James Riley

Secret ballots have long been fundamental to democracy, ensuring the integrity of elections in both government and corporate settings. Traditionally, votes are cast on physical paper, creating a clear separation between the voter’s identity and their choice. This anonymity protects individuals from vote-buying, intimidation or retaliation. But what happens when the system moves online? Recently...

Just days out from the United States presidential election last month, X (formerly Twitter) suddenly crippled the ability of many major media and political organisations to reach audiences on the social media platform. Without warning, the platform, under tech billionaire Elon Musk’s stewardship, announced major changes to the main pathway these organisations use to disseminate content. This pathway is known as the application programming interface, or API. The changes meant users of the free tier API would be limited to 500 posts per month – or roughly 15 per day. This had a huge impact on news media outlets, including The Conversation – especially with one of the biggest political events in the world just around the corner. It meant software programs designed to quickly and easily share stories wouldn’t work and newsrooms had to scramble to post stories manually.

Canberra-based Quantum Brilliance has attracted a $13 million investment from the National Reconstruction Fund as part of the larger Series A round that will help scale up new production laboratory in Victoria.

Gilmour Space Technologies has completed the final wet-test of its Eris orbital rocket and pending final documentation from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, expects to nominate a launch for mid- to late January.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) tell whether you’re happy, sad, angry or frustrated? According to technology companies that offer AI-enabled emotion recognition software, the answer to this question is yes. But this claim does not stack up against mounting scientific evidence. What’s more, emotion recognition technology poses a range of legal and societal risks – especially when deployed in the workplace.

After a shaky start, the Australian designed and manufactured cube satellite CUAVA-2 is moving back on mission following a reboot and is now undergoing commissioning of services.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation has made a $25 million equity investment in South Australian IoT and satellite startup Myriota as part of a broader $50 million funding round.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation has announced a $22.5 million investment in secure data infrastructure provider Vault Cloud, bringing its total investments into Australian companies in the past month to $100 million. The investment in Vault, announced by NRFC chair Martijn Wilder on Friday, is the first into the fund’s Defence Capability priority area, and will be used to develop and deploy new services including an AUKUS cloud capability, among other things. The NRFC’s investment is part of Vault’s Series B funding round, with additional capital to come from private Australian investors.

Gather around dear readers, for it is time to deliver our most popular column of the year. Yes, the InnovationAus Ultimate Guide to Summer Reading has landed for 2024. We are traditionalists here. We follow a process. Which is to say that we have reached out to the leaders of our sometimes weird and always...

Gather around dear readers, for it is time to deliver our most popular column of the year. Yes, the InnovationAus.com Ultimate Guide to Summer Reading has landed for 2024.