Val Hooper, Victoria University Gordon Anderson, Victoria University Stephen Blumenfeld, Victoria University Anyone familiar with George Orwell’s novel 1984 will relate to the menace of Big Brother watching their every keystroke and mouse click. For a growing share of the workforce that dystopian reality arrived while most of us
The renewable energy pricing anomalies strike again. Not only does the long-suffering taxpayer shell out to windfarms operators to not produce electricity it appears they may be subsidising the smugmobile owners as well. When the ‘renewable utility companies have more electricity available than they need to meet demand, what do
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No, not that sort of super model, the super computer model that was the basis for the lockdown which trashed the economy – that model. Apparently the decisions in New Zealand were based on models by a group called Te Punaha Matatini, a “Centre of Research Excellence” at Auckland University. Their
One thing that has been obvious about the response to the Chinese virus pandemic is how willing the public has been to co-operate with government restrictions that would normally be associated with totalitarian states. There have been some rumblings, particularly with over-zealous police fining people for anything from washing their
Well anyone who likes a bit of sport knows that there isn’t much going on anywhere in the world at the moment. Football is cancelled, rugby is a goner, yachting, mountainbiking, skiing, all gone. But what about motor racing? Well sure, the actual belting around racetracks is right out,
Katharine H. Greenaway University of Melbourne Alexander Saeri Monash University Tegan Cruwys Australian National University We are now a society at a distance. As of this week, New South Wales has closed restaurants, bars, gyms, and entertainment venues where people gather in large numbers. Victoria has similarly implemented a shut
Reports out of Europe this week say that as a result of the lockdowns over there, too many people are using Netflix and YouTube, and as a result, the Internet is becoming overloaded and slow. As a result, YouTube and Netflix will temporarily reduce video quality in the United Kingdom
Now that Facebook has sent home its human workers and all that’s left are Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow bots, a curious phenomenon has emerged. Tech giant Facebook recently admitted that it marked posts linking to genuine information and articles about the Wuhan coronavirus as spam, blaming a “bug
Joe Burton University of Waikato It didn’t take long for a terrorist to show how hard it is to prevent violent extremist content being shared online. Within six months of the attacks at two Christchurch mosques on March 15 last year, which were live streamed on Facebook, a far-right
Dave Pine The beautiful state of Colorado is known to be a Millennial Greenie hipster’s paradise. Their environmental policies are usually a good indication of which direction the rest of the US will head. “Wind turbine blades won’t be buried in the Logan County landfill any longer. Although
ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is the first Chinese tech company with a serious chance when it comes to competing with the American social media giants such as Facebook and Instagram. CKGSB Knowledge Fair Observer TikTok’s latest viral challenge has the world’s teens gluing up their top lips with
Oh dear, oh, dear. It seems all is not rosy in the green world of hybrid motoring. The plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) owners are not actually saving the planet. Woe is me! It seems that the claimed ‘economy’ figures touted by the manufacturers are not actually achievable out here
Robert Hassan University of Melbourne A survey this year revealed that Australians, on average, spend 10.2 hours a day with interactive digital technologies. And this figure goes up every year. This is time we don’t get back. And our analogue lives, which include everything not digital, shrink in
Get them hooked and then slug them later when they are far too invested in the product to back away. Clearly IONITY, a European EV charging network, were thinking this when they hiked their EV charging prices by more than 500%. I am sure that the fact that this happened
