Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers including: Australian mum launches anti-Bitcoin campaign, Telstra fines $500,000 for tardy service, the weirdest gizmos from the Consumer Electronics Show.
- A Sydney mother whose teenage son died after buying drugs purchased with bitcoins is calling on the Federal Government to ban the cryptocurrency in Australia. Read the full story here.
- From 13 January to 28 February 2014, Virgin Mobile will be offering 1GB of bonus data per month to customers on $40 plans and above (including BYO). As we’ve mentioned in the past, choosing a prepaid deal will usually get you the same or better entitlements with no lock-in, so be sure to examine all options.
- Last week, Telstra was slapped with a $500,000 fine because it didn’t connect new landline customers quickly enough. The ACMA issued an infringement notice to Telstra following its annual assessment of Telstra’s 2012-13 compliance with the Customer Service Guarantee (CSG) benchmarks. Read the full report here.
- AVG is currently offering an extended one year trial of AVG Internet Security 2014. The trial grants access to all features with the exception of tech support and can be used for business or home use. [Via OzBargain]
- Each Monday, Grill’d will be offering free burgers and discounts when the weather reaches certain temperatures as part of its ‘Meatwave’ promotion. The catch is that you need to ‘like’ them on Facebook to find out when the deal will be offered in your state. Meatwave will run each Monday between between Jan 20 and Feb 16.
- CES has been used as the launchpad for a wide range of enduring gadgets including the VCR, the camcorder, the Xbox and the plasma TV. It’s also been a veritable freak show for countless curiosities — this Gizmodo gallery takes a lot at some of the weirdest tech in the history of CES.
Comments
6 responses to “Briefly: Free Grill’d Burgers, Weird CES Gadgets, Telstra Fined $500,000”
Glad to hear about Telstra copping a fine! They took nearly two months to connect my home phone and internet line. No reason given, rang every day to follow up the progress, kept saying there system is down and can’t check for me every time. Such BS!
Why would you try ban bitcoin for that unfortunate incident? That seriously makes no sense. If he had bought it with Australian dollars would you try banning it? There is a bigger issue here (drug addiction, ease of access, good morals) but instead bitcoin is the monster in this situation? Makes no sense and sounds like a guilty conscience is playing the blame game.
Very good point! As sad as this situation is, at the end of the day, people just need to take responsibility for their actions.
I was going to say exactly the same thing, but you said it much better.
While i agree its stupid (but i also think BC is stupid as well), i guess her problem is that she thinks that without the anonymous purchasing power of BC that he wouldn’t have bought the drugs.
It could be argued that the illicit nature of the drug contributed quite a bit to his death. Only due to the fact his particular batch was laced with a fatal amount of (not sure what). If cocaine would’ve been legal, this outcome would most likely have been completely avoided since it would have been regulated. I am of course not implying that it should be legalised although it would solve a few problems while of course creating different issues to solve.