Happy Monday. A few things happened over the weekend, so let’s get up to speed before you start your week.
1. Uber was hacked and it doesn’t look good
Uber has been hacked and boy does it look bad. The hacker, which boasted of their achievements via Telegram this week, claims to be an 18-year-old who allegedly gained such liberal access to the tech giant’s network that they were able to Slack the Uber workforce and post a picture of a dick on the company’s internal websites. Here’s everything we know.
2. Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory reaches massive milestone
Tesla opened a Gigafactory in Austin, Texas back in April. That factory has now built its 10,000th Model Y electric SUV. Brought to our attention by Electrek, it doesn’t exactly give us the current production rate, but it is likely more than one thousand vehicles per week that are being produced by the Elon Musk company. The Model Y was recently crowned Australia’s safest car.
10,000 Model Ys built at Giga Texas to date pic.twitter.com/4cOlnpCRa0
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 17, 2022
3. SpaceX testing Starlink Internet in Antarctica using space lasers
Still in Elon Musk world, Starlink has made its way to the southernmost continent, beaming down broadband internet to a research centre in Antarctica. McMurdo Station, a research outpost run by the U.S. Antarctic Program, is testing out a Starlink terminal to enhance its connectivity. McMurdo Station conducts scientific research on geology, astrophysics and climate systems, among other things. The research centre hosts close to 1,000 people during Antarctica’s summer season.
4. Bitcoin country El Salvador’s credit tumbled again
Remember when El Salvador thought it was a great idea to make bitcoin legal tender? Well, things are going well (they’re not). Credit agency Fitch downgraded El Salvador’s debt rating from CCC to CC around 14 months after the company’s tech bro president and budding authoritarian, Nayib Bukele, made Bitcoin a nationally recognised legal currency. CC, for context, represents Fitch’s fourth worst credit rating and is seven ticks below the AAA gold standard.
5. Google sends blogger nearly $US250,000 by mistake
As reported by Business Insider, Google accidentally sent a quarter of a million dollars to a blogger and security engineer, who says he waited almost a month to hear back from the company. According to the man’s tweet, Google had ‘randomly’ transferred him $US249,999 (around $370,5000). He is a security engineer who carries out “bug bounty hunting” work for organisations like Google. But this payment doesn’t reflect the jobs.
It’s been a little over 3 weeks since Google randomly sent me $249,999 and I still haven’t heard anything on the support ticket. Is there any way we could get in touch @Google?
(it’s OK if you don’t want it back…) pic.twitter.com/t6f7v5erli
— Sam Curry (@samwcyo) September 14, 2022
BONUS ITEM: After this pic circulated, the Thai Red Cross urged people to not do that. We hard agree, please don’t sell your kidney for an iPhone 14.
They donated a kidney to get themselves the iphone 14 😂 pic.twitter.com/ko2InN8OHU
— ZIM COUSIN (@zimcousin) September 12, 2022
Have a great week.