In the lead up to the government's Jobs and Skills Summit next month, CSIRO chief executive Dr Larry Marshall reckons giving kids more STEM skills "should be a national mission". He told Innovation Australia that "we've got to grow the next generation to have those STEM skills, otherwise they won't be able to do the things we need them to do to invent a better future". That's a sobering thought. Australia has always had "brain drain", without our best and brightest leaving for the USA or UK for bigger opportunities that simply don't exist here, but the situation is getting so bad that we're not even going to have a brain to drain unless something major is done to train them, let alone keep them here.
JD Power has published the results of its annual Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study and unfortunately, public charging still sucks. "One out of every five respondents ended up not charging their vehicle after locating a public charger. And of those who didn't charge, 72 percent indicated that it was due to the station malfunctioning or being out of service". I know this is a US-based survey but I can tell you the situation is just as bad in Australia, with the exact same problems. As much as I loathe Elon Musk and have a love/hate relationship with my mid-life crisis Model 3, it's honestly the Supercharger network's size and reliability keeping me as a Tesla owner.
Mozilla has run their privacy focused eyes across the growing market of reproductive health apps and found the majority of them "did not provide clear guidelines on what data could be shared with law enforcement" and one of them "did not even have a privacy policy". Along with no clear info on how, who and when they share data, Mozilla found that the 10 apps they looked at allow weak passwords to secure data, claim to use AI but don't explain how it works and collect way too much information than is necessary to do their job (i.e: asking about "work experience, education, hobbies, and interests"). It's sad to see such carelessness from these apps considering the very sensitive data they handle. A total lack of respect for their users.
Dr. Ian Cutress riffs on the Right to Salvage in the latest issue of his newsletter, blasting Apple for the DRM on components in their products. "If a repairer has a device that is dead but has a working screen, and another device that just has a broken screen, the screen can't be transplanted from the dead device into the repairable device. The repairer has to buy a new screen from Apple, and it has to be reprogrammed or remotely activated". Apple might talk a big game about their environmental policies, but shit like this makes them look like total hypocrites. I can't think of a better way to be more sustainable than to re-use working bits from other phones instead of the byzantine process Apple has now.
📻 O Yeah - End Of Fashion
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