Apple has made a thing of quiet hardware announcements this week. First it was the iPad refresh that turned up unexpectedly, now we’ve also got some info on iMac upgrades.
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This week in Light Start, we’ve got an Apple Watch study, James Gunn returns for Guardians 3, the newest Avengers: Endgame trailer, and Notmycar.
Once a piece of ransomware has got hold of your valuable information, there is very little you can do to get it back other than accede to the attacker’s demands. Ransomware, a type of malware that holds a computer to ransom, has become particularly prevalent in the past few years and virtually unbreakable encryption has made it an even more powerful force.
Black subscribers will now be able to choose which content they prefer, and pay a monthly rate according to their personal taste in TV.
There is now widespread concern about the amount of time children spend staring at screens – with many people worried about the negative impacts mobile devices might have on health and well-being.
Concerns have also been raised about the influence of technological change on relationships and face-to-face interactions. Sherry Turkle, a professor of the social studies of science, came up with the famous term “alone together” – which is also the name of her book. “Alone together” captures this idea of spending time on devices to the neglect of interacting with those who are physically nearby.
Earlier this year we heard that Lenovo-owned Motorola is taking another crack at their iconic Razr phone, only this time it is going to be a (very expensive) foldable device. Pricing over R20k? We were hoping that the device would justify the cost beyond just being an entry in the burgeoning folding phone wars but… yeah.
Zuckerberg aims to make private messages private and ephemeral – meaning Facebook can’t read our messages, and the data doesn’t stick around on the company’s servers for longer than necessary. His vision involves merging Facebook and the company’s other digital platforms – Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger – into a super app, similar to China’s WeChat.
Some people suggest these tasks should be automated, as machines do not get bored, tired or distracted over time. However, computer vision algorithms tasked to recognize faces could also make mistakes. As my research has found, together, machines and humans could do much better.
The folks at Stuff love a good drone. The flying-around one, not the type that puts you to sleep when…
Instead of being central to the system of decisions that affects us, we are cast out in to its environment. We have progressively restricted our own decision-making capacity and allowed algorithms to take over. We have become artificial humans, or human artefacts, that are created, shaped and used by the technology.