Australia's Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has announced a reshuffle of his ministerial portfolios, leading to changes in political leadership across science and technology. For the past three years the minister for Industry, Science and Technology was Karen Andrews, with the position now moving to former Attorney General Christian Porter. This is the seventh change to this portfolio since the Coalition won government in 2013.

The cyberattack on Nine Entertainment continues at the broadcast and publishing giant, with the company reporting the attack is now contained but continuing to cause serious disruption. Paul Smith at The Australian Financial Review, a Nine newspaper, reported that the attack does seem to be based on the MedusaLocker ransomware but no ransom demand has been made – it has simply been deployed to make systems unusable. The recovery is expected to continue to be quite difficult for Nine.

OpenAI has announced what the first nine months of AI text generation platform GPT-3's public launch has enabled, stating more than 300 apps are producing 4.5 billion automated words per day. OpenAI highlighted apps for customer sentiment tracking, for creating dialogue in interactive VR stories, and for semantic website search tools. The organisation, which chose to partner with Microsoft to run the platform on its Azure platform, has emphasised safety and only allows access via application to prevent poor use and misuse of the technology.

Visa has become the first major payment network to allow the settlement of transactions on its network via a cryptocurrency. Visa has allowed the use of the USDC stable coin, built on the Ethereum blockchain, to settle transactions via the crypto.com cryptocurrency exchange. USDC has its value directly connected to the US dollar so it will not fluctuate nor see speculation like many other cryptocurrencies.

A report from The Australia Institute has found that solar combined with big battery technology can replace fossil fuels on questions of power reliability needs. Analysis has shown that while batteries are just 0.5 percent of capacity in the Australian energy market the technology is delivering one-third of important frequency control service across the energy network. Grid stability has been a key argument for continued reliance on coal and gas power services, so the early success of battery deployments strengthening power networks is a positive sign for the future.

Sony is closing the PlayStation Store for three of its older consoles in coming months. The PlayStation 3 and PSP stores will close in July and the PlayStation Vita store will close in August. The shutdown means you can no longer buy digital games for these consoles via the store nor buy in-game content, but you will still be able to download any games or other content you have purchased in the past. The PS3 launched in 2006, the PSP in 2005, and the Vita in 2011.

In esports, controversy in China's League of Legends LPL league as clothing sponsor Nike has seen its branding covered up after making statements against forced Uyghur labour camps. The company has been a major sponsor of esports and related apparel in the region, including billboards featuring star players. The Nike swoosh logo was taped over with a black strip featuring the LPL logo. In 2018, LPL sponsor Mercedes-Benz had its logo removed after quoting the Dalai Lama in a social media campaign.

And finally, with recent news multi-award winning videogame Disco Elysium has been refused classification during its review ahead of a physical 'Final Cut' release, the game is likely to be removed from the Steam digital store potentially at any moment – if you're interested in playing one of the most unique pieces of interactive storytelling in years, buy it before it disappears.

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