Author: The Conversation

The cryptocurrency bitcoin now uses up more electricity a year than the whole of Argentina, according to recent estimates from the University of Cambridge. That’s because the creation of a bitcoin, in a process called mining, is achieved by powerful computers that work night and day to decode and solve complex mathematical problems. The energy these computers consume is unusually high. Police in the UK recently raided what they believed to be an extensive indoor marijuana-growing operation, only to discover that the huge electricity usage that had aroused their suspicions was actually coming from a bitcoin-mining setup. Thousands of similar setups, around 70% of which…

One of the joys of watching the Olympics is seeing the speed, strength and grace of the competitors. It’s amazing how the best athletes in the world make it look easy, but for anyone with personal experience in a particular sport, there’s an appreciation for the hard work, sacrifice and dedication that goes into producing medal-winning performances. Given the high standards of Olympic competition, it’s not surprising that coaches and athletes look for any possible advantage — from dietary regimens to equipment innovations and novel training methods — to maximize the chances of success. One of the more recent tools…

Five years since the Brexit vote and three since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, we’re now familiar with the role that targeted political advertising can play in fomenting polarisation. It was revealed in 2018 that Cambridge Analytica had used data harvested from 87 million Facebook profiles, without users’ consent, to help Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign target key voters with online adverts. In the years since, we’ve learned how these kinds of targeted adverts can create political filter bubbles and echo chambers, suspected of dividing people and increasing the circulation of harmful disinformation. But the vast majority of the ads exchanged online are commercial, not political. Commercial targeted advertising is the primary source…

Over the past few weeks, the Chinese government’s crackdown on big tech companies has intensified. The giants have all felt the brunt of heightened regulatory scrutiny. At the end of last year, Ant Group (which owns the payment platform AliPay) failed to go public on the stock market. Chinese regulators cited a lack of compliance with new fintech regulations, which were abruptly introduced a week after founder Jack Ma publicly criticised the existing regulatory regime. Since then, the calculated reining-in of China’s largest tech firms by the government continues unabated, culminating in several high-profile cases over the past month. Two of China’s largest…

Since the early days of social media, there has been excitement about how data traces left behind by users can be exploited for the study of human behaviour. Nowadays, researchers who were once restricted to surveys or experiments in laboratory settings have access to huge amounts of “real-world” data from social media. The research opportunities enabled by social media data are undeniable. However, researchers often analyse this data with tools that were not designed to manage the kind of large, noisy observational sets of data you find on social media. We explored problems that researchers might encounter due to this mismatch…

With British billionaire Sir Richard Branson’s successful flight to the edge of space, he and his company Virgin Galactic have firmly established themselves in the history books as space tourism pioneers. While not the first tourist to enter space, 70-year-old Branson is the first to make his journey with a commercial spaceflight company, marking a giant leap for the space tourism industry being championed by some of the world’s most famous billionaires. Unlike its rivals, Virgin Galactic launched its spacecraft from a carrier craft – not from the ground. Branson and three Virgin Galactic mission specialists travelled along with two pilots in the…

Over the next fortnight, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will take off into space, because they can, on spaceships designed by their respective companies. It’s a big moment for the private space industry. But the question comes to mind: who has the smarter plan? A billionaire’s space race On May 5 Blue Origin, owned by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced it would fly its first crew of astronauts into space on July 20 — the Apollo 11 Moon landing’s 52nd anniversary. After 15 successful test flights, this will be the first crewed flight for Blue Origin’s New Shepard…

Good-faith disagreements are a normal part of society and building strong relationships. Yet it’s difficult to engage in good-faith disagreements on the internet, and people reach less common ground online compared with face-to-face disagreements. There’s no shortage of research about the psychology of arguing online, from text versus voice to how anyone can become a troll and advice about how to argue well. But there’s another factor that’s often overlooked: the design of social media itself. My colleagues and I investigated how the design of social media affects online disagreements and how to design for constructive arguments. We surveyed and interviewed 257 people about their experiences with online arguments…

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog! These words from Peter Steiner’s famous cartoon could easily be applied to the recent ransomware attack on Florida-based software supplier Kaseya. Kaseya provides software services to thousands of clients around the world. It’s estimated between 800 and 1,500 medium to small businesses may be impacted by the attack, with the hackers demanding US$50 million (lower than the previously reported US$70 million) in exchange for restoring access to data being held for ransom. https://twitter.com/TheHackersNews/status/1412336467490209796? The global ransomware attack has been labelled the biggest on record. Russian cybercriminal organisation REvil is the alleged culprit. Despite its notoriety, nobody really knows what REvil…

Three astronauts on China’s new space station have just performed the country’s first space walk and are busy configuring the module for future crews. Named Tiangong (“heavenly palace”), the station is the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA)‘s signature project to develop China’s ambitions for having humans in orbit around Earth for a long amount of time. In planning since the late 1990s, the Tiangong station’s core module, Tianhe (“heavenly river” and the old Chinese name for the Milky Way), launched on April 29. But it isn’t yet complete. Yang Liwei, chief designer of China’s human spaceflight programme, has said the astronauts “have a lot of tasks to…