The tech worth your attention, tested properly.

On 18 June an OpenAI model doing research in training was refused by a Services Australia statistics portal and went around the block. The government heard 84 days later, via a public inbox. The timeline, the four agencies involved, OpenAI’s apology to parliament, and the inquiries now under way.

Apple’s M6 Mac mini starts at A$1,449 in Australia, up from A$999 for the M4, and the M5 Pro model at A$2,699. Teardowns show the removable SSD module is gone, and published tests put the 256 GB base model at half the storage speed of 512 GB. Every confirmed figure, and which configuration makes sense.

Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 is on sale here from AU$679 and the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio arrives on 13 October from AU$529. Ray-Ban Display, Muse and the hearing feature from Connect 2026 have not reached Australia. What is here, what it costs, and what is still missing.

Roborock put six wire-free mowers on sale in Australia on 1 September from $1,409. How they line up against Segway Navimow and Mammotion, what RTK, LiDAR and cameras actually do, the price per square metre of lawn, and the research that says you should only mow in daylight.

Google kept $1,499 and $1,849 for a 256 GB Pixel 11 and Pixel 11 Pro, then dropped the 128 GB models, cut the base Pro and Pro XL from 16 GB to 12 GB of RAM and added $100 to the XL and Fold. Every Australian tier, the $350 rise hiding in the 16 GB Pro, the Pro Fold against Samsung’s Fold8, and the features that do not work here.

MG priced the U9 EV at $78,990 on 18 September, completing a segment that also holds the $60,000 KGM Musso EV and the $74,990 Toyota HiLux BEV. Towing ratings from 1,800kg to 3,500kg, range figures measured on cycles that do not compare, payloads that never reach a tonne, charging claims against our own arithmetic, and the efficiency standard behind the timing.

On 16 September Anthropic signed a long-term lease at a proposed campus near Dalby that would draw as much power as 1.5 million homes from a coal-connected substation. What is actually in the development application, the water and jobs claims, the approvals that have not happened, and who is arguing about it.

Google’s first Android laptops from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo go on pre-order in North America on 21 September with no published price, no ship date and no independent test: what Google has confirmed, the six leaked models and the one leaked price, the 5 October Opening Night, what the Australian launch page says that the US page does not, and what Google has told Chromebook owners.

Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 in Australian dollars, on sale since 18 September: every tier from $649 to the $1,689 ceramic, the $30 and $50 cuts against the Series 11 and Ultra 3, how much of that is the stronger dollar, and Apple’s own admission that hypertension notifications will not work on the new watches here until the TGA clears them again.

Apple’s September event priced in Australian dollars: every iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max storage tier against last year (up $100 at the bottom, $900 at the top), the foldable iPhone Duo from $3,499 to $5,899, the $150 quietly added to the iPhone 17 the same night, the memory shortage Tim Cook blamed in June, and our exchange-rate arithmetic on the Australia tax.

On 25 August SA Power Networks remotely ramped about 100,000 rooftop systems to 0 kW as a drill; six days later rooftop solar met 99.9 per cent of the state’s demand. What the emergency backstop is, why Victoria and Queensland already have it and NSW starts on 23 November, AEMO’s zero-to-135-days-a-year projections, and the export-limit versus switch-off difference that decides what it costs you.

August 2026: 27,078 battery EVs, 24.9 per cent of the market, and for the first time more than petrol, diesel or hybrid. Why the FCAI and EV Council totals disagree, the Model Y sitting 1,342 sales behind the Ranger for the annual title, and what a quarter of the market does to the road user charge trigger.

Victoria’s Act No. 25/2026 received Royal Assent on 4 August: from 28 January 2027 every school in the state must restrict wearables as well as phones, with cellular and recording functions off. How NSW and Queensland differ, what Spacetalk and Telstra’s new Apple Watch plan cost to run, and the Black Hat demo that opened a $30 kids’ watch with an email address.

Carmakers have had to sell diagnostic information to independent workshops since 2022, and a discussion paper that closed on 3 July proposes the same for tractors. Phones and laptops get a spare-parts guarantee a manufacturer can disclaim at the counter. What you can actually enforce, and the seven-year parts commitment the same handset carries in Europe.

On 1 May the certificate factor fell from 8.4 to 6.8 and started tapering by size: about $272 for each of the first 14 kWh, $163 up to 28, and $41 above that. What the discount is worth at every size, what 1 January 2027 takes off it, and why the average system shrank 40 per cent in eight weeks.

The mandatory guardrails were dropped in the National AI Plan, and the standards National Cabinet backed on 26 August are rules about power, water and land. The one obligation that reaches a decision made about you starts on 10 December — and it is a paragraph in a privacy policy.

NSW has an EV road user charge priced at 3.095 cents a kilometre for 2026-27 and dated to 1 July 2027 — and the High Court has already ruled that a state cannot levy it. What it costs at 15,000 km, why 5.8 litres per 100 km is the number that matters, and why the collection method matters more than the rate.

eSafety’s own longitudinal study says under-16 account-holding fell from 52.4 to 42.1 per cent while usage moved just four points. Five platforms are under investigation, nobody can be made to hand over government ID — and the age check reads your language, your school hours and your friends list.

nbn put dates on the end of copper on 22 April 2026: letters from July 2027, the first suspensions in January 2028, 130,000 premises in year one. The fibre upgrade is free and no longer needs a faster plan — and once it starts, the queue runs at 20,000 a month.

Microsoft moved the consumer security deadline from October 2026 to 12 October 2027 by editing a note into an old blog post. It is AU$44.95 or free, it covers ten devices — and five different expiry dates now run on the same machine, with the apps outliving the operating system by a year.

myGov has issued nearly 1.8 million passkeys and now asks you to delete your password. ubank has 90 per cent of its app users on them. CommBank and Westpac have shipped nothing — while phishing stayed the most-reported scam in Australia, 65,361 times over.

Six in ten NEM homes now have a smart meter, the opt-out ended in June 2025, and the box is owned by a company you have no contract with. The two-year tariff protection almost nobody knows about — and why the meter will not talk to your other devices until 2028.

Kmart’s Anko glasses sold out in a week and the Attorney-General wrote to the Privacy Commissioner on 7 August. The awkward finding: Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT have no optical surveillance offence at all — their laws only ever covered microphones.

Used EV sales rose 54.6 per cent in the first half of 2026 and a 2022 Model Y has shed about half its list price. State of health is the number that separates a bargain from a $6,000–$20,000 problem — and Geotab’s data says how it was charged matters twice as much as how far it was driven.

HP told investors memory jumped from a sixth of what a PC costs to build to more than a third in one quarter. Australian channel RAM went from $60 to $200-$300. And the industry’s answer is to quietly ship 8GB machines again — which is the part that outlasts the price rise.

The SMS Sender ID Register commenced 1 July 2026: an unregistered brand name is now overwritten with ‘Unverified’ and dumped in one shared thread, with telcos facing $250,000 per contravention. There is no registration deadline — which is exactly why your dentist is in that thread.

In one week in August the market commission told ministers what data centres must bring with them, NSW moved to control grid access, and two federal rule changes went into the queue. The modelling says up to 26 per cent on NSW wholesale prices by 2035 — or nothing, if the rules hold.

Alexa+ started rolling out here on 6 August, free until 30 November and AU$29.99 a month after that. Gemini for Home already replaced Assistant — and Google says that switch cannot be reversed, for anyone in the house.

Build 2026 said Windows AI was expanding beyond the NPU. Microsoft’s own documentation says one API of nine made it — on two GPU families, behind Developer Mode and a beta driver. What the Copilot+ badge still gates, and what it is worth paying for.

Since 1 February 2026 the bike, the battery and the charger must each be lab-tested, certified and permanently marked before sale in NSW — with $825,000 penalties. Queensland went a different way, Victoria has not decided, and the national standard is three years of funding away.

Apple’s Hearing Aid feature and, since 24 June, EssilorLuxottica’s hearing glasses at OPSM are both on the ARTG — a registered hearing aid is now a retail purchase. What they are cleared for, and the subsidy nobody mentions.

23 of 28 telcos sell it and Australian iPhones still keep the tray — but once the SIM is a profile, your number becomes the credential worth stealing. A sourced snapshot, with the regulator’s four-year enforcement record.

Since 4 March 2026 smart gear must ship without default passwords, with a place to report bugs and a published support end date — but phones are excluded and nobody gets fined. A sourced snapshot.

80 Gbps is real, and mostly sidelined — Intel’s 2026 laptop platform still integrates Thunderbolt 4. What the doubling buys you, which machines have it, and why the dock can wait.

Australia quietly gained 160 MHz more Wi-Fi spectrum on 1 October 2025 — enough for a second 320 MHz channel. What it changes, why 6 GHz is still indoor-only, and whether to wait for Wi-Fi 8.

The standard is in force, the first chargers are certified and two distributors take applications — but it is $12k–$20k installed, the eligible-car list is tiny and Hyundai has gone on the record with warnings.

OpenAI retires Atlas on 9 August while Comet and Gemini push deeper into agentic browsing — and researchers keep proving the web can tell your browser what to do. A sourced snapshot.

Telstra now runs text and select apps over Starlink, Optus is still late, and your iPhone’s satellite SOS is a different system entirely — a sourced snapshot.

Hypertension notifications, sleep apnoea and ECG now carry TGA approval in Australia — antioxidant scores and glucose claims do not. A sourced snapshot of where the line sits.

Chargefox is aggregating rival networks and Tesla has opened most of its Superchargers to any CCS2 car — a sourced snapshot of what changed and what it costs.

Snapdragon X2 and a much better Prism emulator have quietly fixed most of the old compatibility problem — what runs, what still breaks, and who should buy.

Cameras, closures and soil sensors are finally in the standard, and Thread’s duelling-mesh problem is fixed — a sourced snapshot of what actually changed.

The strongest open-weight models you can download and run — ranked with cited benchmark data, and honest about the licence fine print.

Two working days of battery in a silent, fanless 14-inch chassis — if your software has made the jump to ARM.

A flagship that finally makes on-device AI feel useful rather than a checkbox — at a price that asks a lot.

The foldable finally gets thin, durable and crease-free enough to recommend without an asterisk.

Smart glasses you can actually wear in public — with an assistant that sees what you see.

A long-range electric sedan that charges fast, drives beautifully and finally gets the software right.

It vacuums, mops, empties itself, washes and dries its own pads — and mostly stays out of your way.

The most comfortable way to track sleep and recovery — if you can live without a screen and a subscription.