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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Those with high levels of vocational training, including tradespeople, are least exposed to AI displacement, according to government review
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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.
Continue reading...Telco said outage was not due to a cyber-attack but warned of scammers calling people claiming to be from Telstra
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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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Culture secretary says her department will stop using platform, citing concerns over far-right content fuelling violence and division
The UK’s culture and media department will stop using X because the site “now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate”, Lisa Nandy has announced.
The culture secretary’s department is the UK’s second to quit the Elon Musk-owned platform over increasing concerns about the way it highlights and prioritises often inaccurate far-right and racist content and is used to incite violence and division.
Continue reading...Value of some chip manufacturers have tripled, or more, driving Asia Pacific stock markets sharply higher
Shares in chipmakers have surged in the first half of this year as investors piled into companies that make the hardware underpinning the AI boom, according to analysis.
Investors have driven up the value of semiconductor and memory chip manufacturers, whose profits have soared during 2026, at the expense of some large software companies, which have fallen out of favour this year.
Continue reading...UK is latest country to set minimum age for social media access but big tech is fighting back globally against curbs
Arturo Béjar, a former employee turned whistleblower at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has talked to parents around the world. He says they share the same perspective: they dread the day their children are old enough to go online.
Governments appear to be listening too. This month the UK became the latest country to state that it would set a minimum age of 16 for accessing major social media platforms. Social media bans are becoming a legislative trend after the precedent set by Australia last year, when it imposed an age limit on platforms including Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Elon Musk’s X, TikTok and Snapchat.
Continue reading...Prime minister Anthony Albanese says too many children still on platforms but he is ‘heartened’ by world-leading law
Social media bans go global: big tech faces a reckoning after Australia’s crackdown
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The federal government will double the penalty for breaches of Australia’s youth social media ban to $99m, arguing tech companies are “not doing enough” to keep children off harmful social media sites.
And the eSafety commissioner, now investigating potential breaches of the law by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, will have its information-gathering powers strengthened under proposed further reforms.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Researchers call for urgent investigation of risks to babies of tablets, smartphones and other digital devices
Screen time for babies and toddlers under the age of two has been linked with long-term negative effects on health and quality of life and should be avoided, according to a landmark study.
It warns that using screens during that period may lead to wide-ranging developmental concerns and calls for further urgent investigation of the risks smartphones, tablets and other digital devices pose to infants.
Continue reading...As a host of countries move to rein in social media use by children, could this be technology’s big tobacco moment?
Continue reading...Fire and Rescue NSW uses thermal imaging and a mobile phone red light to quickly locate men who veered off walking track near Jindabyne
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Two hikers who veered off a walking track in Kosciuszko national park have been found within five hours using a drone powered by artificial intelligence, a first-of-its-kind mission, Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) has said.
The two men, aged in their 20s, were reported missing at 7pm on Tuesday evening after they failed to return to a rendezvous point on time.
Continue reading...RJ Scaringe says firms focused on selling fossil fuel engines risk being ‘woefully behind’ on technology by end of decade
Carmakers that focus on selling fossil fuel engines are at risk of being “woefully behind” on technology by the end of the decade, according to the boss of Rivian, an Amazon-backed US electric carmaker.
RJ Scaringe, Rivian’s founder and chief executive, said the car industry has reached a “fork in the road” in the choice between short-term profits and the heavy investments, particularly in software, that will be required to survive.
Continue reading...‘It’s all just rendered useless’, Something For Kate’s Paul Dempsey says as AI scrapes millions of songs to learn how to make music
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Paul Dempsey and Bernard Fanning are among big-name Australian musicians upset that their original songs have been found in datasets used to train artificial intelligence.
A dataset search tool recently created by US publication The Atlantic reveals millions of creative works have been scraped from the internet to train the disruptive technology.
Continue reading...LSE analysis highlights litigation linked to energy sources, water consumption and air pollution
The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world, from the US and UK to Chile to Ireland, a report has found.
In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implications.
Continue reading...Driver told authorities he had driver-assistance technology engaged before crash that killed 76-year-old Martha Avila
The US government has opened a second federal investigation into a recent crash of a Tesla that reportedly had driver-assistance technology engaged, struck a Texas home and killed a resident.
Meanwhile, the family of Martha Avila, the 76-year-old resident who was killed, has sued over the wreck.
Continue reading...Previously hidden text revealed without unrolling scroll discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art and human behaviour
The surviving part of an ancient scroll that was burnt to a crisp when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago has been virtually unwrapped and read with help from artificial intelligence.
Researchers uncovered 20 columns of previously hidden text covering more than a metre of charred papyrus without physically unrolling the scroll. The work discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art and human behaviour and dates to the second or late-third century BC.
Continue reading...China’s LineShine debuts at number one in Top500 – a list sometimes viewed as a national measure of global tech prowess
A supercomputer in China now outranks its US counterparts as the world’s most powerful. It is the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation’s technological prowess.
The LineShine computer in Shenzhen displaced top-ranked US computer El Capitan in the Top500 rankings released on Tuesday. It was LineShine’s debut on the list.
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