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18 December, 2014
Ralph H. Baer never reached the levels of public recognition of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs but, as the inventor of home video games, his contribution to technology and entertainment are arguably on the same scale. A relentless inventor, Baer - who died aged 92 on December 6- produced the first home machine to connect to a television and allow users to control the images, creating the video game industry that today is worth billions of dollars and has allowed an entirely new medium for art and entertainment.
15 December, 2014
12 December, 2014
11 December, 2014
Just last year, Mozilla stood strongly against Apple’s hardheaded refusal to allow alternative rendering engines on iOS. Now, Mozilla seems totally willing to play ball in exchange for access to Apple’s massive user base. If I had to guess, this is likely due to the tepid response Firefox OS has seen since launch.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
History
06 December, 2014
05 December, 2014
About 18 months ago, Google began working on an advanced risk analysis engine that could figure out just who — or what — was behind an attempt to get through a CAPTCHA screen. The researchers looked at a host of cues. They included what web site the person had come from, where their mouse went on the screen, how long it moved, how steady it was and other cues Google won't divulge.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
research
30 November, 2014
29 November, 2014
27 November, 2014
22 November, 2014
Showing a rather shocking disregard for the long-term safety of human civilization, Microsoft has become one of the first companies to deploy autonomous robot security guards. Dubbed the K5, Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus was being policed last week by five of these roughly human-sized 300-pound (136 kg) robots
21 November, 2014
The University of NSW says it has issued 238 fines — estimated to total around $100,000 - to students illicitly downloading copyright infringing material such as movies and TV shows on its Wi-Fi network since 2008. The main issues are that the University is not returning any money to the copyright holders but is instead using the money raised for campus facilities and that it is essentially enforcing a commonwealth law.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Ethical
19 November, 2014
A PRIVATE college that fought the regulator for the right to enter the higher education market expects its IT degree will undercut university offerings by 15-20 per cent. He said the new, three-year bachelor of information technology and systems would cost $45,000 for overseas students and $39,000 for locals.
Labels:
Education
17 November, 2014
We’ve seen some absolutely amazing art over the past 6,000 years of human history, and, more recently, we’ve seen some incredible creations that were made using 3D printing and imaging techniques. But now it’s clear — some of the most impressive art is something we will never see. At least not with the naked eye. Or even a jeweler’s scope, or a microscope that can magnify 400x.
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking
16 November, 2014
13 November, 2014
A French-based startup has just launched a website that will let you add your skills to a comprehensive map of human skills. As quoted from their website "We aim to build the largest, most accurate, multilingual skills database ever made, by allowing a diverse and skillful community to contribute their individual skills to the global map." The ontology is simple: skills can have zero or more sub-skills. Every new skill is available in all supported languages (only English and French at the moment). The crowdsourced data is free for non-commercial use."
12 November, 2014
07 November, 2014
Using Australia Post's ShopMate service, launched last week, subscribers can have their parcels sent to their "US address" before they're forwarded to their Australian address. Parcel Post general manager Kelly Heintz says the service will cut the annoying price difference suffered by Australian consumers. ShopMate isn't the first service of its kind in Australia, but it's the first that won't rely on more costly international couriers.
Labels:
Intercultural Understanding
Microsoft today announced a significant change to its Office strategy for mobile devices: creating and editing is now free. The company also released standalone Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps for the iPhone, as well a new preview of these apps for Android tablets. Starting today, whether you’re using an Office app on Android or iOS, you can create and edit content without an Office 365 subscription
04 November, 2014
Imagine every computer that ever existed, in your browser. The JAVASCRIPT MESS project is a porting of the MESS emulator, a program that emulates hundreds of machine types, into the Javascript language. The MESS program can emulate (or begin to emulate) a majority of home computers, and continues to be improved frequently. By porting this program into the standardized and cross-platform Javascript language, it will be possible to turn computer history and experience into the same embeddable object as movies, documents, and audio.
02 November, 2014
01 November, 2014
HP has taken a wild step toward re-imagining the personal computer, deleting the keyboard and mouse and merging a 3D scanner and projector to create a super all-in-one device it hopes can rekindle PC sales. The new desktop computer, called Sprout, being touted as 'unusual', 'futuristic' and 'wild', goes on sale online in the US on Wednesday, costing $US1899.
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Game,
Graphic Design,
ICT Capability
In the context of the upcoming crackdown on piracy, Malcolm Turnbull quickly qualified the statement saying rights holders probably wouldn’t be interested in getting access to metadata. Simply put, Turnbull said, rights holders already have mechanisms with which to identify and pursue those engaging in illegal file sharing:
Although the government is downplaying comments from Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin that retained data could be used to hunt down Australians downloading infringing films, TV shows, or music, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has confirmed that the data could be accessed by film studios under a court order.
The proposed legislation, as he detailed in the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014, specifies six categories of metadata to be retained. They are: account or subscriber details source of communication destination of communication date and time of communication type of communication location of the device.
26 October, 2014
Adelaide has never had a strong reputation as a haven for game development; in fact our city has a history of making life somewhat difficult for the ludologically-inclined. But that hasn't disheartened Machine Spirit, whose first game, Amygdala, launches tomorrow.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Game,
ICT Career,
Women in IT
Robocar R&D is moving fast in Singapore, and this week, the National University of Singapore (NUS) announced they will be doing a live public demo of their autonomous golf carts over a course with 10 stops in the Singapore Chinese and Japanese Gardens. The public will be able to book rides online, and then summon and direct the vehicles with their phones. The vehicles will have a touch tablet where the steering wheel will go. Rides will be free
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
ICT Career
24 October, 2014
23 October, 2014
22 October, 2014
Doctor Who has been pressganged into the BBC’s “Make it Digital” push to help kids understand computers rather than just playing with them. Its answer: an educational video game. The cunning plan is to sweeten the task of understanding basic coding by sneaking it into something that is fun
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education,
Game,
ICT Capability
3D-printed gun maker draws jail term in Japan MORE LIKE THIS Japan police arrest man who made 3D-printed guns The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2014 (so far!) 3D vendor sells $1,500 part to make metal guns on IDG Answers Corrupt Lotus Notes NSF File Yoshitomo Imura, 28, was sentenced to 2 years as the court backed Japan's stiff gun controls
Labels:
3D,
Asia Connection,
Ethical
21 October, 2014
The self-described “math geek” from Perth, who represented Australia at the 1988 International Math Olympiad, obviously spent a lot of time with big numbers growing up. But those numbers must pale into comparison with the return he has delivered by betting $US500,000 on Snapchat, the social media phenomenon that has recently been valued at $US10 billion ($11.43bn).
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
ICT Career
15 October, 2014
12 October, 2014
11 October, 2014
HUGH Jackman’s latest Wolverine movie, X-Men Days of Future Past, has a comic scene in which the character Quicksilver stops time then zips around the room reorganising the kitchen in the Pentagon — US Defence headquarters — just the way he wants it. The sequence, which lasts under two minutes, is just a small gag in the latest instalment of the hugely popular X-Men series, but it’s massively complicated. Fine water sprays down, vegetables and frypans fly through the air, bullets fire and characters flit along walls at hypserspeed. It is just one of a show reel of amazing film moments from Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings and Gravity brought to Hollywood by Adelaide’s Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) and created in Pulteney Street.
01 October, 2014
Is Windows 10 really Windows 7.5? Perhaps Windows 10 should be dubbed Windows 7.5 – the stepping stone we should have had before Microsoft forced Windows 8 upon us. Convincing us that it's a worthy upgrade will be the biggest test of new Microsoft chief Satya Nadella. Simply skipping over the number 9 isn't enough to convince long-suffering Windows users that 10 is a major step forward.
30 September, 2014
Chinese consumers will get their first shot at legally buying game consoles this week after a 14-year ban, as Microsoft begins offering its Xbox One in 4000 stores. The trouble is none of its most popular titles are available because of government restrictions.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Game,
Intercultural Understanding
27 September, 2014
Vodafone is developing a scheme to store details of the websites its customers have visited for up to 90 days. The company says the scheme will allow its customers to keep track of how much of their mobile phone data allowance they are using on particular sites. This will help resolve billing disputes when customers believe they have been overcharged, it said. Most telcos do not store such data and Telstra has indicated it has no plans to create such a scheme.
26 September, 2014
Apple, in an explanation of its new policy, says on its website that on devices running its new operating system, “your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode. “Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data. So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy
25 September, 2014
As a young man, Kevin Mitnick became the world’s most notorious black hat hacker, breaking into the networks of companies like IBM, Nokia, Motorola, and other targets. After a stint in prison, he reinvented himself as a white hat hacker, selling his skills as a penetration tester and security consultant. With his latest business venture, Mitnick has switched hats again: This time to an ambiguous shade of gray.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
ICT Career
24 September, 2014
23 September, 2014
17 September, 2014
That’s the aspiration behind IBM’s new big-data play, Watson Analytics, the latest effort to commercialise the company’s artificial intelligence technology as a tool for business intelligence. Watson is best known for beating two world champions on “Jeopardy” a few years ago — and winning the game show’s million-dollar prize. IBM then began trying to turn the technology into a cash cow.
15 September, 2014
APPLE’S proud announcement that its new iPhone could be used to buy goods in a single swipe has left customers nonplussed in Japan, where mobile contactless payments have been normal fare for a decade. A type of Near Field Communication (NFC) chip, known in Japan as FeliCa, was introduced to the Japanese mobile market in June 2004 and has been implanted in almost all phones sold in the country since.
12 September, 2014
the first printed car arrives. It will be built up from carbon-reinforced plastics, then driven out of Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center and onto the streets of the Windy City. The vehicle will be printed over 44 hours. Technicians will add in the unprintable — electric motor, battery, wiring, window glass — and the car, called Strati,
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking,
ICT Capability
11 September, 2014
A list of almost 5 million combinations of Gmail addresses and passwords was posted online on Tuesday. But the passwords seem to be old, and they don't appear to actually belong to Gmail accounts. Instead, it seems that many of the passwords were taken from websites where users used their Gmail addresses to register, according to some of the leak's victims as well as security experts.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Privacy
08 September, 2014
AFTER years of debate, and millions of dollars spent on fruitless court cases, it is clear that copyright legislation has not kept up with enormous changes brought by the internet. In describing us as “the worst pirates in the world” (another apocryphal claim), rights holders are conveniently ignoring the fact that Australians are willing to pay for quality content. It is rarely reported that Game of Thrones was Australia’s most popular, legally downloaded TV show or film in 2013, or that Australia is second only to the US on a per capita basis in digital consumer revenues.
While major retailers including Myer have said the ability of offshore internet retailers to sell tax-free is a major threat to local players, Mr Gladstone said there was a competitive advantage in being based in Australia. “Offshore competition is tough, but they have a disadvantage with the cost of shipping, and people always prefer to buy locally — so if we can offer a comparable price, fast delivery and good customer service with cheap returns it will always be preferable,” he said.
EPPB is a program that makes it possible for a user to download iCloud backups from Apple's iCloud servers onto a computer. Once there, the backups can be scoured for information including camera rolls, messages, email attachments and more. In essence, the app reverse-engineers Apple's "restore iOS backup" functionality, only instead of downloading the backed up data to a physical device, it downloads it to the cloud.
04 September, 2014
International researchers are reporting that they have built the first human-to-human brain-to-brain interface, allowing two humans — separated by the internet — to consciously communicate with each other, with no additional sensory cues. One researcher, attached to a brain-computer interface (BCI) in India, successfully sent words into the brain of another researcher in France,
Victorian schools are increasingly using plagiarism detection software to help mark students' work and ensure assignments are not copied from the internet. Fairfax Media has confirmed that at least 21 Victorian schools are now using the program Turnitin to detect plagiarism. Australian Educator magazine also recently reported that teachers at a South Australian school were using the software.
03 September, 2014
Apple has denied any wrongdoing in a press release, instead suggesting that the attack was down to culprits targeting usernames, passwords, and security questions. From the statement, we can glean that most if not all of those afflicted by this incident did not comply with the highly-recommended two-step verification Apple offers to bolster accounts against such events, and as such, the victims in this case perhaps did not protect themselves as well as they might have.
01 September, 2014
30 August, 2014
t's like arguing that it's more cost-effective to a build a single-lane Sydney Harbour Bridge, while conveniently ignoring the fact that it won't meet our future needs. It's a short-sighted approach which looks good in a spreadsheet but is designed to win a political argument rather than meet the future needs of the country. Comparing the cost of fibre-to-the-node to fibre-to-the-premises overlooks a few key issues which seriously impact on the value proposition; maintaining the copper network fixing copper black spots upgrading and maintaining the HFC network extending the fibre network later to meet growing demand
29 August, 2014
Privacy apps get blocked from the Google Play store. The controversy reflects the control that Google and rival Apple exert through their app stores. Even at the height of its powers, by contrast, Microsoft did not control the distribution of apps for its Windows operating system for personal computers.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy
28 August, 2014
25 August, 2014
24 August, 2014
Telstra chief executive David Thodey says call centre jobs across a range of sectors will not exist in five years thanks to the internet and smartphone applications. Mr Thodey told ABC Radio's Jon Faine in Melbourne on Friday that he understood the "enormous costs" to local communities caused by taking away call centre jobs.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Ethical,
ICT Career,
Sustainability
22 August, 2014
Cody Littley’s new hard drive can only hold a single kilobyte of data—about one millionth of what you can cram onto those finger-nail-sized microSD cards—and it can’t exactly slide into the back of your smartphone. But it’s still an impressive creation. Littley built it himself, inside the virtual world of Minecraft.
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Game,
ICT Capability
21 August, 2014
With Parallels Desktop 10 installed on your Mac, you won't just be able to run Windows on a "virtual machine" within your Mac, you'll be able to do it significantly faster then previous generations. Windows documents open 48 per cent faster, and Office 2013 apps launch 50 per cent faster, the company claims. At the same time, battery life is extended up to 30 per cent, and the Windows "machine" uses 10 per cent less memory.
Labels:
ICT Capability
Once hailed as the poster child of digital interactive learning, tablets are falling increasingly out of favour in NSW schools after being found to be less practical than laptops. Both private and public schools across the state have moved towards “bring your own device" (BYOD) policies and when parents and kids have been asked to choose, laptops have been the overwhelming favourite.
20 August, 2014
19 August, 2014
18 August, 2014
15 August, 2014
An Australian teenager who found a security flaw in an Australian public transport authority's website has found another serious vulnerability, this time in the site of global payments provider PayPal. The flaw, uncovered by 17-year-old Melbourne schoolboy Joshua Rogers, allowed hackers to bypass the payment provider's two-factor authentication system
14 August, 2014
Another alleged music pirate pinged under New Zealand's 'Skynet'. The tribunal ordered the unnamed Vodafone customer to pay Recorded Music New Zealand NZ$738.96 ($670.50) in costs, damages and "deterrent" payments after their account was used to illegally share music, including Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.
A handful of jobseekers are listing achievements in video games such as the role-playing platform World of Warcraft on their resumes or LinkedIn profiles, betting that virtual-world accomplishments will impress hiring managers in real life. Some players say the game’s tasks aren’t that different from the duties of the modern office job.
13 August, 2014
12 August, 2014
11 August, 2014
Finnish security firm F-Secure has shown that a smartphone from Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi does secretly steal user data without their permission despite strong denials by the company last month. At the end of July a number of articles claimed that phones made by up-and-coming Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi - often called the 'Apple of the East' - were silently uploading user information to servers based in Beijing.
CHINA for the first time placed restrictions on instant-messaging services — an increasingly popular platform in the country for discussion and debate. The new rules don’t appear to apply to instant messaging between users and their personal contacts.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Ethical,
Intercultural Understanding,
Privacy,
Social
05 August, 2014
The copyright debate should cover our rights, not just our responsibilities. As laughable as it sounds, last week the UK finally legalised copying music CDs for personal use – ripping or "format-shifting" discs to your computer so you can listen to albums on your portable device of choice. The change comes into effect in October but of course Brits have been ripping their music for more than a decade, just like everyone else, using software such as Apple's iTunes. It just took a very long time for the law to catch up with the technology.
04 August, 2014
Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Chinese users found themselves abruptly unable to access the services of popular mobile messaging app Line. Now, after weeks of being unable to use the service—including paid ‘stickers’ that are widely shared among users—frustration is growing. Line’s services have been on the blink in mainland China since July 2, the day after a massive pro-democracy demonstration in neighboring Hong Kong.
Fortunately, it turns out that a computer-science degree isn't necessary to get a job in programming. Fourteen percent of the members of some teams at Google don't have a college degree, and 67% of the programming jobs in the U.S. are at nontech companies where other kinds of industry experience are more likely to be valued. Computer programming, in other words, has become a trade. Like nursing or welding, it's something in which a person can develop at least a basic proficiency within weeks or months. And once budding coders learn enough to get their first jobs, they get onto the same path to upward mobility offered to their in-demand, highly paid peers.
Massive, undetectable security flaw found in USB. The problem, according to SR Labs, is that these USB controllers can have their firmware reprogrammed so that they announce themselves as a different class. For example, you could reprogram a mass storage device so that it masquerades as a network controller, so that all of your network communications (websites, passwords) get redirected to the device.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
research
If you’re a cellular customer in the United States, today marks a very important day for you. As of today, cellular unlocking is legal in the U.S. again – which basically means you can now unlock your mobile phone, including the iPhone or any Android smartphone, to work on any carrier in the country. According to the White House, President Barack Obama is signing the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act today. The Act, which was brought on by Senator Patrick Leahy, and was already agreed upon by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, essentially reinstates a copyright exemption that legalized the modification of a mobile device’s firmware in order to remove carrier restrictions, both by the owners/consumers of the device, or authorized third-party sources.
FEDERAL Attorney-General George Brandis has warned internet service providers that they can no longer pretend to be “innocent bystanders” in his war on internet piracy, and signalled that he would introduce legislation if he faces resistance. Senator Brandis knows that no measures will eliminate piracy entirely. “This is a percentage game,” he said. “We’re not going to reduce internet piracy to zero, but for every percentile piracy is reduced that’s a very substantial financial benefit to the content creators.”
Missing just one day of school has negative consequences for a student’s academic achievement, the first major study linking poor attendance to lower NAPLAN results has found. And school attendance patterns established as early as year 1 can predict how often a student will show up to class right through high school, according to the research.
Labels:
Education,
Literacy,
Numeracy,
Personal / Social Capability,
research
01 August, 2014
Film studios and other content creators should sue “mums and dads and students” who download pirated content, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull says. Although doing this will be unpopular, he said it would help curb piracy. Mr Turnbull's advice on how to tackle online piracy came a day after he said any costs to crack down on it would need to be paid for by the content industry, not internet providers.
31 July, 2014
Assistive technology puts creativity within reach. If you’re a person with the full use of your arms and legs, and you’ve found video editing software a challenge, your ego is about to take a tumble. Christopher Hills, 18, is quadriplegic, born with athetoid cerebral palsy, which severely limits his ability to control muscle function and speech. Basically, his brain works fine but to use a computer he relies on his neck muscles to operate a switch control.
30 July, 2014
A four year-old vulnerability in an open source component that is a critical part of Google’s Android mobile operating system could leave mobile devices that use it susceptible to attack, according to researchers at the firm Bluebox Security. FAKEID Logo A flaw in the way Google’s Android verifies mobile applications opens the door to widespread attacks, according to researchers from Bluebox Security. The vulnerability was disclosed on Tuesday. It affects devices running Android versions 2.1 to 4.4 (“KitKat”), according to a statement released by Bluebox. According to Bluebox, the vulnerability was introduced to Android by way of the open source Apache Harmony module.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety
28 July, 2014
Personal data including text messages, contact lists and photos can be extracted from iPhones through previously unpublicised techniques by Apple employees, the company has acknowledged. The same techniques to circumvent backup encryption could be used by law enforcement or others with access to the "trusted" computers to which the devices have been connected, according to the security expert who prompted Apple's admission.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy
CAPITALISING on an anticipated boom in the unmanned-aircraft industry, several US universities and colleges are launching training programs for future drone pilots. The problem: the US Federal Aviation Administration says its rules barring commercial use of drones apply to teaching programs as well, effectively prohibiting students from hands-on instruction.
AUSTRALIA’S robots are one up on their human counterparts, having trounced Germany to win the robot World Cup in Brazil overnight. The University of NSW’s robot football team called rUNSWift toppled Germany 5-1 to win the RoboCup 2014, the world’s largest robot competition.
Labels:
Game,
ICT Capability,
Intercultural Understanding,
Social
21 July, 2014
Traditionally, there was a gap between compiled programming languages, such as Objective-C and C++, and interpreted languages, such as Python and Ruby and PHP. With compiled languages, after you wrote your code, you had to wait for your compiler to turn it into executable software, but once it was built, this executable software ran extremely fast. Interpreted languages let you test your program nearly instantly, but in the end, it didn’t run as quickly. Swift bridges this gap, giving you the best of both worlds. The new language makes it far easier to build and run something without sacrificing how quickly it can run. As Ash puts it, Swift is “friendly to programmers and still friendly to the machine.” He says “it still remains to be seen how this will work out,” but he calls Apple’s work “promising so far.”
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability
19 July, 2014
18 July, 2014
I did quite well in high school English, in fact I got an A -- back when teachers were brave enough to give out letters that indicate skill level instead of bland platitudes. But, for the life of me, I cannot understand what my kid’s teachers are saying about him. And I am not alone, when I talk to parents the most common complaint about school reports is that they have become meaningless; afraid to say anything, schools end up saying nothing. Reports become a random selection of safe words and a scale that appears to start at Good and end at Really Good.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education
A new tamper-proof digital watermark that has been developed in Australia is promising to capture information about people who have downloaded and distributed copyright-protected material. Researchers from Deakin’s School of Information Technology, together with peers at Japan’s Aizu University, developed the technology which embeds metadata - such as a user's credit card and bank details, internet protocol (IP) address, transmission time, and received format - directly into a song or movie. "ISPs and search engines ... represent the entirety of the opportunity to access digital content," he said. "Until they fundamentally change their business practices, pirate content is largely going to continue unabated."
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy,
research
16 July, 2014
The Australian Electoral Commission has refused a Senate order to reveal the underlying source code of the EasyCount software used to tabulate votes in upper house elections. Source code release could "leave the voting system open to hacking or manipulation"
09 July, 2014
07 July, 2014
HER child is like a drug addict — at age 12. His drug of choice is computer games. The once brilliant student with a perfect academic record has even refused to go to school for the past month. Attempts to limit time on the computer have led to violent outbursts, even the police have been called on several occasions and now this Sydney mother wants to warn others of the hell that has come from giving in to her child’s demands for screen time.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Game,
Personal / Social Capability,
research
03 July, 2014
A Chinese company has become the first to construct multiple buildings using 3D printers that extrude recycled building materials at breakneck speed. Using four huge 3D printers, Yingchuang New Materials Inc. was able to print the shells of 10 one-room structures in 24 hours and at a cost of only about $5,000 per building. The buildings had to harden at the factory and then be transported and assembled on site.
Tiffany Rad is turning software industry gender stereotypes on their head. Rad is a white hat, a hacker who specialises in looking for security holes so that they can be fixed. The attorney turned her computer-hacking hobby into a career in 2008, when she submitted a research proposal to an underground security conference in New York. Rad's talk there propelled her into the industry, and she is now manager of threat research for ThreatGrid, a specialist in malicious software analysis that Cisco Systems bought in May.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career,
research,
Women in IT
02 July, 2014
The outrage sparked by a Facebook experiment on almost 700,000 users' emotions continues to burn, causing the research team to mount a public defence. For a week in January 2012, researchers tweaked users' news feeds to expose them to more positive or negative posts. They found a corresponding impact on what the affected users shared. In the subsequent paper they declared this proof of online emotional contagion. The publication of the report has prompted thousands of protest posts on social media, as well as concerns from leading academics and psychologists who have raised concerns about the ethics involved.
01 July, 2014
To show how different countries have very different standards when it comes to beauty, US journalist Esther Honig had her face digitally altered by people in 26 countries - and the results are stunningly disparate. For the project, named "Before & After", Honig used freelancing platforms such as Fiverr, to contract about 40 photoshop artists from countries such as Ukraine, Kenya and Serbia.
27 June, 2014
The SA Secondary Principals Association says the Education Department pays lip service to modern teaching philosophies and technologies and there are “pockets of innovation” in some schools, but systemic changes are needed to drag all schools into the 21st century. Its draft 21st Century Schooling paper also calls for personalised learning programs, direct assessment of students’ critical and creative thinking capabilities and a system-wide focus on “inquiry-based” learning rather than traditional teacher-led classes. The association’s vice president and Hamilton Secondary College principal Peter Mader said there should be “minimum input from the teacher and maximum output from the student” in modern classrooms.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education,
research
Meet Google Cardboard, a gadget made from materials worth about $30 that you can place any modern Android smartphone in to create a basic virtual reality headset. The invention — which has similar capabilities to the $US350 Facebook-owned Oculus Rift — is truly amazing. It’s like putting a computer in front of your face and comes at a fraction of the cost of a traditional VR headset Australian Mark Pesce, one of the early pioneers in virtual reality, said Cardboard was "very clever".
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking
26 June, 2014
Robert Morris University will offer about 30 athletic scholarships to students who play the 'League of Legends' video game. "It's a team sport," Melcher said. "There's strategy involved. You have to know your role in the game. Obviously it's not cardiovascular in any way, but it's mental. There are elements that go into it that are just like any other sport."
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education,
Game
23 June, 2014
Computer Science is now mandatory subject in Chinese schools. students study five years of physics, four years of chemistry and biology, three years of geography and history, and one year of computer science, which includes basic computer literacy and programming. Pupils also participate in physical education in each year of secondary school and two or three years of art and music. Many schools now teach typing in the second year of junior secondary school.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Education,
ICT Capability
INNOVATIVE east coast firm Plexus has unveiled what it says is the nation’s first commercial use of artificial intelligence to provide legal services. In the first of what is intended to be a series of fully automated products, Plexus has developed an online service in which businesses running trade promotions can obtain advice about all legal requirements without talking to a lawyer.
12 June, 2014
Google just made a huge change to the way app permissions work on Android. Apps already on your device can now gain dangerous permissions with automatic updates. Future apps can gain dangerous permissions without asking you, too. This is all thanks to the latest Play Store update and its simplified app permission interface. The core idea here — making Android app permissions comprehensible to normal users — is good. The implementation is the big problem.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Privacy
09 June, 2014
Google is testing a new browser extension that will be able to encrypt Gmail messages sent to and from Google Chrome, making it harder for someone to read them. While email encryption software isn't new, and Google already offers an encrypted connection for Gmail (shown as https on the address bar), the new service would encrypt the message content. Google said it hoped the plug-in would make the process of encryption more accessible and therefore more widely used. Encryption software tools like PGP and GnuPG are freely available but are cumbersome for consumers. Google's plug-in, is called End-to-End, promising uninterrupted protection of data travelling between two parties.
A "super computer" has duped humans into thinking it was a 13-year-old boy to become the first machine to pass the "iconic" Turing Test, experts say. Five machines were tested at the Royal Society in central London to see if they could fool people into thinking they were humans during text-based conversations. The test was devised in 1950 by computer science pioneer and World War II code breaker Alan Turing, who said that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human, then it was "thinking". No computer had ever previously passed the Turing Test, which requires 30 per cent of human interrogators to be duped during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations, organisers from the University of Reading said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/computer-becomes-first-to-pass-turing-test-in-artificial-intelligence-milestone-but-academics-warn-of-dangerous-future-9508370.html
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/super-computer-first-to-pass-turing-test-convince-judges-its-alive-20140608-zs1bu.html
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/super-computer-first-to-pass-turing-test-convince-judges-its-alive-20140608-zs1bu.html
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Ethical,
History,
ICT Capability,
research
07 June, 2014
A number of governments have the ability to tap directly into the communication network run by the British telecommunications company Vodafone, a level of surveillance that elicited outrage from privacy advocates when the company disclosed it on Friday. Vodafone said that it had received thousands of requests from 29 countries in the 12 months through March 31. But the report also said that governments in certain countries had direct access to its networks without having to use legal warrants.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy
04 June, 2014
02 June, 2014
'White hat' Jonathan Brossard warns cars can be hacked on the road
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/security-researcher-warns-cars-can-be-hacked-remotely-take-control
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
ICT Career
31 May, 2014
29 May, 2014
AUSTRALIAN Apple device users are being urged to change their iCloud password following a security breach which saw some iCloud users locked out, and asked to pay up to US$100 ransom by PayPal. But there is uncertainty as to how hackers are receiving any cash with PayPal saying no PayPal address is linked to the email address referenced in the scam. PayPal instead is offering ransom refunds.
Labels:
Cybersafety
26 May, 2014
Valve’s annual Dota 2 tournament — The International — is now one of world’s biggest sporting events. Thanks to the Valve’s most excellent shepherding of both the game and the 5-versus-5 MOBA genre, an ingenious crowdfunding scheme, and the continuing growth of spectator esports, The International now has a total prize fund of over $6 million. The winning team will take home somewhere in the region of $3 million.
23 May, 2014
The UK is the first G8 country to include computer science education in its national curriculum, and the move could serve as a test case for so many other nations across the globe, including the United States. As computing comes to dominate our world, programming skills are more valuable than ever, but even the U.S.–the center of the technology universe–is still struggling to bring coding into the classroom. Part of the problem is that, before students learn how to code, their teachers must learn too. Pulling all that off is a massive endeavor. Part of the problem is that, before students learn how to code, their teachers must learn too. That’s why many UK schools are turning to Codecademy, a three-year-old startup based in New York City. Codecademy offers free coding classes over the internet in a variety of programming languages
The US move on Tuesday adds to tensions between Washington and Beijing over cyber-security, creating obstacles for US companies in the nearly $US324 billion ($350bn) Chinese infor-mation technology market. Experts say friction has hurt sales for firms such as Cisco Systems and IBM in the wake of leaks by the National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
AN Alice Springs school is one of the first in the country to track students using GPS technology to improve school attendance rates. The tracking devices are also being used to help case-managed Aboriginal families locate their children to avoid losing welfare payments if their children skip class.
22 May, 2014
A federal government department has been blasted over its "appalling response" to a security researcher's report which found it has been exposing millions of Australians' personal information by leaving serious security flaws unchecked in a critical government website. The vulnerabilities were found in the myGov website, which stores the private records of Australians, including their doctor visits, prescription drugs, childcare and welfare payments. The Tax Office is expected to make the site mandatory for electronic tax returns this year.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
Privacy
Blizzard Entertainment is taking a stand against the programmers behind the popular Starcraft II “ValiantChaos MapHack” cheat. The game company has sued the hackers for copyright infringement and accuses them of ruining the Starcraft II gaming experience for legitimate players.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Game
20 May, 2014
Apple and Google have declared a cease-fire in their intellectual-property wars. The two Silicon Valley technology giants said they are dropping lawsuits against one another and will work together in some areas of patent reform. The dismissed suits involve patent disputes regarding Google's Motorola Mobility handset unit. The deal doesn't include Apple's ongoing patent battles with Samsung, which uses Google's Android software for mobile devices.
Labels:
Ethical,
History,
research,
Sustainability
19 May, 2014
FIFTY years ago, at 4am on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall at Dartmouth College, the world of computing changed forever. Professor John Kemeny, then the chairman of the mathematics department at Dartmouth and later its president, and Mike Busch, a Dartmouth sophomore, typed “RUN” on a pair of computer terminals to execute two programs on a single industrial-sized General Electric “mainframe” computer. The programs were written in BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a fledgling computer language designed for the everyman, by Prof. Kemeny, Professor Tom Kurtz and a team of eager students.
16 May, 2014
Ever wanted to put yourself inside of a video game? It’s now possible to dynamically represent your entire body inside of a virtual world, and this monumental task can be accomplished with off-the-shelf hardware. With three first-gen Kinects and an Oculus Rift dev kit, a developer by the name of Oliver Kreylos has hacked together a true VR prototype that actually makes you feel like you’re in a computer-generated world.
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Game,
ICT Capability,
research
THE US Federal Communications Commission has prodded the internet a step closer to a two-speed solution, by voting to advance rules that would let broadband providers charge companies for preferential handling of Web traffic. The move has sharply divided technology giants over how to keep the internet open, fast and robust.
15 May, 2014
Australia’s game developers have blasted the federal government's budget decision to axe a fund established just over a year ago to help the industry recover from a post-GFC contraction that saw it shed more than half its jobs. ‘‘I think someone saw the word ‘games’ and put a red line through it, based on an antiquated perception of what the games industry is,’’ Mr Reed said. ‘‘We are supposed to be a knowledge economy but the government has elected to go down another path.’’
13 May, 2014
The challenge is daunting. In 1994, machines took the checkers crown, when a program called Chinook beat the top human. Then, three years later, they topped the chess world, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer besting world champion Garry Kasparov. Now, computers match or surpass top humans in a wide variety of games: Othello, Scrabble, backgammon, poker, even Jeopardy. But not Go. It’s the one classic game where wetware still dominates hardware.
11 May, 2014
09 May, 2014
08 May, 2014
Meet Betty, the Siri-Like App That Turns Plain English Into Code. a tool that translates plain English into Unix commands, the commands that popped up on the UNIX operating system in the ’70s and are still used by Apple’s OS X operating system, the open source Linux OS, and even Microsoft’s PowerShell environment.
Labels:
History,
ICT Capability,
research
Russia has taken another major step toward restricting its once freewheeling Internet, as President Vladimir V. Putin quietly signed a new law requiring popular online voices to register with the government, a measure that lawyers, Internet pioneers and political activists said Tuesday would give the government a much wider ability to track who said what online.
06 May, 2014
Australian Taxation Office has said it will tax crypto-currencies such as bitcoin and litecoin and is believed to be considering at least four taxation methods as it canvasses financial and legal bodies. The Australian Bankers Association, the Law Council of Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants are among organisations being consulted on how bitcoin is to be taxed this financial year.
05 May, 2014
02 May, 2014
The tried and tested Qwerty keyboard model has persisted since its first appearance in a typewriter patent application filed in 1868 by US politician, newsman and inventor Christopher Sholes. Curator of Canberra's Australian Typewriter Museum Robert Messenger said challengers come and go but, like it or not, Qwerty is here to stay. He pointed to the emergence of the Dvorak simplified keyboard in the 1930s. Despite boasting faster typing speeds and a more intuitive typing interface - where vowels and consonants were separated on different lines and the most commonly used letters were alternated across both hands - it failed to gain mainstream traction.
Labels:
History,
research,
Sustainability
01 May, 2014
In an exciting move that could turn the console war back in its favor, Microsoft’s Xbox One will soon become the first major game console to be sold in China since they were banned in 2000 due to concerns they melt the brains of children. The ban was finally lifted at the end of 2013, but only for consoles produced in Shanghai’s new free trade zone. It would seem that Microsoft is the first big console maker to set up a production line there
This is an IBM coding sheet, for COBOL. We had them for other languages, too: Pascal, Assembly language, Fortran. You'd use these to hand-write your computer programs. In pencil. Because this was the dizzying heights of "undo" technology: And when you were finished handwriting a section of code - perhaps a full program, perhaps a subroutine - you'd gather these sheets together (carefully numbered in sequence, of course) and send them along to the folks in the data entry department. They'd type it in. And the next day you'd get a report to find out if it compiled or not.
Labels:
History,
ICT Career
BITCOIN NOW ON BLOOMBERG. It’s worth noting that we are not endorsing or guaranteeing Bitcoin, and investors cannot trade Bitcoin or other digital currencies on Bloomberg. Global interest in digital currencies has undoubtedly increased, but these instruments still represent a fraction of fiat currency usage. Reaction from governments around the world to digital currencies has been mixed and the regulatory environment remains very unclear. And while Bitcoin has thus far survived intense media scrutiny, scandal and wild price swings, there certainly is no guarantee that Bitcoin will persevere.
GOOGLE says it has stopped scanning student Gmail accounts for advertising purposes after the practice was scrutinised during a recent court case. Google didn’t place ads inside the apps, which it offered to educational institutions since 2006. However, the company continued to scan the contents of students’ Gmail accounts., gathering information that could potentially have been used to target ads to those students elsewhere online.
For all the talk of the National Broadband Network, the reality is that most Australian homes will be at the mercy of the copper DSL network for at least a few years yet. ADSL2+ has a theoretical maximum download speed of 20 megabits per second (Mbps), which is not too shabby, but you'll only see those speeds if you live next door to your telephone exchange. Many homes would be lucky to sustain a third of those speeds, and it's easy to forget that some people would give their right arm for a solid and reliable 1 or 2 Mbps at home. Don't be afraid to talk to your ISP about tweaking your DSL settings. Also check out the settings on your modem. It requires patience to find the right balance, but if it all goes pear-shaped you can always go back to your old settings. Of course the copper network is a fickle beast, so what is stable one day might not be the next.
30 April, 2014
COMMONWEALTH Bank customers will be able to withdraw cash from ATMs by using their smartphones and without a card from next month. Withdrawals are limited to one transaction a day, up to $200, and customers must first have the CommBank app installed on their smartphones. Customers who want to collect the cash themselves can select the amount to withdraw and the account via the app. Two unique numbers will be issued — an 8-digit cash code and a 4-digit cash PIN.
29 April, 2014
This year, the hype around HDA is exploding. It may be the showcasing of HDA devices at January’s Consumer Electronics Show or the rising anticipation around the release of music legend Neil Young’s HDA-capable PonoPlayer, a triangular orange gadget that has the backing of Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and other notable musos..Just as 4K TVs upscale ordinary HD by interpolating pixels and adding more of them, Sony says its digital enhancement works on the audio to restore missing high-frequency sounds. Its digital remastering engine then remasters your modified track as a DSD and replays it.
Labels:
research
HISTORY is about to repeat itself as the Abbott government embarks on a mammoth project to replace Centrelink’s core IT infrastructure central to the delivery of $150 billion in social security payments annually. Joe Hockey all but gave the green light when he told radio station 3AW last week that the welfare agency’s 31-year-old mainframe system was “in bad shape” and would cost “billions” to upgrade.
Labels:
History,
Sustainability
MICRO-quadcopters will be given the ability to operate intelligently and carry out tasks to assist humans in disaster situations. The Monash Swarm Robotics Laboratory at Monash University, the only lab in the country with an exclusive focus on “swarm’’ technology, is translating the techniques used for ground-moving robots into quadcopters.
28 April, 2014
Microsoft has announced that its Internet Explorer browser has a significant security flaw that affects Internet Explorer versions 6 through 11 — or in other words, every version of Internet Explorer that you’re likely to be using right now. The flaw allows for remote code to be executed by corrupting memory stored within the browser, potentially allowing an external system to take full control of your PC.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety
27 April, 2014
TWO Adelaide police officers are behind a new application they say can reduce the time taken to conduct an investigation by 65 per cent and save SAPOL about $21 million per year. The application, my Evidence, is being developed by Senior Constable Jerome Lienert and Senior Constable First Class Tung Tran and does away with separately using paper notebooks, video cameras, audio recorders and still cameras to obtain and record evidence.
26 April, 2014
THE Danish government has devised an ingenious way to tour the nation, recreating the entire country using online game Minecraft. The building-block style virtual Minecraft world now includes a faithful reproduction of Denmark to scale. The only significant difference is all the roofs had to be flat
25 April, 2014
a United Nations program devoted to urban planning in countries affected by poverty or natural disasters began developing a sports field in the slums of Kibera, Kenya, designing it in the popular sandbox video game Minecraft. The game, which allows players to build entire worlds out of cubes in a 3D environment, helped the project leaders create a visual representation of the field that could be easily understood by the neighbourhood's residents.
24 April, 2014
19 April, 2014
The necessity of failure: Gaming as a metaphor for learning and living. Failure teaches you something, while success - or at least a lack of immediate failure - teaches you nothing. There is a deeper parallel here, though, beyond logic puzzles and video games. In life, during our seven or eight decades on this earth (good luck permitting), this is precisely how we learn, how we discover new things and find better ways to do old things. So remember that next time you're tempted to swear at your screen or throw your controller. Failure can be frustrating as hell, but it's making you a better player, just like failures in your life make you a better, smarter, and more capable person.
SINA Weibo, China's answer to Twitter, debuted on the Nasdaq exchange with a 19.1 per cent jump despite an IPO that went out undersubscribed and lower priced than hoped. In a spate of buying that suggested that Wall Street's waters are still welcoming to loss-making technology high flyers, and to Chinese firms as well
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Intercultural Understanding,
Social
17 April, 2014
Children can swipe a screen but can't use toy building blocks, teachers warn Teachers call for research into effects of tablet addiction amid concerns computer habits are hindering progress at school. Addressing the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference in Manchester on Tuesday, Colin Kinney, a teacher from Northern Ireland, said excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control.
16 April, 2014
When NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden first emailed Glenn Greenwald, he insisted on using email encryption software called PGP for all communications. But this month, we learned that Snowden used another technology to keep his communications out of the NSA’s prying eyes. It’s called Tails. And naturally, nobody knows exactly who created it.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Privacy
NBN Co hits 105 megabits per second in fibre-to-the-node trials. While FTTN technology is cheaper to deploy — as it avoids the high capital costs of the civil works needed to connect fibre directly to premises — it offers slower download and uploads speeds than Labor’s preferred fibre-to-the-premise rollout which is capable of delivering committed download speeds of 1000Mbps.
15 April, 2014
11 April, 2014
Heartbleed, official designation CVE-2014-0160, is a bug in OpenSSL’s heartbeat extension. It isn’t important to know what this extension does, only that it was poorly coded (in coder speak, it lacked bounds checking). This bug can be exploited by a hacker to read blocks of 64KB from the server’s RAM. The hacker can only grab one 64KB block at a time, but he can keep going back for more until he’s gathered all the data he needs. With access to the server’s memory, the jig is up. Passwords, security certificates (encryption keys), other sensitive details — they’re all stored in memory, and they’ve all been exposed for the last two years thanks to OpenSSL’s Heartbleed bug.
A collective of scientists and writers, known as the Slow Reading Movement, fears this addiction to speed-reading is affecting our brains, and is encouraging people to rediscover the novel. The group includes Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Professor Wolf fears we might “lose the ‘deep-reading’ brain in a digital culture”. In a paper for the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, she argues that “it takes time ... to (learn to) read with deep, expanding comprehension, and to execute all these processes as an adult expert reader”. There is “no genetic guarantee that any individual novice reader will ever form the expert reading brain circuitry,” she warns
He calls it P2SH — short for “pay-to-script hash” — and it’s basically a hack of the protocol that drives the digital currency. It lets you keep your bitcoins safe even if your primary private key is stolen. You see, bitcoin’s other great strength is that it’s open source software. It can be hacked and extended
Labels:
Cybersafety
10 April, 2014
AMAZON Web Services will host its new desktop computer as a service product Workspaces locally by the end of June. AWS head Andy Jassy said it was recommended that Australian customers not use Workspaces until it was rolled out on AWS servers in the Sydney region. “The latency is too high for it to be a good experience,” he said.
Labels:
ICT Capability
Dubbed "Heartbleed", the vulnerability exists in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library used by millions of companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, to provide security and privacy over the internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging and some virtual private networks.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety
09 April, 2014
Jim Barber believes many campuses will simply lose their customers — students and industry — if massive open online courses, or MOOCs, morph into a product that offers engaging online education at a cut price, and credentials accepted by employers. And he sees Australia’s universities as captives of a risk-averse culture, looking the wrong way, fixated on the recruitment of locals for courses that offer little choice
TODAY at 5pm, after 12 years, Microsoft will turn off the lights on Windows XP. Now don’t panic too much. Windows XP computers will still power on and work after the clock strikes 5pm (AEST), but behind the scenes Microsoft will be cutting off support and security updates, leaving XP computers — and the information you have stored on them — vulnerable to newly developed attacks.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
History
08 April, 2014
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority says it is investigating an incident that involved an athlete in a West Australian triathlon being injured by a drone that was filming the event. Mr Abrams told ABC Radio that his own investigation showed that someone other than the pilot had "channel-hopped" and taken control of the drone. According to drone regulator CASA, drones need to be at least 30 metres away from people.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
research,
Sustainability
Robots will not take over manufacturing jobs, but enhance future employment opportunities, according to a landmark report on production in Australia. But as demand for workers with a higher level of skills grows, some workers will find themselves at risk of displacement. "Lightweight assistive systems will facilitate humans' work in factories, resulting in jobs with more high-value tasks and fewer repetitive tasks and physically demanding activities such as weight-lifting and tool-picking," the report by the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency says. "Integrating new technologies such as in mechanical and electrical manufacturing will mean that workers need skills to operate and manage computerised and technological advances in machinery and equipment.
07 April, 2014
Sharing Australian Aboriginal Culture Australian Aboriginal culture has existed continuously for more than 40 000 years. They have developed sophisticated social organisations, complex legal systems and a numerous practices and ceremonies based around their Dreamtime beliefs. There is no way we could ever hope to capture all their knowledge of animal behaviour, or of the seasons and bush tucker that each one brings. For that matter we will never know the full extent of the geographical, ecological or land management skills that these communities possess but at least some of them are documenting different aspects of their culture for future generations. Here are a number of apps that introduce students to both their oral story telling tradition and their traditional languages.
Labels:
Indigenous,
Intercultural Understanding,
Literacy
Cortana starts off by trying to get to know a little bit about you — what you like to do in your spare time, who is important in your life, what sports teams you follow, etc. It uses that information to begin preparing tidbits of information it can show you first thing in the morning, or when it thinks you might need them. It also learns about your habits and becomes more personal over time.
Labels:
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
Privacy
The PS4′s undeniable hardware advantage Everything we know about the Xbox One-PS4 matchup suggests that the PS4 is winning the hardware battle thanks to a straightforward memory arrangement (no need to muck with the 32MB of SRAM) and a stronger GPU.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Game,
Graphic Design
05 April, 2014
04 April, 2014
03 April, 2014
02 April, 2014
JavaScript has exploded in popularity over the past few years. It’s now the number one language on Github, and getting more popular every day. This popularity plus the recent advances in HTML5 has meant an explosion in the number of JavaScript game engines out there. The JavaScript wiki lists over 80 game engines, where to even begin in choosing one?!
31 March, 2014
You’re able to send and receive messages even when you don’t have a data connection. FireChat accomplishes this magic by allowing each device to connect directly to others nearby using Bluetooth, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, or traditional Wi-Fi networks. Because you’re connecting directly with other users, you don’t actually need to be connected over Wi-Fi or a cellular network.
The UK Government has published a guide informing consumers about an upcoming revision of copyright law which will legalize CD and DVD copying for personal use. The changes go into effect in June, and will also broaden other forms of fair use, including parody and quotation rights. To most consumers it is common sense that they can make a backup copy of media they own, but in the UK this is currently illegal.
30 March, 2014
28 March, 2014
27 March, 2014
Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance has been scanned in 3D for the first time, producing images of the St Kilda Road landmark as it has never been seen before. Invented by CSIRO scientists after six years in development, the hand-held scanning device known as Zebedee is so sensitive it records the ripples on a corrugated iron roof after a single walk-by.
Labels:
3D,
ICT Capability,
research
26 March, 2014
25 March, 2014
An important ruling in Florida has made it more difficult for copyright holders to extract cash settlements from alleged BitTorrent pirates. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro dismissed a lawsuit filed by Malibu Media, arguing that the IP-address evidence can't identify the person who actually downloaded the pirated file.
24 March, 2014
Australian citizens now have the right to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym when interacting with government agencies, private health service providers, and large organisations under new privacy laws. The Australian Privacy Foundation says the laws, which came into effect on March 12, are a huge win for those who don't wish to use their real identity when interacting with organisations and companies
Labels:
Ethical,
Personal / Social Capability,
Privacy
23 March, 2014
Big businesses are turning to criminology methods to work out how to sell you more stuff. How? Because of the mass amounts of data businesses have on you, which can include your purchasing behaviour, demographic information, internet history, media consumption, financial history and more. But the challenge facing many corporations is how to make sense of all the information.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Ethical,
Privacy
22 March, 2014
20 March, 2014
14 March, 2014
13 March, 2014
Green America and China Labor Watch have launched their campaign to protect the health of factory workers assembling the devices in China. The groups unveiled an online petition protesting the use of benzene and n-hexane in the production of iPhones. Benzene is a carcinogen that can cause leukaemia if not handled properly and n-hexane has been linked to nerve damage. Apple says it has already removed a long list of toxic chemicals and ensures all remaining toxic substances comply with U.S. safety standards.
Sitting at the heart of these developments is the expansion and power of digital sports data and the rise of so-called datatainment. As the current infatuation indicates, data comes in many forms. In sport, much of it is directed towards making money in a multi-screen media environment where internet-connected devices sit alongside television in the engagement of fans and the harvesting of user data
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Game,
Numeracy,
Social
12 March, 2014
07 March, 2014
28 February, 2014
Google is aiming to sell $50 customisable modular phones by early next year. The company told Time magazine it is continuing to work on Project Ara, an effort to create phones that users can easily modify by switching their parts as though they are Lego blocks.
Labels:
Ethical,
research,
Sustainability
25 February, 2014
Last June, in an interview with Adam Bryant of The New York Times, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google - ie, the guy in charge of hiring for one of the world’s most successful companies - noted that Google had determined that academic results weren’t very important. ‘‘[Grade point averages] are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless ...We found that they don’t predict anything.’’ He also noted that the ‘‘proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time’’ - now as high as 14 per cent on some teams.
24 February, 2014
FACEBOOK’S $21bn deal for WhatsApp in part is a move to bolster the US company’s position abroad. But in Asia, Facebook still has its work cut out for it. That is because in Asia, even more so than on Facebook’s home turf, the growing social media market is on mobile phones. And if Facebook wants to be as dominant on smartphones in Asia as it has been on personal computers, WhatsApp will need to lure users away from three popular apps in the region: Naver’s Line, Tencent Holdings’ WeChat, and Kakao’s Kakao Talk.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Social
A major flaw in Apple devices could allow hackers to intercept email and other communications that are meant to be encrypted, the company says. Apple released a fix on Friday for mobile devices running iOS, such as iPhones, iPads and iPods. The company said it will issue a software update "very soon" to cut off the ability of spies and hackers to grab email, financial information and other sensitive data from Mac computers.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety
Facebook has made its boldest business move ever, buying the mobile-messaging service WhatsApp in a deal worth about $US19 billion ($21 billion) in cash and stock. That is six times what Google paid for Nest in January, and 19 times what Facebook paid for Instagram two years ago. It is so much money that people found themselves reaching beyond the business realm for context. Development expert Charles Kenny compared the purchase price to the total annual lending of the World Bank.
Labels:
History,
ICT Career,
Intellectual Property,
Social
19 February, 2014
After an 18-month review, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has backed calls to bring Australia's copyright laws into the modern age with "Fair Use" exemptions. The change would streamline our current hotch-potch copyright laws, which aren't designed to cope with the rapid pace of technological change.
Now, all the big music publishing companies around the world, led by the Universal Music conglomerate, have launched a format that will revolutionise the world of high-quality audio. Universal calls it Pure Audio, and it will succeed because it piggybacks on Blu-ray, a format that already has a viable and growing presence.
17 February, 2014
14 February, 2014
13 February, 2014
10 February, 2014
why would Nguyen remove a popular game that stands to make him millions? The Los Angeles Times speculate that “Nguyen may have boosted the game’s popularity using fake accounts to help Flappy Bird’s rankings.” But others wonder if a Flappy Bird lawsuit is in the works. After all, it’s rather obvious that Flappy Bird heavily borrowed from the famous Mario Bros. pipes, never mind the coin sound effects. But some people might not be aware the basic gameplay mimics a 2011 game called Piou Piou that also happened to feature a big-lipped bird dodging between objects.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Ethical,
Game,
Intellectual Property
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