🗞 Wonderwall

Good morning. A final reminder that every referral to the newsletter this week will put you into the draw to win a $100 voucher at Edes Restaurant. Your personal referral link is here.

It's been another big week. Some of our highlights from this week:

• Oasis is back proving you can hit someone with a cricket bat and still play music together.

• We all stopped working at 5pm because the government said we could.

• The Paralympics started on Thursday.

• Nvidia grew 122% and beat revenue expectations by $1.3 billion, which still wasn't good enough seeing the share price decreased 7%.

Have a great Friday.


All the headlines and more below...

REFER A MATE TO WIN

Every referral this week puts you in the running to win a $100 voucher at Edes Restaurant & Bar

AUSTRALIAN NEWS

Government-owned bank created out of Australia Post back on Labor’s agenda

• A government-owned bank created from Australia Post is back on the agenda, 5 years after the idea was first proposed. LINK

• The energy market regulator has reduced its forecast for electric vehicle uptake as more drivers opt for hybrid vehicles. LINK

• An upcoming rise in the age pension will see single pensioners receive an additional $28.10 per fortnight. LINK

• The Sunshine Coast council has ended its e-scooter hire scheme following community concerns and modest usage. LINK

• NAB's Commercial Property Index reveals a bleak outlook with sentiment and confidence dropping in all states except WA, and VIC performing the worst across all sectors. LINK

• Industrial energy users are concerned that the power market is failing, citing the need for emergency reserves this summer. LINK

• CBA CEO warned that young families, particularly those aged 35 to 44, are being hardest hit by rising living costs and rates. LINK

COMPANY NEWS

Qantas profits dip as fares fall

• Air New Zealand reported a 61% drop in annual profit, citing challenges from high inflation, intense competition and engine maintenance issues. LINK

• Qantas flight attendants secured up to a 30% pay increase and improved working conditions. LINK

• Qantas reported a 28% drop in net profit with the airline increasing spending on customer satisfaction and fleet upgrades. LINK

• Pepper Money reported a decline in profit as struggling borrowers increasingly resort to using credit cards and personal loans to make mortgage payments. LINK

• Disney's ESPN is exploring the use of AI to personalise SportsCenter. LINK

• Reddit resolved an outage that affected thousands of users due to an update that unintentionally impacted platform stability. LINK

• Google is considering building its first hyperscale data centre in Vietnam. LINK

• Cromwell Property Group reported a $531.6M loss due to valuation declines in local office properties and the sale of its European operations. LINK

• OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise billions of dollars in a new funding round that could value the company at over $100B. LINK

• Resimac posted a 50% drop in net profit to $34.8 million, driven by lower assets under management and squeezed margins. LINK

• Google to resume rolling out image generation of people using its Gemini after pausing the feature due to inaccuracies. LINK

• Mastercard is pushing back against proposed limits on card payment fees. LINK

• Bunnings sales are slowing due to the downturn in building activity. LINK

• Kmart saw strong sales growth driven by budget-conscious shoppers. LINK

• Nvidia’s earnings report disappointed investors, resulting in a 7% drop in its shares and wiping out $200B in market value. LINK

• CrowdStrike reduced its revenue and profit forecasts for the year following the global outage. LINK

• TikTok is facing a lawsuit where its algorithm is possibly liable for the death of a 10-year-old girl from a viral "blackout challenge". LINK

THE ODD PICK

Teacher in Korea sued for emotional abuse after asking student to solve problem on chalkboard

CHART OF THE DAY

Berkshire’s Balance Sheet is Truly Magnificent

BRAINTEASER

Procrastinating?

It's Friday and we know you are procrastinating getting into your work so we thought we’d give you a brainteaser to conveniently delay the start:

Ellen is on board a ship, from which she can see a lighthouse. The lighthouse transmits messages to ships by flashing three coloured lights in different orders. Ellen knows that the possible messages are as follows:

• Safe to dock: red, yellow, green

• Storm incoming: blue, yellow, red

• Do not dock: green, red, yellow

• Another ship nearby: yellow, blue, green

The lighthouse flashes a message, but later Ellen only manages to remember two of the flashed colours, and not the order in which she saw them. One of the colours is red. This allows her to work out which message was conveyed.

What was the message?
A) Safe to dock
B) Storm incoming
C) Do not dock
D) Another ship nearby

Answer below

ANSWER

B) Storm incoming

If Ellen remembered red and yellow, she would not be able to uniquely identify the message because both "Safe to dock" and "Do not dock" also contain red and yellow.

The key here is that Ellen remembers a colour combination that uniquely identifies the message.

The only message where the combination of red and another specific colour (in this case, blue) uniquely identifies the sequence is "Storm incoming" (blue, yellow, red). No other sequence uses red and blue together.

Since Ellen was able to determine the exact message based on the two colours she remembered, the remembered colours must have been red and blue.