theodp writes: In The Man Who Broke Bowling, GQ's Eric Wills profiles professional bowler Jason Belmonte, whose two-handed bowling technique made him both an outcast as well as one of bowling's greatest, changing the sport forever. Unlike the rest of us, a 7-year-old Belmonte was unconvinced by the taunts used to prompt kids into switching from bowling two-handed to one-handed ("It was, Come on, you're a big boy now. It's time to bowl properly," Belmonte recalls). As a result, Belmonte was able to develop a 600-rpm throw when most pro bowlers averaged 350-400, imparting a spin that "sends the pins into concussion protocol." Wills writes:

"When he first alighted on the professional bowling scene, Belmonte resembled an alien species: one that bowled with two hands. And not some granny shot, to be clear, but a kickass power move in which he uses two fingers (and no thumb) on his right hand, palms the front of the ball with his left, and then, on his approach, which is marked by a distinctive shuffle step, rocks the ball back before launching it with a liquid, athletic whip, his delivery producing an eye-popping hook, his ball striking the pins like a mini mortar explosion. Not everyone welcomed his arrival. He's been called a cheat, told to go back to his native Australia; a PBA Hall of Famer once called the two-hander a 'cancer to an already diseased sport.'

If you're interested in more on the technical aspects of bowling -- Belmonte's installed a tracking system in his parent's bowling center back in Australia that generates reams of data he can sift through to find areas for improvement -- Wikipedia goes into some of the physics of bowling balls.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Australia should phase out advertising for online gambling in three years, a parliamentary committee of inquiry recommended on Wednesday as it looked to limit the "havoc" it caused in one of the world's biggest betting market. The committee made 31 recommendations on how online gambling, which it said was changing the culture of sport, should be regulated and how Australians struggling with addiction should be supported. Australians outspend the citizens of every other country on online gambling, Peta Murphy, chair of the committee said in the report titled "You win some, you lose more."

"This is wreaking havoc in our communities," Murphy said. Murphy said online gambling companies advertise deliberately and strategically alongside sport, which has normalized it as fun and harmless and sociable activity. A generation of young Australians views gambling and sport as inextricably linked, Murphy said, adding that it was changing the culture of sport. "Australia would be diminished if sport was to be so captured by gambling revenue that providing an opportunity for betting came to be seen as its primary purpose," Murphy said.

A phased, comprehensive ban on all gambling advertising on all media, broadcast and online, that left no room for circumvention, was needed, the panel said. It recommended the ban be phased in over three years so sporting bodies and broadcasters had enough time to find alternative sources of advertising revenue. [...] Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government would consider the recommendations. "We need to deal with online issues, we need to deal with social media issues, we need to deal with it comprehensively across the board," Albanese said on ABC Gold Coast radio.

Australia's prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has told residents they should turn their smartphones off and on again once a day as a cybersecurity measure -- and tech experts agree. From a report: Albanese said the country needed to be proactive to thwart cyber risks, as he announced the appointment of Australia's inaugural national cybersecurity coordinator. "We need to mobilise the private sector, we need to mobilise, as well, consumers," the prime minister said on Friday. "We all have a responsibility. Simple things, turn your phone off every night for five minutes. For people watching this, do that every 24 hours, do it while you're brushing your teeth or whatever you're doing." The Australian government's advice is not new. In 2020, the United State's National Security Agency issued best-practice guidelines for mobile device security, which included rebooting smartphones once a week to prevent hacking.

In August, white-hat hackers at the DEFCON hacker convention will compete to try and breach the computer systems on a satellite in orbit. It took four years, but "this year, we are in space for real," said Steve Colenzo, Technology Transfer Lead for the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate in Rome, New York, and one of the contest organizers. From a report: Hack-A-Sat 4, taking place live at DEFCON Aug. 10-13 in Las Vegas, will be the first-ever hacking contest staged on a vehicle in orbit. In previous years, the contests used genuine working satellite hardware, but running safely on the ground. [...] Hack-A-Sat 4 is an attack/defend contest in which teams compete to hack each other's systems while defending their own. It is being staged by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Space Force. More than 380 teams signed up for the qualification round in April, and the eight top-scoring ones, which include contestants from Australia, Germany, Italy and Poland, as well as the U.S., will participate in the finals at DEFCON.

"We always knew our objective was to do this in space," Colenzo said. But when, back in 2020, organizers asked satellite operators if they could stage a hacking contest on their space assets, "The answer, and there was really no hesitation, the answer was always no." Hack-A-Sat organizers realized that, if they wanted to reach their objective of staging such a contest in space, they would have to launch their own satellite, Colenzo said. The Moonlighter satellite was launched on a SpaceX rideshare rocket to the International Space Station June 5 by the U.S. government-backed non-profit The Aerospace Corporation. It's a foot-long toaster-sized cubesat satellite with extendable solar panels.

If all goes according to plan, Moonlighter will be deployed into orbit early in July, Project leader Aaron Myrick told Newsweek. Moonlighter is designed to be hacked, he said, and there are numerous safety measures in place. "The first thing that we said was that propulsion was off the table," Moonlighter can't change its own orbit, which might make it a hazard to other satellites. And its ground controllers have the ability to reboot the system, kicking out any intruders and restoring their control.

Meta plans to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada once a parliament-approved legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers comes into effect, the company said on Thursday. From a report: The legislation, known as the Online News Act, was approved by the Senate upper chamber earlier on Thursday and will become law after receiving royal assent from the governor general, a formality. The legislation was proposed after complaints from Canada's media industry, which wants tighter regulation of tech companies to prevent them from elbowing news businesses out of the online advertising market.

"Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act taking effect," Meta said in a statement. Facebook had telegraphed such a move for weeks, saying news has no economic value to the company and that its users do not use the platform for news. The act outlines rules to force platforms such as Facebook and Alphabet's Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content, a step similar to a groundbreaking law passed in Australia in 2021.

Microsoft is increasing its Xbox Series X prices in most countries in August apart from the US, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia. From a report: The Xbox maker is also increasing the monthly prices of its Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions for the first time next month, which will see the base Game Pass subscription for console move up to $10.99 a month from $9.99. "We've held on our prices for consoles for many years and have adjusted the prices to reflect the competitive conditions in each market," says Kari Perez, head of communications for Xbox, in a statement to The Verge. Xbox Series X console pricing will largely match the price hike Sony announced for the PS5 last year, with the Xbox Series X moving to $612 in the UK, $604 across most European markets, CAD $649.99 in Canada, and AUD $799.99 in Australia starting August 1st. The Xbox Series S pricing will not be adjusted in any markets, remaining at $299.99.

The Associated Press reports: A project using artificial intelligence to track social media abuse aimed at players at the 2022 World Cup identified more than 300 people whose details are being given to law enforcement, FIFA said Sunday.

The people made "abusive, discriminatory, or threatening posts [or] comments" on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, soccer's governing body said in a report detailing efforts to protect players and officials during the tournament played in Qatar. The biggest spike in abuse was during the France-England quarterfinals game, said the report from a project created jointly by FIFA and the players' global union FIFPRO. It used AI to help identify and hide offensive social media posts... About 20 million posts and comments were scanned and more than 19,000 were flagged as abusive...

The identities of the more than 300 people identified for posting abuse "will be shared with the relevant member associations and jurisdictional law authorities to facilitate real-world action being taken against offenders," FIFA said. "Discrimination is a criminal act. With the help of this tool, we are identifying the perpetrators and we are reporting them to the authorities so that they are punished for their actions," FIFA President Gianni Infantino said in a statement. "We also expect the social media platforms to accept their responsibilities and to support us in the fight against all forms of discrimination."

FIFA and FIFPRO have extended the system for use at the Women's World Cup that starts next month in Australia and New Zealand.

The extent of area burned in California's summer wildfires increased about fivefold from 1971 to 2021, and climate change was a major reason why, according to a new analysis. Scientists estimate the area burned in an average summer may jump as much as 50% by 2050. From a report: Days after wildfire smoke from Canada turned skies orange along the US Eastern Seaboard, the study is further confirmation of past research showing that higher temperatures and drier conditions in many parts of the world make wildfires more likely. Wildfires worsened by greenhouse gases emitted by human activities tore through Australia in 2019 and 2020 and Siberia in 2020. The peer-reviewed research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that wildfires in California's northern and central forests scorch the most area when temperatures are high and less area when it's cooler.

Marco Turco, a climate researcher at the University of Murcia in Spain, and colleagues designed the study to try to identify how much of the increase in the burned area of California fires was due to climate change, and how much to natural variability. They conducted a statistical analysis of temperature and forest-fire data for California summers in the period 1971 to 2021. They then drew on modeling that shows how the last several decades might have evolved without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The result: Burned area grew 172% more than it would have without climate change. Manmade effects began to overwhelm what would be expected without greenhouse gas pollution after 2001, the researchers concluded.

Australia is set to be a cheque-less society by the end of the decade, if the federal government has its way. From a report Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced on Wednesday morning that his government would be moving to phase out cheques by no later than 2030. "We know that usage of cheques has been declining," he said. "This is largely because digital transactions are easier, cheaper and more accessible. "In fact, 98 per cent of retail cheques could be serviced through internet or mobile banking."

Because cheques only account for only 0.2 per cent of all payments, according to figures from an Australian Banking Association (ABA) report. Cheque payments are also more expensive to process compared to other payment types -- and it's been that way for some time. A report for the Reserve Bank of Australia in 2008 -- that's 15 years ago -- said it was costly then, saying it cost financial $4.22 to process cheques.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dell Technologies' Australia subsidiary misled online shoppers into thinking that adding a monitor to their purchase would get them a discount on the display, even though doing so sometimes resulted in customers paying a higher price for the monitor than if they had bought it on its own. That's according to a declaration by the Australian Federal Court on Monday. The deceptive practices happened on Dell's Australian website, but they serve as a reminder to shoppers everywhere that a strikethrough line or sale stamp on an online retailer doesn't always mean you're getting a bargain. On June 5, the Federal Court said Dell Australia was guilty of making "false or misleading representations with respect to the price" of monitors that its website encouraged shoppers to add to their purchase. The purchases were made from August 2019 to the middle of December 2021.

The website would display the add-on price alongside a higher price that had a strikethrough line, suggesting that the monitor was typically sold at the price with the line going through it but that customers would get a discount if they added it to their cart at purchase. (The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, or ACCC, posted a screenshot example here.) However, the strikethrough prices weren't actually representative of what Dell was charging for the monitors for most of the time before the purported discount. In fact, the allegedly discounted price occasionally turned out to be a rip-off, as ACCC commission Liza Carver said in a statement today: "In some cases, consumers paid more for the add-on monitor advertised as 'discounted' than they would have paid if they had bought it as a stand-alone product, which is shocking."

The Australian Federal Court also found that Dell's Australian website used deceptive language, like "Includes x% off," "Total Savings" plus a dollar amount, "Discounted Price" and a dollar amount, and "Get the best price for popular accessories when purchased with this product." According to the ACCC, shoppers spent over $2 million Australian dollars ($1.33 million USD) on 5,300 add-on monitors during this time period. The Australian Federal Court ordered Dell Australia to give full or partial refunds to affected customers. The company must also hire an "independent compliance professional" and contact affected customers. The Australian Federal Court will take comment on further penalties Dell Australia should incur, which could include fines, at a future date. Dell told The Register: "As we acknowledged in November 2022 when the ACCC commenced these proceedings, due to an unrectified error on our part, our web page misrepresented the level of savings consumers could achieve by purchasing a monitor in conjunction with a desktop, laptop, or notebook."

Dell is looking into refunding customers, "plus interest," Dell's statement to The Register added, and the company is "taking steps to improve our pricing processes to ensure this sort of error does not happen again."

According to email addresses associated with Z-Library, more than 600,000 students and teachers are using the pirate eBook repository. TorrentFreak notes that this is "likely an underestimation," especially since the United States is excluded from the analysis. From the report: The team analyzed its user database to check how many user email-addresses are linked to universities, colleges and schools. This gives an impression of how many students and employees use the site but it's likely a low estimate, as students may very well use their personal email addresses to sign up. Still, the overall outcome and the global distribution of users is worth highlighting. China is the top country in absolute numbers, followed by India and Indonesia. This is no surprise, perhaps, as these countries also have the largest populations. Looking at the full database, Z-Library linked 600,000 email addresses to a total of 30,000 educational institutions around the world.

The only country missing from the top list, population-wise, is the United States. Z-Library notes that it intentionally excluded the country due to the criminal prosecution of two of the site's alleged operators. "It should be noted that when compiling statistics, we excluded all data related to the United States due to illegal arrest of two Russian citizens on suspicion of involvement in Z-Library," the shadow library writes on Telegram. There are also some relatively smaller countries in the top list, such as Australia. With a population of just over 25 million, Z-Library is relatively popular there, beating Brazil and Vietnam, which both have much larger populations.

The Australian Monash University also gets a special mention. Apparently, it is the educational institution where users have created the most public booklists. These lists are personal book collections that can be focused on any theme, including educational topics. Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland, is the runner-up based on the number of created booklists. It's worth a separate mention, however, as it also appears in the top 5 universities that donated to Z-Library. The list of most avid Z-Library supported is led by the top Chinese universities, which are grouped for the purpose of this analysis.

Netflix's controversial password sharing crackdown just hit the US. From a report: In addition to the US, Netflix confirmed it will also be rolling out the crackdown across all regions around the world such as the UK, France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, among others. "Netflix account is for use by one household," the company wrote in the post. "Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are -- at home, on the go, on holiday -- and take advantage of new features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices." Netflix broadened its crackdown in early February to include countries like Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain, in addition to the test countries of Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. It previously said "a broad rollout" of the policy would hit this quarter.

Last week the Telegraph reported that a recent firmware update to HP printers "prevents customers from using any cartridges other than those fitted with an HP chip, which are often more expensive. If the customer tries to use a non-HP ink cartridge, the printer will refuse to print."

Some HP "Officejet" printers can disable this "dynamic security" through a firmware update, PC World reported earlier this week. But HP still defends the feature, arguing it's "to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property, maintain the integrity of our printing systems, ensure the best customer printing experience, and protect customers from counterfeit and third-party ink cartridges that do not contain an original HP security chip and infringe HP's intellectual property."

Meanwhile, Engadget now reports that "a software update Hewlett-Packard released earlier this month for its OfficeJet printers is causing some of those devices to become unusable." After downloading the faulty software, the built-in touchscreen on an affected printer will display a blue screen with the error code 83C0000B. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way for someone to fix a printer broken in this way on their own, partly because factory resetting an HP OfficeJet requires interacting with the printer's touchscreen display. For the moment, HP customers report the only solution to the problem is to send a broken printer back to the company for service.
BleepingComputer says the firmware update "has been bricking HP Office Jet printers worldwide since it was released earlier this month..." "Our teams are working diligently to address the blue screen error affecting a limited number of HP OfficeJet Pro 9020e printers," HP told BleepingComputer... Since the issues surfaced, multiple threads have been started by people from the U.S., the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Poland, New Zealand, and France who had their printers bricked, some with more than a dozen pages of reports.

"HP has no solution at this time. Hidden service menu is not showing, and the printer is not booting anymore. Only a blue screen," one customer said.

"I talked to HP Customer Service and they told me they don't have a solution to fix this firmware issue, at the moment," another added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A trash can overflowing with disposable drink cups is an all-too-familiar sight outside any high-traffic cafe or fast-food joint. It was during a lunch-time walk in Melbourne that colleagues Aniyo Rahebi and Catherine Hutchins passed by several such eyesores and decided to combat the piles of waste. A few months later they arrived at an idea: a to-go cup that can be eaten. After hundreds of hours in the kitchen refining their concept, the duo took it to market. Their startup Good-Edi now offers an edible, biodegradable, plastic-free alternative to the standard polyethylene-lined paper cups used for coffee that largely end up in landfills or gets incinerated.

The company raised about $98,000 through a crowd-funding site in 2021, and its baking team currently produces about 500 cups a day for clients across Australia, including coffee shops, roasteries and concert venues, from a facility in a suburb of Melbourne. Good-Edi aims to boost output and expand sales internationally this year. The world goes through more than 250 billion plastic-lined paper drink cups every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Only about 1% of those cups are recycled. Good-Edi says about 2.7 million disposable cups find their way to landfills each day in Australia.

Good-Edi's product works for both for hot drinks like coffee and tea as well as cold drinks. After about 250 recipe adjustments, the founders settled on a blend of rye flour, wheat bran, oat bran, sugar, salt, coconut oil and water. They say their container stays crispy holding a hot cup of joe for about 40 minutes and won't leak a cold beverage for about eight hours. For Hutchins and Rahebi, who have a combined 20 years experience in the food-processing and packaging sectors, Good-Edi is still a side hustle. They are banking on shifting consumer sentiment and a beverage industry under pressure to offer more sustainable to-go options to drive sales and compensate for the fact that their containers can increase the cost of a cup of takeaway coffee by A$1. "Will coffee drinkers be keen to gobble up the company's innovation, if it doesn't feel like a treat?" asks a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter that says the cup tasted like an unsweetened wheat biscuit.

Australia's stock market operator, ASX Ltd, has announced that it will no longer pursue the rebuilding of its software platform using blockchain technology. The decision comes after an external review found that the project would require significant rework, and ASX stated that it will explore more conventional technology options to achieve its business goals. Reuters reports: ASX frustrated market participants in November by "pausing" a rebuild of its all-in-one trading, settlement and clearing software based on the decentralized computing concept, after an external review found it had to be largely reworked after seven years of development. The company has since said it is considering options for another attempt at the rebuild of the 30-year-old software, but at a meeting with participants this week it said it would not involve blockchain or related "distributed ledger technology" (DLT).

Asked if the next attempt would "go down the more conventional route, that is without the focus on DLT (or) blockchain," exchange project director Tim Whiteley told the meeting that "while we continue to explore all the options, certainly we will need to use a more conventional technology than in the original solution in order to achieve the business outcomes." The statement signals the end of what was to be one of the world's most prominent use cases of the concept that promises to accelerate online transactions by processing them securely in multiple locations.

Until now, ASX has said it may resurrect the project using blockchain-based technology developed by New York-based contractor Digital Asset. It has said it will announce a new strategy for the project by year-end. Whiteley told the meeting ASX was on track to decide a new strategy by year-end. It sent a request for information to potential software vendors and "issued an RFP to a number of vendors who responded more positively ... for more detailed feedback," he said, using the acronym for a request for proposal. Market participants had told ASX they did not want a risky, single-date changeover to new software, and "that feedback has been taken into the implementation planning," Whiteley said.

Companies in Apple's third-party repair program say delays in the process and high pricing for parts make it almost impossible to compete with the juggernaut. From a report: In 2021 Apple, under pressure from a Productivity Commission review on the "right to repair," launched its independent repair provider program in Australia. It was trumpeted as a way for small companies to compete with Apple to repair their products -- such as the iPhone -- using Apple tools and spare parts. At the time, repairers said they felt the move was a token gesture designed to head off any potential right-to-repair legislation that would have been recommended by the Productivity Commission review. Two years later, some say their fears have been realised. A number of repairers Guardian Australia has spoken to in Australia and the US suggest Apple's slow response times and the high cost for replacement parts makes it almost impossible for them to be viable competitors. The repairers requested anonymity to speak about the program, fearing that reprisals from the California-based tech giant might prevent them from remaining in the program.

Apple has indicated it takes an average of eight weeks for repairers to be admitted to the program, but repairers Guardian Australia has spoken to said the wait time can be up to six months -- and that it feels like the applications sit in a black hole, without any point of contact within Apple to provide an update on their status. Once repairers are admitted to the program, they receive training from Apple, as well as access to Apple parts, tools, repair manuals and diagnostic software for the company's iPhones and Macs. But they say the price of the parts, as well as the process to get a discounted rate for replacement parts, make it difficult for repairers to compete with Apple's own repair program. One repairer, who says his business repairs between 30 and 40 Apple products every week, said the average repair takes between an hour to an hour and a half. If it charge the rate Apple charges customers for repairs, then its maximum margin is about $60.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: Ocean surface heat is at record-breaking levels. Temperatures began climbing in mid-March and skyrocketed over the course of several weeks, leaving scientists scrambling to figure out exactly why.

Temperatures have fallen since their peak in April — as they naturally do in the spring — but they are still higher than they have ever been on record for this time of year.... The record may not seem huge — it's nearly two-tenths of a degree higher than the previous record in 2016 — but given how much heat is needed to warm up this huge body of water, "it's a massive amount of energy," Matthew England, professor of ocean and climate dynamics at the University of New South Wales, Australia, told CNN... Some scientists are concerned the scale of these new records could mark the start of an alarming trend. Others say record-breaking temperatures like these are always concerning but to be expected given the human-caused climate crisis.

All agree the consequences are likely to be significant. Warmer oceans bleach coral, kill marine life, increase sea level rise and make the ocean less efficient at absorbing planet-warming pollution — the warmer oceans get, the more the planet will heat.
The science leader at the British Antarctic Survey told CNN that "it's probably too early" to blame El Niño." In fact, the world just emerged from a 3-year La Niña cooling event in March. So instead, CNN gets a different explanation fro Gregory C. Johnson, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: "It's a little bit like we've had the freezer door open for a while and it's helped to cool the planet," Johnson said. But even while that freezer has been open, background temperatures have continued to rise. Now the freezer is closed, everything is hotter than before.
Later CNN adds that some scientists are concerned "climate change might be progressing in ways climate models have not predicted." One surprising reason could be the reduction of aerosols in the atmosphere. In 2020, regulations were introduced to limit the amount of sulfur in the fuel ships used — a policy aimed at addressing air pollution. Though air pollution has a significant impact on human health, it also acts as an artificial sunscreen and reflects sunlight away from the Earth. One theory is the absence of aerosols may have turned up the heat, said Karina von Schuckmann [an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean International in France].

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Growth at $50 billion fintech Stripe has been slowing this year, but one of its key strategies to reverse that course got a decent push today: Stripe is announcing that it has inked a "strategic payments partnership" with Uber. The pair will work together initially on selected services in eight of Uber's biggest markets, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan. Some context on this deal: Uber's big U.S. rival Lyft has been a longtime marquee customer of Stripe's for payments, and whether or not it was true, that was one reason some assumed Uber and Stripe would not work together. Uber is, however, a much bigger beast, at close to $100 billion transacted annually (Stripe processed $817 billion last year). And Uber is not just a force globally but in the U.S. specifically, where one estimate from YipIt (via WSJ) puts Uber's rideshare market share currently at a whopping 74%.

Lyft will remain a customer of Stripe's, Stripe president Will Gaybrick confirmed to TechCrunch. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but as with the rest of Stripe's payments business, a big component will come from commissions that Stripe will make from each transaction that it powers on Uber's platform. The Uber partnership, expected to be announced formally later today at Stripe's user conference, comes on the heels of recent enterprise deals Stripe has inked with Amazon, Microsoft and BMW. But this partnership -- for now at least -- is not a global adoption of all that Stripe has to offer. Uber will be using Stripe to break into a specific, new payments frontier. Specifically, it will integrate Stripe Financial Connections and Link to let users import banking details to pay for services like Uber Rides and Eats directly from bank accounts, giving users a payments alternative to credit or debit cards.

Google and other tech giants have called on the Australian government to relax copyright laws to allow artificial intelligence to mine websites for information across the internet. From a report: In a submission to the government's review of copyright enforcement published this week, Google argued the government needs to consider whether copyright law has "the necessary flexibilities" to support the development of AI. The company has called for the introduction of a fair dealing exception for text and data mining for AI.

"The lack of such copyright flexibilities means that investment in and development of AI and machine-learning technologies is happening and will continue to happen overseas," Google said. "AI-powered products and services are being created in other countries with more innovation-focused copyright frameworks, such as the US, Singapore and Japan, and then exported to Australia for use by Australian consumers and businesses. Without these discrete exceptions, Australia risks only ever being an importer of certain kinds of technologies."

In an op-ed via The Conversation, Stephen Dobson, professor and Dean of Education and the Arts at CQUniversity, Australia, argues that it is time for universities to return to oral exams in the AI and ChatGPT era. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: Imagine the following scenario. You are a student and enter a room or Zoom meeting. A panel of examiners who have read your essay or viewed your performance, are waiting inside. You answer a series of questions as they probe your knowledge and skills. You leave. The examiners then consider the preliminary pre-oral exam grade and if an adjustment up or down is required. You are called back to receive your final grade.

This type of oral assessment -- or viva voce as it was known in Latin -- is a tried and tested form of educational assessment. No need to sit in an exam hall, no fear of plagiarism accusations or concerns with students submitting essays generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. Integrity is 100% assured, in a fair, reliable and authentic manner that can also be easily used to assess multiple individual or group assignments. As services like ChatGPT continue to grow in terms of both its capabilities and usage -- including in education and academia -- is it high time for universities to revert to the time-tested oral exam? "Chatbots cannot replicate this sort of task, ensuring student authenticity," writes Dobson. "I argue that it is time to change our conversation to be more about assessment that actually involves a 'conversation.'"

"Writing would still be important, but we should learn to re-appreciate the importance of how a student can talk about the knowledge and skills they acquired. Successfully completing a viva could become one of our graduate attributes, as it once was."