Branson stands by his land, stays on island through Hurricane Irma … Panasonic designs self-driving fridge … Energy Australia email scam hits inboxes

By Dominic Powell and Emma Koehn.

Despite one of the worst hurricanes in modern history bearing down on his home in the British Virgin Islands, entrepreneur Richard Branson has chosen to remain there, sticking with his team of staff as they ride out hurricane Irma.

Irma, which has been recorded as the highest possible category of hurricane in terms of level of destruction, laid its full force across Branson’s home around eight hours ago. According to a blog post, Branson spent the night before the hurricane playing dice and having a sleepover with his team at his home.

“We are expecting to get the full force of the hurricane in around five hours’ time, when we will retreat to a concrete wine cellar under the Great House,” Branson wrote.

“Knowing our wonderful team as I do, I suspect there will be little wine left in the cellar when we all emerge.”

According to an Instagram post from Branson’s son, all humans on the island are safe, but most of the buildings were destroyed, and the main house “uninhabitable”.

Panasonic designs self-driving fridge

Tech giant Panasonic has finally revealed a concept product that the human race has been missing for decades: a self driving fridge that comes to you when you call it.

Business Insider reports the fridge – called ‘Ku’ – uses the same LIDAR technology as some designs of autonomous vehicles in order to navigate a home and deliver chilled food and drinks to its residents, without them ever having to leave the couch.

Panasonic says the fridge is aimed at users with disabilities, but they’re not fooling anyone, given enthusiasm from all customers about the invention. Sadly, it’s currently just a prototype, and won’t be available for the next 5-6 years.

Energy Australia email scam hitting inboxes

Web security firm MailGuard has warned a phishing scam in the form of an Energy Australia bill is doing the rounds this week.

A screenshot of the email shared on Twitter shows e-bills have been sent to Australian inboxes complete with account numbers and payment details for amounts due on September 20.

Breaking: 2 fake @EnergyAustralia #phishing campaigns today – JS & HTA payloads. Details to follow. pic.twitter.com/vxNxGLqInh

— MailGuard (@MailGuard) September 6, 2017

One of the scam emails has the subject line ‘Your Energy and Gas Bill is here” and was sent out around 8:00am this morning, while a second variation has a link to a Google doc labelled “Energy Australia Bill”.

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