Beyond Infinity

When you buy a smart phone in China, your face will be imaged and the biometric data kept by the government.

'AC 75' hydro foiling monohulls, capable of sailing at over 50 knots from wind power alone, will compete for the Auld Mug in Auckland. But there are concerns over crew safety, susceptibility to capsize and how they'll handle before getting up on to their foils.

Though Google search, thanks to its sheer size, offers the best search available on the Net, users must accept that it will store their IP addresses and user information. They must also accept tracking, tailored ads and suggestions to use Google products like Maps and YouTube. For most purposes, Duck Duck Go provides an acceptable search alternative, albeit without the tracking.

After concluding a national drone noise review, the Australian Federal Government has come under fire from Google-linked Wing, a delivery drone operator. The Feds want to hand responsibility for drone noise to the states, which may result in an uncertain and inconsistent regulatory environment.

A new music streaming service from TikTok's parent company Bytedance could challenge Spotify's market dominance. It aims to capitalise on the massive and growing popularity of TikTok to encourage sharing and virality among music lovers, with emphasis on video and interactivity.

Doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have used emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR) to place critically ill patients in suspended animation. EPR involves lowering body temperature to 10-15C, by replacing all the body's blood with ice cold saline, for up to 2 hours, thereby buying time for life-saving surgery.

Australian billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest are lead investors in a project to build an enormous solar power plant near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, plus a 4,500 km long interconnector to supply clean energy to SE Asia.

In an important opinion on privacy at borders, US District Court Judge Denise Casper ruled that device searches without probable cause are in violation of the 4th Amendment. She held that people have significant privacy interests in their digital data and that device searches require reasonable suspicion from border officials.

The Air Force has completed an upgrade to its Strategic Automated Command and Control System whereby its 1960s era 8-inch floppy disk system was replaced with a solid state digital storage solution. Yet America's ICBMs may wind up being less secure from hackers.

A new report from Australia's peak science and technology agency says artificial intelligence will be vital to the future of healthcare, natural resource management and the built environment. Data61's roadmap says more jobs will be created than lost, with digital technologies potentially worth AUD$315 billion to the local economy by 2030. By the same year, AI could be worth AUD$22.17 trillion to the global economy.