Border officials have ‘near-unfettered’ access to electronic devices, ACLU says
By: Colin Lecher April 30, 2019 United States officials have largely unchecked power to search electronic devices at the border, and can share the resulting data widely, the American Civil Liberties Union said today. The organization, which is suing both Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agencies had released new […]
Our smartphone addiction isn’t just bad for our mental health, it’s a security risk
By: Gary Davis April 28, 2019 We’ve all had the “smartphone conversation.” The one about our unhealthy obsession and inability to put phones down. This fear is legitimized byresearch, showing that we spend approximately one third of our waking hours on our mobile devices – just over five hours per day. However, while we all […]
Autonomous vehicles make congestion pricing even more critical
By: Tech Crunch April 28, 2019 Autonomous vehicles will soon be ubiquitous on city streets. Before this happens, we should ask ourselves: Will they whisk us quickly through cities or make traffic worse? A car is a car, whether self-driving or people driven—taking up a great deal more space than busses, streetcars, or trains—so let’s […]
AR will mean dystopia if we don’t act today
By: Matt Miesnieks April 26, 2019 The martial arts actor Jet Li turned down a role in the Matrix and has been invisible on our screens because he does not want his fighting moves 3D-captured and owned by someone else. Soon everyone will be wearing 3D-capable cameras to support augmented reality (often referred to as […]
Creating the present by imagining the future: The power of science fiction
By: Charles-Edouard Bouée April 15, 2019 Technological progress is growing exponentially and we hazard that the so-called obsolescence of the law attributed to Moore will have no consequence whatsoever on this surge. We are experiencing a tremendous cultural shift in the way we adapt to technological changes. We are pushed to turn our relation to […]
One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority
By: New York Times April 14, 2019 The Chinese government has drawn wide international condemnation for its harsh crackdown on ethnic Muslims in its western region, including holding as many as a million of them in detention camps. Now, documents and interviews show that the authorities are also using a vast, secret system of advanced […]
An Australian start-up is using robots to pull weeds and herd cattle
By: Anmar Frangoul April 10, 2019 An Australian start-up that develops robots which use artificial intelligence is hoping to soon sell its technology to the wider market. The company, called Agerris, specializes in both “air and ground field robotic systems” for agriculture. It uses tech that has been developed at the University of Sydney’s Australian […]
Google’s world-first drone delivery business wins approval in Canberra
By: Lisa Martin April 09, 2019 A world-first drone delivery business has been granted approval to take to the skies over the Australian capital. For the past 18 months, Project Wing, an offshoot of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has been trialling drone delivery of food and drinks, medication and locally-made coffee and chocolate. The aviation […]
How smart tech is giving ageing prisoners a lifeline
By: Sarah Johnson March 6, 2019 Jim Lees woke up late one night needing to use the toilet. As he sat up in bed, he felt dizzy, then blacked out and fell to the floor. He remembers: “Everything went blank. I fell and was unconscious. I don’t know how long I was out.” When Lees […]