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The Australian government recently passed legislation that bans social media for anyone under 16. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hailed the legislation for putting “the onus on social media platforms — not young people or their parents” — for protecting youth from online harms. Australia is... Read Full article on HadNews.com

Since 2019, the Australian Department for Industry, Science and Resources has been striving to make the nation a leader in “safe and responsible” artificial intelligence (AI). Key to this is a voluntary framework based on eight AI ethics principles, including “human-centred values”, “fairness” and “transparency and explainability”. Every subsequent piece of national guidance on AI has spun off these eight principles, imploring business, government and schools to put them into practice. But these voluntary principles have no real hold on organisations that develop and deploy AI systems. Last month, the Australian government started consult...... Read Full article on HadNews

The same day that President Joe Biden signed a new federal law designed to ban the popular social media platform TikTok from use in the United States, TikToK CEO Shou Zi Chew took to the platform with words of defiance. “Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” he declared. “The facts and the Constitution are on our side.” It was a clear signal that TikTok and its allies would not be going down without a legal fight. The dimensions of that fight are now coming into focus. On May 7, TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, filed suit against the Biden administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argui...... Read Full article on HadNews

Small-scale solar power, also known as rooftop or distributed solar, has grown considerably in the U.S. over the past decade. It provides electricity without emitting air pollutants or climate-warming greenhouse gases, and it meets local energy demand without requiring costly investments in transmission and distribution systems. However, its expansion is making it harder for electric utilities and power grid managers to design fair and efficient retail electricity rates – the prices that households pay. Under traditional electricity pricing, customers pay one charge per kilowatt-hour of electricity consumption that covers both the en...... Read Full article on HadNews

The Federal Trade Commission announced on on Feb. 26, 2024, that it’s suing to prevent Kroger’s attempt to acquire Albertsons. The US$25 billion deal, first announced in 2022, would combine Cincinnati-based Kroger, already the largest traditional U.S. supermarket chain, with Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons, which is currently the fourth-biggest. The Conversation asked Christine P. Bartholomew, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law who researches consumer protection, to explain what’s at stake and why the government opposes this merger. Which supermarkets belong to the two companies? The proposed merger involves more th...... Read Full article on HadNews

Dietary supplements are a big business. The industry made almost US$39 billion in revenue in 2022, and with very little regulation and oversight, it stands to keep growing. The marketing of dietary supplements has been quite effective, with 77% of Americans reporting feeling that the supplement industry is trustworthy. The idea of taking your health into your own hands is appealing, and supplements are popular with athletes, parents and people trying to recover more quickly from a cold or flu, just to name a few. A 2024 study found that approximately 1 in 10 adolescents have used nonprescribed weight loss and weight control products,...... Read Full article on HadNews

Google has published several new features to its range of services, but only available to those in the EU. Tech companies around the world are making changes to fall in line with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a bill that aims to make digital markets fairer and open. There are various new obligations that tech companies will need to adhere to, ranging from preventing the removal of pre-installed apps on their systems or stopping the tracking of end users outside of their core platforms without user consent. Several improvements are on the way to Google services in particular along these lines, as announced in a recent blog. As the chan...... Read Full article on HadNews

This week, federal Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic announced the Australian government’s response to the Safe and Responsible AI in Australia consultation. The response addresses feedback from last year’s consultation on artificial intelligence (AI). It received more than 500 submissions, noting “excitement for the opportunities” of AI tools, but also raising concerns about potential risks and Australians’ expectations for “regulatory safeguards to prevent harms”. Instead of enacting a single AI regulatory law like the European Union has done, the Australian government plans to focus on high-risk areas of AI implementation ...... Read Full article on HadNews