Aussie schools say AI is in & phones are out

The NSW Government has banned all mobile phones from public schools. The new policy, effectively immediately now extends the original ban in primary schools to high schools as well. It'll be up to each school to figure out how to enforce the ban, the government kicking schools and teachers a nice little hospital-ball to catch there. Many schools around Australia already have similar bans in place with phones required to be stored in lockers at the beginning of the day or inside locked pouches. Meanwhile further north the QLD government has decided to stand on the beach with open arms to embrace the AI tsunami, announcing they plan on using an AI system called Cerego to generate classroom quizzes based off the QLD school curriculum. The pitch is that it will help teachers & students find gaps in their knowledge to focus their revision efforts. You know, just like a normal test and quiz does?

Vodafone & Intel to build new cell-tower chips

I think this is the first time in forever I've seen someone actively engaging Intel to develop a custom chipset architecture. It's not any of the usual suspects either, not Apple, not Samsung, not even Amazon or Microsoft. Nope, it's Vodafone who are investing like the clappers in a new open standard that will allow the mixing of technologies on mobile phone towers called "Open RAN". Their partnership with Intel will pave the way for hardware providers to better integrate with the standard and very likely make them a nice chunk of change in the process. The cellular market is dominated by the vendor lock-in style hardware of Ericsson, Nokia and Aussie banned Huwaei, migrating to the new Open RAN infrastructure would allow the likes of Vodafone and other telecommunication providers to pick and choose hardware from anyone. Naturally uptake has been slow due to the manufacturers not wanting to share, but a number of successful tests have been completed in real world scenarios and the first 4G calls taking place using Open RAN in Romania.

Unity CEO 'retires' amidst dev backlash

Now former Unity CEO, John Riccitiello, has retired effectively immediately according to a press release from the company. Sent out late in the afternoon on a US holiday it states he will stay on in an advisory role to help the company transition, with former Red Hat exec James M. Whitehurst stepping in as interim CEO. I can't help but think of this as if a page lifted directly from the Alan Joyce playbook. With the company on fire after introducing new "per-install" charges to devs that were sort of back-pedalled, Riccitiello is quietly ducking out the back door with a few extra dollars in his pocket. He did a similar thing whilst the CEO of EA, leaving after a disastrous launch of Sim City back in the day and pointing the blame elsewhere. Classic.

Building the world's fastest sailboat

Did you know that hydrofoils are limited to about 100km/h because of some fancy physics thing called cavitation? Well that's pretty much been the benchmark of fast wind-powered boats. In fact the fastest speed every recorded by a sailboat has stood since 2012 topping out at 121km/h. That's all about to change though with two teams racing to smash that record by at least another 50km/hr if not more! The Syroco & SP80 boats are a new generation of design with very different looks to one another, but both using a giant kite-like sail to propel them. The Syroco model is barely a boat in my opinion and more floats above the water's surface, meanwhile the SP80 looks like some bad ass shit straight out of Mass Effect that skims along the water's surface in a frictionless-like manner.