Author: The Conversation

Small corners of the internet are ablaze with the news that Apple has significantly ramped up its search bot activity. Search bots typically scan websites in order to rank and index them for search engine results. When you look for something on a search engine, the results that appear are ordered by “ranking”, meaning that the result that is most accurate to what you are looking for appears at the top. This increase in activity also appears alongside pressure from the UK competition commission to break up Apple’s multi-billion dollar sweetheart deal with Google. The deal ensures that Google is the default search…

With self-driving cars gaining traction in today’s automobile landscape, the issue of legal liability in the case of an accident has become more relevant. Research in human-vehicle interaction has shown time and again that even systems designed to automate driving — like adaptive cruise control, which maintains the vehicle at a certain speed and distance from the car ahead — are far from being error-proof. Recent evidence points to drivers’ limited understanding of what these systems can and cannot do (also known as mental models) as a contributing factor to system misuse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-D24dhT8I&feature=emb_logo A webinar on the dangers of advanced driver-assisted systems. There are many…

In 2019, US President Donald Trump declared “space is the new war-fighting domain”. This followed the creation of the US Space Force and a commitment to “American dominance” in outer space. Other space-faring nations, and those who fear the acceleration of an arms race in space, were greatly concerned. At the latest meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, states noted with alarm that “preventing conflicts in outer space and preserving outer space for peaceful purposes” is more necessary than ever. The election of Joe Biden as the next US president and Kamala Harris as vice-president suggests there is cause for hope.…

With nightclubs shuttered, DJs have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. To make up for a lack of regular bookings many have taken their sound to the virtual airwaves through platforms such as Twitch, Mixlr, and the newly launched Mixcloud Live. While the idea of streaming live DJ sets is not new, the unforeseen arrival of COVID and lockdown has triggered an unprecedented rise in online DJ streams. The sight of a person bopping around behind decks while virtual hearts and comments stream past on the screen has become pretty well known. The vast majority of DJs, ranging from professional to those who…

It is extremely possible that you might be opting to take a road trip this December, even though travel restrictions during this pandemic are being lifted. While pandemic-era travel is a risk in any form, travelling within South Africa has the greatest chance at a positive outcome — economy stimulation, as well as no risk of being stuck outside the country for weeks. To ensure your trip is memorable in the best rather than the worst way, here are some things you and your fellow travellers can do to reduce the risk of becoming infected with, or spreading, COVID on…

Young kids believe that YouTube videos are better for learning than TV shows or videos created on a researcher’s smartphone. They also view people in YouTube videos to be more real than those on TV but less real than those featured in a researcher-created smartphone video. These are the major findings from a pre-COVID-19 study conducted in U.S. children’s museums in 2019. We asked children aged 3-8 to look at images that we told them came from YouTube, television or a researcher’s smartphone. Then, we asked them to tell us if they believed that the person in the video was real or…

The audio on the otherwise shaky body camera footage is unusually clear. As police officers search a handcuffed man who moments before had fired a shot inside a pizza parlor, an officer asks him why he was there. The man says to investigate a pedophile ring. Incredulous, the officer asks again. Another officer chimes in, “Pizzagate. He’s talking about Pizzagate.” In that brief, chilling interaction in 2016, it becomes clear that conspiracy theories, long relegated to the fringes of society, had moved into the real world in a very dangerous way. Conspiracy theories, which have the potential to cause significant harm, have found…

If you take classes online, chances are you probably procrastinate from time to time. Research shows that more than 70% of college students procrastinate, with about 20% consistently doing it all the time. Procrastination is putting off starting or finishing a task despite knowing that it will seriously compromise the quality of your work – for instance, putting off a major class project until the last minute. In fact, research has shown that procrastination can be a harmful behavior that lowers a student’s grades. Now that so many colleges and universities are operating remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we worry that students are more…

Daniel Bliss is a professor of electrical engineering at Arizona State University and the director of the Center for Wireless Information Systems and Computational Architecture. In this interview, he explains the ideas behind the original cellular networks and how they evolved over the years into today’s 5G (fifth generation) and even 6G (sixth generation) networks. How did wireless phones work before cellular technology? The idea of wireless communications is quite old. Famously, the Marconi system could talk all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. It would have one system, which was the size of a building, talking to another system, which was…

I walk outside my rural Saskatchewan house before dawn and look up, expecting to have my breath taken away by the sheer number of stars overhead. I’m a professional astronomer, but I still appreciate naked-eye stargazing as much as an eager child. This is the first place I’ve lived that’s dark enough to easily see the Milky Way, and I’m stunned and awed every time I look up. This time though, I curse softly. There’s a bright satellite. And another following behind. And another. And another. I used to be excited about seeing artificial satellites, but now I know what’s coming.…