Clare Armstrong, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): Australia will seek to harness the benefits of artificial intelligence without losing control of it by tackling challenges such as data centres, copyright, and jobs through a new national framework. Buoyed, no doubt, by the… success of the...

SpaceX’s two-trillion dollar (US) share-market valuation astonished market analysts, investors, and probably a great many other people, alike. Roger Montgomery, an Australian financial adviser, sets out in simple terms how the remarkable figure was calculated. My head is still spinning.

Rose Horowitch, writing for The Atlantic (gift link): Reading has come to seem extraneous even to some of the best-educated members of society. Margaret Rennix, Harvard’s assistant director for humanities and social-sciences support, told me she’d spoken with a student who was struggling to read a book written in...

If you’ve had enough of Wordle, here’s something new to try. You’re given a jumbled-up selection of letters, and have thirty-seconds to figure out the word. The game starts out with a couple of four-letter words, but the they get longer as you progress. There’s no need to tell anyone how you fared….

The resurgence of personal, independent, and non-commercial websites has been with us for several years, propelled in part by the IndieWeb/SmallWeb communities, and a heap of discontent — to say the least — with the present, excessively commercial, nature of the web. And this revival couldn’t be more timely. When...

Find out where you sit on the AI compass, which is a little similar to the vote compass. There are thirty AI classifications including sceptic, Luddite, conscientious objector, doomsday prepper, founder, and prophet. Each has a patron saint. Mine is Amanda Askell, though I’m not entirely sure I agree with my...

Individuals, educational institutions, and other organisations have to make payment in some form or other to access the work of writers, musicians, artists, and other creatives. It seems like a naive question, but why should it be any different for the tech companies who are presently helping themselves to whatever...

Perhaps we see something of the future when we look to the past. Chloe VS History, a YouTube channel, presents significant chapters of our history, hosted by a buoyant young woman named Chloe, a would-be time traveller, and seen through the lens of what is presumably a smartphone. While it’s moot point, the...

CJ Chilvers: Before influencers, there were bloggers. Before bloggers, there were TV stars, rock stars, and movie stars. Call them whatever you want, but individuals have always been the drivers of engagement and trust. This is a point Alex Cowen reiterated in a recent talk given in the UK. It seems to me you don’t...

Fred Kozlowski: My favorite figure in the post-Roman period is Theoderic — ruling 493 to 526, twenty years after the “fall” of Rome. He took over the structure of the Roman Empire and ruled it as a functionally emperor-like figure. He was a Goth and an Arian Christian, or in other words, a barbarian and a heretic. I...

George Musser, writing for Nautilus, ponders the nature of coincidence, particularly the more “out there” instances. Read about his repeated encounters with another backpacker, as he travelled — solo — in Africa some years ago. I could probably write at length on this topic. For instance… A few years ago, someone...

The first trailer for the Taika Waititi directed adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, Klara and the Sun has landed. I’m not one to complain about differences between the book and its movie counterpart — mainly because adapting a novel for the big screen is far from straightforward — but this two minute glimpse...