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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Sydney Morning Herald: National security agencies are continuing to scour the Parliament's computer network for threats to MPs' data after what is being described as a "sophisticated" hack attack that could be the work of a foreign government. Alastair MacGibbon, head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, said the government's cyber experts would work over coming days and weeks to make sure all the breaches had been detected and the hackers' presence removed. The hacking comes just three months ahead of the federal election, prompting fears that if MPs emails or data were stolen they could be used to cause political interference of the style Russia perpetrated against the United States in the 2016 presidential campaign. Sources said the fact that Parliament had significantly upgraded its cyber defense since an attack by Chinese intelligence agencies in 2011 suggested the latest hackers were highly skilled, potentially pointing to a foreign government. Mr MacGibbon stressed it was too early to say who was behind the attack but said this part of the investigation. The network is used by all MPs, including ministers. House Speaker Tony Smith and Senate President Scott Ryan said in a joint statement there was "no evidence that any data has been accessed or taken at this time, however this will remain subject to ongoing investigation." They said they had no evidence the hack was an effort to "influence the outcome of parliamentary processes or to disrupt or influence electoral or political processes."

schwit1 shares a report: Mining corporation Rio Tinto says that an autonomous rail system called AutoHaul that it's been developing in the remote Pilbara region of Australia for several years is now entirely operational -- an accomplishment the company says makes the system the "world's largest robot." "It's been a challenging journey to automate a rail network of this size and scale in a remote location like the Pilbara," Rio Tinto's managing director Ivan Vella told the Sydney Morning Herald, "but early results indicate significant potential to improve productivity, providing increased system flexibility and reducing bottlenecks." The ore-hauling train is just one part of an ambitious automation project involving robotics and driverless vehicles that Rio Tinto wants to use to automate its mining operations. The company conducted its first test of the train without a human on board last year, and it now claims that the system has completed more than a million kilometers (620,000 miles) of autonomous travel.

The plan to replace passport check-ins with more face scans is being trialed by Quantas on passengers for select flights into the Sydney Airport starting this week. The move is an attempt to replace the "inconvenience" of relying on more traditional paper passports. TechCrunch reports: It's still very early stages in a process that isn't exactly being rolled out overnight. After all, implementing such technology for Sydney's 43 million annual passengers is pretty large undertaking, even without myriad security and privacy concerns to contend with. To start with, the technology will be utilized for select international flights, to help automate check-in, boarding, lounge access and bag drop. Moving forward, the airport also hopes to implement it for mobile check-in and customs processing. "We've worked with Qantas from the outset and are delighted to be partnering with them as we trial this technology," Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert said in a statement provided to the press. "In the future, there will be no more juggling passports and bags at check-in and digging through pockets or smartphones to show your boarding pass," he added. "Your face will be your passport and your boarding pass at every step of the process."

Jacob Saulwick, reporting for The Sydney Morning Herald: The movement of pedestrians and vehicles in inner-city Liverpool will be captured by upgraded CCTV cameras and smartphones. The project, part-funded by the federal government's $50 million "Smart Cities" program, aims to help the local council map potential tweaks to streets and planning rules, in an area undergoing rapid development. "It gives us the opportunity to be more experimental in our CBD to get better outcomes for the people using it," the chief executive of Liverpool City Council, Kiersten Fishburn, said. The street grid of downtown Liverpool was laid out in 1827 by Robert Hoddle, who would go on to survey and plot Melbourne's distinctive grid. And Liverpool is changing fast, with a proposed local environment plan to allow denser and residential development around the inner city, as well as the opening of University of Wollongong and Western Sydney University campuses.

Rebutting a widespread speculation, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the company is not working toward building an operating system that both Macs and iPhones could share. From his interview on Sydney Morning Herald: Later, when I ask about the divide between the Mac and iOS, which seems almost conservative when compared to Microsoft's convertible Windows 10 strategy, Cook gives an interesting response. "We don't believe in sort of watering down one for the other. Both [The Mac and iPad] are incredible. One of the reasons that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two ... you begin to make trade offs and compromises. "So maybe the company would be more efficient at the end of the day. But that's not what it's about. You know it's about giving people things that they can then use to help them change the world or express their passion or express their creativity. So this merger thing that some folks are fixated on, I don't think that's what users want." A surprising comment, considering rumours from well-connected reporter Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, who wrote the company is working on a project called "Marzipan", which involves merging the codebase of macOS and iOS apps.

schwit1 shares a report from CNET, written by Claire Reilly: In 2015, during the transition from paper to Opal [contactless public transit cards], Australia passed sweeping new data retention laws. These laws required all Australian internet service providers and telecommunications carriers to retain customers' phone and internet metadata for two years -- details like the phone number a person calls, the timestamps on text messages or the cell tower a phone pings when it makes a call. Suddenly, Australians were fighting for the right to stay anonymous in a digital world. On one side of the fence: safety-conscious civilians. They argued that this metadata was a powerful tool and that the ability to track a person's movements through phone pings or call times was vital for law enforcement. On the other side of the fence: digital civil libertarians. They argued that the data retention scheme was invasive and that this metadata could be used to build up an incredibly detailed picture of someone's life. And sitting in a barn two paddocks away from that fence: me, switching out burner phones and researching VPNs. When it emerged that police had the power to search Opal card data, track people's movements and match this to individual users, it was the last straw. August 2016 rolled around, paperless tickets were phased out and I hatched my plan. The Black Opal. The concept of the Black Opal is simple. Buy your transport card. Pay cash. Top up with cash (preferably in a new location each time). Never register it. Never link it to your credit or debit card. Live off the grid. Stay away from The Man.

[Reilly discusses the problems she faced:] All the top-up machines at train stations, light rail stops and ferry terminals were card-only affairs. One tap on that baby and you were back in the system. So, if I was busing downtown for a work meeting, I'd have to factor in extra time to get to an ATM, get cash out and then find somewhere to top up my card. Running for the train with friends, I was the one who had to divert three blocks, change jackets, burn off my fingerprints and find a nondescript corner store to top up. Here's what I learned. No one likes the paranoid one. [...] I finally came undone last week. Racing for a flight, I forgot about my Black Opal. I'd had an unusually busy week on public transport, and my balance was low. On the train to the airport terminal, it hit me. Did I have enough money on my card to pay the AU$17.76 tap-off fee that they use to gouge tourists at the airport? As I rode up the escalators and the exit turnstiles came into view, my heart sank. No ATM. No cash in my wallet. Just a row of bright green Opal readers and a top-up machine. Card only. With one trip, my years of off-grid living were undone. I slumped against the top-up machine and swiped my debit card. I was just 9 cents short, but it cost me so much more than that. My Black Opal was dead.

After a very soft launch on Nov. 23, Amazon has officially launched in Australia. Mashable reports: One of the biggest things to happen to Australia's retail sector, Amazon's website has switched over from a Kindle Store presence to its fully fledged Amazon.com.au, with millions of products now ready for eager Christmas shoppers across more than 20 categories. It's a huge moment for Australian retail, and one of the most anticipated launches of the year, after Amazon confirmed in April 2017 it would expand its operations in Australia. Local retailers like David Jones and Myer have been scrambling to launch their own "premium" in-store services and price matching strategies or revamped online stores ahead of Amazon's arrival.

Thousands of Australian brands have already signed up with Amazon to sell their wares locally and internationally. Small and medium-sized Australian businesses are selling on Amazon Marketplace. Amazon's allowing free delivery on eligible orders above $49 that are sold by Amazon, and the company is rolling out one-day delivery service to select areas. Plus, for the first time, Australian customers will be able to access Prime Video and Twitch Prime, launching Prime shipping benefits in Australia in mid-2018 (registration for Prime is open now for Aussies).

Rei writes: Tesla announced the completion of the world's largest battery -- a 100 MW/129 MWh wind-power backup system for 30,000 homes in South Australia. Three times more powerful than any other battery on Earth, the $50 million project had garnered press due to Elon Musk's Twitter boast that it would be completed within 100 days of the contract signing or it would be free. In the end, Tesla took it up a notch: the battery was finished 55 days from the date of contract signing and 99 days from the date of Musk's boast itself.

An anonymous reader quotes the Sydney Morning Herald: Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's claims about the self-driving capabilities of his upcoming Tesla vehicles are "full of crap", General Motors' self-driving Tsar says... "To think you can see everything you need for a level five autonomous car [full self-driving] with cameras and radar, I don't know how you do that"... GM's own solution involves several radar and Lidar sensors, as well as cameras and multiple redundancy systems. Each system costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and GM are some way away from getting the cost low enough to be commercially viable. "The level of technology and knowing what it takes to do the mission, to say you can be a full level five with just cameras and radars is not physically possible," Mr Miller said.

ArmoredDragon writes: German police have raided 36 homes of people accused of using illegal speech on Facebook and Twitter. Much of it was aimed at political speech. According to the article, "Most of the raids concerned politically motivated right-wing incitement, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office, whose officers conducted home searches and interrogations. But the raids also targeted two people accused of left-wing extremist content, as well as one person accused of making threats or harassment based on someone's sexual orientation."

This comes just as a new law is being debated that can fine social media platforms $53 million for not removing 70% of illegal speech (including political, defamatory, and hateful speech) within 24 hours of it being posted, which Facebook argues will make it obligatory for them to delete posts and ban users for speech that isn't clearly illegal.

Australia's Reserve Bank will roll out an instantaneous money-transferring technology later this year, "which will push Australia even further towards being a cashless society," according to ABC. An anonymous reader quotes their report: In 2014, 12 financial institutions signed up to build the "New Payment Platform," partly as a way of bringing Australia up to speed with other countries that are ahead in the race to becoming completely cashless. Sweden is on track to become the world's first completely cashless economy, and just last November India got rid of its highest denomination bills, effectively eliminating 90 per cent of its paper money... The "New Payment Platform" will mean money can be transferred almost instantaneously, even when the payer and payee are members of different banks.
"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is lost in tax revenue due to the sort of cash economy," says an economics professor at the University of New South Wales, who predicts Australia could be cash-free by 2020. The Australian Payments Association reports that over 75% of the country's face-to-face payments are already tap-and-go, and ATM withdrawals have sunk to a 15-year low.

Deutsche Bank has banned text messages and communication apps such as WhatsApp on company-issued phones in an effort to improve compliance standards. From a report: The functionality will be switched off this quarter, chief regulatory officer Sylvie Matherat and chief operating officer Kim Hammonds told staff in a memo. Unlike emails, text messages can't be archived by the bank, said a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. "We fully understand that the deactivation will change your day-to-day work and we regret any inconvenience this may cause," Matherat and Hammonds said in the memo. "However, this step is necessary to ensure Deutsche Bank continues to comply with regulatory and legal requirements." The policy also applies to private phones used by employees for work purposes. Communication apps such as WhatsApp, Google Talk, iMessage are also prohibited, the memo said.

Gaming company Valve Corporation has been hit with a $3 million fine after the Federal Court found its online games site Steam breached Australian Consumer Laws. From a report: The court imposed the maximum fine requested by Australia's competition regulator because of Valve's disregard for Australian law and lack of contrition. Valve's general counsel, Karl Quackenbush, told the court the company did not obtain legal advice when it set up in Australia, and did not check its obligations until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission got involved in April 2014. It only provided staff verbal instructions. This lack of interest in Australian laws and lack of cooperation encouraged Justice James Edelman to impose a pentaly 12 times more than Valve Corporation suggested it pay.

wheelbarrio writes: We've known for a long time that diet-induced weight loss is rarely permanent but until now what has been a frustration for dieters has also been largely a mystery to scientists. A paper published today in the prestigious journal Nature presents good evidence that your gut microbiome may be to blame. Studying mice fed cycles of high-fat and normal diets, the authors found that the particular bacterial population that thrives in the high-fat regime persists in the gut even once the mice have returned to normal weight and normal metabolic function after a dieting cycle. This leaves them more susceptible to weight gain than control mice who were never overweight, when both populations are exposed to a cycle of high-fat diet. The details are fascinating, including the suggestion that dietary flavonoid supplementation might mitigate the effect. My guess is that this may end up being one of the most cited papers of the year, if not the decade.

New research led by scientists at the Australian National University's Research School of Earth suggests that humans first started to significantly change the climate in the 1830s, near the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The findings have been published in the journal Nature, and "were based on natural records of climate variation in the world's oceans and continents, including those found in corals, ice cores, tree rings and the changing chemistry of stalagmites in caves." Sydney Morning Herald reports: "Nerilie Abram, another of the lead authors and an associate professor at the Australian National University's Research School of Earth Sciences, said greenhouse gas levels rose from about 280 parts per million in the 1830s to about 295 ppm by the end of that century. They now exceed 400 ppm. Understanding how humans were already altering the composition of the atmosphere through the 19th century means the warming is closer to the 1.5 to 2 degrees target agreed at last year's Paris climate summit than most people realize." "It was one of those moments where science really surprised us," says Abram. "But the results were clear. The climate warming we are witnessing today started about 180 years ago."

Heart44 writes: News sites are reporting that the Australian census website has been shut down until further notice. This happened on census night, Tuesday (Australian time), August 9th, 2016. This is the first attempt at an online census where [the internet] is the default data collection method. You had to call an often busy number to get a paper form. This is on top of a long running controversy that the Australian Bureau of Statistics will keep the names and addresses of everyone for five years. I presume more useful links will appear over time. "The site was targeted by four denial of service (DoS) attacks," chief statistician David Kalisch told ABC radio. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: "The first three caused minor disruptions and did not stop more than two million census forms from being 'successfully submitted and safely stored,' he said. But the site was shut down after a 'gap' in the system's security measures was found during a fourth attack (AEST), Mr Kalisch said. 'After the fourth attack, which took place just after 7:30pm [on Tuesday AEST], the ABS took the precaution of closing down the system to ensure the integrity of the data,' Mr Kalisch said. 'I can certainly reassure Australians the data they provided is safe,' he said."

UPDATE 8/09/16: Many reports are contradicting Kalisch's claim that the website was shut down from DDoS attacks. User @mhackling on Twitter tweeted a screenshot of Digital Attack Map showing "nothing unusual DDoS wise for Australia and yesterday."

Heart44 writes: News sites are reporting that the Australian census website has been shut down until further notice. This happened on census night, Tuesday (Australian time), August 9th, 2016. This is the first attempt at an online census where [the internet] is the default data collection method. You had to call an often busy number to get a paper form. This is on top of a long running controversy that the Australian Bureau of Statistics will keep the names and addresses of everyone for five years. I presume more useful links will appear over time. "The site was targeted by four denial of service (DoS) attacks," chief statistician David Kalisch told ABC radio. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: "The first three caused minor disruptions and did not stop more than two million census forms from being 'successfully submitted and safely stored,' he said. But the site was shut down after a 'gap' in the system's security measures was found during a fourth attack (AEST), Mr Kalisch said. 'After the fourth attack, which took place just after 7:30pm [on Tuesday AEST], the ABS took the precaution of closing down the system to ensure the integrity of the data,' Mr Kalisch said. 'I can certainly reassure Australians the data they provided is safe,' he said."

UPDATE 8/09/16: Many reports are contradicting Kalisch's claim that the website was shut down from DDoS attacks. User @mhackling on Twitter tweeted a screenshot of Digital Attack Map showing "nothing unusual DDoS wise for Australia and yesterday."

iONiUM quotes a report from The Sydney Morning Herald: More than one-third of the coral reefs of the central and northern regions of the Great Barrier Reef have died in the huge bleaching event earlier this year, Queensland researchers said. Corals to the north of Cairns -- covering about two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef -- were found to have an average mortality rate of 35 percent, rising to more than half in areas around Cooktown. Bleaching occurs when abnormal conditions, such as warm seas, cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae. Corals turn white without these algae and may die if the zooxanthellae do not recolonize them. "It is fair to say we were all caught by surprise," Professor Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said. "It's a huge wake up call because we all thought that coral bleaching was something that happened in the Pacific or the Caribbean which are closer to the epicenter of El Nino events." The report says, "The northern end of the Great Barrier Reef was home to many 50- to 100-year-old corals that had died and may struggle to rebuild before future El Ninos push tolerance beyond thresholds."

An anonymous reader writes: Jill Watson is an artificial intelligence bot, it is also Ashok Goel's teaching assistant. Ashok Goel, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech, hired Jill Watson to answer questions online for his students so that his teaching staff wasn't so overworked. On average, Goel and his staff receive more than 10,000 questions from students online each semester. So he decided to use IBM Watson, an artificial intelligence system designed to answer questions. After training and tweaking it for months, he was able to spit out good enough answers. Originally, Goel didn't reveal Watson's true identity to his students until after the last final exam was turned in at the end of the class. Students were amazed. "I feel like I am part of history because of Jill and this class!" wrote one student in the class's online forum. "Just when I wanted to nominate Jill Watson as an outstanding TA in the CIOS survey!" said another. Goel is now working to bring the bot to as as many education centers are possible. He expects the bot's question-answering abilities to help online classes, where there's little engagement with a human instructor.

Reader Dave Knott writes: The World Video Game Hall Of Fame has announced its inductees for the year 2016, the second group of games to be so honoured since the award's inception in 2015. The Hall Of Fame "recognizes individual electronic games of all types -- arcade, console, computer, handheld, and mobile -- that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general". This year's six inductees are: Grand Theft Auto III, The Legend of Zelda, The Oregon Trail, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Space Invaders.The Sydney Morning Herald has more details.

As technology continues to change the world -- and kill many jobs -- it may soon change the very nature of what is considered work, said Bill Gross, a renowned American financial manager in his recently released investment outlook. Gross says that in a year or so we will need to start guaranteeing income for everyone. Gross, added that the current crop of national leaders is hopelessly behind the curve, leaving it to central bankers to fix the mess. "Our economy has changed, but voters and their elected representatives don't seem to know what's really wrong," he writes. "They shout: (1) build a wall, (2) balance the budget, (3) foot the bill for college, or (4) make free trade less free. "That will fix it" they discordantly proclaim, and after November's election some unlucky soul may do one or more of the above in an effort to make things better. Similar battles are being fought everywhere." The Sydney Morning Herald reports: Central bank "helicopter money" will avoid a long recession that looms as millions of millennials face losing their jobs to robot technology, Gross says. In news that is sure to depress anyone under the age of 30, Gross says that while presidential hopefuls in the US spout mantras about how they are going to spur growth, none are addressing the reality of the future: that robots and technology are going to render "millions" of jobs redundant. "Virtually every industry in existence is likely to become less labour-intensive in future years as new technology is assimilated into existing business models," Gross writes. Transport is a visible example of this transition and millions of truck and taxi drivers will be out of a job in the next 10 to 15 years due to driverless vehicles, he says. "We should spend money where it's needed most -- our collapsing infrastructure for instance, health care for an aging generation and perhaps on a revolutionary new idea called UBI -- Universal Basic Income."

An anonymous reader shares an article on The Sydney Morning Herald:Scientists and businesses working full steam to produce lab-created meat claim it will be healthier than conventional meat and more environmentally friendly. But how much can they improve on old-school pork or beef? In August 2013, a team of Dutch scientists showed off their lab-grown burger (cost: $435,000) and even provided a taste test. Two months ago, the American company Memphis Meats fried the first-ever lab meatball (cost: $23,700 per pound). Those who have tasted these items say they barely differ from the real deal. The Dutch and the Americans claim that within a few years lab-produced meats will start appearing in supermarkets and restaurants. And these are not the only teams working on cultured meat (as they prefer to call it). Another company, Modern Meadow, promises that lab-grown "steak chips" -- something between a potato chip and beef jerky -- will hit the stores in the near future, too.

An anonymous reader cites an amusing article on Stuff: When Telstra offered its mobile customers unlimited data for two separate days this year as compensation for network outages, some customers took it as a challenge to download as much as they possibly could in one day. On Sunday, 27-year-old Sydney resident John Szaszvari outdid himself and everyone else by ploughing through almost a whole terabyte of data. That's more than double what he managed during the first free data day in February -- an already mammoth 425GB.

daria42 writes: If you're counting on Apple to keep your digital information safe, you may want to think again ... at least if you live in Australia. Yesterday the country's two major political parties — Labor and the Coalition — voted down a motion in Federal Parliament calling for strong encryption to be supported in the wake of the FBI's demands that Apple unlock iOS. It appears that implementing comprehensive telephone and email retention in Australia may not have been the end of demands by law enforcement in the country.

Harlequin80 writes: RMS (Roads & Maritime Service), the New South Wales' governing body for transport, has begun suspending the vehicle registration of UberX drivers. After failing to deter drivers through prosecutions, with Uber covering fines and legal costs of its drivers, RMS has begun suspending the registration of the vehicles as it forces the vehicle off the road for three months. Under the NSW Passenger Transport Act, paid ride sharing is illegal, and this will see UberX drivers losing the use of their vehicle for both Uber and personal use.

An anonymous reader writes: In 2011, a journalist named Natalie O'Brien published a series of stories on security problems in Vodafone's Siebel data system. "Customers' home addresses, driver's licenses and credit card details were all available online, O'Brien wrote, and criminal groups were paying for customers' private information." Now, Vodafone Australia has admitted that an employee went through her phone and text records to try and figure out who her sources were within the company. O'Brien wrote, "The invasion of privacy is devastating. It plays with your mind. What was in those texts? Who were they to? What did they see? What did they do with the information?" Despite the admission, Vodafone has denied that it engaged in improper behavior (PDF). The company says it found no evidence the employee was directed to do so by management. That said, leaked emails show management became aware of the privacy breach and its potential repercussions as early as 2012.

A NASA panel yesterday announced widely reported finding that global sea levels have risen about three inches since 1992, and that these levels are expected to keep rising as much as several more feet over the next century -- on the upper end of model-based predictions that have been made so far. From the Sydney Morning Herald piece linked above: NASA says Greenland has lost an average of 303 gigatons [of ice] yearly for the past decade. Since it takes 360 gigatons to raise sea level by a millimetre, that would suggest Greenland has done this about eight times over just in the last 10 years or so. "People need to be prepared for sea level rise," said Joshua Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. "It's not going to stop."

ausrob writes: Cementing their position as Australia's most backwards and dangerous government in recent memory comes this nasty bit of legislation, riddled with holes (which is nothing new for this decrepit Government): "The legislation allows rights holders to go to a Federal Court judge to get overseas websites, or "online locations", blocked that have the "primary purpose" of facilitating copyright infringement. If a rights holder is successful in their blocking request, Australian internet providers, such as Telstra and Optus, will need to comply with a judge's order by disabling access to the infringing location." Adds reader Gumbercules!! links to another story on the legislation, writing: Aside from the sheer inefficiency of trying to spot piracy by blocking individual sites, there's also the risk that servers which house other, more legitimate sites, will be caught up in the net. Unsurprisingly, the bill does nothing to remedy the fact that Australians pay far more for access to media than other places in the World or that media is often not available or extremely delayed, here.

New submitter Gob Gob writes: The Prime Minister of Australia has come out and ridiculed an opposition policy aimed at teaching kids to code. In response to the leader of the Labor Party's question about whether he would commit to supporting Labor's push to have coding taught in every primary school in Australia, the Prime Minister said: "He said that he wants primary school kids to be taught coding so they can get the jobs of the future. Does he want to send them all out to work at the age of 11? Is that what he wants to do? Seriously?"

An anonymous reader writes: According to a Tuesday story in the UK edition of the International Business Times, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the celebrity astrophysicist and media personality, advocates a space race between the United States and China. The idea is that such a race would spur innovation and cause industry to grow. The Apollo race to the moon caused a similar explosive period of scientific research and engineering development. You might prefer the Sydney Morning Herald piece on which the IB Times article is based.

An anonymous reader writes: Maurice Newman, the top business advisor to conservative Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, today published an opinion piece (paywalled) in which he claims, "It's a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models ... have been found ... to be in error." He goes on to write "This is not about facts or logic. It's about a new world order under the control of the UN." While Newman's 'skeptical' views have long been on record, it's unclear when he came to believe in this vast global conspiracy. Last year, the Abbott government removed Australia's Emissions Trading Scheme, and recently gave $4 million in funding to contrarian Bjorn Lomberg, while cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from science across the country.

An anonymous reader writes: Maurice Newman, the top business advisor to conservative Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, today published an opinion piece (paywalled) in which he claims, "It's a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models ... have been found ... to be in error." He goes on to write "This is not about facts or logic. It's about a new world order under the control of the UN." While Newman's 'skeptical' views have long been on record, it's unclear when he came to believe in this vast global conspiracy. Last year, the Abbott government removed Australia's Emissions Trading Scheme, and recently gave $4 million in funding to contrarian Bjorn Lomberg, while cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from science across the country.

First time accepted submitter BlacKSacrificE writes Australian carriers are bracing for a mass recall after it was revealed that a Dutch SIM card manufacturer Gemalto was penetrated by the GCHQ and the NSA in an alleged theft of encryption keys, allowing unfettered access to voice and text communications. The incident is suspected to have happened in 2010 and 2011 and seems to be a result of social engineering against employees, and was revealed by yet another Snowden document. Telstra, Vodafone and Optus have all stated they are waiting for further information from Gemalto before deciding a course of action. Gemalto said in a press release that they "cannot at this early stage verify the findings of the publication" and are continuing internal investigations, but considering Gemalto provides around 2 billion SIM cards to some 450 carriers across the globe (all of which use the same GSM encryption standard) the impact and fallout for Gemalto, and the affected carriers, could be huge.

Jagungal (36053) writes The SMH reports that The University of NSW says it has issued 238 fines — estimated to total around $100,000 - to students illicitly downloading copyright infringing material such as movies and TV shows on its Wi-Fi network since 2008. The main issues are that the University is not returning any money to the copyright holders but is instead using the money raised for campus facilities and that it is essentially enforcing a commonwealth law.

Jagungal (36053) writes The SMH reports that The University of NSW says it has issued 238 fines — estimated to total around $100,000 - to students illicitly downloading copyright infringing material such as movies and TV shows on its Wi-Fi network since 2008. The main issues are that the University is not returning any money to the copyright holders but is instead using the money raised for campus facilities and that it is essentially enforcing a commonwealth law.

An anonymous reader writes Citing the need to abide by a law combating "gay propaganda," a memorial dedicated to the late Apple founder Steve Jobs has been torn down. This comes on the heels of new CEO Tim Cook coming out as gay. "In Russia, gay propaganda and other sexual perversions among minors are prohibited by law," ZEFS (a Russian group of companies that originally erected the statue) said, noting that the memorial had been "in an area of direct access for young students and scholars". "After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was taken down to abide to the Russian federal law protecting children from information promoting denial of traditional family values."

AlbanX writes The Australian Government has introduced a bill that would require telecommunications carriers and service providers to retain the non-content data of Australian citizens for two years so it can be accessed — without a warrant — by local law enforcement agencies. Despite tabling the draft legislation into parliament, the bill doesn't actually specify the types of data the Government wants retained. The proposal has received a huge amount of criticism from the telco industry, other members of parliament and privacy groups. (The Sydney Morning Herald has some audio of discussion about the law.)

skegg writes: Frustrated journalist Ben Grubb has documented his attempts at gaining access to his own metadata from his carrier. "After more than a year of phone calls and emails and a private mediation session, it still hasn't released the information or answered my one key question satisfactorily: the government can access my Telstra metadata, so why can't I?" Later, he says, "Telstra's one and only valid argument to date has been that identifying who calls me would be in breach of that person's privacy if they called from an unlisted number. I've agreed and said that in providing me with my metadata they should remove unlisted numbers. They argue this would be too difficult to do, which I think is baloney."

First time accepted submitter chentiangemalc writes While Australia is on "high alert" for terror threats a man walked past a Sydney Airport security screening while engrossed in his iPad and delayed flights for an hour. From the article: "This event was captured on CCTV and unnerved officials so much that they evacuated passengers. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported, the man found himself (or, perhaps, didn't) going into the terminal through an exit passage that clearly was convenient for him, but less convenient for the hordes of passengers who not only had to be removed from Terminal 3, but also re-screened. A spokeswoman for Qantas told the Morning Herald: 'The man disembarked a flight and left. It appears he wasn't paying attention, was looking at his iPad, forgot something and walked back past (the security area).'"

First time accepted submitter Marquis231 writes New laws due to be passed in Australia allow intelligence agency ASIO to spy on domestic internet traffic like never before. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: "Spy agency ASIO will be given the power to monitor the entire Australian internet and journalists' ability to write about national security will be curtailed when new legislation – expected to pass in the Senate as early as Wednesday – becomes law, academics, media organisations, lawyers, the Greens party and rights groups fear."

The Washington Post reports (building on a short AP report they're also carrying) that "[Australian] police have arrested 15 people allegedly linked to the Islamic State, some who plotted a public beheading." According to the Sydney Morning Herald, of the arrestees, only two have been charged. From the Washington Post story: “Police said the planned attack was to be “random.” The killers were to behead a victim and then drape the body in the black Islamic State flag, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. ... Direct exhortations were coming from an Australian who is apparently quite senior in [the Islamic State] to networks of support back in Australia to conduct demonstration killings here in this country,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said at a press conference, as the BBC reported. “So this is not just suspicion, this is intent and that’s why the police and security agencies decided to act in the way they have.”

First time accepted submitter kavzee writes The popular Australian online discussion forum, Whirlpool, is being sued by a financial services group for refusing to remove a negative review about its services. A similar story occurred a number of years ago when another company by the name of 2Clix attempted to sue Whirlpool for the same reasons but later withdrew their case. "A financial services business licenced through National Australia Bank is suing an online forum for refusing to remove an allegedly fake and negative post about its services, claiming it has damaged its reputation with would-be clients. It is the latest legal action launched against an online forum or review website for publishing negative comments, following several high profile cases in Australia and overseas. Financial advice group WCS Group has initiated action against Whirlpool in the Supreme Court of Victoria, seeking unspecified damages and costs, despite the fact the forum generates no revenue."

schwit1 notes that the Australian government has repealed a controversial carbon tax. After almost a decade of heated political debate, Australia has become the world's first developed nation to repeal carbon laws that put a price on greenhouse gas emissions. In a vote that could highlight the difficulty in implementing additional measures to reduce carbon emissions ahead of global climate talks next year in Paris, Australia's Senate on Wednesday voted 39-32 to repeal a politically divisive carbon emissions price that contributed to the fall from power of three Australian leaders since it was first suggested in 2007.

AHuxley (892839) writes The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Australian federal and state police are using a no warrant cell phone tower metadata access technique called a "tower dump". A "tower dump" provides the identity, activity and location of all cell phones that connect a cellphone tower(s) over time (an hour or two). The metadata from thousands of phones and numbers connected are then sorted. Australian law-enforcement agencies made 330,000 requests for metadata in 2012-13. AHuxley links to some U.S. views on the same kind of massive data grab: The Wall Street Journal says they caputure innocent users' data; the Chicago Police Department is being sued for information on its purchases of equipment associated with this kind of slurping; and the EFF asks whether warrant protection for users' data will be extended by voice-comm companies as it has been for ISPs. I wonder what people would think of an occasional "postal zone dump" employing the same kind of dragnet but for communications on paper.

As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, NASA has given a green light to the production of a new motor, dubbed the Space Launch System, intended to enable deep space exploration. Boeing, prime contractor on the rocket, announced on Wednesday that it had completed a critical design review and finalized a $US2.8-billion contract with NASA. The last time the space agency made such an assessment of a deep-space rocket was the mighty Saturn V, which took astronauts to the moon. ... Space Launch System's design called for the integration of existing hardware, spurring criticism that it's a "Frankenstein rocket," with much of it assembled from already developed technology. For instance, its two rocket boosters are advanced versions of the Space Shuttle boosters, and a cryogenic propulsion stage is based on the motor of a rocket often used by the Air Force. The Space Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group and frequent NASA critic, said Space Launch System was "built from rotting remnants of left over congressional pork. And its budgetary footprints will stamp out all the missions it is supposed to carry, kill our astronaut program and destroy science and technology projects throughout NASA."

schwit1 (797399) writes "The text of a 19-page, international trade agreement being drafted in secret was published by WikiLeaks as the transparency group's editor commemorated his two-year anniversary confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Fifty countries around the globe have already signed on to the Trade in Service Agreement, or TISA, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. Despite vast international ties, however, details about the deal have been negotiated behind closed-doors and largely ignored by the press. In a statement published by the group alongside the leaked draft this week, WikiLeaks said "proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets," and have participated in "a significant anti-transparency maneuver" by working secretly on a deal that covers more than 68 percent of world trade in services, according to the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research.

beaverdownunder (1822050) writes "Victoria Australia's Taxi Directorate has begun a crackdown on Melbourne Uber drivers, fining them $1700 each for operating a taxi service illegally, with total fines apparently equalling over $50000. In response, Uber has shut down its Melbourne service, and has refused to comment on whether its drivers will be compensated, since Uber told them they were providing a legal service. (Fined Uber drivers could take the company to the state's consumer tribunal: stay tuned!) Uber is set to meet with the Directorate next week but it is likely the demands the Directorate will place on Uber drivers, such as mandatory criminal record checks, vehicle inspections and insurance, will make the service in Melbourne unviable. Meanwhile, the New South Wales government is awaiting a report to determine if Uber drivers operating in that state are doing so illegally, warning that drivers could face substantial fines if they are found to have been operating in breach of the law. In South Australia, it doesn't even appear Uber will get off the ground — the state has made it clear that those who operate as an Uber driver will be driving without being covered by the state's mandatory insurance coverage, essentially de-registering their vehicle and making them liable for fines and license suspension."

bennyboy64 writes: "IT security industry experts are beginning to turn on Google and OpenSSL, questioning whether the Heartbleed bug was disclosed 'responsibly.' A number of selective leaks to Facebook, Akamai, and CloudFlare occurred prior to disclosure on April 7. A separate, informal pre-notification program run by Red Hat on behalf OpenSSL to Linux and Unix operating system distributions also occurred. But router manufacturers and VPN appliance makers Cisco and Juniper had no heads up. Nor did large web entities such as Amazon Web Services, Twitter, Yahoo, Tumblr and GoDaddy, just to name a few. The Sydney Morning Herald has spoken to many people who think Google should've told OpenSSL as soon as it uncovered the critical OpenSSL bug in March, and not as late as it did on April 1. The National Cyber Security Centre Finland (NCSC-FI), which reported the bug to OpenSSL after Google, on April 7, which spurred the rushed public disclosure by OpenSSL, also thinks it was handled incorrectly. Jussi Eronen, of NCSC-FI, said Heartbleed should have continued to remain a secret and be shared only in security circles when OpenSSL received a second bug report from the Finnish cyber security center that it was passing on from security testing firm Codenomicon. 'This would have minimized the exposure to the vulnerability for end users,' Mr. Eronen said, adding that 'many websites would already have patched' by the time it was made public if this procedure was followed."

bennyboy64 writes: "IT security industry experts are beginning to turn on Google and OpenSSL, questioning whether the Heartbleed bug was disclosed 'responsibly.' A number of selective leaks to Facebook, Akamai, and CloudFlare occurred prior to disclosure on April 7. A separate, informal pre-notification program run by Red Hat on behalf OpenSSL to Linux and Unix operating system distributions also occurred. But router manufacturers and VPN appliance makers Cisco and Juniper had no heads up. Nor did large web entities such as Amazon Web Services, Twitter, Yahoo, Tumblr and GoDaddy, just to name a few. The Sydney Morning Herald has spoken to many people who think Google should've told OpenSSL as soon as it uncovered the critical OpenSSL bug in March, and not as late as it did on April 1. The National Cyber Security Centre Finland (NCSC-FI), which reported the bug to OpenSSL after Google, on April 7, which spurred the rushed public disclosure by OpenSSL, also thinks it was handled incorrectly. Jussi Eronen, of NCSC-FI, said Heartbleed should have continued to remain a secret and be shared only in security circles when OpenSSL received a second bug report from the Finnish cyber security center that it was passing on from security testing firm Codenomicon. 'This would have minimized the exposure to the vulnerability for end users,' Mr. Eronen said, adding that 'many websites would already have patched' by the time it was made public if this procedure was followed."

bennyboy64 (1437419) writes "Ever since the Heartbleed flaw in OpenSSL was made public there have been various questions about who knew what and when. The Sydney Morning Herald has done some analysis of public mailing lists and talked to those involved with disclosing the bug to get the bottom of it. The newspaper finds that Google discovered Heartbleed on or before March 21 and notified OpenSSL on April 1. Other key dates include Finnish security testing firm Codenomicon discovering the flaw independently of Google at 23:30 PDT, April 3. SuSE, Debian, FreeBSD and AltLinux all got a heads up from Red Hat about the flaw in the early hours of April 7 — a few hours before it was made public. Ubuntu, Gentoo and Chromium attempted to get a heads up by responding to an email with few details about it but didn't, as the guy at Red Hat sending the disclosure messages out in India went to bed. By the time he woke up, Codenomicon had reported the bug to OpenSSL."