Sorry Xiaomi: 4K smartphones are still utterly pointless
It’s tough being a smartphone manufacturer. With so little to differentiate one shiny black rectangle from one another (“look: this one has slightly smaller bezels!”), it must be tempting to see...
AWS comes to NZ – is it really good news?
Maybe it was Covid-fatigue or that strange emotion Kiwis seem to get when Big Tech deigns to notice us - but the announcement last week that Amazon Web Services was going...
Why the tech industry could do more to help close the gender gap
In 1843, mathematician and writer Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm. It can only be assumed she would have expected all women to, one day, be...
Here’s why “Live Text” is Apple’s best feature from WWDC 2021
Up until now Apple hasn’t been quite as adept at dealing with text in images as Google or Samsung. I open my Google Photos app when I want to find, say,...
Is Twitch streaming a dream career? Not for me
I should start this off with a disclaimer: I don’t routinely watch Twitch, in the same way that I don’t spend that much time on YouTube. I was born at the...
NZ’s mobile data is the third most expensive in the world (sort of)
New Zealand's mobile data is the third most expensive in the world. This is according to data from a Tefficient study that analysed mobile data usage and costs from 44 developed...
Now Meta wants to teach our news organisations to “develop better business models”
After a decade of Facebook and Google hammering news organisations globally by effectively taking over the mobile advertising space while using its news content on its platform for little recompense, the...
Buying a car? Go electric or pay for someone else to
No, Waka Kotahi’s “clean car discount” doesn’t reward tidiness, but it is a way to get more people into electric vehicles and support the government’s aim to be carbon neutral by...
We spent a day looking for Covid and Vaccine disinformation on Facebook: Here’s what...
Like most of us who believe in science rather than crackpot conspiracy theories, I'd unfollowed the few Facebook friends who - out of the blue - started posting anti-vaccination rants.
But here...
Facial recognition ad tech flunks the creepiness test, but someone will make it work
Billboards are a pretty inefficient way of advertising to people, if you think about it.
You plaster pictures of your product on a big poster by the side of the road and...