This week in everything from the ASX to Silicon Valley

WEEK STARTING OCTOBER 1

Happy Friday! You know the drill:

AUSTRALIAN FINTECH & STARTUPS

The Banking Royal commission interim report was released. It's incredibly damning. Great summary here

Startup Australia released their 2018 Startup Salary Guide. You can see how much or how little you can expect to earn if you take the plunge to a startup. Super insightful. Shorter summary here

Brighte, the buy now pay later scheme for home improvements, secured a $15m debt facility from BoQ

GAFA

Chinese spies allegedly inserted tiny chips into over 30 US companies' hardware, including Apple and Amazon

Amazon is trialling a shop that only stocks items that have 4-star ratings or higher. It's always interesting reading about anything to do with their (seemingly counter-intuitive) bricks and mortar approach. Paired with their Amazon Go stores, it seems they are experimenting whichever way they like

Aside: this review for a "half-keyboard" is the funniest review I've ever read

Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15

Facebook had a major data breach affecting 50m users

POTPOURRI

New emojis are coming in iOS12. See them here

Max Brenner went into voluntary administration. Must have made a waffle of their books

Finding: people are pirating more as competition between streaming services intensifies. Streaming services often come with exclusive content which is causing users to have multiple accounts, not the 'one stop shop' solution it's touted to be

COOL STARTUP OF THE WEEK

Shiru Cafe, a cafe at Brown University where you pay for your coffee with personal data. University students must give their name, phone number, email address and major(s) to obtain the free coffee. Shiru uses this data to profile their students and then decide which companies should sponsor the cafe accordingly (presumably, better sponsors = better student experience = more time in cafe). Considering the amount of personal data already proliferated online, I'd say that's a pretty good deal

TRIVIA

(a) What does the C stand for in CAPTCHA?

(b) What nation's capital comes first alphabetically?

(c) In the game of Cluedo, which weapon comes first alphabetically?

(d) What is next in this sequence: RR, GB, BC, GB, BO, _ _ ?

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Thanks for reading! Edition #26 means that The Inner Loop has been going for half a year now! Thanks to all the readers that have followed since the start, throughout, or today. You're all awesome. Here's to another 26.

I'm always open for feedback, opinions, banter and submissions @ james.david.grafton@gmail.com