “The Walking Dead” on a new miniatures game, the competition doesn’t matter, because it’s going to sell like hot, fleshy blood cakes.

The folks over at Mantic Games have just announced that its Walking Dead board game is heading to Kickstarter on 1 February (well, 2 February in Australia). The base price for the game will be $US50, with “boosters” retailing for $US20.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

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