TSMC: How a Taiwanese Chipmaker Became a Linchpin of the Global Economy
By: The Financial Times March 24, 2021 When Li Ta-sen was a little boy, he used to walk to school through fields of sugarcane taller than himself. Some 40 years later, he is making a living by selling off the same fields as a property boom takes hold in his hometown of Shanhua. The […]
New Effort To Clean Up Space Junk Reaches Orbit
By: NPR March 21, 2020 A demonstration mission to test an idea to clean up space debris launched Monday morning local time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Known as ELSA-d, the mission will exhibit technology that could help capture space junk, the millions of pieces of orbital debris that float above Earth. The more […]
China’s Tech Giants Test Way Around Apple’s New Privacy Rules
By: Financial Times March 16, 2021 Some of China’s biggest technology companies, including ByteDance and Tencent, are testing a tool to bypass Apple’s new privacy rules and continue tracking iPhone users without their consent to serve them targeted mobile advertisements. Apple is expected in the coming weeks to roll out changes it announced […]
Using AI-Powered Spacecraft Is The Only Way To Clean Up Space
By: City AM March 17, 2021 In 1978 NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler proposed a theoretical scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit due to space pollution becomes high enough that collisions between objects starts to cause a chain reaction whereby each collision generates more space debris, which then increases […]
Chief executive of Jack Ma’s Ant Group steps down
By: City AM March 12, 2021 Simon Hu has reportedly resigned as chief executive of Ant Group after just over a year in the role. Hu resigned for personal reasons according to Bloomberg, and he will be replaced by Ant Group chairman Eric Jing with immediate effect. He joined Alibaba in 2005 before […]
America Grapples With Regulating Surveillance Technology
By: The Economist March 9, 2021 AMONG THE most pernicious aspects of the range of surveillance technologies available to the average police force is how they can render the visible invisible. For instance, you would notice if a police officer walked down your street every day, writing down the licence plates of every car. A police […]
Drones Used by Police to Monitor Political Protests in England
By: The Guardian February 14, 2021 Police have used unmanned drones to monitor political protests, including those held by the non-violent Black Lives Matter movement, research shows. Police also used drones in 2020 at animal rights protests, Extinction Rebellion and anti-HS2 demonstrations, and in one instance, an extreme-right protest. Campaigners say the police’s […]
It’s Time To Tidy Up Space
By: The Economist January 14, 2021 Everybody’s business, an old saw has it, is nobody’s business. And that is a good description of the business of keeping outer space clean and tidy. Yet the part of space nearest Earth, known technically as low-Earth orbit, is getting cluttered. Some of the objects up there are […]
The Struggle Over Chips Enters a New Phase
By: The Economist January 23, 2021 When microchips were invented in 1958, the first significant market for them was inside nuclear missiles. Today about a trillion chips are made a year, or 128 for every person on the planet. Ever more devices and machines contain ever more semiconductors: an electric car can have over 3,000 […]