The News Of Tomorrow, Today

Subscribe

Tech News: 5 Things to Know in Australia Today

Asha Barbaschow Avatar
Asha Barbaschow
Tech News: 5 Things to Know in Australia Today

Hello and happy hump day. There are a few things happening in tech land, here they are.

 

1. Massive cloud outage hits

Now over to Reuters and it’s reporting that Amazon’s cloud services arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), suffered a big disruption overnight that affected websites of SO many U.S. organisations, from media sites to emergency services and everyone in between. Per the report, several hours after Downdetector.com started showing reports of outages, Amazon said many AWS services were fully recovered and marked “resolved”.

2. ACT government affected by vulnerability

Brought to our attention by iTnews, security vendor Barracuda last week disclosed a vulnerability in its email security gateway – and while that’s not something that directly affects consumers, it appears the ACT government investigated Barracuda’s announcement, and discovered that it may be affected. “The investigation has now identified that a breach has occurred and a harms assessment is underway to fully understand the impact specific to our systems, and importantly to the data that may have been accessed,” the notice reads. “We are confident that actions taken to date have contained the breach and that there is no ongoing threat. Canberrans can continue to use ACT Government online systems with confidence.”

3. An AI interface straight into Windows 11

Over to Cnet and it’s reporting that Microsoft has begun building an AI chat interface straight into Windows 11. As you can see from the demo below, it’s really leaning into an AI bot as the future of information searching. Thanks, I hate it.

4.  Even the Beatles aren’t safe from AI

Unfortunately, The Beatles have used artificial intelligence to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” decades after the band broke up. Per AP, Paul McCartney told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. The “new” song is set to be released later this year, he said.

5. Tapping off with a locked iPhone

Passengers on Sydney’s public transport network can now ‘tap off’ without unlocking their phones. Brought to our attention by The Guardian, the new feature means you no longer have to stare at your iPhone when in a rush to get off the bus (or train, or ferry), hoping the FaceID registers it’s you. It is the ultimate first-world problem but boy do I get flustered trying to get my phone to acknowledge it’s me, just with makeup on. The capability is already active on some Opal readers, and will be fully rolled out to all 25,000 readers across the bus, train, light rail and ferry networks in the coming weeks. I just tried it on a bus and it didn’t work, but maybe it will next week.

BONUS ITEM: There’s not much to this, but it shocked me a little when it came across my feed so I thought i’d share.

Have a lovely day.

The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.