While some people see video games as a means of living out fantasy, the truth is who we are in the virtual world largely reflects who we are in the real one. For instance, one piece of research has found that a player’s real values match their in-game decisions, suggesting that their true personality often gets reflected in a game scenario. There is also evidence that our ability to lead is strongly reflected in the way we form relationships in video games.
As the internet continues to gain considerable power and agency around the world, many governments have moved to regulate it. And where regulation fails, some states resort to internet shutdowns or deliberate disruptions.
The deluge of cyberattacks sweeping across the world has governments and companies thinking about new ways to protect their digital systems, and the corporate and state secrets stored within. For a long time, cybersecurity experts have erected firewalls to keep out unwanted traffic and set up decoy targets on their networks to distract hackers who do get in. They have also scoured the internet for hints about what cybercriminals might be up to next to better protect themselves and their clients.
Of all the fictional virtual assistants we know from pop culture, few stand up to the original and perhaps most famous: the HAL 9000 from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
We should probably be thankful for that. After all, Alexa may shut your lights off, but she won’t turn against you and wreak havoc on your life. Or will she?
Imagine a house where the walls change colour depending on your mood, or your tablecloth changes shape when you’re having a dinner party. A house where every item, from your cushions to your lampshades, interact with you. This might sound like something out of Harry Potter, but such magic interior design could become a real part of our lives in the near future.
When you are asked to create a password – either for a new online account or resetting login information for an existing account – you’re likely to choose a password you know you can remember. Many people use extremely basic passwords, or a more obscure one they reuse across many sites. Our research has found that others – even ones who use different passwords for each site – have a method of devising them, for instance basing them all on a familiar phrase and making site-specific tweaks.
Alita: Battle Angel is an interesting and wild ride, jam-packed full of concepts around cybernetics, dystopian futures and cyberpunk themes.
The film – in cinemas from today – revolves around Alita (Rosa Salazar), a female cyborg (with original human brain) that is recovered by cybernetic doctor Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) and brought into the world of the future (the film is set in 2563).
It has become possible to 3D print with quite a range of different materials, including the likes of wood and silver. Most machines are restricted to synthetics, however, such as plastics, rubbery polymers and nylons. Machines usually only print one material at a time, or swap between a palette of two or three materials
When the ten year challenge began doing the rounds on social media, people rushed to post profile pictures of themselves from 2009, side by side with one from 2019, to highlight how much they had changed (or not) in the meantime. It is estimated that more than 5.2m social media users participated in this challenge.
Every day, often multiple times a day, you are invited to click on links sent to you by brands, politicians, friends and strangers. You download apps on your devices. Maybe you use QR codes.
Most of these activities are secure because they come from sources that can be trusted. But sometimes criminals impersonate trustworthy sources to get you to click on a link (or download an app) that contains malware.