Tech, AI, startups, and cyber security
At a White House summit on education and artificial intelligence, a walking, talking robot introduced First Lady Melania Trump. The moment symbolised a deeper strategic competition over AI's role in schools.
James Callahan 
Three major US federal agencies have withdrawn from RSA Conference 2026 after a former Biden administration official was appointed CEO, raising questions about political pressures overriding national security coordination.
Priya Narayanan 
YouTube is making it easier for emerging creators to monetise their channels through affiliate sales, reducing the subscriber threshold from 1,000 to 500.
Andrew Marsh 
Razer's refreshed Blade 16 ditches AMD processors for Intel's latest Core Ultra chips, squeezing more cores into the same slim profile. The move highlights growing costs in premium laptop components.
Tom Whitfield 
The viral AI fruit videos sweeping TikTok contain layers of misogynistic content that reveal something darker about where generative AI technology is heading.
Zara Mitchell 
The FCC has banned all new foreign-made Wi-Fi routers, citing cybersecurity risks from Chinese hackers. The policy is sweeping but faces serious practical challenges: no major router brand manufactures domestically.
Daniel Kovac 
A California jury has found Meta and YouTube negligent in designing addictive social media platforms that harmed a young woman's mental health, awarding $3 million in damages and opening the door to thousands of similar cases.
Helen Cartwright 
Geekbench has flagged Intel's latest processors as unreliable for benchmarking after the company's new optimisation tool boosted scores without public documentation of how it works.
Jake Nguyen 
Free built-in protection is now genuinely capable. Whether you need paid antivirus depends on your behaviour and what you do online.
Tom Whitfield 
Oracle unveiled Fusion Agentic Applications this week, claiming AI agents can reason and execute business decisions autonomously. Analysts warn that unresolved liability issues and data integration challenges pose serious risks to enterprises.
Fatima Al-Rashid 
A controlled study found AI agents vulnerable to manipulation, even disabling their own functions when pressured by users. The findings raise urgent questions about deploying autonomous systems in enterprise environments.
Daniel Kovac 
Meta nearly killed Horizon Worlds on VR headsets, then reversed course after user backlash. But the reprieve offers little comfort as the company abandons its grand metaverse vision.
Nadia Souris 
Reddit is rolling out human verification checks for accounts showing bot-like behaviour, using fingerprint scanning or Face ID rather than full ID checks to preserve user anonymity.
Sophia Vargas 
As artificial intelligence consumes 70 per cent of global memory chip supply, manufacturers are systematically eliminating gaming hardware from the market. Australian gamers face both price increases and product scarcity until domestic chip manufacturing arrives in 2028.
Oliver Pemberton 
Google has released Lyria 3 Pro, its most advanced music generation model yet, allowing creators to compose tracks up to three minutes long with granular creative control.
Darren Ong 
Dell has overhauled its Pro and XPS laptop lines with thinner designs and improved battery life, with the latter achieving 31 hours through LG's new variable refresh rate display technology.
Zara Mitchell 
Professionals can implement AI for as little as $5-50 per month, but success requires choosing tools that solve specific problems, not jumping at every shiny capability.
Daniel Kovac 
Reddit is weighing biometric verification methods to combat AI-driven spam, but the solution threatens the anonymity that defines the platform.
Oliver Pemberton 
Wine 11 brings kernel-level synchronisation and architectural rewrites that could finally shift the balance for PC gamers tired of Windows. Performance gains are real, but caveats remain.
Jake Nguyen 
Thousands of data brokers are selling your personal information to marketers, scammers, and strangers. Here's how to fight back without breaking the bank.
Sophia Vargas