Casey Tonkin, Information Age

A lifelong technophile and science fiction geek, Casey joined Information Age in 2019. With interests in AI, space travel, and post-humanism, Casey is always on the hunt for the overlap of science-fact and science-fiction.

Binance
Cryptocurrency

US regulators launch legal action against crypto giant Binance alleging they broke US money laundering laws

- March 28, 2023 2 MIN READ

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has launched a suit against the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, claiming the company was deliberately skirting local regulation and knowingly facilitated the illicit flow of money. In a complaint against Binance, its founder Changpeng Zhao, and chief compliance officer Samuel Lim, the CFTC alleged the Binance team… Read more »

Old unemployment queue
Business

Amazon axes again, sacking another 9,000 staff at AWS and Twitch

- March 21, 2023 2 MIN READ

Amazon is laying off another 9,000 employees, with senior management citing “the uncertain economy in which we reside”. The cuts will come from its cloud business Amazon Web Services (AWS), streaming platform Twitch, and its advertising department. This latest round of layoffs comes just two months after Amazon said it would cut more than 18,000… Read more »

facebook
Social Media

Facebook’s fight with Australian privacy regulators over the Cambridge Analytica scandal has hit the High Court

- March 10, 2023 2 MIN READ

The battle between Facebook and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) had a hearing in the High Court this week over the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the personal data of 300,000 Australians was harvested without their consent. Facebook has been fighting a court battle for three years following revelations that between… Read more »

Medibank
Cyber security

Medibank data breach: third-party IT provider’s stolen credentials used by hackers

- March 2, 2023 2 MIN READ

The hacker got credentials from a third-party IT provider. Australian health insurer Medibank made a “rookie mistake” that led to one of the largest data breaches in our country’s history, a cyber security expert has claimed in the wake of new details about the breach. In its half-yearly report, Medibank shared a brief outline of… Read more »

big tech layoff
People

Big tech layoffs free up talent for Australia

- February 3, 2023 3 MIN READ

Sudden mass layoffs at the biggest technology companies on Earth could be an opportunity for Australian organisations to fill long-standing gaps in their workforces. More than 70,000 employees have been sacked from tech giants in the past year as companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta – which saw enormous growth during the pandemic – are now winding back their staffing… Read more »

Max Headroom
AI/Machine Learning

Microsoft has built a new AI-based speech generator that can mimic how you talk after hearing it for just 3 seconds

- January 12, 2023 2 MIN READ

A newly developed text-to-speech language model from Microsoft can mimic a person’s speech from as little as three seconds of sample audio – but the tech giant is keeping its tech under wraps for now so it is not misused. One of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) research teams published a paper about its model for text-to-speech… Read more »

dogecoin, cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency

The RBA is gearing up for its digital currency trial – but still can’t see the point

- December 19, 2022 2 MIN READ

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) remains sceptical about the need to introduce a fully digital dollar as it looks to begin an eAUD trial early next year. In a speech to a banking conference last week, Assistant RBA Governor Brad Jones said it remained unclear exactly what purpose a central bank digital currency (CBDC)… Read more »

Fintech

Payments startup Xiippy named the best in Queensland tech

- November 3, 2022 2 MIN READ

Privacy-focused payment startup Xiippy was the big winner from the River Rival pitch competition that closed out Brisbane’s Something Tech conference last week, taking out both the judge’s award for Best in Product and tying for the Best of the Best award with diabetes medicine subscription service Stripped Supply. Xiipy is encouraging retail merchants to… Read more »

Politics

Web developers are among 10 IT roles added to the federal government’s national skills shortage list

- October 7, 2022 2 MIN READ

The National Skills Commission has added 10 more IT-related occupations to its list of skills facing national shortages, once again highlighting the need to train more technology talent in Australia. Web developers, database admins, and business analysts are now among jobs on the Commission’s official skills shortage list which informs Australia’s migration and skills development policies.… Read more »

Cryptocurrency

Crypto.com accidentally sent a customer $10.5m, and by the time they noticed, she’d bought a house in Melbourne

- September 1, 2022 2 MIN READ

Major cryptocurrency trading platform Crypto.com accidentally sent a woman $10.5 million instead of the $100 refund she requested – and didn’t notice until seven months later. Now the platform is trying to recover its money, $1.35 million of which the woman, Thevamanogari Manivel, used to buy her sister a home in the Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn. The… Read more »

Other tech

Bunnings and Kmart drop facial recognition as privacy commissioner takes a closer look

- July 28, 2022 3 MIN READ

Kmart and Bunnings have temporarily halted their use of facial recognition in stores pending an investigation from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). It was last month revealed that Wesfarmers-owned Kmart and Bunnings, and whitegoods retailer the Good Guys, quietly began using facial recognition in some stores without express consent from their customers. While… Read more »

Future of work

The big bucks in tech come from working remotely

- July 15, 2022 3 MIN READ

Remote tech workers are paid nearly twice as much as their full-time office counterparts, a global survey from Landing.Jobs has found. Technology professionals in every region reported higher salaries if they were fully remote or had flexible working arrangements compared with people working full office jobs, according to the Global Tech Talent Trends 2022 survey. On average,… Read more »

Uber
Global tech

How Uber ignored the law, lobbied and exploited anger to go global

- July 13, 2022 3 MIN READ

Uber’s strategy was clear from the outset: move quickly into markets, operate with dubious legality, create a critical mass of demand, and deal with the consequences later. Now a trove of over 124,000 internal files from Uber – including messages between executives and internal briefing notes – has revealed the scope of the company’s market… Read more »