“FAKE NEWS” has been shouted louder than almost anything else over the last few years. Coming to the forefront with the wild accusations of Donald Trump, fake news has stayed an issue in the Covid-19 pandemic, continuing to support dangerous behaviour. Current efforts to mitigate the spread of misinformation rely on readers fact checking articles, […]
Phones are great fun until you live near the Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex and its smouldering lake of “toxic sludge”. Rare-earth metals are the key ingredient in all the devices which connect us, but they come at a cost. Extraction and refinement processes often require a fantastic amount of energy and vast vats […]
In some rare but welcome positive news, the new rover Perseverance (a.k.a. Percy) safely landed on Mars on February 18 at 20:55 UTC. The rover is equipped with seven cameras uniquely tasked with filming its entry, descent and landing, which allowed NASA to collect over 30 gigabytes of information and more than 23,000 images. If […]
You thought a Biden presidency would mean an end to America’s slow descent into a corporate dystopia? That’s adorable. In his January State of the State Address, governor of Nevada Steve Sisolak proposed a bill that would allow for the creation of ‘Innovation Zones’, in which firms would be able to exert powers comparable to […]
Tesla made a profit for the first time in its chequered twelve-year history. This, by itself, is not surprising. Tech companies will often operate at a loss for years, subsisting off of vulture capital funding until breaking even. What is different about Tesla’s news is that this represents a shift in how the public perceives […]
The Australian government is taking on Google. At least, that is how most British outlets have been covering the tech giant’s opposition of the recent controversial legislation, which would see companies like Google and Facebook negotiating deals with news media companies before they can use their content. If negotiation grew stale, then a government-approved independent […]
YouTube-DL is a piece of free, open-source software which you can use to download videos from the site. This was unpopular with the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), which filed a successful takedown notice with GitHub, where the code is stored. They represent the people who create, record, mix and distribute 85 per cent […]
Dating in the midst of a pandemic is difficult. No clubs and bars, jostling bodies and blacking out on the pavement. So, with cuffing season upon us once again, people are turning to online dating services to find that special match. But with the world so unfamiliar, the rules of engagement have changed. In these […]