A worker was sacked over his side hustle. Here are 5 tips for employees with second gigs

Scientists at Microsoft Research in the United States have demonstrated a system called Silica for writing and reading information in ordinary pieces of glass which can store two million books’ worth of data in a thin, palm-sized square.

In a paper published today in Nature, the researchers say their tests suggest the data will be readable for more than 10,000 years.

What tiny pulses of light can do

The new system, called Silica, uses extremely short flashes of laser light to inscribe bits of information into a block of ordinary glass.

These pulses are called “ultrashort” for a reason. Each one lasts mere quadrillionths of a second (aka femtoseconds or 10^–15 s).

To get your head around that: comparing ten femtoseconds to a single minute is like comparing one minute to the entire age of the universe.

These incredibly short flashes can be used to generate even shorter bursts of light lasting attoseconds (a thousandth of a femtosecond or 10^–18 s).

These attosecond bursts can be used to observe the motion of electrons inside atoms and molecules – and in 2023 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for pioneering work in this area, to Ferenc Krausz (coincidentally my former PhD supervisor), Anne L’Huillier and Pierre Agostini.

Writing in glass

Femtosecond laser pulses also have a practical technological application. They can be used to make changes deep inside transparent materials such as glass.

These lasers produce light of a wavelength that normally passes through glass without interaction. However, when ultrashort pulses of this light are tightly focused on a particular region, it produces an intense electric field that alters the molecular structure of the glass in the focal zone.

This means only a tiny three-dimensional volume, often less than a millionth of a metre to a side, is affected. This is called a “voxel”, which can be made at precisely controlled positions in the glass.

Decades of research

The idea of using laser-written voxels for three-dimensional data storage is not new.

Eric Mazur and co-workers at Harvard University in the US investigated volumetric optical storage back in the 1990s. Their groundbreaking work demonstrated that permanent data structures could be inscribed into common glass using femtosecond lasers.

In 2014, Peter Kazansky and colleagues at the University of Southampton in the UK reported data storage in fused quartz glass with a “seemingly unlimited lifetime”. This helped to to establish the idea of ultra-stable glass-based memory devices.

In 2024, Kazansky spun out a company called SPhotonix to commercialise what they describe as “5D glass nanostructuring”. Their vision of a “5D memory crystal” even made its way into popular culture: a similar device appeared in the latest Mission Impossible film, The Final Reckoning, portrayed as a secure vault capable of containing a powerful but sinister AI.

A complete system

The Silica project does not claim to have made a new scientific breakthrough. Instead the team presents the first comprehensive demonstration of a practical real-world technology.

Their work brings together all the key elements of such a storage platform based on femtosecond lasers and glass. It includes encoding data, writing, reading, decoding and error correction. The work explores different strategies for reliability, writing speed, energy efficiency and data density, and involves systematic assessments of the data lifetime.

Silica looked at two main types of laser-written voxels.

The first consists of tiny elongated void-like features created by laser-driven “micro-explosions” inside the glass. These allow an extremely high storage density of 1.59 gigabits per cubic millimetre.

The second type involves making subtle changes in the local refractive index of the glass. These can be written faster, using less energy – but each cubic millimetre of glass can hold less data. This method can write about 65.9 megabits per second, and the authors say this could be increased with more laser beams.

Finally, accelerated ageing experiments suggest that the written data, even in the case of the more sensitive phase voxels, could remain stable for more than 10,000 years. This vastly exceeds the lifetime of conventional archival storage media such as magnetic tape or hard drives.

The future

When I began my PhD in the late 1990s at the Vienna University of Technology, we were one of only a handful of laboratories worldwide that had the expertise to build lasers capable of generating femtosecond pulses.

Today, after decades of technological development, ultrafast lasers with the reliability, power and repetition rates required for industrial use can be purchased off the shelf.

Dense, fast and energy-efficient archival data storage is an exciting real-world application of these lasers. As ultrafast photonics continues to mature, I have no doubt more applications will follow. Exciting times ahead.

Alex Fuerbach, Professor, Photonics Research Centre, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has appointed Tim Wilson, the only Liberal to win back a “teal” seat last year, to go head-to-head as shadow treasurer against the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers.

Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume will take on a major economic role as shadow minister for employment, industrial relations, productivity and deregulation, in an extensive reshuffle of the opposition frontbench.

Taylor said the new shadow frontbench blended “proven experience with the next generation of Coalition talent”. It was designed to do two main things “one, prosecute Labor’s failures,” and “two, ensure the Coalition is ready to govern and change Australia for the better,” he said.

The changes promote key Taylor supporters and dump or demote key backers of former leader Sussan Ley. But notably Taylor also has moderates in significant positions, in a bid to foster some unity as a fractured party.

Andrew Hastie, who quit Ley’s shadow ministry, and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who was sacked, are both back in the frontbench lineup, in senior posts.

Hastie, who wanted to run for leader but stepped back under factional pressure, becomes shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability. He also will be deputy leader in the House of Representatives, a new position created to deal with the fact the party deputy is in the Senate.

Hastie will be a controversial choice with business, given his views on industry policy are more interventionist than those of Taylor, a classic economic “dry”. Hastie was anxious for an economic post after the election and annoyed with Ley when he did not get one.

Price will be spokeswoman for small business, skills and training, in shadow cabinet.

In another major move, conservative factional power broker James Paterson shifts from shadow finance minister to defence spokesman. While defence is a prestigious post, previously held by Taylor, it does not, in the normal course of events, give as much scope for a high public profile as finance does.

Paterson’s old job of finance, government services and the public service goes to Claire Chandler, 35, elevated into shadow cabinet as one of the biggest winners in the reshuffle.

Those off the frontbench include Ley’s numbers man Alex Hawke, Paul Scarr (formerly immigration spokesman), and Andrew Wallace (former shadow attorney-general), as well as Melissa Price and Scott Buchholz.  Angie Bell and Kerryanne Liddle have been demoted.

Leader of the moderates Anne Ruston, one of Ley’s strongest supporters, retains health and aged care but has had some responsibilities moved elsewhere.

Strong Taylor backer Tony Pasin will be shadow minister for scrutiny of government waste and accountability, in the outer shadow ministry. Another backer, Phillip Thompson, has been put in shadow cabinet as shadow minister for defence industry and personnel.

Ted O'Brien, previously shadow treasurer, who lost his position as deputy leader to Hume, becomes shadow foreign minister, a plum post. He’s a Chinese speaker.

Wilson, 45, who defeated teal Zoe Daniel to regain the Victorian seat of Goldstein, and is one of the most indefatigable Liberal MPs, was previously spokesman on industrial relations under Ley.

He campaigned strongly before the 2025 election against Labor’s planned superannuation tax on unrealised gains – the government post-election dropped this part of its proposed changes. He is seen by the opposition as likely to get under Chalmers’ skin. One Liberal source describes him as unembarrassable.

Wilson told Tuesday’s news conference, which featured the new economic team, “hope is on the way.”

In an immediate attack, Chalmers said: “Tim Wilson strikes me as another typical Liberal. He’s long on ego, arrogance and entitlement and short on empathy or understanding.

"This is the same guy who floated the privatisation of Medicare, argued against penalty rates, and called for the dismantling of compulsory super for workers.”

Sarah Henderson, a Taylor ally excluded from the frontbench by Ley, becomes shadow minister for communications and digital safety, and is in the shadow cabinet. Henderson is a fervent critic of the ABC.

Jonno Duniam, a conservative faction leader, stays in home affairs – he also has immigration added to his shadow portfolio. Previously, immigration was a separate post, in the hands of a moderate, Scarr, who sought to temper the harder line push on the issue. One of Taylor’s immediate tasks is to shape an immigration policy, for early release.

Unsurprisingly, the Nationals rebels who broke shadow cabinet solidarity, which briefly split the Coalition, are immediately back in on the frontbench, in their old jobs, as are all the other frontbench Nationals who resigned in support of them. Under the deal Ley did with Nationals leader David Littleproud, there would have been a hiatus on getting together the frontbench until early March.

Dan Tehan retains the energy portfolio and becomes manager of opposition business in the House.

In other appointments:

• Michaelia Cash moves from foreign affairs to become shadow attorney-general, a post she has held previously.
• Matt O'Sullivan becomes shadow minister for “choice in child care and early learning”, a title that signals the Taylor opposition will diverge significantly in child care policy from the Albanese government.
• Melissa McIntosh will be spokeswoman on women, social services and the NDIS.
• Julian Lesser retains education and adds Indigenous Australians. His appointment to the latter post is significant, given his views. He supported the Voice referendum and was at odds with Price.
• Andrew Bragg  retains housing and also takes on environment. Bragg is one of the most prominent moderates and a notable choice for environment, a post previously held by Bell who struggled during the negotiations over the Environment Protection and Conservation Act last year.
• James McGrath continues as shadow special minister of state but is out of the shadow cabinet.
• Aaron Violi is promoted to the frontbench as spokesman on the digital economy.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

AI fears have been the cause of downturns and downright crashes in recent weeks and months. Here’s why the market is so spooked.

While ChatGPT has become the Kleenex of the AI world, there are tonnes of tools out there that are - in some ways - outstripping the work that OpenAI has been doing. One such company that is downright neck-and-neck is Anthropic and its Claude product. We've written abut some of the research work it has done before (be kind of afraid).

While AI has been heralded as this great assistant for all-things-work and a lightning-rod for business productivity, nobody can quite figure out how to integrate it into everyday life just yet. Models like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and tonnes of others still require a lot of manual input. Often, these tools stop at text responses, image generation or light video work.

This week though, Anthropic with Claude showed off what has everyone invested in SaaS and cloud computing companies so worried. With the release of its new model - called Sonnet 4.6 - Anthropic showed how Claude can help, not just for business stuff, but also your personal to-do list.

This takes it from the office all the way into your everyday life.

 

 

In a video posted to its social channels, Claude is shown doing rudimentary everyday tasks on your to-do list that normally take tonnes of manual processing.

Stuff like buying birthday gifts that are on budget through your browser, renewing a driver's license, doing your expenses, shifting meetings back and forth in your diary and so on.

It's this sort of thing that has big investors spooked when it comes to software companies: many don't know where or how AI will be used, potentially to replace the core business models that these companies have built billions on.

We saw it recently with Xero, where both I and the company's CEO tried to replicate a core accounting program using nothing but Claude's suite of tools. She said she couldn't do it "easily", and when I got right down to it, neither could I. "Easily", being the operative word.

Instead, Xero made big moves about how it's embracing AI to give the data it already has on its customers the edge so they can do their tasks faster and make their offering better.

Others like Salesforce and Oracle, for example, are still struggling to articulate this message, and that's where the panic comes in.

When we first saw ChatGPT and Claude burst onto the scene, nobody knew they'd be used like this. And until big businesses can show how they're using AI rather than trying to push against it, the panic is likely set to continue.

If you're looking at private health insurers on the ASX, you might want to take note of what Health Minister Mark Butler has to say on significantly higher price premiums set to kick in soon.

Minister Butler announced that private health insurance premiums will rise by an average 4.41 per cent from 1 April 2026, in one of the largest annual increases in recent years, after the Federal Government signed off on insurers’ revised submissions.

He added that the increase followed multiple rounds of negotiations with insurers and reflected rising costs across the health system.

The 4.41 per cent lift is higher than last year’s 3.73 per cent rise. It tracks a 5 per cent increase in the cost of medical and hospital services over the past financial year.

The minister issued figures revealing that in the 12 months to 30 September 2025, insurers paid out more than $26.7 billion in hospital, medical and extras benefits.

Hospital treatment benefits rose $1.2 billion to $20 billion, up 6 per cent. General treatment benefits increased $341 million to $6.7 billion, up 5 per cent. Hospital accommodation benefits per episode climbed 5 per cent, the strongest growth since the data series began in 2008.

The minister said wage pressures and the financial position of private hospitals also drove the premium outcome.

The hospital benefits ratio, which measures the share of premiums returned to members as hospital benefits, has risen to 85.9 per cent as at September 2025, up from 83 per cent in 2022–23. It is projected to reach 87 per cent in the year from 1 April 2026.

Pre-pandemic, the ratio sat around 90 per cent.

“This premium round has been guided by my commitment to maintain the value of private health insurance for Australians, while making sure the sector plays its part in supporting private hospitals facing rising costs and significant challenges,” Mr Butler said.

Mr Butler said premium increases must be supported by evidence and improve the broader system, not insurer balance sheets.

For households, the April rise compounds pressure from higher rents, mortgages and energy bills. For the private health sector, it reflects the continuing strain of rising wages, hospital costs and post-pandemic demand.

The larger question is whether lifting the hospital benefits ratio back towards 90 per cent is enough to stabilise private hospitals without triggering further premium pressure next year.

Keep an eye on the health insurance companies on the ASX. Medibank has been up over 14% over the last 12 months, while NIB has been up almost 7.5%.

If you paid extra for “high performance” fuel at certain Mobil sites in Queensland, the Federal Court says you weren’t getting what the signage promised.

In a judgment handed down this week, the court declared that Mobil Oil Australia Pty Ltd contravened the Australian Consumer Law by selling fuel branded as “Mobil Synergy Fuel” at nine sites in north and central Queensland when the fuel was not, in fact, Synergy fuel and did not contain the advertised additives.

As fuel prices continue to tick higher, it's another reminder that the system we use to track what's going into our cars isn't always the most reliable.

The court found Mobil breached sectionsof the ACL by representing that the fuel:

• was “Synergy Fuel”,

• had a substantially different composition or quality to unadditised fuel, and

• contained additives delivering benefits such as corrosion protection, deposit removal, improved fuel economy, reduced emissions and peak engine performance  .

In reality, the fuel dispensed at the relevant sites was similar or even the same as ordinary unadditised fuel of the same grade.

That’s the rub, for the court: Premium branding is lawful. Premium pricing is lawful. But premium claims must be true.

The penalty? $16 million, payable within 28 days. Mobil must also publish corrective notices on its website and in local papers.

My favourite part, however, is that there's never anything more reliable than a company that has to stay under court scrutiny. Mobil now must implement and maintain an ACL compliance program for three years. So maybe this is a sign of trust for the brand going forward?

You can read the full judgment here.

 

Across the globe, radio is discovering that the voice in your car might not belong to a person at all.

From experimental late-night music programs in the United States to automated news bulletins in parts of Europe and Asia, broadcasters are quietly testing artificial intelligence-generated hosts. The pitch is familiar: AI can run around the clock, never calls in sick, and can tailor playlists and patter to hyper-specific audiences.

In Australia, that experiment has already crossed from theory into practice.

Last year, a Sydney-based station revealed it had used an AI-generated voice named Thy to host a regular weekday music show without informing listeners.

For six months.

At the time, no rule required disclosure. For many in the industry, it was a proof of concept. For others, it was a warning shot.

Honestly? Most of the time, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Here's what it sounded like.

Now, the regulator has stepped in.

According to a story from the Australian Associated Press, commercial radio stations will soon be required to disclose when a regularly scheduled music or news program is hosted by a computer-generated voice. The change is part of the Commercial Radio Code of Practice 2026, unveiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority this week.

Under the revised code, which takes effect on July 1, stations must tell audiences if a synthetic voice is hosting a regular program. The disclosure can be made during the broadcast itself or published on the station’s website or social media channels.

But the rules come with notable carve-outs. AI-generated voices used in advertisements, weather and traffic updates, and music segments will not require disclosure. Nor will AI content delivered via streaming platforms. That distinction reflects the regulator’s focus on traditional broadcast radio, even as listening habits shift increasingly online.

Let’s say you want to encourage more drivers to shift to battery-electric vehicles. What’s the best way to do it?

Globally, billions have been poured into incentives to encourage drivers to switch. The most popular approaches are rebates to cut the purchase cost and schemes to fund fast public chargers. The logic is simple: make EVs cheaper and public charging easier and consumers will follow.

But my recent research on Australian battery-electric vehicle policies suggests it’s not simple. Highly visible policies subsidising the upfront cost of new battery-electric vehicles represent surprisingly bad value for money.

What shifts the dial much more are quieter policies reducing annual running costs, boosting convenience and strengthening consumer understanding. The best return on investment comes from subsidising home and workplace EV chargers. This is because of the large savings on annual operating cost and the certainty and convenience of charging cheaply at home or at workplace.

As Australian policymakers review tax exemptions on new battery EVs, it’s worth taking a hard look at what actually drives uptake in an economically efficient way.

Australia’s slow start

Sales of battery and plug-in hybrid EVs rose to over 13% of new vehicles last December – the highest percentage to date.

But Australia is lagging. Battery-electric vehicles globally averaged more than 20% of new car sales last year.

To understand what drives uptake efficiently, I asked a panel of Australian industry experts to shortlist top policy contenders based on a systematic review of successful global policies. I ran benefit-cost analyses of the six shortlisted policies and projected how effective they would be over 30 years.

These policies were: purchase rebates, public and private charging, education programs, incentives to cut operating costs and fuel efficiency standards.

How do these policies rank?

Of the six, two clearly stood out as boosts to uptake – private chargers and education programs. Public chargers didn’t give much economic return, but are essential to giving drivers certainty.

Purchase rebates and cheaper operating costs: popular underperformers

Purchase rebates give buyers some money back to effectively make the EV cheaper. These policies aim to support early adopters who might be deterred by higher upfront costs.

The problem is, they don’t work very well. My analysis shows these policies have a benefit-cost ratio of just 0.88, returning just 88 cents in benefits for every dollar spent.

Why? Freeriders. Many well-heeled people who get the rebate would likely have bought the vehicle anyway. But the policies do little to drive change with other groups.

International studies similarly show broad-based rebates are often weak in encouraging people to buy battery-electric vehicles who weren’t already planning to, while benefits disproportionately flow to higher-income households.

Incentives to cut operating costs had the same poor benefit-cost ratio of 0.88. These incentives – such as exemptions from road tolls and parking discounts – are more evenly spread, as they extend to secondhand owners.

Fuel efficiency: exceptional on value, modest on uptake

At the start of 2025, the long-awaited New Vehicle Efficiency Standard came into effect, bringing Australia into line with other developed nations.

Low implementation costs give these standards the highest benefit-cost ratio of all policies assessed at almost 47.

Importantly, the policy is technology-neutral, meaning it acts to cut emissions across all vehicle technologies, including hybrids and internal combustion engines.

But while the standards are a highly cost-effective way to cut transport emissions, they won’t drive mass uptake of battery-electric vehicles. They function as a foundational policy — efficient, essential but insufficient on their own.

Rebates for home and work chargers: strong boost to uptake

Incentives for home or workplace smart chargers are little discussed. But these policies had the highest total return on investment and a benefit-cost ratio of 1.86, as well as strong effects on uptake over time.

Why? Cost savings and convenience. Smart chargers let households charge cheaply at off-peak times or from rooftop solar, which also eases pressure on the grid. Owners strongly value the convenience of charging at home or work, rather than having to go to a public charger and wait for the car to charge. In the future, vehicle-to-grid technologies allowing owners to sell power to the grid will be another incentive.

The policy would be particularly effective in Australia, where off-street parking and rooftop solar are common. To date, Australia doesn’t have a nationwide rebate for home chargers.

Public fast chargers: important but not economically efficient

Australian governments prefer to fund public fast chargers rather than offer rebates for home chargers. This makes some sense, as fast chargers give drivers more certainty they can recharge away from home.

It’s not very efficient, with a low benefit-cost ratio of 0.88. But public charging is more equitable than purchase rebates, as these chargers give renters and people in apartments a way to charge. The chargers boost confidence in the network, even if they are used infrequently.

While public fast-charging has a borderline economic benefit, it’s essential on a social and psychological front.

Public education and exposure: surprisingly effective

Information campaigns and public education are another underappreciated policy option. Test-drives and hands-on demonstrations let people new to the technology become comfortable.

Education policies tackle common information gaps and misconceptions around range, battery life, charging costs and safety.

These programs are cheap and highly effective, with a benefit-cost ratio of 3.05 and an initial boost to uptake.

Which way forward?

In earlier research, we found different policies were more effective at different stages of battery-electric vehicle adoption. This means it’s important for policymakers to put the right policies in place at the right time.

Until now, Australian policymakers have focused on building the network of public chargers and giving rebates to reduce purchase prices.

But as our research shows, it’s not always the shiniest, most popular policies which do the heavy lifting.

We could get far better traction with less visible but more effective policies around private chargers and education programs – and making sure purchase rebates go to people who need them.

Anilan V, Postdoctoral Researcher, Adelaide University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the RBA looks to quell inflation with rate rises, conventional wisdom suggests Australian households will have less to spend on shiny new laptops, TVs and other consumer discretionary gear. Typically, that would spell trouble for discretionary companies on the ASX. Not in today’s topsy-turvy market.

Switzer Report’s Paul Rickard joined this week’s Switzer Investing TV to explain why JB Hi-Fi is a standout example of a company bucking the trend.

Despite falling from around $120 a share in October to $78 at the start of this week’s trading, Rickard says JB Hi-Fi remains worth a look.

And the latest numbers back that up.

The retailer reported HY26 total sales of $6.10 billion, up 7.3 per cent, with EBIT rising 8.1 per cent to $454.0 million and net profit after tax up 7.1 per cent to $305.8 million. Earnings per share rose 7.1 per cent to 279.7 cents and the interim dividend increased 23.5 per cent to 210 cents per share, reflecting a higher payout ratio of 75 per cent of net profit.

So what gives Rickard confidence that JB Hi-Fi can maintain that performance in a sticky inflation environment?

As always, he says, the detail matters. A store-by-store analysis shows the business is holding up.

“Comparable store sales are the really important number. These are stores that were open 12 months ago and are still open now. How are they trading relative to how they traded 12 months ago?” he said.

“Sales over the half year, comparable store sales — in other words, not sales from adding new stores — were up over 5 per cent across all their divisions, which is pretty good.”

Rickard cautioned that January trading was softer than the market expected.

“The market’s initial reaction was they gave some January sales numbers which were a bit down. Comparable store sales for one month were only up 2.6 per cent,” he said.

“You’ve got to be a bit careful reading that. January is a funny month. There are so many seasonal issues at play.”

Even so, he argues the stock still deserves consideration from income-focused investors.

“It is as blue chip as you want to come in terms of retail. It’s the best retailer in Australia by question. It’s done it year in, year out,” he said.

“Discretionary, with talk of higher interest rates, is not going to be flavour of the month. But this is a stock you can put away and rely on the dividend.”

Watch the full episode here.