After the news last week that Bunnings and other large retailers are quietly using mass facial recognition in their stores, Electronic Frontiers Australia asked Bunnings for more info. From what EFA was told, they surmised (Bunnings would neither confirm nor deny) that Bunnings is taking a faceprint of everyone that enters their stores in order to match it with a list of people banned from their stores. This probably constitutes "sensitive information" under the Privacy Act, which has strict rules on what is valid consent for collecting such data that Bunnings and other retailers are not adhering to. Today EFA, Digital Rights Watch and the Australian Privacy Foundation have made an official complaint to the Australian Information Commissioner that will hopefully trigger an investigation.
Australian startup Silicon Quantum Computing reckons they've invented the world's first "quantum processor at the atomic scale to simulate the behaviour of a small organic molecule". This allows them to "simulate the precise location of atoms in the polyacetylene chain". Apparently this was a challenge set in 1959 by the famous theoretical physicist Richard Feynman and is a Big Deal in the physics world. Nature has published an article about their accomplishment. It's way over the top of my head so I'll nod and smile and congratulate these researchers on their hard work. The federal government found it exciting enough to publish their own press release and remind us that they're supporting quantum computing industry.
When semiconductors were new they were designed on paper, but now CPUs and other types of microchips are way too complex for that. Even a "basic" chip, like say the one inside your monitor that's responsible for accepting a HDMI signal from a computer, is more complicated than any sane human can design using a piece of paper. Electronic Design Automation is the technology responsible for making these convoluted chip designs with billions of transistors possible and Asianometry has a great article and video explaining the basics of how damn important EDA is to semiconductor manufacturing and therefore, to society at large.
📻 Heavy Business - Magic Dirt
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