An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A trash can overflowing with disposable drink cups is an all-too-familiar sight outside any high-traffic cafe or fast-food joint. It was during a lunch-time walk in Melbourne that colleagues Aniyo Rahebi and Catherine Hutchins passed by several such eyesores and decided to combat the piles of waste. A few months later they arrived at an idea: a to-go cup that can be eaten. After hundreds of hours in the kitchen refining their concept, the duo took it to market. Their startup Good-Edi now offers an edible, biodegradable, plastic-free alternative to the standard polyethylene-lined paper cups used for coffee that largely end up in landfills or gets incinerated.

The company raised about $98,000 through a crowd-funding site in 2021, and its baking team currently produces about 500 cups a day for clients across Australia, including coffee shops, roasteries and concert venues, from a facility in a suburb of Melbourne. Good-Edi aims to boost output and expand sales internationally this year. The world goes through more than 250 billion plastic-lined paper drink cups every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Only about 1% of those cups are recycled. Good-Edi says about 2.7 million disposable cups find their way to landfills each day in Australia.

Good-Edi's product works for both for hot drinks like coffee and tea as well as cold drinks. After about 250 recipe adjustments, the founders settled on a blend of rye flour, wheat bran, oat bran, sugar, salt, coconut oil and water. They say their container stays crispy holding a hot cup of joe for about 40 minutes and won't leak a cold beverage for about eight hours. For Hutchins and Rahebi, who have a combined 20 years experience in the food-processing and packaging sectors, Good-Edi is still a side hustle. They are banking on shifting consumer sentiment and a beverage industry under pressure to offer more sustainable to-go options to drive sales and compensate for the fact that their containers can increase the cost of a cup of takeaway coffee by A$1. "Will coffee drinkers be keen to gobble up the company's innovation, if it doesn't feel like a treat?" asks a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter that says the cup tasted like an unsweetened wheat biscuit.

Australia's stock market operator, ASX Ltd, has announced that it will no longer pursue the rebuilding of its software platform using blockchain technology. The decision comes after an external review found that the project would require significant rework, and ASX stated that it will explore more conventional technology options to achieve its business goals. Reuters reports: ASX frustrated market participants in November by "pausing" a rebuild of its all-in-one trading, settlement and clearing software based on the decentralized computing concept, after an external review found it had to be largely reworked after seven years of development. The company has since said it is considering options for another attempt at the rebuild of the 30-year-old software, but at a meeting with participants this week it said it would not involve blockchain or related "distributed ledger technology" (DLT).

Asked if the next attempt would "go down the more conventional route, that is without the focus on DLT (or) blockchain," exchange project director Tim Whiteley told the meeting that "while we continue to explore all the options, certainly we will need to use a more conventional technology than in the original solution in order to achieve the business outcomes." The statement signals the end of what was to be one of the world's most prominent use cases of the concept that promises to accelerate online transactions by processing them securely in multiple locations.

Until now, ASX has said it may resurrect the project using blockchain-based technology developed by New York-based contractor Digital Asset. It has said it will announce a new strategy for the project by year-end. Whiteley told the meeting ASX was on track to decide a new strategy by year-end. It sent a request for information to potential software vendors and "issued an RFP to a number of vendors who responded more positively ... for more detailed feedback," he said, using the acronym for a request for proposal. Market participants had told ASX they did not want a risky, single-date changeover to new software, and "that feedback has been taken into the implementation planning," Whiteley said.

Companies in Apple's third-party repair program say delays in the process and high pricing for parts make it almost impossible to compete with the juggernaut. From a report: In 2021 Apple, under pressure from a Productivity Commission review on the "right to repair," launched its independent repair provider program in Australia. It was trumpeted as a way for small companies to compete with Apple to repair their products -- such as the iPhone -- using Apple tools and spare parts. At the time, repairers said they felt the move was a token gesture designed to head off any potential right-to-repair legislation that would have been recommended by the Productivity Commission review. Two years later, some say their fears have been realised. A number of repairers Guardian Australia has spoken to in Australia and the US suggest Apple's slow response times and the high cost for replacement parts makes it almost impossible for them to be viable competitors. The repairers requested anonymity to speak about the program, fearing that reprisals from the California-based tech giant might prevent them from remaining in the program.

Apple has indicated it takes an average of eight weeks for repairers to be admitted to the program, but repairers Guardian Australia has spoken to said the wait time can be up to six months -- and that it feels like the applications sit in a black hole, without any point of contact within Apple to provide an update on their status. Once repairers are admitted to the program, they receive training from Apple, as well as access to Apple parts, tools, repair manuals and diagnostic software for the company's iPhones and Macs. But they say the price of the parts, as well as the process to get a discounted rate for replacement parts, make it difficult for repairers to compete with Apple's own repair program. One repairer, who says his business repairs between 30 and 40 Apple products every week, said the average repair takes between an hour to an hour and a half. If it charge the rate Apple charges customers for repairs, then its maximum margin is about $60.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: Ocean surface heat is at record-breaking levels. Temperatures began climbing in mid-March and skyrocketed over the course of several weeks, leaving scientists scrambling to figure out exactly why.

Temperatures have fallen since their peak in April — as they naturally do in the spring — but they are still higher than they have ever been on record for this time of year.... The record may not seem huge — it's nearly two-tenths of a degree higher than the previous record in 2016 — but given how much heat is needed to warm up this huge body of water, "it's a massive amount of energy," Matthew England, professor of ocean and climate dynamics at the University of New South Wales, Australia, told CNN... Some scientists are concerned the scale of these new records could mark the start of an alarming trend. Others say record-breaking temperatures like these are always concerning but to be expected given the human-caused climate crisis.

All agree the consequences are likely to be significant. Warmer oceans bleach coral, kill marine life, increase sea level rise and make the ocean less efficient at absorbing planet-warming pollution — the warmer oceans get, the more the planet will heat.
The science leader at the British Antarctic Survey told CNN that "it's probably too early" to blame El Niño." In fact, the world just emerged from a 3-year La Niña cooling event in March. So instead, CNN gets a different explanation fro Gregory C. Johnson, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: "It's a little bit like we've had the freezer door open for a while and it's helped to cool the planet," Johnson said. But even while that freezer has been open, background temperatures have continued to rise. Now the freezer is closed, everything is hotter than before.
Later CNN adds that some scientists are concerned "climate change might be progressing in ways climate models have not predicted." One surprising reason could be the reduction of aerosols in the atmosphere. In 2020, regulations were introduced to limit the amount of sulfur in the fuel ships used — a policy aimed at addressing air pollution. Though air pollution has a significant impact on human health, it also acts as an artificial sunscreen and reflects sunlight away from the Earth. One theory is the absence of aerosols may have turned up the heat, said Karina von Schuckmann [an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean International in France].

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Growth at $50 billion fintech Stripe has been slowing this year, but one of its key strategies to reverse that course got a decent push today: Stripe is announcing that it has inked a "strategic payments partnership" with Uber. The pair will work together initially on selected services in eight of Uber's biggest markets, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan. Some context on this deal: Uber's big U.S. rival Lyft has been a longtime marquee customer of Stripe's for payments, and whether or not it was true, that was one reason some assumed Uber and Stripe would not work together. Uber is, however, a much bigger beast, at close to $100 billion transacted annually (Stripe processed $817 billion last year). And Uber is not just a force globally but in the U.S. specifically, where one estimate from YipIt (via WSJ) puts Uber's rideshare market share currently at a whopping 74%.

Lyft will remain a customer of Stripe's, Stripe president Will Gaybrick confirmed to TechCrunch. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but as with the rest of Stripe's payments business, a big component will come from commissions that Stripe will make from each transaction that it powers on Uber's platform. The Uber partnership, expected to be announced formally later today at Stripe's user conference, comes on the heels of recent enterprise deals Stripe has inked with Amazon, Microsoft and BMW. But this partnership -- for now at least -- is not a global adoption of all that Stripe has to offer. Uber will be using Stripe to break into a specific, new payments frontier. Specifically, it will integrate Stripe Financial Connections and Link to let users import banking details to pay for services like Uber Rides and Eats directly from bank accounts, giving users a payments alternative to credit or debit cards.

Google and other tech giants have called on the Australian government to relax copyright laws to allow artificial intelligence to mine websites for information across the internet. From a report: In a submission to the government's review of copyright enforcement published this week, Google argued the government needs to consider whether copyright law has "the necessary flexibilities" to support the development of AI. The company has called for the introduction of a fair dealing exception for text and data mining for AI.

"The lack of such copyright flexibilities means that investment in and development of AI and machine-learning technologies is happening and will continue to happen overseas," Google said. "AI-powered products and services are being created in other countries with more innovation-focused copyright frameworks, such as the US, Singapore and Japan, and then exported to Australia for use by Australian consumers and businesses. Without these discrete exceptions, Australia risks only ever being an importer of certain kinds of technologies."

In an op-ed via The Conversation, Stephen Dobson, professor and Dean of Education and the Arts at CQUniversity, Australia, argues that it is time for universities to return to oral exams in the AI and ChatGPT era. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: Imagine the following scenario. You are a student and enter a room or Zoom meeting. A panel of examiners who have read your essay or viewed your performance, are waiting inside. You answer a series of questions as they probe your knowledge and skills. You leave. The examiners then consider the preliminary pre-oral exam grade and if an adjustment up or down is required. You are called back to receive your final grade.

This type of oral assessment -- or viva voce as it was known in Latin -- is a tried and tested form of educational assessment. No need to sit in an exam hall, no fear of plagiarism accusations or concerns with students submitting essays generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. Integrity is 100% assured, in a fair, reliable and authentic manner that can also be easily used to assess multiple individual or group assignments. As services like ChatGPT continue to grow in terms of both its capabilities and usage -- including in education and academia -- is it high time for universities to revert to the time-tested oral exam? "Chatbots cannot replicate this sort of task, ensuring student authenticity," writes Dobson. "I argue that it is time to change our conversation to be more about assessment that actually involves a 'conversation.'"

"Writing would still be important, but we should learn to re-appreciate the importance of how a student can talk about the knowledge and skills they acquired. Successfully completing a viva could become one of our graduate attributes, as it once was."

In March U.S. President Joe Biden "signed an executive order that limits U.S. government agencies from using commercially available spyware," writes EFF senior policy analyst Matthew Guariglia.

"But that doesn't mean there will be no government use of spyware in the United States...." The executive order arrived only days before revelations that the United States, which was previously thought to have steered clear of some of the most infamous foreign spyware products, actually had a contract to test and deploy the notorious Pegasus created by Israeli company NSO Group. The contract was signed under a fake name on November 8, 2021 between an organization that acts as a front for the U.S. government and an American affiliate of NSO group. Only five days before, on November 3, 2021, the U.S. Commerce Department added NSO Group and other foreign spyware companies to a blacklist — the "Entity List for engaging in activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States." So the signing of this straw contract was in apparent breach of this ban. NSO Group is just one of the companies that should be covered by the new executive order....

Though the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware has garnered particular attention for its widespread use against human rights advocates, journalists, and politicians, the executive order did not name any company specifically, keeping the policy broad. This may lead some government agencies to think that their purchase of foreign spyware might fly under the radar if it comes from another, smaller vendor, or the vendor can plausibly deny that it is really spyware that they are selling. We urge the Biden administration to publish a non-exhaustive list of spyware companies included as part of this ban. That would send a clear message to agencies who wish to exploit any ambiguity in order to skirt the law.
The EFF applauds the U.S. order for specyfing ways in which spyware is not to be used — including a ban on its use against journalists, activists, political figures, and any U.S. person "without proper legal authorization, safeguards, and oversight." And the EFF also notes positive signs of progress towards stopping government misuse of spyware:
Building upon the U.S. executive order, a global coalition of eleven countries, including Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are working towards a common goal of countering the misuse of commercial spyware. This alliance is committed to establishing robust guardrails and procedures that uphold fundamental human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law, within each of their respective systems.
But the EFF also points out the biggest concern of the U.S. government appears to be with the dangers in spyware that's foreign made. "While this signals discomfort with foreign-made spyware, no one should take this as an indication that the U.S. government is averse to using similar technologies developed internally, or indeed acquiring foreign spyware companies for domestic use.

"Given the government's long history of using and abusing incredibly invasive techniques, people in the United States should push for robust human rights safeguards to ensure the government won't proceed with only the minor restrictions of this executive order to rein them in."

Several government cybersecurity agencies united to urge secure-by-design and secure-by-default software. Releasing "joint guidance" for software manufactuers were two U.S. security agencies — the FBI and the NSA — joined with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the cybersecurity authorities of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, and New Zealand. "To create a future where technology and associated products are safe for customers," they wrote in a joint statement, "the authoring agencies urge manufacturers to revamp their design and development programs to permit only secure-by-design and -default products to be shipped to customers."

The Washington Post reports: Software manufacturers should put an end to default passwords, write in safer programming languages and establish vulnerability disclosure programs for reporting flaws, a collection of U.S. and international government agencies said in new guidelines Thursday. [The guidelines also urge rigorous code reviews.]

The "principles and approaches" document, which isn't mandatory but lays out the agencies' views on securing software, is the first major step by the Biden administration as part of its push to make software products secure as part of the design process, and to make their default settings secure as well. It's part of a potentially contentious multiyear effort that aims to shift the way software makers secure their products. It was a key feature of the administration's national cybersecurity strategy, which was released last month and emphasized shifting the burden of security from consumers — who have to manage frequent software updates — to the companies that make often insecure products... The administration has also raised the prospect of legislation on secure-by-design and secure-by-default, but officials have said it could be years away....

The [international affairs think tank] Atlantic Council's Cyber Statecraft Initiative has praised the Biden administration's desire to address economic incentives for insecurity. Right now, the costs of cyberattacks fall on users more than they do tech providers, according to many policymakers. "They're on a righteous mission," Trey Herr, director of the Atlantic Council initiative, told me. If today's guidelines are the beginning of the discussion on secure-by-design and secure-by-default, Herr said, "this is a really strong start, and an important one."

"It really takes aim at security features as a profit center," which for some companies has led to a lot of financial growth, Herr said. "I do think that's going to rub people the wrong way and quick, but that's good. That's a good fight."
In the statement CISA's director says consumers also have a role to play in this transition. "As software now powers the critical systems and services we collectively rely upon every day, consumers must demand that manufacturers prioritize product safety above all else."

Among other things, the new guidelines say that manufacturers "are encouraged make hard tradeoffs and investments, including those that will be 'invisible' to the customers, such as migrating to programming languages that eliminate widespread vulnerabilities."

Now Australian online businesses that put up hurdles to make it harder for customers to unsubscribe from their services may face a crackdown from the federal government, with plans to be unveiled later this year. The Guardian reports: The practice of "forced continuity" or "subscription trapping" involves building design features of a website or app in a way that impedes a customer's ability to cancel a particular service. The chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Gina Cass-Gottlieb, said in a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday a prohibition on unfair trade practices would help protect consumers and small businesses "exposed to manipulative practices designed to get them to agree to unfair or unfavorable contract terms".

The consumer watchdog has called for new powers in Australian consumer law to crack down on such practices since 2017. A spokesperson for the regulator said subscription traps can cause "significant harm to consumers and some small businesses." "These practices make it difficult for consumers to cancel subscriptions after fixed-term periods, with the consequence that many subscriptions roll over to paid subscriptions despite consumers no longer utilizing or wanting them," the spokesperson said. The report cites a discrepancy in the steps required to canceled an Amazon Prime subscription. In Europe, "there is a simple two-step process," reports the Guardian. "But customers in Australia must navigate four convoluted steps, with the wording and location of the cancellation button changing between each screen."

This is due to Australia's lack of unfair trading practices laws that exist in Europe and other countries.

An anonymous readers shared this report from the Washington Post: Brian Hood is a whistleblower who was praised for "showing tremendous courage" when he helped expose a worldwide bribery scandal linked to Australia's National Reserve Bank. But if you ask ChatGPT about his role in the scandal, you get the opposite version of events. Rather than heralding Hood's whistleblowing role, ChatGPT falsely states that Hood himself was convicted of paying bribes to foreign officials, had pleaded guilty to bribery and corruption, and been sentenced to prison.

When Hood found out, he was shocked. Hood, who is now mayor of Hepburn Shire near Melbourne in Australia, said he plans to sue the company behind ChatGPT for telling lies about him, in what could be the first defamation suit of its kind against the artificial intelligence chatbot.... "There's never, ever been a suggestion anywhere that I was ever complicit in anything, so this machine has completely created this thing from scratch," Hood said — confirming his intention to file a defamation suit against ChatGPT. "There needs to be proper control and regulation over so-called artificial intelligence, because people are relying on them...."

If it proceeds, Hood's lawsuit will be the first time someone filed a defamation suit against ChatGPT's content, according to Reuters. If it reaches the courts, the case would test uncharted legal waters, forcing judges to consider whether the operators of an artificial intelligence bot can be held accountable for its allegedly defamatory statements.
The article notes that ChatGPT prominently warns users that it "may occasionally generate incorrect information." And another Post article notes that all the major chatbots now include disclaimers, "such as Bard's fine-print message below each query: 'Bard may display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn't represent Google's views.'"

But the Post also notes that ChatGPT still "invented a fake sexual harassment story involving a real law professor, Jonathan Turley — citing a Washington Post article that did not exist as its evidence." Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 tipped us off to that story. But here's what happened when the Washington Post searched for accountability for the error: In a statement, OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix said, "When users sign up for ChatGPT, we strive to be as transparent as possible that it may not always generate accurate answers. Improving factual accuracy is a significant focus for us, and we are making progress...." Katy Asher, senior communications director at Microsoft, said the company is taking steps to ensure search results are safe and accurate. "We have developed a safety system including content filtering, operational monitoring, and abuse detection to provide a safe search experience for our users," Asher said in a statement, adding that "users are also provided with explicit notice that they are interacting with an AI system."

But it remains unclear who is responsible when artificial intelligence generates or spreads inaccurate information. From a legal perspective, "we just don't know" how judges might rule when someone tries to sue the makers of an AI chatbot over something it says, said Jeff Kosseff, a professor at the Naval Academy and expert on online speech. "We've not had anything like this before."

Australia's financial regulator has cancelled the local financial services licence of the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. The Guardian reports: Earlier this year, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) found Binance had incorrectly classified hundreds of retail customers as wholesale investors. The Asic chair, Joe Longo, said the distinction was important because retail customers have access to more consumer protections under Australian law, including the right to dispute resolution. Binance's Australia's financial services (AFS) licence only allows it to provide derivatives products to sophisticated investors, rather than retail customers.

"It is critically important that AFS licensees classify retail and wholesale clients in accordance with the law," Longo said. "Retail clients trading in crypto derivatives are afforded important rights and consumer protections under financial services laws in Australia, including access to external dispute resolution through the Australian financial complaints authority. Our targeted review of these matters is ongoing, including focus on the extent of consumer harms."

From April 14, Binance clients will not be able to increase derivatives positions or open new positions. The exchange must close any remaining open positions by April 21. Binance can remain a member of the Australian financial complaints authority until April 8, 2024. "As we have said before, Asic supports a regulatory framework for crypto with a focus on consumer protection and market integrity. The final decision as to the regulatory settings is one for government," Longo said. Binance has been operating in Australia for many years but its now cancelled AFSL was with Oztures Trading, a company it acquired last year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Like so much in our modern era, Australia's high-stakes gamble on renewable energy starts with an Elon Musk Twitter brag. South Australia's last coal-fired power plant had closed, leaving the province of 1.8 million heavily reliant on wind farms and power imports from a neighboring region. When an unprecedented blackout caused much of the country to question the state's dependence on clean power, Tesla boasted -- on Twitter, of course -- that it had a solution: It could build the world's biggest battery, and fast. "@Elonmusk, how serious are you about this," replied Australian software billionaire and climate activist Mike Cannon-Brookes. "Can you guarantee 100MW in 100 days?" Musk responded: "Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?"

To the astonishment of many, Tesla succeeded, and today, almost seven years later, that battery and more like it have become central to a shockingly rapid energy transition. By the middle of the next decade, major coal-fired power stations that generate about half of Australia's electricity will shut down. Gas-fired plants are being retired, too, and nuclear power is banned. That leaves solar, wind and hydro as the major options in the country's post-coal future. "It's really a remarkable story," said Audrey Zibelman, the former head of the Australian Energy Market Operator, or AEMO, the agency that runs the grid, and now an adviser to Alphabet's X. "Because we're not interconnected, we've had to learn to do it in a much more sophisticated way, where a lot of other countries will go once they've shut down their fossils."

It may be Australia's biggest power buildout since electrification in the 1920s and 30s. And, if successful, could be replicated across the 80% of the world's population that lives in the so-called sun belt -- which includes Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, India, southern China and Southeast Asia, says Professor Andrew Blakers, an expert in renewable energy and solar technology at Australian National University. That, in turn, would go a long way to halting climate change. Building battery storage is just one critical piece of the national project, and AEMO and others are worried coal plants will shut before there's enough additional electricity supply. Australia needs to increase its grid-scale wind and solar capacity ninefold by 2050. Connecting all that generation and storage into the grid will require more investment. Overall, the cost could be a staggering A$320 billion ($215 billion), and the money is starting to flow: Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., Macquarie Group Ltd., and billionaires Andrew Forrest and Cannon-Brookes have all been involved in headline-grabbing energy deals in recent months. New government support for renewables has also improved investor sentiment, according to the Clean Energy Investor Group, which includes project developers and financiers.

Several domain names tied to Genesis Market, a bustling cybercrime store that sold access to passwords and other data stolen from millions of computers infected with malicious software, were seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today. KrebsOnSecurity reports: Sources tell KrebsOnsecurity the domain seizures coincided with "dozens" of arrests in the United States and abroad targeting those who allegedly operated the service, as well as suppliers who continuously fed Genesis Market with freshly-stolen data. Active since 2018, Genesis Market's slogan has long been, "Our store sells bots with logs, cookies, and their real fingerprints." Customers could search for infected systems with a variety of options, including by Internet address or by specific domain names associated with stolen credentials.

But earlier today, multiple domains associated with Genesis had their homepages replaced with a seizure notice from the FBI, which said the domains were seized pursuant to a warrant issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. But sources close to the investigation tell KrebsOnSecurity that law enforcement agencies in the United States, Canada and across Europe are currently serving arrest warrants on dozens of individuals thought to support Genesis, either by maintaining the site or selling the service bot logs from infected systems. The seizure notice includes the seals of law enforcement entities from several countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. [...]

One feature of Genesis that sets it apart from other bot shops is that customers can retain access to infected systems in real-time, so that if the rightful owner of an infected system creates a new account online, those new credentials will get stolen and displayed in the web-based panel of the Genesis customer who purchased that bot. "While some infostealers are designed to remove themselves after execution, others create persistent access," reads a March 2023 report from cybersecurity firm SpyCloud. "That means bad actors have access to the current data for as long as the device remains infected, even if the user changes passwords. SpyCloud says Genesis even advertises its commitment to keep the stolen data and the compromised systems' fingerprints up to date. "According to our research, Genesis Market had more than 430,000 stolen identities for sale as of early last year -- and there are many other marketplaces like this one," the SpyCloud report concludes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The federal government is considering a "roadmap" on how to restrict access to online pornography to those who can prove they are 18 or older, but there are warnings that any system could come at the cost of Australians' privacy online. On Friday, the eSafety commissioner provided a long-awaited roadmap to the government for how to verify users' ages online, which was commissioned by the former Morrison government nearly two years ago. The commissioner's office said the roadmap "explores if and how age verification and other measures could be used to prevent and mitigate harm to children from online pornography" but that any action taken will be a decision of government.

There were a variety of options to verify people's ages considered during the consultation for the roadmap, such as the use of third-party companies, individual sites verifying ages using ID documents or credit card checks, and internet service providers or mobile phone operators being used to check users' ages. Digital rights groups have raised concerns about the potential for any verification system to create a honeypot of people's personal information. But the office said any technology-based solution would need to strike the right balance between safety, privacy and security, and must be coupled with education campaigns for children, parents and educators. [...]

It comes as new industry codes aimed at tackling restricted-access content online, developed by groups representing digital platforms, and software, gaming and telecommunications companies were submitted to the eSafety commissioner for approval. The content covered includes child sexual abuse material, terrorism, extreme crime and violence, and drug-related content. The commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, will now decide whether the voluntary codes meet her expectations or whether she needs to enforce mandatory codes. [...] The second phase of the codes will set out how the platforms restrict access to pornography on their sites -- separate from the use of age verification systems.

Cruising at a depth of 8,336 meters (over 27,000 feet) just above the seabed, a young snailfish has become the deepest fish ever filmed by scientists during a probe into the abyss of the northern Pacific Ocean. From a report: Scientists from University of Western Australia and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology released footage of the snailfish on Sunday filmed last September by sea robots in deep trenches off Japan. Along with the filming the deepest snailfish, the scientists physically caught two other specimens at 8,022 meters and set another record for the deepest catch. Previously, the deepest snailfish ever spotted was at 7,703 meters in 2008, while scientists had never been able to collect fish from anywhere below 8,000 meters. "What is significant is that it shows how far a particular type of fish will descend in the ocean," said marine biologist Alan Jamieson, founder of the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre, who led the expedition. Scientists are filming in the trenches off Japan as part of a 10-year study into the deepest fish populations in the world. Snailfish are members of Liparidae family, and while most snailfish live in shallow water, others survive at some of the greatest depths ever recorded, Jamieson said.

Australia will announce a ban on TikTok on government phones this week, following other countries in barring the Chinese-owned video app over security concerns, Australian newspapers reported late on Monday. From a report: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agreed to a government-wide ban on the use of TikTok after the completion of a review by the Home Affairs department, The Australian newspaper reported. Victoria state will also ban the short video app from government phones, The Age newspaper reported, quoting a state government official as saying Victoria would follow the federal government's guidance. The United States, Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Belgium and the European Commission have already banned the app from official devices over security concerns./i

The United States and some of its partner countries on Thursday called for strict domestic and international controls to counter the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware. From a report: The joint statement was issued by the governments of Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The countries said they were committed to preventing the export of technology and equipment to end-users who are likely to use them for "malicious cyber activity." The joint statement also said the countries would share information with each other on spyware proliferation and misuse, including to better identify these tools. On Monday, U.S. President Joseph Biden signed an executive order intended to curb the malicious use of digital spy tools around the globe targeting U.S. personnel and civil society. The new executive order was designed to apply pressure on the secretive industry by placing new restrictions on U.S. government defense, law enforcement and intelligence agencies' purchasing decisions.

Clancy William James writes via The Conversation: We have just published evidence in Nature Astronomy for what might be producing mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from distant galaxies, known as fast radio bursts or FRBs. Two colliding neutron stars -- each the super-dense core of an exploded star -- produced a burst of gravitational waves when they merged into a "supramassive" neutron star. We found that two and a half hours later they produced an FRB when the neutron star collapsed into a black hole. Or so we think. The key piece of evidence that would confirm or refute our theory -- an optical or gamma-ray flash coming from the direction of the fast radio burst -- vanished almost four years ago. In a few months, we might get another chance to find out if we are correct. [...]

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has found two binary neutron star mergers. Crucially, the second, known as GW190425, occurred when a new FRB-hunting telescope called CHIME was also operational. However, being new, it took CHIME two years to release its first batch of data. When it did so, [Alexandra Moroianu, a masters student at the University of Western Australia and lead author of the study] quickly identified a fast radio burst called FRB 20190425A which occurred only two and a half hours after GW190425. Exciting as this was, there was a problem -- only one of LIGO's two detectors was working at the time, making it very uncertain where exactly GW190425 had come from. In fact, there was a 5% chance this could just be a coincidence. Worse, the Fermi satellite, which could have detected gamma rays from the merger -- the "smoking gun" confirming the origin of GW190425 -- was blocked by Earth at the time. [...]

LIGO and two other gravitational wave detectors, Virgo and KAGRA, will turn back on in May this year, and be more sensitive than ever, while CHIME and other radio telescopes are ready to immediately detect any FRBs from neutron star mergers. In a few months, we may find out if we've made a key breakthrough -- or if it was just a flash in the pan.

"The World Health Organization on Friday called on China to release new data linking the Covid pandemic's origins to animal samples at Wuhan Market after the country recently took down the research," reports CNBC.

The existence of the new data was revealed by the Atlantic earlier this week, in an article reporting that the newly-discovered samples showed the virus was present in creatures for sale there near the very beginning of the pandemic: A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It's some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses....

The genetic sequences were pulled out of swabs taken in and near market stalls around the pandemic's start. They represent the first bits of raw data that researchers outside of China's academic institutions and their direct collaborators have had access to. A few weeks ago, the data appeared on an open-access genomic database called GISAID, after being quietly posted by researchers affiliated with the country's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. By almost pure happenstance, scientists in Europe, North America, and Australia spotted the sequences, downloaded them, and began an analysis.

The samples were already known to be positive for the coronavirus, and had been scrutinized before by the same group of Chinese researchers who uploaded the data to GISAID. But that prior analysis, released as a preprint publication in February 2022, asserted that "no animal host of SARS-CoV-2 can be deduced...." The new analysis, led by Kristian Andersen, Edward Holmes, and Michael Worobey — three prominent researchers who have been looking into the virus's roots — shows that that may not be the case. Within about half a day of downloading the data from GISAID, the trio and their collaborators discovered that several market samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were also coming back chock-full of animal genetic material — much of which was a match for the common raccoon dog. Because of how the samples were gathered, and because viruses can't persist by themselves in the environment, the scientists think that their findings could indicate the presence of a coronavirus-infected raccoon dog in the spots where the swabs were taken....

The new analysis builds on extensive previous research that points to the market as the source of the earliest major outbreak of SARS-CoV-2: Many of the earliest known COVID-19 cases of the pandemic were clustered roughly in the market's vicinity. And the virus's genetic material was found in many samples swabbed from carts and animal-processing equipment at the venue, as well as parts of nearby infrastructure, such as storehouses, sewage wells, and water drains. Raccoon dogs, creatures commonly bred for sale in China, are also already known to be one of many mammal species that can easily catch and spread the coronavirus. All of this left one main hole in the puzzle to fill: clear-cut evidence that raccoon dogs and the virus were in the exact same spot at the market, close enough that the creatures might have been infected and, possibly, infectious.

That's what the new analysis provides. Think of it as finding the DNA of an investigation's main suspect at the scene of the crime.
The article also notes that the genetic sequences "also vanished from the database shortly after the international team of researchers notified the Chinese researchers of their preliminary findings, without explanation." And it adds that all along China has "vehemently" fought the theory that Covid-19 originated from live animals being sold at Wuhan market. Although "in June 2021, a team of researchers published a study documenting tens of thousands of mammals for sale in wet markets in Wuhan between 2017 and late 2019, including at Huanan."

"The animals were kept in largely illegal, cramped, and unhygienic settings — conditions conducive to viral transmission — and among them were more than 1,000 raccoon dogs." And there's even photos of raccoon dogs for sale at the market in December of 2019.


More coverage of the newly-discovered data is now appearing in numerous news outlets, including the New York Times, NBC News, ABC News, the Guardian, PBS, and Science.