Category Archives: Technology

New Jersey governor signs law banning surveillance pricing to protect shoppers

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New law prohibits retailers from using personal data to charge different prices for identical products

New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill recently signed a new law prohibiting businesses from using shoppers’ personal information to charge different prices for identical products, making her state the third in the US to ban the practice.

The Fair Price Protection Act passed by New Jersey’s legislature seeks to protect consumers from surveillance pricing, in which retailers can use data including online activity, location and purchasing history to arbitrarily change prices for individual shoppers.

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Trump says nearly 200 firms have signed pledge to protect Americans from costs arising from datacenters

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‘Ratepayer Protection Pledge’ president has touted is non-binding as people continue to struggle with rising bills

Donald Trump has announced that about 200 entities have signed on to his non-binding “Ratepayer Protection Pledge”, expanding a voluntary commitment which claims to ensure US consumers will not bear the cost of the AI datacenter build-out.

Trump delivered remarks on Thursday at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters, alongside Lee Zeldin, the agency’s administrator, and Chris Wright, the energy secretary. Other attenders included governors who signed on to the pledge, including Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Spencer Cox of Utah and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.

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‘Customers prefer AI chatbots,’ says British Gas owner as 1,300 call centre jobs axed

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CEO Chris O’Shea defends Centrica’s plans as it reports rise in retail profits following focus on bigger margins

The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.

Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cuts it confirmed last month.

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Personal and banking details among customer data stolen in Origin Energy hack

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Hackers access Australian customers’ names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and some bank account details, company says

Origin Energy customers’ addresses, phone numbers and partial bank account data have been accessed in a hack, the company has confirmed.

The firm has 4.8m customer accounts in Australia, providing electricity, fossil gas, LPG and internet services to homes and businesses.

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Tesla’s profits slide despite growing revenue as it pivots to robotics and AI

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Shares in Elon Musk company fall more 3% in after-hours trading, as earnings per share miss Wall Street expectations

Tesla reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, disclosing far lower profits than expected. The company’s already beleaguered stock, which had fallen about 14% this year to date, dipped further following the earnings report.

Elon Musk’s automaker, once the pinnacle of his tech empire, has taken a back seat to SpaceX. Musk’s rocket and AI company held the largest stock market debut in history last month, turning the richest man on Earth into the world’s first trillionaire, though his net worth has since fallen from its peak.

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Why are OpenAI and Anthropic cheering on regulation in Australia? The answer has global reach

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The companies hope to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, which raised $86bn and soared to a $2.1tn valuation after it listed on public markets in June

Top US AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI cheered when Australia announced it would set new AI rules.

Big tech celebrating limits on their Silicon Valley VC-funded free-for-all might seem counterintuitive but there’s a much broader play than just what happens in one relatively small market.

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Victoria announces new social media ‘demasking’ powers for accounts accused of vilification

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New laws would give Vcat power to force social and AI platforms to identify anonymous users in move premier says will protect children

Social media companies could be forced to identify anonymous accounts accused of online vilification, under new laws being proposed in Victoria.

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, announced a suite of social media reforms on Sunday, saying families needed new ways to protect their children online.

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‘Adversarial clothing’: are garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems about to go mainstream?

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Designers say that as well as offering a degree of protection from surveillance, their clothes make a powerful fashion statement about the importance of privacy

As facial recognition technology is rolled out across Britain’s public spaces, a new generation of designers say privacy could be the next big fashion trend.

Companies have started incorporating “adversarial patterns” in their garments – carefully designed arrangements of shapes, colours and repeated motifs said to exploit weaknesses in some computer vision systems.

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Starmer faces final PMQs before stepping down – PMQs live

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Andy Burnham nears Labour leadership finish line

Labour should ditch the triple-lock pensions promise to help tackle the UK’s straitened public finances, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has urged. Heather Stewart has the story.

I’m afraid we are not going to be able to open comments today for staffing reasons. If you want to contact me directly, it is probably best to get me on on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social.

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Bank of England governor would have put off Farage meeting had £5m gift been under investigation

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Exclusive: Andrew Bailey says he does not regret meeting Reform UK leader to discuss cryptocurrency regulation

The Bank of England governor has said he would have put off a meeting with Nigel Farage last autumn had the Reform UK leader’s £5m gift from a crypto billionaire been under investigation at the time.

Andrew Bailey said he did not regret meeting Farage to discuss the Bank’s plans for cryptocurrency regulation last September, months before the controversial donation from the Thailand-based investor Christopher Harborne was revealed by the Guardian in April.

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Patient records stolen in cyber-attack on Australian healthcare provider

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Partnered Health says personal information and medical details and notes were breached in the attack on 21 clinics

Thousands of medical records and patient information stored with one of Australia’s biggest healthcare providers have been breached in a cyber-attack.

Partnered Health, owned by private equity firm Quadrant, said 21 clinics across several cities including Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra have been affected by the breach which occurred on 23 June.

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Shipwrecks of Shackleton and Scott recreated in 3D digital form after deep sea expedition

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Canadian scientists visit remains of polar exploration vessels in ‘golden era for shipwreck investigating’

Moments after devouring the final glimmers of light, the seafloor offered nothing but darkness and silt. Then the bow appeared.

More than 1,000ft (305 metres) below the surface of the Labrador Sea, off the coast of Canada, the skeleton of the final ship used by the famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton appeared in its silty grave.

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Is the most popular song played on Australian radio stations the product of generative AI?

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Josh Fawaz’s song, a cover of Like a Prayer, has raised questions about how generative AI is being used in music and whether it should be declared

An Australian producer has gone from little-known artist to viral sensation in a matter of months, with his hit song catapulting on to global charts and receiving thousands of radio spins.

There’s just one problem: music experts and other musicians are questioning whether he produced it. They claim Josh Fawaz’s most popular song, a cover of Madonna’s Like a Prayer which reached the No 1 spot on the National Radio Airplay chart, could have been made using AI.

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Big tech platforms will have to ban scam ads under UK plans to tackle fraud

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Range of potential measures announced by Ofcom include reducing risk of accounts being hijacked for scams

Big tech platforms will be required to ban scam advertisers in the UK under proposals to tackle online fraud.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, X and YouTube will have to block bad actors who post fraudulent ads and prevent them from creating new accounts in a range of measures targeted at the biggest services.

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Democrat running for Texas AG claims $110m in grants for Starlink ‘sure looks’ like corruption

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Nathan Johnson says if elected he’ll investigate state’s deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide rural internet

A Texas Democrat running to become the state’s attorney general has said he will investigate Elon Musk’s SpaceX company if elected, saying it “sure looks like” corruption was involved in a deal he said handed the world’s richest man $110m of taxpayers’ money.

Nathan Johnson made the comment in an interview with the Dallas News on Friday, in which he called for greater legislative scrutiny of state grants funneled to SpaceX for its Starlink satellite program, which provides fast internet access for customers in remote areas.

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‘A lot of red flags’: plans for New Zealand’s first datacentre spark concern as locals demand greater transparency

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Plans to build a NZ$3.5bn datacentre in Makarewa in the country’s south has drawn concern about electricity and water use, and potential noise pollution

People living near the site of New Zealand’s first planned AI datacentre are calling for more transparency about the project, especially about how the centre’s huge electricity and water use and potential noise pollution could affect them.

Singapore-based company Datagrid has secured approval to build a NZ$3.5bn (US$2bn) AI datacentre on a 49-hectare site in Makarewa, just north of New Zealand’s southern-most city, Invercargill. Construction is due to begin this year, with the centre becoming operational by 2028.

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Women and university graduates in Australia most at risk of losing jobs to AI, report finds

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Those with high levels of vocational training, including tradespeople, are least exposed to AI displacement, according to government review

Artificial intelligence has yet to cause widespread job losses but the federal government has warned that telemarketers, advertising staff and accountants are among the occupations “most exposed” to being replaced by the technology.

According to a first-of-its-kind national report, people in the more exposed occupations are more likely to be women and have university qualifications.

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Telstra blames ‘software defect’ for major outage that hit mobiles, trains and triple-zero calls

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Telco said outage was not due to a cyber-attack but warned of scammers calling people claiming to be from Telstra

Telstra has blamed a “software defect” that changed the time servers for a major outage in which thousands of mobile customers were unable to make calls or access data on the country’s largest network on Wednesday morning.

The telco, which powers about 25m mobile services nationwide, confirmed the outage on Wednesday, with all services restored by 4pm AEST.

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Israeli command system identified 850,000 targets in Gaza and Lebanon wars, says supplier

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Elbit Systems supplied Tzayad digital army programme to map people, vehicles and other objects in real time

Israel identified about 1,000 potential targets a day during the first two years of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon with its command and control system, according to a presentation by the country’s largest arms supplier, Elbit Systems.

A total of 850,000 targets were detected in real time by the Israeli Tzayad digital army programme across all the military’s theatres of war between 7 October and the end of 2025, the company said at a military conference in London.

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UK parents warned over posting images of children amid AI sexual abuse fears

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Exclusive: National Crime Agency and safety watchdog issue guidance amid rise in explicit material online

Parents should not put photos of their children on public display online, according to landmark guidance issued to tackle the rise of AI-generated sexual abuse material.

The recommendation has come from the National Crime Agency and the Internet Watch Foundation, which fear that most people are unaware of the dangers posed by paedophiles and criminal networks.

They suggest that parents and guardians make their social media accounts private or share pictures of their children through a “close friends” group. The NCA and the IWF stressed they were not telling parents how to behave online, but said they should be aware of the problem and how to tackle it.

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