The Justice Department has charged three current or former members of the so-called Syrian Electronic Army for computer hacking-related conspiracies. The charges were unsealed Tuesday in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Virginia. Prosecutors allege that two Syrians, 22-year-old Ahmad Umar Agha and 27-year-old Firas Dardar, tricked email users to steal usernames and passwords to compromise government, media and private-sector computer systems. In April 2013 they allegedly tweeted from the Associated Press account on Twitter falsely claiming a bomb had exploded at the White House and injured the president. None of them are in custody.

There has been much discussion in the last few days about the announcement by the World Economic Forum that it predicts it will take 117 more years until we achieve gender parity in the workplace. It seems crazy that in today's workforce, which is driving developments like self-driving cars, gaming-genius AI, and making hoverboards a reality, we still don't have gender equality. Research published recently by EY makes a compelling case for businesses to do more in terms of tackling existing inequalities: data shows that more diverse company boards command higher share prices and improved financial performance; balanced leadership increases a company's productivity and nationally a country's GDP can be lifted by reducing the gender gap. Another piece of research that looked at start-ups receiving Series A funding in the Bay Area in 2015, showed that only 8% of firms were led by women - that's 16 out of 204 start-ups. And this figure was down by 30% from the previous year.

Last week, we witnessed DeepMind AlphaGo's stunning victories over Go legend and world champion Lee Se-dol. This landmark event has stoked excitement over AI's potential in every aspect of life more than any other in recent memory. DeepMind (an AI system of neural networks) was acquired by Google in 2014 and uses games as a testing ground for AI algorithms that could have real-world applications. 'I think what we've done with AlphaGo is to introduce with the neural networks this aspect of intuition, if you want to call it that, and that's really the thing that separates out top Go players: their intuition.' The same could be said about top lawyers, lawyering and legal service provision.

Riverview Law provides large corporations with a high quality, fixed priced and proven alternative to using traditional law firms and/or growing the size of their in-house legal function. Using client dedicated teams which combine lawyers, client managers, data analysts and other professionals, Riverview Law helps free the internal legal team so that it can evolve its legal operating mode to focus on higher value added strategic and tactical requirements. Riverview Law has three core offerings. It provides managed service solutions via its Legal Advisory Outsourcing services. It licenses to in-house teams its service delivery and workflow platform, which manages instructions into the function, triage, case management and reporting. It provides barrister-led litigation, risk and compliance advice and support.

A new Federal Government report has outlined the future of Australia's workforce and revealed growing demand for professionals in STEM industries. The report by CSIRO and the Australian Computer Society, titled Tomorrow's Digitally Enabled Workforce, identified six megatrends. The trends include continued advances in automation and artificial intelligence; jobs will be more flexible and agile due to digital technology; a requirement for entrepreneurial skills; and an increase in skills and education requirements for many professions. While the report found that 44% of Australian jobs would be impacted by these changes, Andrew Johnson, CEO of the Australian Computer Society and one of the report's authors, said there are numerous opportunities for engineers. 'The intent of this report is to look at a 15- to 20-year timeframe.

Artificial intelligence has been around for awhile, but in rudimentary forms. But only recently have artificial intelligence developments gotten close to really aiding, and possibly replacing, professionals like attorneys. One of the recent revolutions in AI is the proliferation of successful machine learning. Machine learning allows computer programs to develop independently, through observing, evaluating, and deciding over and over and over again -- getting better each time. IBM's Watson technology, for example, can learn what tastes you enjoy and create brand new recipes based on those.

The field of intellectual property is rapidly evolving, both with respect to the law and the technologies being considered for protection. This session provides a primer about what a patent is, current best practices for protecting speech technologies and defending against assertion, and the recent evolution of intellectual property law in the United States, with emphasis on speech, software user interfaces, and mobile technologies. Fraudsters are using robodialing and ANI spoofing to wreak havoc on call centers. From the illegal practice of toll-free traffic pumping and international revenue-sharing fraud, to the more villainous acts of financial account fraud, identity theft, and drug trafficking, this seminar explores the unusual ways criminals are hacking our businesses. We also examine simple and cost-effective practices to protect our businesses, and our customers.

Apple has revealed a 29 armed robot that can rip apart an iPhone in 11 seconds for recycling. It is hoped the machine will help recycle silver, tungsten and other metals from the handsets. The system started to operate at full capacity last month and can take apart one iPhone 6 every 11 seconds to recover aluminum, copper, tin, tungsten, cobalt, gold and silver parts, according to Apple. The system started to operate at full capacity last month and can take apart one iPhone 6 every 11 seconds to recover aluminum, copper, tin, tungsten, cobalt, gold and silver parts, according to Apple. It has already been installed near Apple's HQ in Cupertino, and it plans to build a second in Europe.

Data can't be racist or sexist, but the way it is used can help reinforce discrimination. The internet means more data is collected about us than ever before and it is used to make automatic decisions that can hugely affect our lives, from our credit scores to our employment opportunities. If that data reflects unfair social biases against sensitive attributes, such as our race or gender, the conclusions drawn from that data might also be based on those biases. But this era of "big data" doesn't need to to entrench inequality in this way. If we build smarter algorithms to analyse our information and ensure we're aware of how discrimination and injustice may be at work, we can actually use big data to counter our human prejudices. This kind of problem can arise when computer models are used to make predictions in areas such as insurance, financial loans and policing.

Apple has come under fire for its use of conflict minerals in iPhones (so have many other device manufacturers, to be fair) before, and the company has just introduced how it aims to reduce its environmental impact. It comes by the way of Liam, a robot that disassembles old iPhones into their core components. The tungsten from the device's alert module will become a cutting tool for example, while the silver contained therein is used for solar panels -- possibly including the ones powering Cupertino's Thailand operations. With the disposable nature of electronics, seeing moves like this is entirely welcome.