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Even if TikTok and other apps are collecting your data, what are the actual consequences

Ausma Bernot, Griffith University By now, most of us are aware social media companies collect vast amounts of our information. By doing this, they can target us with ads and monetise our attention. The latest chapter in the data-privacy debate concerns one of the world’s most popular apps among young people – TikTok. Yet anecdotally...Continue reading

Publishers vs the Internet Archive: why the world’s biggest online library is in court over digital book lending

Joanne Gray, University of Sydney and Cheryl Foong, Curtin University Earlier this month, the Internet Archive asked a US court to end a lawsuit filed against it by four large book publishers. The Internet Archive is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1996 that lends digital copies of books, music, movies and other digitised content to...Continue reading

Interesting Internet Finds

Steve Costello While going through more than 300 RSS feeds, I often run across things that might be interesting to other user group members. The following are some items I found during August 2021. Internet Problems? Here’s How To Tell If It’s Your ISP’s Fault https://www.howtogeek.com/740382/internet-problems-heres-how-to-tell-if-its-your-isps-fault/ It is a matter of when not if you...Continue reading

So this is how it feels when the robots come for your job: what GitHub’s Copilot ‘AI assistant’ means for coders

Ben Swift, Australian National University I love writing code to make things: apps, websites, charts, even music. It’s a skill I’ve worked hard at for more than 20 years. So I must confess last week’s news about the release of a new “AI assistant” coding helper called GitHub Copilot gave me complicated feelings. Copilot, which...Continue reading

It’s 2022. Why do we still not have waterproof phones

Ritesh Chugh, CQUniversity Australia While manufacturers have successfully increased the water-repelling nature of smartphones, they are still far from “waterproof”. A water-resistant product can usually resist water penetration to some extent, but a waterproof product is (meant to be) totally impervious to water. Last week, Samsung Australia was fined A$14 million by the Australian Federal...Continue reading

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