fitness tracker
After Hours

Your watch will soon know more about your health than your doctor

- February 7, 2025 4 MIN READ

Sleep tracking, oxygen saturation, fall detection, mindfulness: today’s smartwatches and fitness trackers are jacks-of-all-trades – but experts believe we’re just getting started, with new sensors and AI-driven analysis soon set to diagnose more disease than doctors do. It’s a big prediction for a device category that only hit the mainstream in 2007, when Fitbit gamified the working… Read more »

Submarine data cable, fibreoptic
AI/Machine Learning

Telstra is tripling its undersea cable networks because of AI demand

- January 24, 2025 3 MIN READ

Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI) has driven Telstra to upgrade its international networks, with a planned network using AI and digital twins to manage itself as the carrier chases new revenues in a stagnant telco market – and bolsters security in uncertain times. The company’s business-focused Telstra International division outlined its plans for next-generation… Read more »

BNPL, Afterpay, Klarna
Fintech

The BNPL sector is now being regulated as credit in Australia

- December 4, 2024 3 MIN READ

Financial institutions, fintechs, and regulators have welcomed new buy now, pay later (BNPL) rules that will finally treat the sector like other credit providers, with new legislation passed hours before shoppers tapped BNPL to propel Black Friday sales to record-breaking heights. The new regulations will apply corporate regulator ASIC’s National Credit Code (NCC) to a BNPL sector that has… Read more »

Telstra CEO Vicki Brady
Business

The first big AI-led jobs cull is here, with Telstra shedding 2,800 workers in $350m cost cutting plan

- May 22, 2024 3 MIN READ

Up to 2,800 Telstra workers will be retrenched by year’s end, with Australia’s largest telecommunications carrier announcing plans to pare its workforce in an AI-driven “reset” of its enterprise arm including an overhaul of its Telstra Purple services business. The package of reforms is designed to contribute to $350 million in cost savings as the… Read more »

begging - coin put in a glass jar
Politics

ATO analysis reveals how tough it is to run a tech business in Australia, with Apple, Google and others struggling to make a buck

- April 5, 2024 3 MIN READ

Accounting tricks are helping Big Tech firms avoid paying tax on up to 96.6% of their Australian income, according to a new analysis of Australian Taxation Office (ATO) figures that showed Apple was the worst offender when it came to corporate tax minimisation. The tech giant took $9.3 billion from Australian customers during the 2021-22… Read more »

Knight Rider, KITT
Data

Connected cars are starting to snitch to insurers about your driving habits

- March 16, 2024 3 MIN READ

Carmakers including Kia, Subaru, Mitsubishi and General Motors are providing details of owners’ driving behaviour to insurance companies, leading many drivers to report surges in car insurance premiums despite industry claims that the transmitted data (‘telematics’) helps good drivers pay less. The revelations have stoked a PR firestorm after the New York Times related the experiences of… Read more »

cowboy, lasso, farm
ASX

Superloop knocks back Aussie Broadband’s $466 million takeover bid as ‘opportunistic’

- February 29, 2024 3 MIN READ

Expanding internet service provider Aussie Broadband is weighing its options after fibre infrastructure operator Superloop rejected as “opportunistic” a proposed acquisition that Aussie said would have created a serious market rival to “incumbents” Telstra and Optus. A merger of the companies – which would have created a “scale player” providing a wider product offering to… Read more »

electric vehicle
Politics

EVs are 41% cheaper in New Zealand – here’s how Australian government policies are forcing buyers to pay $9000 more than they should

- February 16, 2024 3 MIN READ

Advocates believe a perfect storm of competition concerns, new fuel efficiency standards and the axing of archaic parallel-import restrictions could provide “achievable change” that boosts the supply of electric vehicles (EVs) and slashes their prices by around $9,000. That’s the amount Australians are overpaying for EVs, former ACCC chair Allan Fels concluded in a recent analysis of price… Read more »

Muster farm, cattle
AI/Machine Learning

The Productivity Commission wants a light touch on AI regulation

- February 8, 2024 3 MIN READ

The government should avoid “overzealous lawmaking” and lead by example with a “stepped, gradual approach” to regulating artificial intelligence (AI), the Productivity Commission (PC) has advised in an analysis that flags AI’s potential to resolve Australia’s productivity slump. Aiming to guide the understanding of AI’s productivity benefits, regulatory challenges and implications for data policy, the trilogy of… Read more »

Mark Zuckerberg
Social Media

‘Blood on their hands’: US politicians rip into social media bosses over child sexual abuse concerns

- February 1, 2024 3 MIN READ

Social media firms are offering “a product that’s killing people” and their CEOs have “blood on their hands” for failing to protect children from online predators, a US senator has told five tech executives during vitriolic hearings in which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to apologise to angry families of victims of online child grooming.… Read more »

Kepler Exploration Robot Co
Other tech

It all Generative AI and robots – sometimes together – at CES in Las Vegas

- January 12, 2024 3 MIN READ

As car manufacturers have demonstrated for years, there is no functional reason why robots require a head, face, or personality – but with Generative AI (GenAI) now offering irresistible possibilities for designers, humanoid robots were out in force at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Chinese firm Kepler Exploration Robot Co, for one, used the… Read more »

robot typing
Politics

myGov is getting rid of passwords as part of its upgrade

- January 1, 2024 3 MIN READ

MyGov will be modernised with passwordless logins and a new Digital Inclusion Standard, the federal government has announced in responding to a scathing audit that warned current legislation “impedes service delivery” through the underfunded platform. The government’s response to the myGov user audit – an election promise that began in September 2022 as a “myGov revolution” and handed down its findings in… Read more »