Tech News March 2016

Email inventor dies at aged 74

American programmer Ray Tomlinson, best known for inventing email, has died aged 74.

Mr Thomlison created direct electronic messages between each user on various machines on a specific network in 1971, the ABC reported.

Before that, people were restricted to writing messages to other users on the same computer.

"A true technology pioneer, Ray was the man who brought us email in the early days of networked computers," his employer, Raytheon, said in a statement."His work changed the way the world communicates and yet, for all his accomplishments, he remained humble, kind and generous with his time and talents. He will be missed by one and all."

Former ‘Anonymous’ member handed suspended sentence

A former member of online activism group Anonymous, who assisted with hacking websites, has been described by a Perth judge as an “immature creep" and a "pest" who has never grown up.

Adam John Bennett, 42, was on Thursday handed a suspended sentence for six charges including aiding another person to cause the unauthorised impairment of electronic communications, the ABC reported.

Five of the offences happened during November 2012, when members of the group Anonymous hacked into websites across the globe.

The court heard that Bennett used the pseudonym 'Lorax' for his online pursuits, had an online radio show and thousands of followers.

Google ‘partly responsible’ for self-driving car crash

Google admits it holds “some responsibility” for one of its self-driving vehicles colliding with a bus last month.

The incident could be a first for its autonomous cars to crash into another vehicle at the fault of the self-drove machine, the ABC reported.

Google said it had implemented changes to its software after the collision to avoid future crashes.

A report filed with Californian regulators said the incident happened on February 14, 2016, when a Lexus RX450h self-driving car tried to avoid sandbags in a wide lane while travelling less than 3.5km/h. A bus was travelling at 24km/h.

The test driver and the vehicle “believed the bus would slow or allow the Google [autonomous vehicle] to continue," it said.

But just seconds after, the Google car re-entered the centre of the lane and hit the bus.

No one was injured in the incident.

FBI vs Apple

Software giant Apple is reportedly in a legal battle with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over a security "back door" to unlock a terrorist's iPhone.

During February a US Federal Court ordered Apple to assist the FBI to unlock an iPhone 5C used by the gunman and mastermind behind the bloody San Bernadino massacre, The Age reported.

Apple iPhones are equipped with an optional security feature that will delete any encrypted data if the phone’s passcode is incorrectly entered 10 times.

What the FBI is asking is for Apple to rewrite that software to disable those feature.

Apple is appealing the order - with the strong support of other tech giants Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

OPTUS denies axing workers

Optus has quashed reports it plans to slash more than 1000 employees from its work force.Reports suggested the telco planned to cut jobs and cut costs in a bid to purchase costly sports media rights with the English Premier League (EPL).

Confidential documents, that were also sent to senior executives at the company, outlined a plan to cut up to 1011 employees between April 2016 and March 2017, according to The Australian.

“As part of our FY17 plan, we have included $215m cost-out ­initiatives to protect profitability,” the alleged document read.

In a statement sent to the ABC, an Optus spokeswoman said the company “continually reviews its operations” but “does not have any plans to make 1000 roles redundant”.“As our business evolves we anticipate we will need to make further changes to the way we organise ourselves to help support our business goals, but we have no specific changes to share right now,” she said.