Items tagged with Australia
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 just using the web, to get access to apps. In September of last year, the ACCC established an inquiry into digital platforms and app stores to examine data sharing, competition, and pricing transparency. The commission reports that this will be a five-year inquiry with new reports every six months examining "markets for the supply of digital platform services in Australia."...
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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 on Today to express his disappointment with Facebook. During his interview, Frydenberg explained that when Facebook moved to pull news sharing for Australia, the company “endangered public safety.” Australians lost access to information about vaccines, domestic violence help, fire and rescue, and other public services on Facebook without any advance notice. Moreover,...
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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 swept up unrelated Facebook pages in the ensuing commotion. Yesterday, Facebook made a blog post about the proposed "Media Bargaining law," claiming that it "fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content." As the Australian government contemplates the law, Facebook was left with the choice of preparing to comply...
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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 sides, with Google holding steady against the legislation and Microsoft backing up media companies and publishers. Yesterday, Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, penned a lengthy blog post explaining that Microsoft would remain in Australia if the proposed law was passed. In short, the company is fully in support of paying media and publishing companies for news content as that...
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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 compiled news articles. At a recent Australian Senate committee hearing, Google stated that if the proposed code becomes law, it will shut off search in Australia. Crikey! Earlier today, the search giant’s local managing director and VP of Australia and New Zealand, Melanie Silva, delivered the shut-off threat to the senate committee. She went on to explain that “It’s...
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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 by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. That in and of itself is controversial—Apple, for example, refused the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's demands to build a backdoor into iOS so that it could crack an iPhone that was confiscated from a crime scene. The issue was headed to court, until the FBI found another way to unlock the iPhone, and subsequently dropped...
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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 with, though. Apple is taking the Australian government to task over a "dangerously ambiguous" bill that deals with encryption. Australia's draft Access and Assistance Bill grants authority to certain agencies "to secure critical assistance from the communications industry and enable law enforcement to effectively investigate serious crimes in the digital era." The bill seeks to establish...
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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, ranks in 55th place at 25.18 Mbps according to Speedtest. So, you would think that Australia would be doing everything in its power to expand its national telecommunications infrastructure. Well, the country is definitely trying, but mother nature is threatening to thwart its plans. In fact, one particular type of bird is chewing through cables, causing tens of thousands of dollars...
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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 the rates for its ride-sharing service – a decision that it shortly backtracked on. A tweet from the @Uber_Sydney account stated, “We are all concerned with events in CBD. Fares have increased to encourage more drivers to come online & pick up passengers in the area.” No sooner was the tweet sent before the public started to express outrage on social networks with some...
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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 discounted sites and on eBay. They can also be found in local stores. Stowe said that Fair Trading investigators recently removed a bunch of unapproved and non-compliant USB chargers, travel adapters, and power boards at a mobile phone accessory shop at a Campsie area. The person running the shop faces possible prosecution. In such cases, maximum penalties for an individual are $87,500...
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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 agencies’ networks. Predictably, Lenovo bristled at this allegation and informed us that Australia’s Department of Defence had posted a notice on its site stating that the report was incorrect: Reports published on 27 and 29 July 2013 in the Australian Financial Review allege a Department of Defence ban on the use of Lenovo computer equipment on the Defence Secret and...
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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 taxes. It might surprise you, therefore, to learn that companies like Microsoft and Adobe make huge profits off foreign customers by drastically inflating prices well beyond their US equivalents. Sixty years ago, there was some logic as to why a product made in America would cost more in Australia than here, and the Australian dollar, historically, was much weaker than the United States'...
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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 country's rolling out a national broadband network. "I support it very much. It's one of the reasons why I actually like this country and want to become a citizen. I live in a country where we don't have any regulation of telecommunications," Wozniak told The Australian Financial Review in an interview. According to Wozniak, he'll be able to retain his American citizenship, though...
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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 dollars in one of the largest state-sponsored Internet infrastructure upgrades in the world."Prime Minister Kevin Rudd didn't shy away from announcing the remarkable $31 billion price tag, nor did he suggest that it would be completed sooner than eight years from now. Still, the sound of "37,000 new jobs" sure is sweet in today's environment, and we're...
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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 map is updated in real-time from the Country Fire Authority (CFA) website via an RSS feed. The number in each marker shows the number of fires at the location. A green marker means the area is called "safe" by the CFA. Yellow means "controlled". Orange means "contained". Red means "ongoing". Unfortunately, it won't embed succesfully in our site, so...
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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 because we might find the content objectionable. We're obviously generalizing here; there are plenty of U.S. citizens out there who would love to ban all objectionable content, but they do not represent the majority.In the U.S., we have a self-regulating organization that assigns and enforces content ratings: the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB)....
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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 Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites. Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material. Online civil libertarians...
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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 the past 12 months by one of Australia's largest IT recruiters, Greythorn Group, shows that Australian salaries in positions such as .Net development, business analyst, database administration and project management are matching and in some cases surpassing those in highly paid centers such as the US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. The report found that demand...
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