Author: The Conversation

As more and more good news about vaccines has come pouring in, Zoom has watched its shares tumble. Contrary to nervous markets, however, we believe video conferencing and remote working are here to stay – whether we like it or not. During the pandemic, how and where we work changed for many of us. The UK’s Office for National Statistics revealed that working from home had increased from 5% of the workforce before the pandemic to 47% in April 2020 – less than two months after the pandemic was declared. Hand in hand with this unprecedented rise in homeworking was an equally surprising increase in the use…

Bitcoin is back. Three years after the bubble that inflated its value from US$5,000 to US$20,000 in less than three months burst in spectacular fashion, plunging more than 80%, the cryptocurrency is again on the verge of a record high. In recent days it has been trading above US$19,000, up from US$10,000 in October and US$5,900 in March. The price of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, has also surged over the past few months, up from less than US$250 in July to about US$600. There are wild reports that by the end of 2021 Bitcoin could surge to US$100,000,…

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…