Senior members of the Australian government have been targeted in phishing attacks this week, with news Health Minister Greg Hunt and Finance Minister Simon Birmingham have been attacked, as well as Australian ambassadors overseas. The attackers impersonate the officials on WhatsApp and Telegram services, contacting people from their stolen address books to find out about people living in Hong Kong. The AFP continues to investigate and is educating MPs on how to deal with phishing attacks.

Component shortages continue to grow in impact, with a report from Nikkei Asia that Apple MacBook and iPad production is being delayed due to shortages of parts like mounting components and display parts. Apple is known to run a very tight supply chain that avoids warehousing, so while devices are set to remain available the report suggests some production plans are being delayed until later in the year. 

Optus has announced a new feature for its phone and broadband customers that will offer a simple app interface to shut off internet access across both mobile and Wi-Fi for a set period of time. Dubbed Optus Pause, the tool in the My Optus app will allow choosing devices and a time period after which connectivity will be restored – a helpful idea for some who need to enforce some offline time in their lives.

Australian researchers have published a study on using drones to herd sheep as a positive improvement over traditional methods. The research out of UNSW Canberra and published in Scientific Reports found that drones that approached carefully while emitting certain tones could herd sheep with less stress on the animal. Drones are already in use on farms, but this research helps understand the positive impacts on animal welfare.

During an online presentation at the Game Developers Conference recently, Intel has announced a new AI tool that aims to remove toxic language from a livestream in real-time. It's called Bleep, and the settings screen shows options for a series of sliders that control how much toxic language is OK across fields like misogyny, racism, sexism and more. There's even a toggle for the N-word. If only we could deal with the toxic culture that created a need for something like this in the first place.

Lenovo has announced its latest gaming smartphone, the Legion Duel 2. The phone features multiple USB-C ports that can be used simultaneously to fast-charge the device's huge battery in just 30 minutes, as well as two cooling fans to let the phone run its processors at high speeds while gaming. It's a beast of a handset and for those wondering if it's overkill, remember that mobile has become the primary gaming platform across many parts of the world – the Legion phone is part of a competitive market with Asus and Xiaomi also eager to win.

In esports, the League of Legends LCO Grand Final will take place at 6pm Saturday night, with the top two teams of the Split, Pentanet.gg and Peace, set to face off. The final series saw the Chiefs make a big run into the semi-finals from the bottom of qualification, but Peace held them off to secure their place in the final. You can watch the best of five match live on Twitch.

This weekend also sees the final of the Asia Pacific Predator League taking place, with events in both PUBG and DOTA 2. Australia's Team Immunity is expected to place highly in the PUBG final, taking place Sunday afternoon. 

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