Australia

Australia lays fiendish tax trap for Meta – with an expensive escape hatch

If Zuck and other Big Tech players pay news publishers, their bills vanish

Legal12 Dec 2024 | 71

Doctor Who theme added to national sound archive to honor innovation, longevity

Australia’s archive, that is – it was an Aussie who wrote it

Offbeat11 Dec 2024 | 50

Australia passes law to keep under-16s off social media – good luck with that, mate

Also intros surveillance tweaks to protect very successful AN0M fake messaging app sting

Legal28 Nov 2024 | 84

Google to wrap up Christmas Island with new subsea cable

Connection will tie remote territory to Darwin in North Australia

Networks27 Nov 2024 | 11

Hardware barn denies that .004 seconds of facial recognition violated privacy

Claims it was just spotting shoppers who threatened staff at Bluey's favorite big box store

AI + ML19 Nov 2024 | 32

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Emails and tool-tracking software weren't heeded, but nothing scary happened - except to the nylon tool

Offbeat15 Nov 2024 | 163

Australia tells tots: No TikTok till you're 16... or X, Instagram and Facebook

Tech companies, not users, to be punished for violations of social media time-out

Personal Tech11 Nov 2024 | 87

Tower PC case allegedly used as 'creative cavity' by drug importer

Motherboard missing, leaving space for a million hits of meth

Cyber-crime31 Oct 2024 | 54

Billionaire SaaS CEO loses title after week of sleaze allegations

Not much more than a slap on the wrist as WiseTech boss stays on in new role and keeps salary

Legal25 Oct 2024 | 6

Woman stuck upside down under rock for hours after trying to retrieve dropped phone

Emergency services had to move a boulder to get her out

Personal Tech23 Oct 2024 | 68

Elon Musk's X mashed by Australian court for evading child protection reporting

Argument that it didn't inherit Twitter's legal obligations did not hit the spot

Legal04 Oct 2024 | 77

Hyperscalers are carving up the ocean floor into private internet highways

Think tank warns of sovereignty risks from subsea cable consolidation

Networks25 Sep 2024 | 6

Australian Police conducted supply chain attack on criminal collaborationware

Sting led to cuffing of alleged operator behind Ghost – an app for drug trafficking, money laundering, and violence-as-a-service

Cyber-crime18 Sep 2024 | 9

Australia’s government spent the week boxing Big Tech

With social media age limits, anti-scam laws, privacy tweaks, and misinformation rules Elon Musk labelled 'fascist'

Public Sector13 Sep 2024 | 41

Huawei debuts triple-folding Mate XT smartphone

Asia In Brief Plus: 550MW more DCs for India; Australia poised to use decryption powers; Indonesia creates cyber warfare unit

Personal Tech09 Sep 2024 | 9

Atlassian CEO's idea to build 4,000-kilometer extension cord plugged in

Giant solar farm in Australia will make 'leccy that flows under the ocean to Singapore

Offbeat21 Aug 2024 | 41

Asia's regional internet registry APNIC names new director general

ICANN's local boss Jia Rong Low gets the gig – and a challenging to-do list

Networks31 Jul 2024 | 3

Tech upgrade broke the casino – took slots offline for days

A fresh mess for the Australian outfit that previously managed to pay winnings more than once

Software18 Jul 2024 | 17

Scammers double-scam victims by offering to help recover from scams

Scum keep databases of the people they've already skimmed

Cyber-crime09 Jul 2024 | 6

China's APT40 gang is ready to attack vulns within hours or days of public release

Lax patching and vulnerable small biz kit make life easy for Beijing's secret-stealers

Security09 Jul 2024 | 8

Australia to build Top Secret cloud in AWS for military and spooky users

Interoperability with US infrastructure a big selling point

Public Sector04 Jul 2024 | 19

Police allege 'evil twin' of in-flight Wi-Fi used to steal passenger's credentials

Fasten your seat belts, secure your tray table, and try not to give away your passwords

Security01 Jul 2024 | 61

Alibaba Cloud closing Australian and Indian datacenters

Prioritizing Mexico and Southeast Asia

Off-Prem01 Jul 2024 | 2

Julian Assange pleads guilty, leaves courtroom a free man

Now, about that bill for the private jet that's taking him home to Australia …

Security26 Jun 2024 | 201

Organized crime and domestic violence perps are big buyers of tracking devices

Australian study finds GPS trackers – and sometimes AirTags – are in demand for the wrong reasons

Security26 Jun 2024 | 24

Coding error in forgotten API blamed for massive data breach

Australian telco Optus allegedly left redundant website with poor access controls online for years

Security21 Jun 2024 | 16

Australian billionaire wins right to sue Facebook in the US over scam ads

Andrew Forrest has spent five years railing against promos that falsely claim he's found the route to crypto riches

Personal Tech20 Jun 2024 | 78

Japan's space junk cleaner hunts down major target

Asia in brief Plus: Australia to age limit social media; Hong Kong's robo-dogs; India's new tech minister

Security17 Jun 2024 | 10

X marks the spot where Twitter's severance math doesn't add up

Surely an everything app includes a working currency converter?

Off-Prem13 Jun 2024 | 34

Australia drops legal action that aimed to have X take down stabbing vid

Musky network celebrates free speech win ... after not opposing takedown of similar fare

Public Sector05 Jun 2024 | 41

Aussie cops probe MediSecure's 'large-scale ransomware data breach'

Throw another healthcare biz on the barby, mate

Cyber-crime17 May 2024 | 13

A million Australian pubgoers wake up to find personal info listed on leak site

Updated Man arrested and blackmail charges expected after allegations of unpaid contractors and iffy infosec

Security02 May 2024 | 36

Australia to fund $620M quantum computer claimed to be first at 'utility-scale'

PsiQuantum's coming home

Public Sector30 Apr 2024 | 11

Australia’s spies and cops want ‘accountable encryption’ - aka access to backdoors

And warn that AI is already being used by extremists to plot attacks

Public Sector25 Apr 2024 | 108

Australia secures takedown order for terror videos, which Elon Musk wants to fight

+Comment Yet X remains a supporter of The Christchurch Call, an international agreement to stop video nasties

Personal Tech23 Apr 2024 | 62

Elon Musk's X to challenge Australian content takedown orders in court

Asia In Brief PLUS: Samsung in 'emergency mode'; Tim Cook's Asian charm tour; APAC AI spend to surge

Public Sector22 Apr 2024 | 60

Software glitch saw Aussie casino give away millions in cash

Nobody cared enough to check why audits were out of whack

Software18 Apr 2024 | 20

US 'considering' end to Assange prosecution bid

Cryptic Biden hint came ahead of April 16 deadline for next step in extradition case

Security11 Apr 2024 | 88

India's Uber clone Ola Cabs hails ride out of the international market

Australian drivers given two days' notice, UK and New Zealand services also shuttered

Personal Tech11 Apr 2024 | 5

Australian techie jailed for accessing museum's accounting system and buying himself stuff

Also down under, researchers find security-cleared workers leaking details of their gigs

Cyber-crime20 Mar 2024 | 26

Uber Australia to pay $178M to settle cabbies' class action

Nice payday for some, but plenty of Australians still pay extra to help drivers

Personal Tech18 Mar 2024 | 20

Ten nations tell social media, banks, and telcos to get better at stopping scams

Australian minister singles out Meta – where Zuck has 600,000 Nvidia GPUs ready to roll

Public Sector14 Mar 2024 | 26

Meta kills Facebook News in the US and Australia

So much for the 'commitment to support news organizations' made in just 2020

Personal Tech01 Mar 2024 | 87

Australian spy chief fears sabotage of critical infrastructure

And accuses a former Australian politician of having 'sold out their country'

Cyber-crime29 Feb 2024 | 17

Google Maps leads German tourists to week-long survival saga in Australian swamp

Pair had to dodge croc on trek back to civilization

Bootnotes23 Feb 2024 | 77

Australian supercomputer 'Taingiwilta' comes online this year with [REDACTED] inside

Exec in charge laments that in defence HPC down under, you can pay a veteran expert a mere web dev's salary

HPC21 Feb 2024 | 20

Square Kilometre Array precursor looks to filter out satellite interference

Starlink isn't the biggest problem, but increasing numbers of orbiting transmitters isn't helpful

HPC20 Feb 2024 | 13

Australia has no next-gen HPC investment plan and clouds can't fill the gap

Academy of Science calls for exascale system, which would cost more than current budgets for all supers

HPC20 Feb 2024 | 4

A visa to fill Australia's empty tech jobs is getting more expensive, but maybe better value

Application process gets a massive overhaul

Public Sector19 Feb 2024 | 44

India buys a third of the world's wearable devices

Asia In Brief PLUS: Australian Parliament calls for Assange release; Japan's H3 rocket soars; LINE leak worsens

Personal Tech18 Feb 2024 | 2

Australian Tax Office probed 150 staff over social media refund scam

$1.3 billion lost as identity fraud – and greed – saw 57,000 or more seek unearned tax refunds

Cyber-crime14 Feb 2024 | 3

Australia passes Right To Disconnect law, including (for now) jail time for bosses who email after-hours

Rushed law will lose criminal sanction, but debate about its utility is fierce

Legal12 Feb 2024 | 81

ANZ Bank test drives GitHub Copilot – and finds AI does give a helping hand

Expert Python programmers saw the most benefit

AI + ML10 Feb 2024 | 40

An established AI player is in nasty trouble – in this market? What? Why?

Australia's Appen boasted of clients including Amazon and Microsoft. Then work dried up, Gen AI arrived, and Google bailed

AI + ML06 Feb 2024 | 8

Australia imposes cyber sanctions on Russian it says ransomwared health insurer

'Aleksandr Ermakov' isn't allowed down under after being linked to ten-million-record leak

Cyber-crime23 Jan 2024 | 9

Google to lay Asia-Pacific to South America undersea cable

Humboldt cable to zoom from Chile to Australia through the South Pacific

Networks12 Jan 2024 | 10