Happy Thursday, all.

1. Three new cases of COVID-19 were detected on Wednesday in Sydney. Two are along the northern beaches and one is in the city’s south-west. “Everyone living in the northern beaches area should monitor for even the mildest of symptoms and come forward for testing immediately if they appear, then isolate until a negative result is received,” NSW Health said.

2. After the collapse of Xinja yesterday, its competitors in the neobank space are, how shall we say, pausing for reflection. Douugh CEO Andy Taylor said it was more proof the model as it currently stands is broken. The CEOs of 86 400 and said that their focus remains on lending to become profitable businesses, while being troubled by the loss of competition in the sector.

3. Food delivery riders would be protected under a compensation scheme funded by a levy on food orders under a proposal to go before the NSW government, the SMH reports. The system, which is intended to be in place by this time next year, would be the first of its kind in Australia, and comes following a series of rider deaths over the last few months.

4. Niue, a tiny island nation in the Pacific, launched proceedings yesterday with internet overseer ICANN to reclaim the .nu top-level domain. The .nu domain has never been in the hands of the Niuean people, with control currently resting with the Internet Foundation of Sweden (IIS), the body in charge of that country’s .se space. “This is the big one,” says Pär Brumark, the Swedish domains expert who is leading a delegation on behalf of Niue to claim its space.

5. Australian tech unicorn SafetyCulture is building a new headquarters in Sydney. It will be located in the emerging tech hub of Surry Hills. The building will be powered by solar and feature a rooftop bar and an onsite chef. Take a closer look:

6. Gmail users yesterday were either frustrated or relieved by serious server issues which plagued it for much of the day. Google resolved an issue with Gmail after a “significant subset of users” experienced problems with the email service on Tuesday, the company said. Although users were still able to access Gmail during the outage, Google said, users saw error messages, lags, and ‘unexpected behaviour.’

7. A coalition of US states filed another antitrust lawsuit against Google over the company’s ad practices on Wednesday. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a Facebook post that Google “used its monopolistic powers to control pricing” and “engage in market collusions to rig auctions” for online ad sales. The Department of Justice brought an antitrust case against Google in October, and a separate group of states plans to file a lawsuit as early as Thursday.

8. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will produce and host exclusive podcasts on Spotify as part of a multi-year deal, the company announced this week. The complete series, which will debut in 2021, will “build community through shared experience, narratives, and values.” This, in conjunction with a Netflix deal, put the couple, which has an estimated $US30 million net worth, in position to build a billion-dollar brand. Royalty is marketable – who would have thought it?

9. The Pornhub dramas continue. Parent company MindGeek on Tuesday was hit with a lawsuit from 40 victims of the sex trafficking operation “Girls Do Porn.” That company was shut down by the FBI in 2019 after victims said they were tricked and coerced into making videos for the company. Pornhub said it was making sweeping changes to its platform and on Monday started taking down millions of unverified videos.

10. TikTok quietly routes personal data of anyone applying for a job online with the company through China, Business Insider has discovered. TikTok discloses that “your data is stored in China” in privacy-policy documents for candidates in European countries, Japan, and Singapore. US and Malaysian candidates are not told, however. The revelation is highly embarrassing for TikTok, which has spent much of 2020 trying to distance itself from its ultimate Chinese parent firm ByteDance.

BONUS ITEM

C’mon.

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