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15 October, 2015
14 October, 2015
Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has described new data retention laws as “neither necessary nor proportionate” to protect against security threats and called on Australian corporations to exercise greater social responsibility. Speaking to the Global Integrity Summit in Brisbane, Ms Triggs also talked up the need for a bill of rights in Australia and criticised the abandonment of the Information Commissioner role. She said there was a strong chance of the metadata legislation being misused and while countries needed to access information to fight crime, the data retention provisions did not have enough checks and balances.
Labels:
Catholic Worldview,
Ethical,
Privacy
06 October, 2015
Watch dreamtime stories from the Yanyuwa people of the Northern Territory vividly animated in these stunning videos, ranging from 2 to 20 minutes in length. Learn why the dance of the Brolga is the most graceful, about the Tiger Shark’s travels, and why complaining about your leader isn’t always a good idea.
Labels:
3D,
Indigenous
24 September, 2015
In a stunning reversal of decades of copyright claims, the judge ruled that Warner/Chappell never had the right to charge for the use of the "Happy Birthday To You" song. Warner had been enforcing a copyright since 1988, when it bought Birch Tree Group, the successor to Clayton F. Summy Co., which claimed the original disputed copyright. Judge George H. King ruled that a copyright filed by the Summy Co. in 1935 granted only the rights to specific piano arrangements of the music, not the actual song.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-happy-birthday-song-lawsuit-decision-20150922-story.html
Labels:
Intellectual Property
22 September, 2015
The Loebner prize for artificial intelligence is a $100,000 award for the person or team that creates a computer that can hold a conversation with a human in such a way that the person can’t identify whether they’re talking to a computer or another person – an implementation of the Turing test.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
ICT Capability,
research,
Robotics
21 September, 2015
The Environmental Protection Agency issued the German automaker a notice of violation and accused the company of using software known as a "defeat device" in four-cylinder Volkswagen and Audi vehicles from model years 2009-15. The device is programmed to detect when the car is undergoing official emissions testing. Only during such tests are the cars' full emissions control systems turned on. During normal driving situations, the controls are turned off, allowing the cars to spew as much as 40 times as much pollution as the legal standard required under the Clean Air Act, the EPA said.
Google’s Rachel Potvin came pretty close to an answer Monday at an engineering conference in Silicon Valley. She estimates that the software needed to run all of Google’s Internet services—from Google Search to Gmail to Google Maps—spans some 2 billion lines of code. By comparison, Microsoft’s Windows operating system—one of the most complex software tools ever built for a single computer, a project under development since the 1980s—is likely in the realm of 50 million lines.
Labels:
ICT Capability,
Numeracy
Some of the most popular Chinese names in Apple’s App Store were found to be infected with malicious software in what is being described as a first-of-its-kind security breach, exposing a rare vulnerability in Apple’s mobile platform, according to multiple researchers. The applications were infected after software developers were lured into using an unauthorised and compromised version of Apple’s developer tool kit, according to researchers at Alibaba Mobile Security
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Cybersafety
17 September, 2015
A new mobile device announced by Telstra on Wednesday will theoretically deliver download speeds of up to 600 megabits per second in select areas - up to six times faster than what the Turnbull government's fibre-to-the-node network will be able to deliver under its current design. The Telstra WiFi 4GX Advanced III mobile broadband hotspot, created by Netgear, is the latest super-fast mobile broadband device to join Telstra's product range and uses "3 band Carrier Aggregation technology".
Labels:
ICT Capability,
research
16 September, 2015
15 September, 2015
10 September, 2015
Wooranna Park Primary takes the lead in computer coding for kids. “One main misconception about teaching kids about computers is people assume teachers have to know everything before they can teach it,” Mr Nolan said. “Actually the kids teach me as much as I teach them. That’s the model we pursue: there’s a lot of self-directed learning.”
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability
08 September, 2015
Sixty per cent of Australian students are training for jobs that will not exist in the future or will be transformed by automation, according to a new report by the Foundation for Young Australians. She says today's students will be affected by three key economic drivers: automation, globalisation and collaboration.
This is not exactly the promised future of robotics, which is increasingly being applied to help humans with manufacturing, health care, humanitarian aid and getting around. But Cavalcanti and Oehrlein, 29-year-old co-founders of MegaBots, are hoping to fulfil another human desire: ferocious, gladiator-style entertainment.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Asia Connection,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Robotics
Fitness instructors, beauty therapists, nannies and other service providers will be in demand, as will people in the high-skilled information and technology field. People in specialist professions including doctors, dentists, nurses, teachers, urban planners and accountants will remain in high demand and they will make greater use of technology to help them do their jobs. Yoga instructors, photographers, social media specialists and other creative workers in the digital media, film and TV, fashion and design, are also expected to be highly sought after, says the study, commissioned by the National Broadband Network.
07 September, 2015
06 September, 2015
02 September, 2015
Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and chip maker Intel have joined forces to solve the mystery of why the world’s bee population is nose diving, a trend that could have potentially disastrous consequences for global food security. The Global Initiative for Honey Bee Health project has seen scientists superglue tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to the backs of 15,000 bees
Australian information technology graduates face a pincer movement in the labour market, outflanked by skilled migrants on one hand and offshore contractors on the other. Demographer Bob Birrell has painted a gloomy picture of job prospects in IT, saying student numbers have ballooned despite tepid employment opportunities. Meanwhile, companies based overseas — particularly India — are cornering the market for globally outsourced services.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Education,
ICT Career,
Social
28 August, 2015
24 August, 2015
19 August, 2015
ILLEGAL downloaders can sleep easier tonight with the Australian Federal Court ruling that the names and addresses of pirates of Dallas Buyers Club will not be shared. The court ruled this morning that unless Dallas Buyers Club (DBC) LLC pays a $600,000 bond it will not be able to obtain the names and addresses of Australians accused of illegally uploading the movie.
Canva CEO Melanie Perkins is in the ninth year of the “most fun adventure she’s ever been on”. But the Perth native is not slowing down, releasing Canva for Work, a bold play at the highly competitive global design software market. The Sydney-based design start-up, which now boasts four million users, more than 30 million designs and over 200,000 registered companies
17 August, 2015
Her neurosurgeon, Marc Coughlan, said the success of the operation — in which a small titanium implant was 3-D printed so it fitted exactly into the contours of a misshapen vertebra in Ms Gorvin’s spine — could have major implications for a wide range of surgical procedures.
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking,
ICT Capability
13 August, 2015
GOOGLE HAS A new owner: a holding company called Alphabet, run by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Alphabet owns a few other things, too: Namely, every company ever created or acquired under the tech giant’s many-tentacled purview. You could say Google got a rebranding of the highest magnitude, but that’s not quite accurate. Alphabet is a holding company, and Google is just one child held within its new parent’s staggeringly powerful arms. Their purposes are different, their corporate structures different. And their logos? Those are different, too
Labels:
Graphic Design
Their sport isn't basketball or hockey but League of Legends, a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) and the most popular computer game in the world. There are 67 million monthly active participants in the game around the globe – almost three times as many people as live in Australia.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Game
Earlier this summer, the League held a nonpublic trial race inside the abandoned Glenwood Power Plant in Yonkers. Six pilots standing on the power plant floor controlled their drones as they flew down the warehouse’s hallways and through open windows. There are typically five to seven participants per race. Racers wear virtual-reality goggles that make it feel as if they are in the “cockpit” of the drone, which translates to video content.
11 August, 2015
10 August, 2015
07 August, 2015
Hello robo-lawyer Computers are replacing many functions once performed by lawyers, especially young lawyers who have traditionally done the case grunt work. NSW Chief Justice Tom Bathurst told an Australian Bar Association meeting in July that the future may include not just "paperless courts, but people-less courts, too". While Bathurst did not predict lawyers would become extinct, he warned: "The reality is that technology, either directly or indirectly, will cut into many areas of barristers' work."
06 August, 2015
05 August, 2015
04 August, 2015
Developing the technologies though was not enough to save Kodak and Nokia. Being wedded to older business models meant their managements weren’t able, despite their best efforts, to adapt the companies to their marketplaces that were dramatically altered by the new machines. “There’s no guarantee that any of these efforts will enable companies to thrive in an age of rapid technological advance,” warns McKinsey. “But in a world in which business models and strategies grow old quickly, leaders must constantly think about ways to rejuvenate their enterprises.”
27 July, 2015
Nike and Apple have agreed to settle in a class action lawsuit alleging that the two sold the Nike FuelBand fitness tracker in spite of knowing that the device’s biometrics measurements were inaccurate. As a result, Nike will pay out $2.4 million in claims to people who bought the FuelBand between January 2012 and June 2015
24 July, 2015
22 July, 2015
A fully -automated machine is being developed by a Perth company that could erect the brick frame of a house in merely two days. "Hadrian" the robot can work 24 hours a day, every day of the year, compared with the lengthy process of building a home with human capabilities, which could take weeks.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Ethical,
Robotics,
Social,
Sustainability
Could you tell if a story was written by a robot? Students at Dartmouth to discover if authors and musicians will be replaced by machines Judges won't know if songs played are computer-generated or by humans $5,000 in prize money up for grabs if students manage to fool experts Variation on the Turing Test, which honours British scientist Alan Turing
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Ethical,
research,
Robotics
21 July, 2015
The first on-road trials of driverless cars in the Southern Hemisphere will take place in Adelaide's southern suburbs in November. Volvo will conduct the testing in conjunction with Flinders University, Carnegie Mellon University, the RAA and Cohda Wireless and Bosch, which has engineers in Australia developing driverless technology.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
ICT Capability,
research,
Social
20 July, 2015
Cartoon-making is coming to the masses, thanks to a range of software. Adobe has you in its sights with its new Character Animator, which has made its debut with the 2015 edition of its Creative Cloud suite. “The ability to animate a character in real time with accurate body and facial movement and lip synch was previously reserved for high-end film companies with very expensive tracking equipment,” Adobe Australia-Pacific principal evangelist Paul Burnett tells Life. “Now anyone can simply create a character and quickly build a realistic synched animation on a laptop computer.”
Labels:
3D,
Graphic Design,
ICT Capability
02 July, 2015
29 June, 2015
Electrically powered quadcopters typically fly 15-20 minutes but Singapore-based Horizon Energy Systems’s (HES) CEO Taras Wankewycz is hoping that his team of fuel cell scientists and engineers will change all that. Horizon Energy Systems’s hydrogen-powered hycopter can already fly for two hours, and Mr Wankewycz is hopeful of four hours by year’s end.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
ICT Capability,
research,
Robotics
The approach is not to simply put lectures and course work online, as is typical of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Rather, Carrasquel will use a blended learning approach that largely replaces formal lectures with videos and optional mini-lectures, and uses an online software application called Classroom Salon to identify concepts that need to be reinforced by instructors in small group meetings with students. “As we teach a wider diversity of students, with different backgrounds, we can no longer teach to ‘the middle,’” Carrasquel said. “When you do that, you’re not aiming at the 20 percent of the top students or the 20 percent at the bottom.”
Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services Group said MYbank, which has registered capital of four billion yuan ($836 million), is ready to issue loans of under five million yuan to small businesses, entrepreneurs and consumers. Still, people can’t open accounts with MYbank yet because of regulatory concerns over facial-recognition technology it wants to use to verify identities.
25 June, 2015
Netflix, Hulu and a host of other content streaming services block non-US users from viewing their content. As a result, many people residing outside of the United States seek to circumvent such restrictions by using services that advertise "free" and "open" web proxies capable of routing browser traffic through US-based computers and networks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, new research suggests that most of these "free" offerings are anything but, and actively seek to weaken browser security and privacy.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
Privacy
22 June, 2015
Further evidence is emerging that Samsung did not respond adequately to information about a serious security flaw affecting approximately 600 million of its smartphones, including its latest flagship Galaxy S6, despite being notified of the issue several months ago.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Cybersafety,
Ethical
16 June, 2015
South Korea’s Team KAIST wins the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge
http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/06/koreas-team-kaist-wins-the-2015-darpa-robotics-challenge/
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Asia Connection,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
research,
Robotics
E-sports has become huge business over the past five years, with professional video gaming tournaments offering more prize money than some of sport’s biggest events. This year’s Defence of the Ancients (DOTA) 2 prize pool is currently sitting at nearly $US10.8 million and is expected to be up to $US15 million by the time the tournament actually starts.
Labels:
3D,
Asia Connection,
Game,
ICT Career
15 June, 2015
Well, the government’s crackdown on the illegal practice has passed a crucial hurdle, which may make the practice much more difficult. A cross-party Senate committee has given the tick of approval to a law that would give power to big companies to block sites that offer pirated content, such as popular torrenting site KickassTorrents and streaming service Project Free TV.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Personal / Social Capability,
Privacy
11 June, 2015
A scar, half an inch wide, stretched from just above the elbow and up over his shoulder. "Our company paid for full medical expenses, so he had an operation," explained his coach, Kang Doh Kyung. "[He] is the best player in StarCraft and has won everything in this field and is still going strong." Repetitive strain had injured Mr Lee's muscles, deforming them and making surgery the only option to save his illustrious career.
04 June, 2015
02 June, 2015
01 June, 2015
Mr Wozniak said he was a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil rights organisation for digital equipment in the US, and he wanted humans to be “so much more important than technology”. “When I was brought up, our constitution gave us a place called the home, and your home could not be violated without court orders or warrants,” he told the forum. “My communication with my friends should be part of the private area that I own. “I would say to the Australian government that there are a lot of examples where (data retention) hasn’t been fruitful. There might be some secrets I don’t know about, but it has not been fruitful in uncovering terrorists, which is what it’s claimed to be all about.”
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy
25 May, 2015
THE MODERN MOBILE era began in 2007 with the release of the first iPhone. But Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, the mobile web, or even the app store. It wasn’t even the first to sell a smartphone to the everyday consumer. In 2002, T-Mobile launched the Sidekick, a smartphone that featured a full keyboard, an email client, a custom mobile web browser
Labels:
History
24 May, 2015
By its nature, computer technology evolves and develops with great rapidity, and the need to conserve superseded software and hardware is behind the launch of the Computer Archaeology Laboratory at Flinders at Tonsley. The Laboratory was officially opened yesterday by Mr Marty Gauvin, CEO of data centre company Tier 5 and a member of Flinders University’s council.
21 May, 2015
Chinese firm Huawei today announces its IoT OS at an event in Beijing. The company predicts that within a decade there will be 100 billion connected devices and it is keen for its ultra-lightweight operating system to be at the heart of the infrastructure. Based on Linux, LiteOS weighs in at a mere 10KB -- smaller than a Word document -- but manages to pack in support for zero configuration, auto-discovery, and auto-networking.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
research
18 May, 2015
A security researcher hijacked an airplane's engines after hacking its in-flight entertainment systems, according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Chris Roberts, a well-known US security researcher, told FBI agents in February that he'd hacked in-flight entertainment systems on over a dozen flights and on one occasion hijacked an aircraft's thrust management computer and briefly altered its course.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical
Yesterday Bill Shorten in his budget reply speech said all kids needed to learn to code. This week 7000 students are doing that courtesy of Microsoft. And Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has a similar message: “We need to expose more students to coding so they are inspired to create, build and develop new technologies rather than just being passive users of it
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