Juha Saarinen

1 week ago | interest.co.nz | Gareth Vaughan |David Hargreaves |Juha Saarinen

Online accounting firm Xero is branching out into accepting point of sale contactless payments, using smartphones. The payments functionality has been up and running in Australia, where Xero users can use both Google Android devices and Apple iPhones, and the UK, which has iPhone functionality only. New Zealand Xero users wanting to use the merchant payments will only have Apple iPhone support to start with. A Xero spokesperson said Android will be next in New Zealand, but didn't say when.

2 weeks ago | interest.co.nz | Gareth Vaughan |David Hargreaves |Juha Saarinen

Meridian Energy has officially opened New Zealand's first large-scale grid battery storage system at Ruakākā, the first of its kind, and a milestone in the country's renewable energy infrastructure development. The Ruakākā Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) delivers 100 megawatts (MW) of maximum output with 200 MW-hour storage capacity. Meridian says that is sufficient to power approximately 60,000 average households for two hours during winter peak demand periods.

2 weeks ago | interest.co.nz | Gareth Vaughan |David Hargreaves |Juha Saarinen

When Amazon and Google backed Anthropic released versions 4 of its Claude Opus and Sonnet models last weekend, the big news was that the former could code all day long. Like, seven hours or so. Brilliant. Time to fire the expensive developers and replace them with a NZ$249 (or more) a month subscription to an Anthropic Max plan then. Just kidding, do not do that. Fire the developers that is.

3 weeks ago | interest.co.nz | Gareth Vaughan |David Hargreaves |Juha Saarinen

Nasdaq-listed crypto currency exchange Coinbase has suffered a serious security incident in which customer data was stolen, ending up in the hands of criminals demanding a US$20 million dollar ransom. Coinbase, which sees trading volumes of between US$3.25 billion to US$4.4 billion daily as the largest exchange in the United States, said criminals "bribed and recruited a group of rogue overseas support agents" to steal data from it.

3 weeks ago | interest.co.nz | Gareth Vaughan |David Hargreaves |Juha Saarinen

When the Member’s Bill about banning social media for adolescents under 16 went into the biscuit tin, the media release accompanying it and the immediate backing from the highest echelons of the Government made it clear the proposed law would be elevated to official policy work. Kicking the issue upstairs was quick and well-orchestrated. B416, a “great group of Kiwis”, as the Prime Minister called them, supporting the ban, popped up just before the Bill and ensuing government announcement.