As part of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission investigation into app marketplaces and possible monopolistic conduct, Apple has made a submission to the inquiry stating that it believes web apps coupled with the existence of platforms like Android, mean iOS faces "significant competition" and it does not wield substantial power over developers. Over the past year many developers who previously used non-App Store payment systems for customers have been forced to include App Store payments or be removed from the store.

Australian Bureau of Statistics says it is almost ready for census night on August 10. At a Senate hearing, the ABS representative said only some final testing and remediation work needs to be completed to be ready for this year's online census. In 2016 a series of failures in the IBM supplied technologies led to the census being taken offline. This year the census is built on Amazon Web Services technology through a contract with consultancy firm Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Also in the Senate, Australian Cyber Security Centre has told the federal government that it has been actively scanning Australian systems for Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities since attacks on a zero day vulnerability at the start of March. Concerns had been raised that there were thousands of vulnerable systems in Australia, and ACSC head Abigail Bradshaw said its scans had seen significant patching activity, with many fewer systems still showing vulnerabilities. Many fewer sounds like it's still a long way from zero.

The first license for an Australian space launch facility has been granted to Adelaide space company Southern Launch. The company aims to launch sub-orbital satellites from a range in Koonibba, in regional South Australia. Southern Launch is also developing a second launch site at Whalers Way near Port Lincoln, also in South Australia.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter that will soon launch the first human-powered flight on Mars is carrying a special connection to the first human-powered flight back on Earth. A small swatch of fabric from the original Wright Brothers aircraft, Flyer 1. Other relics from the Wright Brothers vessel have visited space in the past aboard the first landing on the moon with Apollo 11.

Britain is introducing a new £50 note featuring the image of famed mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. The new note will enter circulation on June 23, Turing's birthday. The bank note is also the last of the British notes to make the transition from paper to polymer material.

In gaming news, Magic: The Gathering is launching the digital version of its collectible card game, Arena, on mobile devices starting today. All cards that are released into the physical tabletop version of the game also appear in Arena, with makers Wizards of the Coast also running many major tournaments in digital formats. Arena has been available on PC since 2019 and on macOS since 2020. The game's newest expansion, Strixhaven, set in a school of magic founded by five dragons, has also been announced. The new set will launch on April 23.

And Chinese open-world action RPG Genshin Impact has become the fastest game to earn $1 billion in mobile App Store revenues, according to Sensor Tower research. It has taken the game just six months to achieve the figure and it is currently the number one mobile RPG worldwide. It took Pokemon Go nine months to hit its first billion dollars.

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