Beyond Infinity

Donald Trump arguably benefited from WikiLeaks during the 2016 US presidential campaign and said he "loved" the publisher of damaging information to the Democrats. But time could be running out for Julian Assange, as the Australian hacker and founder of WikiLeaks may soon be ejected from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Trump's new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the US "can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues to use free speech values against us".

What to do with old phones, laptops, TVs, printers, monitors, cables and chords? Well, it could prove cheaper to 'mine' this rubbish for the valuable metals it contains than to actually mine such materials from ore. It would also be far better than dumping our growing mountains e-waste in landfill.

A large watery lake is believed to be hidden beneath the Martian South pole, while studies of the driest places on Earth, like Atacama in Chile, suggest that there might still be dormant microbes near the surface of Mars.

Our weekly news round-up: The world's first trillion dollar companies; Facebook and Twitter's share prices crash on revenue results; Blood moon - the century's longest total lunar eclipse; More delays to America regaining its ability to launch humans into space; Most common ways to die while taking selfies; Negative consequences of facial recognition technology; Your electronic medical records could be worth $1000 each to hackers.

Despite clear benefits to typing speed, there are privacy considerations when using popular apps like SwiftKey, Gboard and Swype. Your private information like phone numbers, email addresses, device ID, contacts info and call records may be shared with service providers.

Oppy remains silent at Meridiani Planum as a global dust storm envelops Mars, drastically reducing energy to the rover's solar panels. While ground controllers keep nervous vigil listening for a signal from the 15 year old veteran explorer, a flotilla of orbiting spacecraft are beaming back a bonanza of scientific info about this major Martian weather event.

What to keep an eye out for in the next few months if you're considering a smart phone upgrade. We look at what's brewing from Apple, Samsung, Google and the specialised premium Oppo Find X and Red Hydrogen One models.

Our weekly news round-up: Another data scandal hits Facebook; Big update for Apple HomePod; San Fransisco plans to issue electric scooter permits in August and begin year-long trials; Google fined US$5 billion over Android mobile system; Nvidia Shield media centre now on sale; Over-heating reported on top-of-the-line Macbook Pro with i9 CPU.

Google engineers and third-party app developers are given permission to read the emails of the 1.2 billion Gmail users around the world. In some cases this is done to train algorithms to handle the data contained in emails, but it does highlight the vulnerabilities of Google's permission system. Companies like Microsoft, Return Path and Edison Software have also been given access to Gmail user info and the problem applies to other online email services.

With almost 6 million Australians already signed on, 13,000 health professionals connected and 6.5 million clinical documents uploaded so far, the Federal Government's new ehealth system aims to improve health outcomes by better sharing of information between service providers. But there are real concerns over sensitive data protection and it is possible to completely opt out by October 15, 2018.