Skill Zone News issue 112
When angry citizens this month demanded to know why he had voted away browsing privacy for ISP customers, US House Representative, Jim Sensenbrenner, responded by saying "Nobody's got to use the internet". Strictly speaking, that is true. Equally, no-one has to use the telephone, gas, or electricity, the roads or railways, the health services or the insurance companies, the shops or the supermarkets. We could all live in caves, but we'd still have to pay taxes.
26th April 2017
Any publicity is good publicity
A few months ago, a TV reporter came under fire for saying "Alexa, get me a doll's house" and inadvertently activating Alexa boxes in viewers' homes. Someone at Burger King thought that was a great idea and tried a similar ploy with Google Home gadgets when it ran a fifteen second TV advert stateside.
Light fingers and credit cards
Your next credit card could have a black rectangle in the top right corner with the word "biometric" printed below it. Following successful trials in South Africa, Mastercard is introducing a credit card with a built-in fingerprint reader.
From the horse's mouth
Back in November 2016, I wrote about VoCo, described as Photoshop For Speech, which could synthesise anyones voice if it was given a twenty minute sample to learn the pronunciations and cadences used by that speaker. This week, a Canadian start-up named Lyrebird has announced a product which can clone a voice using just a one minute sample.
Art for art's sake
Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University have said that kids are turning away from spray-can graffiti, and turning instead to Instagram and YouTube as a way to make a mark with their art.