Good morning, hope you’re doing well this early Friday kind of Thursday. Let’s get your last tech news briefing for the week out of the way.
1. Everyone gets Meta’s new AI tool
Meta has some big AI ambitions, even as it seems like it’s long been playing catch up to OpenAI, Microsoft, and even Google. To make a bit of a splash, on Wednesday the company showed off its new AI-based Segment Anything Model that’s surprisingly capable of identifying and separating specific objects in images and video. Here’s the kicker: Meta is releasing it to anybody by making its new software open-source.
2. New robotics strategy for Australia
The Australian government wants a robotics strategy, one that’ll cover how the country uses robotics and automation. To make that happen, it’s launched a discussion paper, with the responses gathered to be used for the development of a new National Robotics Strategy. “Australia has all the ingredients to grow our robotics industry – world-class research institutions, a highly skilled workforce and favourable business conditions,” Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic said. It follows the passage of the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund through Parliament last week
3. CSIRO to map the genomic data of Aussie pests
CSIRO has caught our attention again today, but this time it’s because the agency has embarked on an ambitious new project to unravel the genetic blueprints of Australia’s top pest and invasive species to better enable their management or eradication. The Australian Pest Genome Partnership (APGP) will generate the genomic data of hundreds of pests and weeds and make it freely available, along with digital solutions to help analyse the data. The data will assist researchers working on pest and weed species and underpin next generation species-specific solutions, CSIRO said.
4. Global cybercrime takedown
Cybersecurity firm Trellix has said that over the last 24 hours, global law enforcement organisations spanning 17 countries as well as Europol and the FBI conducted arrests to take down one of the world’s largest illegal marketplaces selling the browser cookies, login credentials, email information, e-commerce shopping accounts and other sensitive data of hundreds of thousands of people. Trellix said in addition to the operators of the marketplace, hundreds of cybercriminals worldwide were approached and/or arrested. This was one of the largest cybercriminal takedowns in recent years.
Latest from the @FBI on Genesis Market takedown: Officials obtained copies of back-end servers with details on nearly 60,000 users, reports @AJVicens. “Those records helped law enforcement uncover the true identities of many of the users,” officials said.https://t.co/sJ9nSHtbG6
— CyberScoop (@CyberScoopNews) April 5, 2023
5. New tech for AFP
The AFP has announced the launch of a “modern technology platform” it said is aimed at providing investigators with a “contemporary and fully scalable system for managing investigations into the next decade”. In true AFP form, the details of what this platform is and does are scant, but it said the platform will progress the Commissioner’s intent to “support the frontline, reduce red tape, and enhance partnerships with our Commonwealth, state and territory law enforcement and security partners”. Yay, new tech.
BONUS ITEM: For some reason, Transformers have taken over Taronga Zoo in Sydney.
Have a wonderful long weekend, folks!