Science & Technology

✒ The history of the creation of double-entry booking, and how it evolved towards spreadsheets in computers, from VisiCalc, to Lotus 1-2-3, and then in due course, Microsoft Excel. Also an illustration of how things can go wrong when using this revolutionary digital tool. This happens when Excel’s own functionality is combined with the mistaken … Read More

✒ Productivity-enhancing tools (aka surveillance software) brought in by tech companies to monitor workers (be it blue- or white-collar) are getting excessive, intrusive and borderline unethical. Some track if an employee stays in the toilet for too long, and quantify the odour of each toilet cell. Literally disgusting.

✒ As the creator of the source code behind the world wide web and its first browser, and someone who released it free into the public domain, Sir Tim Berners-Lee does not seem to be merely chasing this NFT craze. This could be an endorsement of the blockchain technology and the philosophy of decentralised network … Read More

✒ No civilisation without intoxication? Archaeologists have begun to suggest that alcohol wasn’t merely a byproduct of the invention of agriculture but actually a motivation for it. The first farmers, on this view, were driven by a desire not for bread but for beer. The argument is that since alcohol is mind-bogglingly dangerous, both physiologically … Read More

✒ With advanced photo editing software, the “pics, or it didn’t happen” mantra on social media had become obsolete. Nowadays, synthetic or manipulated media can look so real that not even video clips can be easily trusted. Head over to Twitter and watch some of the deepfake videos of the Tom Cruise replica created by … Read More

✒ Conducting scientific research the Inception way.

✒ The big idea is that when molluscs encounter heavy metal, pesticides or other pollutants, they close their shells. The water supply system in Warsaw makes use of eight clams which are hooked up to computers for monitoring the city’s drinking water. The scientists do so by attaching a coil and a magnet to their … Read More

✒ Imagine “an avocado armchair” and “an illustration of a baby daikon radish in a tutu walking a dog”. What comes to mind? Let’s see how artificial intelligence is able to visualise it for you. This new text-to-image generator DALL·E — a smaller version of GPT-3 that has also been trained on text-image pairs taken … Read More

✒ The beginning of the movement for a sustainable future of Internet of Things. Meet “Engage” ― a battery-free Game Boy lookalike that can play all the classics from Super Mario to Tetris to Space Invaders. The frequency of your button mashing determines how much energy you have. The solar panels also gather and flow … Read More

✒ Takeaway: a small screen puts obstacles in the way of our reading comprehension. Content on a bigger screen demands less cognitive effort than the same information on a smaller screen. The act of scrolling compromises your ability to absorb text, and the smaller the screen, the more you have to scroll to finish it.

✒ Users are not just sharing data with the site they are on, but also with analytics service providers that may be watching over their shoulders, replaying their digital body language like a movie. The incognito mode may not work the way you think it does, after all.

✒ The rollout of its “Just Walk Out” technology to Whole Foods’ over 500 locations would prove Amazon can scale technology for bigger stores. If the pandemic stretches on, Amazon’s offer of contactless payment solution could attract retailer interest.

✒ A scientific explanation of Trump’s distinctive language.

✒ How to set your password.

✒ Studies found a fifth of genetic data in papers was affected by Excel errors.

✒ Keeping up with technology.

✒ What do you think?

✒ China’s digital currency is taking shape. One government district will begin paying civil servants half of their transport subsidy via the new currency.

✒ Despite all the concerns, technology can be extremely useful tools if used wisely.