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23 October, 2017
20 October, 2017
19 October, 2017
The extent of the Krack fallout remains to be seen. Security analysts say it’s a tricky vulnerability to take advantage of, and major platforms like iOS, macOS, and Windows are either unaffected or have already been patched. But given the millions of routers and other IoT devices that will likely never see a fix, the true cost of Krack could play out for years.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Sustainability
Pharmacy retailer Chemist Warehouse and Mexican food outlet Guzman y Gomez are the first retailers used to test Google parent Alphabet’s new drone delivery system being trialled this week in Australia. Alphabet’s research arm X (formerly Google X) says it is testing its drone delivery technology with households at Royalla in NSW, near the border with the ACT.
Labels:
ICT Capability,
Robotics
17 October, 2017
A newly-discovered security flaw affects virtually every Wi-Fi device, and could render your home network as readable to hackers as the free Wi-Fi at a coffee shop. Belgian Researcher Mathy Vanhoef has detailed a method of breaking WPA2, the security protocol used by the large majority of routers and devices to secure internet connections. By utilising the flaw, which Mr Vanhoef is calling KRACK (for Key Reinstallation Attack), malicious actors could potentially eavesdrop on the traffic of any access point they were physically near.
Labels:
Cybersafety
GitHub, which builds a product that rivals Australian golden child start-up Atlassian's Bitbucket software development platform, unveiled a suite of new features that will make the internet safer and software developers' lives less stressful at its GitHub Universe 2017 conference. Called the "dependency graph", it ensures that developers whose code is dependant on other, open source projects are given the chance to update their work immediately whenever a security breach, bug or performance issue is uncovered.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
ICT Capability,
Sustainability
Robots that battle inside the virtual world of RoboSumo are controlled by machine-learning software, not humans. Unlike computer characters in typical videogames, they weren’t pre-programmed to wrestle; instead they had to “learn” the sport by trial and error. The game was created by nonprofit research lab OpenAI, cofounded by Elon Musk, to show how forcing AI systems to compete can spur them to become more intelligent
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Game,
research
The sight of Mr Zuckerberg using VR to survey the devastation of an island still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria may have been meant to convey Facebook's empathy with the victims. The fact that he was there in the form of a cartoon seemed to many the perfect visual metaphor for the gulf in understanding between Silicon Valley and the real world.
Team KAIST from South Korea emerged as the winner of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) in Pomona, Calif., after its robot, an adaptable humanoid called DRC-HUBO, beat out 22 other robots from five different countries, winning the US $2 million grand prize. The robot’s “transformer” ability to switch back and forth from a walking biped to a wheeled machine proved key to its victory.
Labels:
Robotics
29 September, 2017
Nvidia’s CEO Declares Moore’s Law Dead. I’ve argued in the past Moore’s Law isn’t dead so much as its transformed. Rather than focusing strictly on increasing transistor counts and clock speeds, companies now focus on power efficiency and component integration. The explosion of specialized processors for handling AI and deep learning workloads is partly a reaction to the fact that CPUs don’t scale the way they used to.
26 September, 2017
25 September, 2017
Following a unanimous vote by the Chicago Public School Board of Education, computer science will become a graduation requirement for all high school students in what is the nation’s third largest school district. Starting with next school year’s class of freshmen (class of 2020), students in Chicago Public Schools will be required to complete curriculum around computer science before graduating.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability,
Women in IT
Today, we’re on the verge of another revolution, as artificial intelligence and machine learning turn the graphic design field on its head again. The vision is, to quote one project’s slogan, “websites that just make themselves.” Software will evaluate your text content, line of business, and imagery, and spit out finished pages without your having to lift a finger. These kinds of automated tools will arrive on the web first, but print design will change, too, as design-software makers inject machine learning into their layout tools and apps.
SHARES in MGM Wireless surged almost 70 per cent today after the Adelaide software company announced the largest deal in its history. The agreement will see the West Australian Education Department roll out two MGM products — School Star and Outreach+ — across its 800-plus public schools from the beginning of term four this year. School Star, a Facebook-like app that allows access to only registered parents and carers, provides messaging technology for the purpose of announcements, absenteeism alerts, and other functions. It is integrated with Outreach+, a service that automatically switches to SMS if a parent hasn’t installed the app.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability
22 September, 2017
20 September, 2017
Hackers have proven just how urgently a gaping flaw in the global telecoms network, affecting what's known as Signalling System No. 7 (SS7), needs to be fixed. In a video demonstration, shown to Forbes ahead of publication today, benevolent hackers from Positive Technologies were able to take control of a Coinbase bitcoin wallet and start pilfering funds via the SS7 flaws.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
research
19 September, 2017
Last week, the credit reporting agency Equifax announced that malicious hackers had leaked the personal information of 143 million people in their system. That’s reason for concern, of course, but if a hacker wants to access your online data by simply guessing your password, you’re probably toast in less than an hour. Now, there’s more bad news: Scientists have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to create a program that, combined with existing tools, figured more than a quarter of the passwords from a set of more than 43 million LinkedIn profiles. Yet the researchers say the technology may also be used to beat baddies at their own game.
Equifax “Chief Security Officer” Susan Mauldin has a bachelor’s degree and a master of fine arts degree in music composition from the University of Georgia. Her LinkedIn professional profile lists no education related to technology or security. This is the person who was in charge of keeping your personal and financial data safe — and whose apparent failings have put 143 million of us at risk from identity theft and fraud. It was revealed this week that the massive data breach came due to a software vulnerability that was known about, and should have been patched, months earlier.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career,
Privacy,
Women in IT
13 September, 2017
12 September, 2017
Pretty much every AV now in testing uses some combination of cameras, radars, and lidar laser systems. But now, an Israeli startup wants to add a new tool to the mix: heat-detecting infrared cameras that can pick out pedestrians from hundreds of feet away.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Cybersafety,
ICT Capability,
research
09 September, 2017
AN ARTIST USES AN IPHONE TO VISUALIZE SOUNDS IN A.R. built his real time sound map using Apple’s ARKit and the coding toolkit OpenFrameworks. Like all apps built with ARKit, Lieberman’s uses SLAM—simultaneous localization and mapping—which leverages the phone’s sensors and camera to build a low-resolution map of a room’s boundaries and contours.
Labels:
3D,
Education,
Game,
Graphic Design,
ICT Capability
Today, Neato Robotics is introducing a new flagship robot vacuum that we think offers one of the most significant advances we’ve seen in years: persistent, actionable maps. Like its predecessors, the D7 uses a lidar sensor to create a map of your house as it goes, but now, the robot will remember that map and allow you to interact with it. Neato is starting off simple with what you’ll be able to do (like defining no-go zones), but it’s an incredibly powerful feature that’s necessary for the future of all home robots.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
ICT Capability,
Robotics
07 September, 2017
"If they're too close, or too far apart, the 'entanglement' between quantum bits – which is what makes quantum computers so special – doesn't occur," Dr Tosi said. "This new idea allows us to fabricate multi-qubit processes with current technology." Andrea Morello, program manager of the UNSW-based ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology and one of the paper's authors, said the concept of pulling electrons from the nucleus builds on concepts raised by an earlier UNSW scientists Bruce Kane in a landmark 1998 Nature paper – just nobody had seen it.
Researchers at the University of St Andrews have thrown down the gauntlet to computer programmers to find a solution to a “simple” chess puzzle which could, in fact, take thousands of years to solve and net a $1m prize. Computer Scientist Professor Ian Gent and his colleagues, at the University of St Andrews, believe any program capable of solving the famous “Queens Puzzle” efficiently, would be so powerful, it would be capable of solving tasks currently considered impossible, such as decrypting the toughest security on the internet.
Labels:
Education,
Game,
ICT Capability,
Numeracy,
research
01 September, 2017
31 August, 2017
For the past few years, Google has pushed a particular technology for implementing augmented reality in phones. Known first as Project Tango and now as Tango, Google’s AR platform used to have specific requirements for its cameras that required specialized hardware. This reliance on custom sensors doomed Tango in the wider market, and only a handful of devices have supported the capability to date.
29 August, 2017
Tesla claiming the Model X P100D is the fastest-accelerating sport utility vehicle in history — zero to 100km/h in as quick as 3.1 seconds. The (in) famous Ludicrous Mode is alive and well, giving the driver a rollercoaster-esque feel of acceleration, and autopilot, while still in beta, is another standout feature from the Model S. Autopilot is more than a novelty; while it’s somewhat crazy and exhilarating to let the car drive itself on the freeway with minimum human intervention, after driving 10 hours between states, it’s clear how helpful that really is.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
ICT Capability,
Robotics
25 August, 2017
With so many different kinds of robots, how do you define what one is? It's a physical thing―engineers agree on that, at least. But ask three different roboticists to define a robot and you’ll get three different answers. This isn't a trivial semantic conundrum: Thinking about what a robot really is has implications for how humanity deals with the unfolding robo-revolution.
22 August, 2017
Students in NSW will not sit NAPLAN tests online until schools are confident they are ready to move from pen and paper, according to the Education Minister Rob Stokes, who said he supported the use of handwriting in exams and was "very aware" of the concerns of teachers. Mr Stokes' comments come as the NSW Teachers Federation began collecting feedback from teachers and principals about the school readiness tests, which are under way in thousands of schools across NSW to assess whether schools will be in a position to move to online NAPLAN testing from next year. But data collected by the NSW Department of Education show that the students who sat the school readiness test last week reported that they liked doing it on a computer. Of the 12,500 responses from students, more than 77 per cent were positive.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability,
Literacy,
Numeracy
21 August, 2017
Thousands of subscribers to the National Broadband Network will be refunded after the nation’s biggest telco launched an investigation into overcharging. In May, Telstra announced it would refund almost 8000 customers after it emerged they were being charged for internet speeds that could never be obtained under the fibre-to-the-node delivery system that was implemented by the federal Coalition in 2013. Optus yesterday said it was now “undertaking a similar process” and would work to ascertain how many customers had been affected and to refund those who had been short-changed.
Bregman's notion of a shorter work week is not designed to provide more time to sit on the couch massaging the remote control. "When I talk about the 15-hour work week, I'm talking about doing less paid work that we don't really care about so that we can do more things that are actually valuable," he said. "Whether it's volunteer work or caring for our kids or elderly. We need to update our idea of what work is." He said shortening the work week, in tandem with implementing a universal basic income, would offer people the freedom to decide what to do with their life while providing a level of financial security. Bregman said working fewer hours would reduce stress and workplace accidents. He also said countries with shorter working weeks had less income inequality and greater gender equality.
THE BIG PROMISE of driverless cars is that they'll save lives by preventing crashes. Computers don't fall asleep, get drunk, or glance at that tweet. Robocar technology could save tens, even hundreds, of thousands of lives each year. Such cars remain years away, of course, but you can find an autonomous vehicle saving lives on the road right now, in Colorado.
The Federal Court ruled in favour of film distributor Village Roadshow which brought legal proceedings against telco services to force them to block domain names for services used to illegally download movies and other programs. Federal Court Justice John Nicholas on Friday ordered internet providers, including Telstra, Optus, TPG and Vocus, to take "reasonable steps" to disable access to 42 websites that breach copyright laws, such as Pirate Bay, within 15 days.
Labels:
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
Intellectual Property,
Sustainability
18 August, 2017
17 August, 2017
16 August, 2017
A DRIVERLESS bus will ferry passengers around Tonsley within months, and recharge at a solar garage, in two Adelaide firsts at Flinders University. A $320,000 solar garage will be built at the Tonsley campus, capable of recharging about six electric vehicles at once — including the new autonomous bus. The garage would be available for anyone to recharge their electric vehicles for free, and would also act as an education centre to spread awareness about green transport.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability,
research,
Robotics,
Sustainability
14 August, 2017
This system is called the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), or colloquially, the “world computer.” Code is run publicly, but users are pseudonymous. It’s like Amazon Web Services, except instead of Amazon as the seller and users as the buyer, users can play either role. No individual controls the system. That makes Ethereum something genuinely new—something unprecedented. Decentralized apps, or DApps, are programs that run on the world computer. “Run,” however, might not be the right word, because Ethereum-the-computer is dreadfully slow
Labels:
History,
ICT Capability,
research
Queensland Police are now actively operating the next-generation of crime fighting technology: Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR). In Queensland alone, the tech has been used to accurately scan number plates over 23 million times in the last 15 months. Fitted to police vehicles across the state, ANPR scanners have the ability to fight crime in ways previously the domain of science fiction.
Labels:
ICT Capability,
Privacy
11 August, 2017
The new copycats: How Facebook squashes competition from start-ups
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/the-new-copycats-how-facebook-squashes-competition-from-startups/news-story/3095f438b5880566c65b73c84453c79f
Labels:
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
Intellectual Property,
Social
10 August, 2017
Play Protect encompasses several features that were completely separate until now. There’s malware scanning, lost phone tracking and locking, and Chrome Safe Browsing. The anti-malware features leverage Google’s machine learning platform to monitor apps for suspicious behavior, removing them from your phone before they can cause damage. You may be perplexed, wondering if Android had built-in malware scanning before. Yes, it did, but Google was very bad at making that known.
Labels:
Cybersafety
Starcraft II has been a target for Alphabet’s DeepMind AI research for a while now – the UK AI company took on Blizzard’s sci-fi strategy game starting last year, and announced plans to create an open AI research environment based on the game to make it possible for others to contribute to the effort of creating a virtual agent who can best the top human StarCraft players in the world. The whole goal here is to come up with AI that can play StarCraft II better than any human can, in much the same way that DeepMind did with its AlphaGo software for playing the ancient physical board game of Go.
Deeplearning.ai is home to a series of online courses Ng says will help spread the benefits of recent advances in machine learning far beyond big tech companies such as Google and Baidu. The courses offer coders without an AI background training in how to use deep learning, the technique behind the current frenzy of investment in AI. “This sounds naive, but I want us to build a new AI-powered society,” Ng tells WIRED. “The only way to build this is if there are hundreds of thousands of people with the skills to do things like improve the water supply for your city or help resource allocation in developing economies.”
09 August, 2017
02 August, 2017
IN 2010, STEVE Jobs banished Adobe Flash from the iPhone. It was too insecure, Jobs wrote, too proprietary, too resource-intensive, too unaccommodating for a platform run by fingertips instead of mouse clicks. All of those gripes hold true. And now Adobe itself has finally conceded. The company announced Tuesday that it would “stop updating and distributing the Flash Player,” giving the end of 2020 as its end-of-life date.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Game,
Graphic Design,
History,
ICT Capability
About 7000 year 11 students will sit a new critical thinking exam this year, which has been developed as universities and employers stress jobs of the future will require more than the traditional subjects taught in the Higher School Certificate. The optional 90-minute online test includes 60 questions that assess logical reasoning and analytical reasoning skills, and students get a detailed report on how they performed in relation to their peers and the areas they need to improve.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education
28 July, 2017
The highly competitive entry tests for NSW selective schools will be overhauled as the state government moves to address concerns that wealthy families are gaming the system by engaging tutors for their children. "Parents can spend more than $20,000 a year on preparation for [opportunity class] or selective high school tests," NSW Department of Education secretary Mark Scott told the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children conference in Sydney on Friday.
You may need to impress a machine the next time you apply for a job. And be careful what you put online. These job-vetting machines may not like your blogs and social media posts. The fact these capabilities have been in the pipeline has been known for some time. But now they’re out there and companies are using them. IBM has told The Australian that several local firms are using IBM Watson’s artificial intelligence skills to initially vet applicants for jobs. Watson narrows down the applicants list before humans move in to make final choices.
23 July, 2017
Australia will get its first taste of a global phenomenon today when the event centre at Sydney’s Star casino hosts one leg of the group stages of the Overwatch World Cup. Overwatch is a multiplayer online video game set on a dystopian Earth where two six-player teams take part in a series of skirmishes between 24 predefined characters called heroes.
Labels:
3D,
Game,
Intercultural Understanding,
Social
09 July, 2017
Mind you, the current system has plenty of flaws. Let’s face it: money is created by economists in the ivory towers of central banks and by licensed banks lending what has been deposited with them, which stays deposited at the same time as being lent, thereby multiplying. Money creation by banks is a privatised demand-driven system that periodically comes unstuck because banks either over-lend, or lend unwisely, so that the money gets lost and the original depositors’ savings evaporate — although these days most banks are “too big to fail”, and therefore implicitly guaranteed by taxpayers. The other problem with the current system is that although the value of money is fairly stable, it tends to devalue over time as a result of deliberate inflation. Central banks have been trying to get inflation up for a decade, in order to reduce the face value of the world’s excessive debt. Following the adoption of independent “price stability mandates” by central banks in the 1970s and 1980s, prices have been anything but stable: inflation has averaged 3.5-4 per cent per annum, dramatically reducing the value of money ($1000 40 years ago would now be worth a quarter of that). So those pushing for non-fiat money, that is money not controlled by central bankers and/or politicians, have a point: under the current system, governments debauch the currency for their own purposes and periodically banks blow it up through greed and incompetence. But the people trying to build an alternative system are basically anarchists. In fact, I’d say that global governments will soon need to declare that cryptocurrencies will never become legal tender, and legislate to that effect. You can play with them, and have fun trading and gambling, but actual money? Nah. That’s not to say blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies, is also a scam, far from it. In fact, it looks a truly revolutionary technology that is likely to change the world through mass disintermediation — but not disintermediation of government.
06 July, 2017
According to futurist Thomas Frey, in 14 years it will be a big deal when students learn from robot teachers over the internet. Frey’s prediction comes amid a boom in artificial intelligence research. Google is developing DeepMind, a complex piece of machine-learning software. IBM is developing Watson-powered robots. Amazon is developing drone delivery.
05 July, 2017
Named the ‘Red Belly Blockchain’, the new system being developed by the University of Sydney’s School of Information Technologies will allow secure and almost instantaneous digital transfer of virtual currencies across the world. “In recent testing, our blockchain achieved the best performance we have seen so far – with more than 440,000 transactions per second on 100 machines,” said University of Sydney academic Dr Vincent Gramoli, who heads up the Concurrent Systems Research Group developing the technology. “In comparison, VISA’s network has a peak capacity of around 56,000 transactions per second and the Bitcoin network is limited to around seven transactions per second.”
A makerspace can be any place where students can get creative, whether a classroom, library or garden. It's not about the space, but the innovation mindset that the space promotes. In this article, we unpack everything you need to create your own collaborative makerspace at school.
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education,
Game,
ICT Capability,
Literacy,
Numeracy,
Robotics,
Women in IT
03 July, 2017
Online retail giant Amazon has invented a new way of sending out its deliveries, filing a patent for ‘drone skyscrapers’. According to the designs the tower would have several launching spots where remotely operated drones would be loaded with a package and then take off. Amazon, which will be launching in Australia this year, is planning to use drones to deliver smaller packages and has already begun testing drone delivery
Labels:
ICT Capability,
research,
Robotics
Centrelink is using controversial high-tech phone-breaking devices to reveal secrets hidden by suspected fraudsters in their smart phones. The agency says it uses the technology in strict accordance with the law and only when it has obtained a warrant when investigating cases of serious fraud. But experts have warned the use of the 'Universal Forensic Extraction Devices' is jeopardising the communications security of Australians.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy
28 June, 2017
A ransomware attack has struck computers across the globe, taking out servers at Russia's biggest oil company, disrupting operations at Ukrainian banks and shutting down computers at multinational shipping and advertising firms. An adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister said the virus got into computer systems via "phishing" emails written in Russian and Ukrainian, designed to lure employees into opening them. According to the state security agency, the emails contained infected Word documents or PDF files as attachments.
Labels:
Cybersafety
26 June, 2017
Google says its computers will soon stop reading the emails of its Gmail users to personalise their ads, a move that addresses a longstanding privacy concern about a product that is central to its growing corporate services business. The core unit of Alphabet has mined users’ emails for personal data to serve them more relevant ads since it launched Gmail in 2004, which almost immediately sparked privacy concerns.
21 June, 2017
The fact NBN Co has both “theoretical” speeds — the speeds it expects homes not yet connected will achieve — and actual speeds post-connection also raises questions as to the necessity of a $7 million federal government program to monitor connection speeds in 4000 homes. Industry experts interviewed by The Australian have raised concerns NBN Co has widespread detailed net speed information and is not releasing it publicly but only to retail telco providers, who may have financial incentives to suppress the information.
19 June, 2017
Experts believe the algorithms used to encrypt online messages will be useless in a decade or two, as computers become powerful enough to crack them. An alternative is to tag messages with light particles entangled with each other through the weird properties of quantum physics. However, until now, physicists have succeeded in transmitting entangled particles only about 100km. Over longer distances, light leaches out of the optical fibres used for ground-based telecommunications, which degrades the quantum signal.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
ICT Capability,
research
16 June, 2017
More than half of all students starting a bachelor degree at an Australian university are now admitted on a basis other than their Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR), despite this cohort having one of the highest dropout rates. Nearly 56 per cent of students commencing bachelor degrees were admitted based on criteria other than ATAR in 2015
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education,
Literacy,
Numeracy
13 June, 2017
Microsoft and developer Mojang have announced a significant update to Minecraft that will let people play and create together regardless of whether they're using mobile phones, game consoles or PCs. Dubbed the "Better Together" update, the changes to the immensely popular game were announced at Microsoft's media briefing ahead of this week's E3 expo in Los Angeles. Once the update rolls out in the coming months, the newest versions of the game — including the Pocket Edition, Xbox One Edition, Nintendo Switch edition and more — will be renamed simply to Minecraft and will become functionally identical.
Sydney taxis will be able to turn off their meters as part of a radical package of reforms designed to help them compete with ridesharing firms such as Uber. Although new regulations haven’t been finalised, fare deregulation will mean the end of fixed taxi fare rates. Passengers will hunt for the lowest fare they can get with various taxi firms and Uber, when they book a ride by phone or through an app.
In mixed and augmented reality, Apple could be the winner. It wasn’t the most prominent announcement, but this week Apple released ARKit, development software that will let coders build augmented reality experiences for iPhone and iPad. Already the developer community is buzzing, with some early applications already completed. Very soon iPhone users will be able to sample augmented reality applications of better quality than Pokemon Go, which introduced the globe to the AR concept.
Labels:
3D,
Artificial Intelligence
05 June, 2017
The cocktail party problem refers to the challenge of following a single person’s speech in a room full of surrounding chatter and noise. With a little concentration, humans can focus in on what a particular person is saying. But when we want technology to separate the speech of a targeted person from the simultaneous conversations of others—as we do with hands-free telephony when a caller is in a car with kids in the back seat—the results leave much to be desired. Until now, that is, says Mitsubishi Electric. The company demonstrated its speech separation technology at its annual R&D Open House in Tokyo on 24 May. In one type of demonstration, two people spoke a sentence in different languages simultaneously into a single microphone.
31 May, 2017
30 May, 2017
There’s no doubt that some drone owners will see this as a company trying to crack down on what they’re allowed to do with a piece of hardware they purchased. As someone with pervasive concerns for how personal data is used and sold these days, I’m sympathetic to some of those arguments. Drones can serve incredibly valuable functions, from remote delivery or gathering footage as part of a story, to getting a view of a problem or unfolding situation that would be impossible to source in any other way. The flip side to this equation, of course, is that drone strikes and near-misses have skyrocketed in recent years. Some have argued that the FAA has overblown the risk of a drone strike, given the small size and lightweight design of most drones. But trying to quickly determine whether a drone is of a type that could cause plane damage while closing on the diminutive craft is clearly not an option.
29 May, 2017
27 May, 2017
The Law Society of NSW, the peak representative body for solicitors, this year released a report on the future of the legal profession that identified the need for future law graduates to be equipped with technological and business skills to meet changing employer demands. The report follows stark findings that only 74.1 per cent of law undergraduates looking for full-time employment were successful in finding jobs in 2015, compared with 88.4 per cent of graduates in 2005, according to a report by Graduate Careers Australia.
22 May, 2017
"In lessons involving direct instruction, teachers can teach 40 or 50 students as easily as 20," Mr Bowden said. "But with numeracy, for example, we know these 10 students need remedial work and one teacher can take them aside while a different teachers takes all the students who are on track. "It's a recognition that students learn at difference paces." Schools should either move all classes to a composite structure, or none, Associate Professor Linley Cornish said. "Schools only having some composite classes sets up a stigma, and parents start to think, 'should my child be in a different class, is my child being disadvantaged?'," she said.
As a keen, heavy investor in Bitcoin was quoted as saying last week: “I think that something has to replace the current monetary insanity. It may or may not be Bitcoin. I don’t know what it is. I’m worried about the system — the integrity of the system. You can’t navigate that by working within the system. You have to be outside the system. Bitcoin is outside the system.”
15 May, 2017
Blockchain’s public interface, at its most basic, is a string of shared data made up of a series of uniquely ordered alphabetical letters and numbers, timestamped and immutable. Yet, through this, blockchain can fundamentally change existing organisational structures, not merely as an evolutionary development, but potentially as a transformational technology. While it continues to develop, we need explore the opportunities that blockchain technology can offer and the consequences of not getting it right. We are living in a world where ‘for good’ has become zeitgeist and is often interpreted as 'social good'. However to set the scene of the discussion it is really important to note that 'for good' is not limited to non-profit activities or the third sector. There are incredibly varied views of what 'for good' means – for creative industries, it is transparency and fair distribution of royalties; for refugees, it is establishing or protecting identity; for charities, it is about accountability; and for government, it is about delivering better services to the public.
NAB-owned online bank UBank has launched Robochat, an AI-powered chatbot that’s here to help filling out home loan forms. Robochat exists as an upgrade to Ubank’s home loan live-chat service and is ready to answer most of your questions in mere seconds. For now, Robochat can only answer queries relevant to the home loan application, but in the future it might be able to pre-fill your forms or dole out tips and extra information, says Ubank’s head of digital, Jeremy Hubbard.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence
The ransomware strain WannaCry (also known as WanaCrypt0r and WCry) that caused Friday’s barrage appears to be a new variant of a type that first appeared in late March. This new version has only gained steam since its initial barrage, with tens of thousands of infections in 74 countries so far today as of publication time. Its reach extends beyond the UK and Spain, into Russia, Taiwan, France, Japan, and dozens more countries. One reason WannaCry has proven so vicious? It seems to leverage a Windows vulnerability known as EternalBlue that allegedly originated with the NSA.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical
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