Social media platforms have had some bad press in recent times, largely prompted by the vast extent of their data collection. Now Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has upped the ante. Not content with following every move you make on its apps, Meta has reportedly devised a way to also know everything… Read more »
The popularity of plant-based proteins, or “fake meat”, has increased in recent years as consumers look to eat fewer animal products. In fact, plant-based protein is projected to be a A$3 billion opportunity for Australia by 2030. Many consumers believe these fake meats are better for their health, as well as better for the environment,… Read more »
On Wednesday, reports began emerging Google was down. Google down for thousands of users – Downdetector https://t.co/jQYLzHdjNC pic.twitter.com/TIbcYrtImU — Reuters (@Reuters) August 9, 2022 While it has since returned, it once again highlights our dependence on technology service providers and shows how reliant many people are on a single operator for daily functions. There are… Read more »
Less than two weeks after the announcement of its acquisition of US healthcare company One Medical, Amazon is continuing its expansion with a US$1.7 billion offer for iRobot, the manufacturer of Roomba automated vacuum cleaners. The acquisition will bolster Amazon’s line of smart home products and add to the retail giant’s vast store of consumer… Read more »
Is there a “fourth phase of water”? From time to time you might see people talking up the health benefits of so-called hexagonal water, or structured water, or exclusion-zone (EZ) water. A few weeks ago Kourtney Kardashian’s Poosh website was spruiking a US$2,500 “structured water filter”. Last weekend even Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald got in… Read more »
Around 3.7 million Australians have been unintentionally caught in an ocean rip. For the unprepared it can be a harrowing experience – but for experienced surfers, rips are a handy way to ride through the whitewash and out to the break. We’re not surfers, but we work at Australia’s national science agency in “strategic foresight”,… Read more »
What was your first reaction when you heard about Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who announced last month the AI program he was working on had developed consciousness? If, like me, you’re instinctively suspicious, it might have been something like: Is this guy serious? Does he honestly believe what he is saying? Or is this… Read more »
By now, most of us are aware social media companies collect vast amounts of our information. By doing this, they can target us with ads and monetise our attention. The latest chapter in the data-privacy debate concerns one of the world’s most popular apps among young people – TikTok. Yet anecdotally it seems the potential… Read more »
Earlier this month, the Internet Archive asked a US court to end a lawsuit filed against it by four large book publishers. The Internet Archive is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1996 that lends digital copies of books, music, movies and other digitised content to the public. It aims to support people with print disabilities,… Read more »
Online grocery shopping has boomed since the pandemic began in 2020, with Woolworths and Coles steadily expanding their home-delivery offerings. Rapid delivery is the latest frontier. Woolworths and Coles Express have been offering on-demand deliveries through UberEats and Doordash since last year. Woolworths recently launched the Metro60 app which promises home delivery within an hour… Read more »
Uber has had a controversial history since its founding in 2009, from violent conflicts among drivers to a secret software allegedly used to evade law enforcement. Now, a leak of over 124,000 documents dubbed the Uber files shows the extent to which the firm under co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick capitalised on that chaos… Read more »
The gig economy is in trouble. Rideshare drivers are cancelling in droves. Wait times for food delivery are ballooning out and driver shortages are leading to food waste. So, what’s going on? To find out more, I interviewed 30 Melbourne gig workers who worked as rideshare drivers, food deliverers or for task-based platforms such as… Read more »
In a world rife with opposing views, let’s draw attention to something we can all agree on: if I show you my pen, and then hide it behind my back, my pen still exists – even though you can’t see it anymore. We can all agree it still exists, and probably has the same shape… Read more »
When English statesman Sir Francis Bacon famously said “knowledge is power”, he could hardly have foreseen the rise of ubiquitous social media some 500 years later. Yet social media platforms are some of the world’s most powerful businesses – not least because they can collect massive amounts of user data, and use algorithms to turn… Read more »
Greed, desire, wishful thinking and naivety are lucrative markets for scam artists – and their age-old hustles are increasingly being supplemented by digital chicanery. In 2021 Australians lost an estimated $2 billion to fraudsters, more than double that of 2020, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The consumer watchdog’s latest scam report details… Read more »
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