Showing 1 - 10 of 122
Brazil blocks X after Musk ignores court orders
New York Times, Published on 31/08/2024
» RIO DE JANEIRO — X, formerly known as Twitter, began to go dark across Brazil on Saturday after the South American nation's Supreme Court blocked the social network because its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with court orders to suspend certain accounts.
The World Wide Web turns 30
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/05/2023
» The public version of the World Wide Web turned 30 recently. Back in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a global hypertext system called Mesh. The next year he added a hypertext GUI browser and editor and called the result the WorldWideWeb. Inside CERN, people loved it and by January 1993 the world had around 50 HTTP servers. By February, the first graphic browser appeared known as Mosaic and by April of that year, CERN decided the project belonged to humanity and the public domain version of the WWW was born. The rest and billions of web pages later, is history.
From snoring to surgery, health gadgets shine at CES
Published on 04/01/2023
» LAS VEGAS: Pillows that stifle snores, urine-testing toilets, and “digital twins” for safer surgery were all on display in Las Vegas on Tuesday, ahead of the opening of the world’s biggest annual consumer electronics extravaganza.
Elon's Twitter bid reopens censorship debate
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/04/2022
» Without a doubt, the biggest news of the last couple of weeks has centred around Elon Musk. It started with a tweet where he asked his followers if they thought that Twitter followed free speech principles. Over 2 million responded, with 70% indicating it didn't, and some asked him to buy Twitter. A week or so later he purchased 9.2% of Twitter. This triggered a swathe of wild speculation. Elon then rejected an offer to sit on the board because this would limit his ability to purchase more stock. A week or so later he offered to buy all of the remaining Twitter shares for US$54.20 (1,840 baht) a share, above the current market price and well above pundits' sell price only a little while earlier. The Left went crazy. The board started talking about introducing a financial "poison pill" share approach to both increase the number of and dilute the value of Twitter shares to make it more difficult for Musk to purchase more than 15% of Twitter.
Facebook eases rules to allow violent speech against 'Russian invaders'
AFP, Published on 11/03/2022
» WASHINGTON: Facebook said Thursday that due to the invasion of Ukraine it has temporarily eased its rules regarding violent speech to allow statements like "death to Russian invaders," but not credible threats against civilians.
Meet S. Korea's 18-year-old world drone champion
Life, Published on 07/04/2021
» In a South Korean rice field, the teenage world drone-racing champion is preparing to defend his title in one of the planet's fastest and highest-tech sports.
In 2020, China heads into 1984
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/10/2019
» China will have 626 million CCTVs installed by 2020. That's close to one for every two people in the country. By the end of 2019, any application for Internet access will require first having your face scanned. In 2020, if you want to surf the web you will first have to pass a facial recognition process. If you are recognised and your social score is high enough you will be able to connect. This directive comes from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Technology.
Human override here to stay
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/04/2019
» Computers are useful tools and they will emotionlessly churn through thousands of operations in the blink of an eye to produce whatever results they were programmed to do. Most of the time the results are welcomed. When it comes to malware the results generate a different reaction, and then there are those spaces in the middle. The situation surrounding the Boeing 737 Max MCAS aircraft and the recent crash is an excellent example. The latest analysis would seem to indicate that the computer engineers made some choices that have had unintended consequences. In this case overriding the wishes of the pilots by assuming the plane was crashing, when it wasn't, and not allowing the human pilots to correct the computer's decisions.
IoT for everybody
Life, Suwitcha Chaiyong, Published on 06/03/2019
» At a Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education workshop in St Francis Xavier Convent School, high-school girls designed many Internet of Things projects, such as a machine to cook eggs automatically, a pillow that can wake a sleeper in the morning with its vibrations, and a clothesline that can keep clothes dry by putting canvas up when it's raining. The software program Maker Playground is a tool behind the girls' successes.
Do you have a fear of spying?
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/10/2017
» So how safe do you feel in your home security-wise? I'm not thinking of malware but the ability for someone to snoop on you visually or through audio. There have been some concerns about devices like the Amazon Echo and similar being used to tap into what you are saying with everything recorded on servers that authorities could get from say Amazon.