Items tagged with Australia
Advertisements are everywhere. You can find them on TV, on the Internet, on billboards, in your mail, and now within your text messages sent from reputable sources. Earlier this week, developer Chris Lacy posted to Twitter about an "SMS AD" attached to a Google verification code sent to his phone.
On Monday, Lacy...
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Apple has recently been called on the carpet by both companies, such as Epic Games, and now regulatory bodies like the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC has been diving into Apple's App Store dominance on the iOS ecosystem, but Apple believes there are other options than its services, like...
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Yesterday, Facebook banned Australian news from being shared internationally via its social network, and banned Australians from viewing or sharing any news on the platform. This action inadvertently roped in unrelated Facebook webpages and ultimately caused Australian outcry. Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg went...
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The battle for paying new publishers in Australia has ramped up today after Facebook took some drastic measures. The social media company has now blocked Australian news from being shared on the platform globally after the threat of new rules loomed from the country's government. Interestingly enough, this action has...
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In January, Google threatened to disable its search engine in Australia if legislation passed a proposed law. This law would have made it so digital companies would have had to pay media and publishing companies (like HotHardware) for aggregating news content. We are now starting to see major players in Tech take...
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If you are doing a search in the outback, it may become significantly more difficult soon if Google keeps its threats. Recently, the Mountain View-based search engine company has been butting heads with the Australian government, which introduced rules that could force content aggregators, like Google, to pay for...
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Go home, Australian government, you're drunk. That's the general sentiment among technology firms and privacy advocates around the world, in response to a controversial encryption bill Australia's parliament passed this week. The new legislation forces companies to crack their own encryption when and if it's requested...
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Apple has a history of butting heads with government officials over the topic of encryption, and specifically whether the Cupertino outfit should be forced to install a backdoor into its iOS devices primarily for law enforcement to use. It's not just the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that Apple disagrees...
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For Australians, access to truly high-speed broadband isn't exactly easy to find. We Americans might complain about broadband monopolies and slow internet speeds (especially in rural areas), but the United States still ranks 11th in the world with average download speeds of 74.68 Mbps. Australia, on the other hand...
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There is an ongoing hostage situation, at the time of this article’s publication, in the central business district (CBD) of Sydney, Australia. According to various reports, up to 40 people have been taken hostage. But while everyone is concerned for those involved, Uber seemed to think it was a good idea to increase...
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A recent death that may have been caused by a faulty USB charger has prompted Australia's Fair Trading Commissioner, Rod Stowe, to issue a warning to consumers about the potentially fatal risk of using non-compliant or otherwise unapproved USB style charges. These are typically cheap knock-offs that can find at...
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We reported that the secret and top secret agencies of several countries including Australia, the UK, and the U.S. had banned China-based Lenovo computers for fears of spying. Allegedly, the Lenovo machines could have backdoor access built into the hardware which would therefore allow Chinese hackers to access those...
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If you live in the United States, chances are that you don't think much about the prices other people pay for US products. Everyone is generally aware of the exchange rate, so it's logical to assume that a game, PC, or other product costs the same here as it does in England or Australia, save for shipping costs and...
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You know Steve Wozniak as the oft-outspoken American programmer who co-founded Apple and invented the Apple I and and Apple II systems, but if he gets his way, you'll soon know him as a bona fide Australian citizen. One of the reasons why Woz finds taking up permanent residence in Australia so appealing is because the...
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Britain wants Internet for all, South Korea wants 1Gbps Internet by 2012, and Australia wants to make both of those initiatives look like child's play. According to a new report from Down Under, the Australian government is planning to create a "publicly owned company to build a national high-speed broadband network worth 43 billion Australian...
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By now you are probably aware of wildfires that have ravaged the southern state of Victoria in Australia. 108 people are dead at the time of this writing, over 700 homes destroyed, with 850 square miles (2,200 square kilometers) burned.Google engineers have pulled together a Flash map that shows the extent of the tragic wildfires happening.The...
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Perhaps those of us who live the United States take our freedoms for granted. We can complain all we want about inappropriate content in Grand Theft Auto IV, but we'll stand behind the right of Rockstar Games to sell it. We might not want our children surfing for porn, but we have no intention to tell other folks that they can't view it just...
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Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy today announced a requirement for ISPs to provide a "clean feed" for all homes, schools and any public PCs accessible by children. This follows up on a pre-election Nov. 19th Labor Party press release which first announced a proposed Cyber-safety plan.Telecommunications Minister Stephen...
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Everybody wants a raise. But substantial wage growth depends not only on the value of the work you're doing, but also on a local shortage of people that can perform that work. It appears there's lots of IT work in Australia, and not enough people to do it, as IT salaries have gone up almost 12% in the last year alone."The survey taken over...
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