Published on the 17/02/2025 | Written by Newsdesk
AppWrap aims to help you keep up to date with an easy to read collection of news and snippets published by other leading tech media publications that we trust. AppWrap February 2025 17.02 The Albanese government is reportedly halting plans to begin d
AppWrap aims to help you keep up to date with an easy to read collection of news and snippets published by other leading tech media publications that we trust.
AppWrap February 2025
17.02 The Albanese government is reportedly halting plans to begin designing its News Media Bargaining Incentive policy over fears of a Trump backlash. The SMH (paywalled) says the delay is due to fears the policy will be seen as being unfairly targeted towards the US and result in reciprocal tariffs on Australian exports.
15.02 OpenAI’s board has unanimously rejected a US$97 billion takeover bid by Elon Musk, saying the company is not for sale and dubbing Musk’s bid his ‘latest attempt to disrupt his competition’. AP notes Musk, an early OpenAI investor, sued for breach of contract a year ago over what he called a betrayal of OpenAi’s founding aims as a non-profit. The company is increasingly seeking to capitalise on the commercial success of generative AI, but first needs to buy out the non-profits assets. Musk was attempting to buy the non-profit.
13.02 An AI ‘Bail Assistant’ to promopt the use of correct bail criteria for NSW bail hearings has been paused after preliminary models proved problematic, with the NSW Judicial Commission deciding the assistant wouldn’t make judgements more accurate or restore public confidence. InformationAge reports that the assistant failed to incorporate all of the mandatory tests and was just as difficult for users to navigate.
12.02 Five Russians and the ZServers platform have been sanctioned by the Australian government for enabling the 2022 Medibank data breach. The five individuals are the owner of ZServers and staff members. It is the first time Australia has imposed cyber sanctions against an entity, the Australian Federal Police note.
11.02 Airservices Australia has selected Australia’s AvSoft and Yarra Drones and US-based OneSky to participate in the first round of technical integration with a new data-sharing platform designed to enable drones and other uncrewed craft to be seamlessly incorporated into Australian airspace. The Flight Information Management System will enable Airservices to share flight information between air traffic control, traditional aircraft and uncrewed airspace users, Airservices Australia says.
11.02 The US and UK have both refused to sign a declaration on ‘inclusive and sustainable’ AI at a Paris summit. Sixty other signatories, including Australia and New Zealand, France, China and Canada, signed the document which calls for priorities to ensure AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy and sustainable. The Guardian says the UK says the statement has not gone far enough in addressing global governance of AI and its impact on national security, while the US has criticised ‘excessive regulation’ of technology and warned against cooperating with China.
11.02 US vice president JD Vance has criticised Europe’s ‘excessive regulation’ saying it could cripple the AI industry, Time reports.
11.02 Microsoft is adjusting its Office-Teams pricing in an effort to avoid an EU trust fine, Reuters reports. The company has offered to widen the price differential between Office with Teams and without Teams in a move which could help rivals offer their own products at competitive prices and entice users to switch to them.
10.02 University of NSW’s Bronwyn Fox and Australia’s Temporary AI Expert Group are among those who have contributed to a new 300-page International AI Safety Report. The report looks at risks and safety of general-purpose AI risks including large-scale labour market impacts, scams, non-consensual imagery, bias, hacking and loss of control over AI. It notes a need for policymakers and governments to have access to the current scientific understanding on risks and calls for global collaboration to take advantage of opportunities.
08.02 Meta is cutting five percent of its workforce – or potentially around 4,000 jobs – on Monday as part of its performance-based job cuts. Workers in more than a dozen countries outside the US will be notified via work and personal emails and will lose access to systems within an hour of being informed, Business Insider says.
07.02 Some Australian Salesforce staff are among those impacted by the company’s lay-off of 1,000 staff, ARN says. It says it appears some partner account managers have been laid off.
05.02 AirTrunk founder and CEO Robin Khuda’s Khuda Family Foundation has made the largest ever donation to the University of Sydney, donating $100m to fund a 20-year program to create a pathway for Western Sydney girls into Stem careers. The University says it is one of the largest investments in women in Stem globally and will include tutoring, mentoring and university scholarships.
06.02 Workday is laying off 1,750 employees, or around 8.5 percent of its global workforce, saying it is realigning resources in light of increasing demand for AI and its potential to drive growth for Workday, FastCompany reports.
05.02 The Australian Cyber Security Centre has joined other Five Eyes agencies in issuing a ‘publication series’ on securing edge devices after observing an increase in targeted attacks on the devices. It has released four documents, covering mitigation strategies for edge devices for both executives and practitioners, security consideration for edge devices and guidance on digital forensics and protective monitoring specifications for producers of network devices and appliances. “Failing to secure these network perimeters is equivalent to leaving doors open,” ACSC says.
05.02 DeepSeek has been banned from all government devices and systems over security risks. The government says the ban is not due to the app’s Chinese origins but instead because of the ‘unacceptable risk’ it poses to national security, the BBC reports. It is unclear if the ban includes the wider public sector, such as schools.
04.02 Salesforce is cutting 1,000 jobs – while continuing a hiring push for AI-focused sales roles. Bloomberg says it is unclear which divisions will be impacted, and staff will be able to apply for other jobs within Salesforce. The company had nearly 73,000 staff a year ago.
04.02 The government has postponed plans to toughen online safety requirements for platforms until after the election. A government review has recommended penalties of up to five percent of global annual turnover or $50 million, for breaching duty of care but the regime will require legislation, with no timeline to legislate before the election, ABC says. There is also no timeline for revealing whether the fine regime will be adopted.
04.02 Mastercard plans to phase out credit card numbers by 2030, replacing them with tokenisation and biometric authentication. AMP Bank will offer Australia’s first numberless cards with others expected to follow, Queensland University of Technology academics note in The Conversation.
03.02 The ASD’s Australian Cyber Security Centre is warning of email scammers impersonating the ACSC, asking recipients to provide personal information, money or download software. It says organisations or individuals impacted and needing assistance should contact it.
03.02 A crackdown on outsourcing has saved NSW $450m. The bulk of the savings came from controls to limit the number of individual contractors doing the work of public servants, InnovationAus reports.
03.02 The Australian government has renewed its whole-of-government cloud sourcing deal with AWS for a further three years. The first AU$39m agreement, signed in 2019 ended up costing nearly $391m and was expanded in 2022 in a $174m deal. No price was given for the new deal, which the DTA says will reduce time, effort and resources to procure AWS services.
03.02 ASIC has launched an investigation into a December outage of the ASX’s embattled Chess system. The outage saw settlement of trading delayed and was blamed on a network issue that had remained undetected for nearly a decade. It paid out around $1m in rebates for the failure. The ASX says it has been notified of the investigation.
AppWrap January 2025
31.01 The US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to block HPE’s proposed US$14b acquisition of Juniper Networks, citing antitrust concerns. HPE and Juniper both say they will ‘vigorously defend’ the deal in court.
29.01 The Australian government has granted $6.4 million to the not-for-profit cyber threat intelligence provider CI-ISAC to establish a health-focused cybersecurity threat sharing network. CI-ISAC (Critical Infrastructure – Information Sharing and Analysis Centre) has developed a health cyber sharing network with the funding, aiming to protect Australia’s health sector from cyber threats through enhanced collaboration and intelligence sharing, Australian Cyber Security reports.
29.01 The National Reconstruction Fund has taken a $32m equity investment in medical AI company Harrison.ai. The funding will ensure the company continues to base its operations in Australia and will enable it to continue its global expansion and further develop its suite of radiology and pathology diagnostic capabilities, the NRF says.
28.01 US President Trump has claimed Microsoft is in discussions to buy TikTok’s US operations. Trump made the claim to reporters aboard Air Force One. He signed an executive order extending the deadline for ByteDance to divest from TikTok a day after a law banning it came into effect. The outcome of the proposed deal is expected to be revealed in the coming days, Newsweek says.
28.01 Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler has been named digital economy and science shadow minister as part of a reshuffle by opposition leader Peter Dutton. Chandler takes over the role from Paul Fletcher, who is leaving politics at the forthcoming federal election. Western Sydney MP Melissa McIntosh has also been promoted to the role of shadow minister for communications, StartupDaily reports.
25.01 TechnologyOne founder Adrian Di Marco and Professor Bronwyn Fox, deputy vice chancellor of research and enterprise at the University of NSW are among those recognised in the Australia Day Honours. Two former NASA employees, Curtin University of Technology’s Leonie Rennie and the RAAF’s Brad Sheldon were also among those honoured for technology-related work, InformationAge reports.
24.01 Road Ninja, a Kiwi developed subscription online marketplace for commercial drivers, is expanding into Australia, focusing on the fly-in, fly-out driving jobs in the mining sector. The company claims to have onboarded more than 500 drivers and 100 companies in its first year in New Zealand, facilitating more than $1 million in transactions, NZ Trucking reports.
23.01 Australian tech workers are the highest paid workers in Australia, earning $20/hour more than the average employee according to Employment Hero’s SmartMatch Employment Report. Science and tech sector wages were up four percent in December, month on month, and six percent yoy, InformationAge reports.
20.01 Disaster experts are urging Australian governments to invest heavily in new technologies such as firefighting drones, water gliders, AI-powered fire detection, remote sensors, satellites and live feeds to fire fighters to fight future fires in Australia. Experts are calling for a multi-layered approach to hit fires early and stop them exploding into mega-blazes, ABC News reports.
23.01 LinkedIn is being sued for disclosing customer information to train AI models. The class action filed on behalf of millions of premium users alleges the Microsoft-owned platform disclosed private messages to third parties without permission to train models, and then attempted to ‘cover their tracks’ by quietly introducing a privacy setting to enable or disable sharing, and updating its privacy policy, Reuters reports.
23.01 US President Donald Trump has announced a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank to build a network of data centres and the infrastructure to power AI development in the US. The Guardian reports the move comes just a day after Trump reversed predecessor Joe Biden’s executive order on AI safety standards.
17.01 Canberra Commonwealth Bank of Australia customers will be able to share their Medicare credentials for identity verification in one of the first proof of concepts for the Trust Exchange (TEx). IDTechWire reports participants will be able to use the myGov app to scan a QR code and share verified information from a test Medicare card, with the bank receiving government-verified details, but not sensitive information such as Medicare numbers. TEx aims to reduce the need to share personal information and hard copy documents.
13.01 Microsoft 365 users have taken to Reddit to discuss ‘workarounds’ to avoid being automatically upgraded to more expensive Microsoft plans, featuring AI, after the vendor began hiking prices by up to 45 percent. Microsoft says existing subscribers on recurring billing can switch to plans without Copilot or AI credits, or for a limited time to M365 Personal Classic or Family Classic plans, but some users have complained that Microsoft hasn’t made it clear that automatically moving to the more expensive plans with AI features could be avoided, InformationAge reports.
06.01 Canberra-based hyperscale cloud computing provider Vault Cloud has received a $22.5 million investment from the National Reconstruction Fund. The investment is the first in the NRF’s defence capability priority area, the NRF says.
For 2024 news from around the web head over to the 2024 AppWrap archive.
