Blog Tips
Simply click on the URL (http:// ...) link in each article to visit the article's page
To search this blog, try the Search Box on the right, or click on the Labels following each post entry
To search this blog, try the Search Box on the right, or click on the Labels following each post entry
12 August, 2020
TikTok skirted a privacy safeguard in Google’s Android operating system to collect unique identifiers from millions of mobile devices, data that allows the app to track users online without allowing them to opt out, a Wall Street Journal analysis has found. The tactic, which experts in mobile-phone security said was concealed through an unusual added layer of encryption, appears to have violated Google policies limiting how apps track people and wasn’t disclosed to TikTok users. TikTok ended the practice in November, the Journal’s testing showed.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy
11 August, 2020
06 July, 2020
11 June, 2020
Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) on Wednesday said it was implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software, halting a business it long defended as many protested law enforcement brutality against people of color. The decision culminates a two-year battle between Amazon and civil liberties activists, who have voiced concern that inaccurate matches could lead to unjust arrests.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Big Data,
Ethical,
Privacy
03 June, 2020
Last year, UNSW responded to falling enrolments with a proposal to lower entry requirements. With an estimated 80 per cent of teaching now casualised, academics have become itinerant workers. Students have become customers. Teachers report widespread pressure to pass low-grade students but cannot speak of it, fearing reprisal.
Labels:
Education,
Ethical,
Sustainability
29 May, 2020
The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet At 22, he single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI. This is his untold story.
Labels:
Catholic Worldview,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
History,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career
25 May, 2020
Turn on your webcam, enable your microphone and share your computer screen, an anonymous voice told university student Emily Johnston as she sat her first online exam from her bedroom. Don't look away from your screen for too long, in case artificial intelligence scans your face and registers suspicious behaviour. Any noise or movement you make will be recorded, reviewed and stored for two years. Many university students have been unsettled by proctoring software being used to invigilate their online exams during the coronavirus pandemic.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Privacy
Nvidia’s GameGAN AI Creates Pac-Man Without an Underlying Game Engine. The reason advances like GameGAN strike me as significant is because they don’t just represent an AI learning how to play a game. The AI is actually learning something about how the game is implemented purely from watching someone else play it. That’s closer, conceptually, to how humans learn
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Game,
History
20 May, 2020
'Greatest peril': study finds Australia most dependent on China among the Five Eyes. The report did not recommend an immediate economic decoupling from China as that would be “painful and expensive” but said the Five Eyes countries should work together to prevent China dominating the nine industries that it identified would dominate the future economy. They are: artificial intelligence and machine learning, autonomous robotics, computing hardware, cryptographic technology, materials and manufacturing science, nano-technologies, networking and data communication, quantum technology and synthetic biology.
13 May, 2020
11 May, 2020
01 May, 2020
POPE FRANCIS ON SUNDAY advocated for a form of universal basic income that would "dignify the noble, essential tasks" carried out by street vendors, small farmers, construction workers and caregivers around the world. The message turned heads in the U.S., coming just weeks after lawmakers finalized a plan to distribute direct cash transfers to many Americans – and just months after entrepreneur Andrew Yang made waves in the Democratic presidential primaries on a policy platform based around the adoption of a universal basic income.
Labels:
Catholic Worldview,
Sustainability
27 April, 2020
23 March, 2020
20 March, 2020
The technology that animated movies like Toy Story and enabled a variety of special effects is the focus of this year's Turing Award, the technology industry's version of the Nobel Prize. Patrick Hanrahan and Edwin Catmull won the prize for their contributions to 3D computer graphics used in movies and video games.
Labels:
3D,
Game,
Graphic Design
16 March, 2020
24 February, 2020
20 February, 2020
22 November, 2019
18 November, 2019
Tale of the tape: Why film fans are dropping Netflix for physical media. "[Streaming services] like to present the image of having a comprehensive library, but the irony is there's like ten of them now and they all want to be the only game in town, and even between all of them combined they still don't cover even a fraction of film history."
Labels:
History,
Intellectual Property
15 November, 2019
07 November, 2019
01 November, 2019
BIG ISSUE FOR WIRELESS BUDS It also appears the new AirPods Pro design has done nothing to address what are becoming a couple of massive issues for AirPods and other wireless audio devices. Firstly, the design of the AirPods and other true wireless buds makes them practically impossible to fix, meaning the limited-life lithium-ion batteries that power the devices can’t be replaced. Device teardown specialists iFixit gave the original AirPods a 0/10 score for repairability. “Accessing any case component is impossible without destroying the outer casing,” the website said following its assessment.
Labels:
Ethical,
Sustainability
21 October, 2019
16 October, 2019
15 October, 2019
The Chinese Communist Party has gained the ability to spy on more than 100 million citizens via a heavily promoted official app, a report suggests. The app pushes out official news and images and encourages people to earn points by reading articles, commenting on them and playing quizzes about China and its leader, Xi Jinping. Use of the app is mandatory among party officials and civil servants and it is tied to wages in some workplaces.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Ethical,
Privacy
14 October, 2019
There will be no timetabled classes, no exams and no ATAR at the end of year 12 for students at a new independent high school in Sydney's west. Instead, students at the new CathWest Innovation College, with campuses in Mount Druitt and Emu Plains, will complete two terms of set projects before developing solutions to their problems, building portfolios to apply to university or having the choice to pitch ideas directly to businesses. we're effectively gutting the science rooms and they'll become our makers space with state-of-the-art innovation technology and the classrooms will become design studios where students will do their original work," Ms Larkin said.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education
Almost No One Out There Thinks That Isaac Asimov's Three Laws Could Work For Truly Intelligent AI. The First Law fails because of ambiguity in language, and because of complicated ethical problems that are too complex to have a simple yes or no answer. The Second Law fails because of the unethical nature of having a law that requires sentient beings to remain as slaves. The Third Law fails because it results in a permanent social stratification, with the vast amount of potential exploitation built into this system of laws.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Catholic Worldview,
Ethical,
Robotics
26 September, 2019
Google’s ‘Quantum Supremacy’ Isn’t the End of Encryption. As Preskill notes, that contest was uneven. Google carefully chose a problem naturally suited to its quantum hardware and writes in its paper that “technical leaps” are still needed to realize the promise of quantum computing. Dowling and others estimate it would take millions of high-quality qubit devices to threaten encryption, due to the complexity of the algorithms involved.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
History,
ICT Capability,
Numeracy,
research
25 September, 2019
Google has reportedly built a quantum computer more powerful than the world's top supercomputers. A Google research paper was temporarily posted online this week, the Financial Times reported Friday, and said the quantum computer's processor allowed a calculation to be performed in just over 3 minutes. That calculation would take 10,000 years on IBM's Summit, the world's most powerful commercial computer, Google reportedly said.
Labels:
ICT Capability,
research
16 September, 2019
13 September, 2019
he Biggest iPhone News Is a Tiny New Chip Inside It By embracing ultra-wideband location tech, Apple has a chance to reshape experiences way beyond AirDrop. UWB is more accurate by orders of magnitude. And it can transfer data faster too; up to 8 megabits per second in mobile devices, about four times what Bluetooth can currently manage. UWB operates on a wide frequency band, allowing it to pass through walls more easily than some of its RF counterparts. It can provide positioning updates as often as every 100 milliseconds. And it doesn't interfere with other mainstream RF signals like Wi-Fi.
Labels:
ICT Capability
12 September, 2019
In Douglas Adams' sci-fi series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a pair of programmers task the galaxy's largest supercomputer with answering the ultimate question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything. After 7.5 million years of processing, the computer reaches an answer: 42. Only then do the programmers realize that nobody knew the question the program was meant to answer. Now, in this week's most satisfying example of life reflecting art, a pair of mathematicians have used a global network of 500,000 computers to solve a centuries-old math puzzle that just happens to involve that most crucial number: 42.
Labels:
History,
ICT Capability,
Numeracy
05 September, 2019
A Breakthrough for A.I. Technology: Passing an 8th-Grade Science Test. on Wednesday, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a prominent lab in Seattle, unveiled a new system that passed the test with room to spare. It correctly answered more than 90 percent of the questions on an eighth-grade science test and more than 80 percent on a 12th-grade exam.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Education
04 September, 2019
02 September, 2019
28 August, 2019
23 August, 2019
12 August, 2019
Masters — whose draft review of the NSW curriculum is due to be released soon — says teachers should go on as they have been, but closely observe children's critical, creative and problem-solving skills as they go about their tasks. "The downside of giving [these skills] a name is that it makes them sound as though they're different from what's happening and somehow new to the curriculum," he says. "They are not. What's new is we have prioritised them, we've drawn attention to the fact that they are important and perhaps more important than they once were. But we've always expected students to think critically and creatively, to work together and solve problems."
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education
06 August, 2019
05 August, 2019
Silicon Valley is also keenly interested. In a report in March, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation identified AI as an educational tool worthy of investment. In his 2018 book Rewiring Education, John Couch, Apple’s vice president of education, lauded Squirrel AI. (A Chinese version of the book is coauthored by Squirrel’s founder, Derek Li.) Squirrel also opened a joint research lab with Carnegie Mellon University this year to study personalized learning at scale, then export it globally. But experts worry about the direction this rush to AI in education is taking. At best, they say, AI can help teachers foster their students’ interests and strengths. At worst, it could further entrench a global trend toward standardized learning and testing, leaving the next generation ill prepared to adapt in a rapidly changing world of work.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Big Data,
Education,
Numeracy,
research
02 August, 2019
IBM is acquiring Red Hat, a major distributor of open-source software and technology, in a deal valued around $34 billion, the companies announced on Sunday. Red Hat started 25 years ago as a distributor of a particular flavor of Linux, an open-source operating system that is commonly used in server computers that power company data centers. Today, Red Hat is known for distributing and supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as other technologies commonly used in data centers.
Labels:
History
31 July, 2019
04 July, 2019
Keller doesn’t agree. “The working title for this talk was ‘Moore’s law is not dead but if you think so you’re stupid,’" he said Sunday. He asserted that Intel can keep it going and supply tech companies ever more computing power. His argument rests in part on redefining Moore’s law. “I’m not pedantic about Moore’s law talking just about transistors shrinking—I’m interested in the technology trends and the physics and metaphysics around that,” Keller says. “Moore’s law is a collective delusion shared by millions of people.” Keller also said that Intel would need to try other tactics, such as building vertically, layering transistors or chips on top of each other. He claimed this approach will keep power consumption down by shortening the distance between different parts of a chip. Keller said that using nanowires and stacking his team had mapped a path to packing transistors 50 times more densely than possible with Intel's 10 nanometer generation of technology.
03 July, 2019
NBN Co’s ‘Netflix tax’ slammed amid growing public outcry over net neutrality. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers must treat all internet use equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on the content accessed. Net neutrality is not protected by law in Australia as it is in other parts of the world including Europe and Canada. “Australia doesn’t have a right to net neutrality. We haven’t enshrined it, but have worked on a presumption that it was there,” Dr Leaver said.
Labels:
Ethical
02 July, 2019
Starting from the first term of 2020, smartphones will be banned from all classrooms in primary schools and high schools across Victoria. Students will have to leave their phones in their lockers from the first bell until the last, unless they need it for medical reasons (and no, Snapchat streaks don’t count). Phones will also be allowed if the teacher has specifically said students will need them as part of the day’s lesson.
'Cutting-edge': the project that could replace NAPLAN. They would also be adaptive, which means the questions would get harder or easier based on the child's skills. This would give a more accurate, fine-grained picture of how well the child has mastered the skills within that learning progression.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability,
research
27 June, 2019
21 June, 2019
19 June, 2019
18 June, 2019
06 June, 2019
In upcoming versions of iOS and macOS, the new Find My feature will broadcast Bluetooth signals from Apple devices even when they're offline, allowing nearby Apple devices to relay their location to the cloud. That should help you locate your stolen laptop even when it's sleeping in a thief's bag. And it turns out that Apple's elaborate encryption scheme is also designed not only to prevent interlopers from identifying or tracking an iDevice from its Bluetooth signal, but also to keep Apple itself from learning device locations, even as it allows you to pinpoint yours.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
Privacy
21 May, 2019
High school students will get hands-on experience in SA’s emerging space sector, as companies hope to inspire a new generation into becoming the workforce of the future. Premier Steven Marshall has announced a plan to give students in Years 10 to 12 the opportunity of work experience in a “pilot” scheme set to take off later this year.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Career,
Robotics,
Women in IT
20 May, 2019
In the five days before election night, Professor Bela Stantic analysed 2 million social media comments, from more than half a million unique accounts, relating to 50 key terms, and predicted that Scott Morrison would win. The director of Griffith University's Big Data and Smart Analytics lab has a track record. In 2016, he tipped Donald Trump to take the United States' presidency, and in doing so accurately forecast how all but one state voted. He also foresaw the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union coming that same year.
Labels:
Big Data,
ICT Capability,
research
15 May, 2019
03 May, 2019
Beijing: A feared smartphone app being used by Chinese police to surveil the Uighur ethnic minority has been reverse-engineered by a human rights group, revealing that even turning your own phone off can trigger suspicion. When The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age travelled to China's western region of Xinjiang in late 2018, residents there said Muslim Uighurs regularly had their phones inspected by police. If "suspicious" content was found, they were sent to re-education centres, where hundreds of thousands of Muslims are believed to be detained.
Labels:
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
Privacy,
Social
30 April, 2019
An image of the moment the researcher whose algorithm helped reconstruct the first ever image of a black hole has swiftly made its way around the internet. Scientist Katie Bouman, 29, was snapped at the moment she first saw the fruits of her – and plenty of others around the world's – labour coming to fruition.
Labels:
Graphic Design,
ICT Capability,
research,
Women in IT
Hundreds of Google staffers met on Friday and discussed what activists allege is a frequent consequence of criticising the company: Retaliation. Two leaders of recent company protests said they've been mistreated by managers and collected similar stories from other workers at the world's largest internet company.
Labels:
Catholic Worldview,
Ethical,
ICT Career,
Sustainability,
Women in IT
Jaguar is willing to pay you to drive your car and it is all about connection, according to the British maker. The company will pay drivers in cryptocurrency for providing road data including traffic conditions and pothole locations. The data will then be passed on to navigation companies and local authorities to help improve traffic flow and expedite road repairs. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is developing a “Smart Wallet” to hold the cryptocurrency. It will allow users of connected cars to pay for a range of products including tolls, parking fees and electric vehicle charging.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Asia Connection,
Blockchain,
Robotics
At Blakehurst High School in the south of Sydney 16 students play 90 minutes of competitive video games after school each week. About 45 minutes is practice and the rest is spent playing the hugely popular battle game "League of Legends" for points, as part of the META High School eSports league (MHSE) run by AFL club Adelaide Crows and game publisher Riot Games. “We have better group communication. Before that we didn’t have connections to some of the students. We have bonded and ask questions about school and help when we struggle with assignments and work." "The buried treasure for teachers is students building confidence in their skills," Mr Hewetson said. "There’s a lot of encouragement when someone pulls something off in the game and that gives a natural lift to everyone.
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Education,
Game,
Social
29 April, 2019
Adelaide’s mission to become a “Space City” will have a boost today from an announcement that it will be the home of smart satellites. Alongside Space HQ — the Australian Space Agency — and the promised Mission Control and Space Discovery Centre, Adelaide will be the strategic and decision-making base of a SmartSat co-operative research centre (CRC)
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career,
research,
Robotics
As classrooms across the country embrace digital textbooks, one Sydney school has declared the e-book era over and returned to the old-fashioned hard copy version because it improves comprehension and reduces distraction. For the past five years, Reddam House's primary and junior high school classes have used e-textbooks on iPads. But the consistent feedback from the students has been that they preferred pages to screens.
04 April, 2019
03 April, 2019
Yang is running a rather methodical, data-driven, science-happy campaign. He’s applying that approach to more standard-issue problems like labor, climate change, and the economy but giving them a decidedly tech-forward approach: how (and why) we should define robots, what use might geoengineering have in saving the planet, and whether the government should embrace universal basic income and give every American a $1,000 check.
27 March, 2019
The sixth ŠKODA Student Concept Car will be a spectacular pickup version of the ŠKODA KODIAQ. That is the goal of 35 vocational students, among them six young women, who in 2019 will for the first time be using the ŠKODA KODIAQ as the starting point for their Student Car. With expert support from experienced ŠKODA engineers and staff from the Technical Development, Design and Production departments, they are transforming the Czech car manufacturer’s largest SUV into a dynamic, two-door pickup.
21 March, 2019
20 March, 2019
Aston Martin boss Andy Palmer says a push for semi-autonomous driving systems is “reckless”. Palmer says the brand won’t follow Tesla, Audi and Mercedes down the path of “level three” autonomous driving features, which allow people to hand over control to the car in some circumstances but put the responsibility back on the driver if something goes wrong.
13 March, 2019
05 March, 2019
04 March, 2019
Why technologists are limiting their families' screen time Fears over the side effects of digital devices and social media are prompting tech experts to limit the time they and their children spend online. Simmons allows her children to use computers but would prefer them to pull the machines apart or learn the code that powers them, rather than stare mindlessly at screens. "They need to be creators, rather than users," she says.
Microsoft hasn't lost site of the consumer market entirely with HoloLens. It had Tim Sweeney — CEO of Fortnite maker Epic Games — onstage gushing about the potential of HoloLens and what it could do for gaming as a medium in the future and announced that Unreal Engine 4 support was coming. While HoloLens 2 might be for businesses, HoloLens 3 could potentially be for everyone.
Labels:
3D,
Education,
ICT Capability,
research
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)