Digital Planet

By BBC World ServiceTechnology

Digital Planet episodes

January 24, 2023 What happens when the Bitcoin miners leave?
In the summer of 2021 Kazakhstan was the second biggest producer of Bitcoin in the world, but what has happened since the crypto currency crash? Tech reporter Peter Guest is on the show to tell us about his trip to the country and how mega warehouses that once contained the computing power to make crypto millions now stand empty in the country’s rust belt. He tells us the story of the rise and fall of the bitcoin miners in this remote part of the world.
Wearable tech, AI and potential new treatments for rare diseases
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and Friedreich's ataxia (FA) are very rare genetic diseases neither of which has a cure. Now scientists and engineers in the UK have used motion sensors to capture the way patients move. They processed this data through new AI medical technology that they say can predict disease progression and significantly increase the efficiency of clinical trials in these conditions. Treatments are desperately needed as both diseases can lead to paralysis and currently there are often not enough patients for clinical trials. Dr. Valeria Ricotti, honorary clinical lecturer at the UCL GOS ICH and lead author of the studies is on the show to tell us more.
Sony’s new game controller for disabled gamers
Our gaming correspondent Chris Berrow reports on Sony’s new “Project Leonardo”, its PlayStation 5 controller for disabled gamers. The company teamed up with accessibility experts and charities to design the modular controller which can be adapted in many different ways to allow as many people as possible to use it. Launched at CES it still doesn’t have a release date or price though.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.
Studio Manager: Duncan Hannant
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
(Image: Huge transformers and high tension cable to power bitcoin mines in Kazakhstan. Credit: peterguest.co)
41 min
January 17, 2023 Self-driving cars could be a massive source of global carbon emissions
MIT researchers have concluded in a new study that computers that power self-driving cars could generate as many greenhouse gas emissions as the total of the world’s data centres do today. We’ve reported many times on the huge carbon footprint of data centres as well as the massive amounts of electricity needed to run them. They currently account for 0.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions – a similar level to Argentina - according to the International Energy Agency. The models created show that 1 billion autonomous vehicles, driving for one hour a day each, need a computer consuming 840 watts. These would consume enough energy to generate similar emissions as data centres currently do. Lead author Soumya Sudhakar joins us on the show to explain how hardware efficiency will need to advance rapidly to avoid these high levels of emissions.
Brazil’s antisocial media
Following last week’s events in Brasilia we look at the role social media played in the violence by far-right protestors. Angelica Mari, and activist and researcher Bruna Martins dos Santos who specialises in the Politics of Digitalization discuss if President Lula’s new government can reclaim the social media space and curb the spread of far right disinformation.
Getting South Africa connected – a new initiative
Last week we heard from one of our listeners about how he tries to stay online during power shortages in Ukraine following Russian air strikes. Another country that is significantly affected by energy shortages is South Africa. In addition, getting a reliable internet connection is also very hard. The government has announced that it’s going to spend over 160 million dollars over the next three years creating 33,000 community Wi-Fi hotspots as well as investing in improving IT skills across the population. Our reporter Rani Singh has been looking at how this might be achieved…
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Angelica Mari.
Studio Manager: Michael Millham
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
(Image: Stylised car icon. Credit: Smartboy10/Getty Images)
50 min
January 10, 2023 Getting online in Ukraine’s blackouts
One of our listeners in Ukraine contacted us to tell us how he stays online during power outages following bombing in Ukraine. Volodymyr Bielikov is on the show to explain the issues he’s regularly facing with internet connectivity.
AI avatars undressed and virtual employees
Ghislaine Boddington looks at the alarming story of how a young female reporter created avatars in the AI avatar app Lensa and was shocked to find that out of 100 avatars, 16 were topless and another 14 wore very skimpy clothing and were in provocative poses. Why has this app created astronauts and warrior avatars for her male colleagues and is undressing her avatars? Ghislaine also looks at the rising employment of virtual staff. The tech company Baidu says the number of virtual people projects its working on has doubled in the last year with prices of a virtual employee starting at just under $3k. Why are they becoming popular and what jobs are they being used for? Evelyn Cheng, senior correspondent from cnbc.com in Beijing, has been investigating the story.
An AI age verification system
Age verification has long been a topic of discussion, particularly in the online space with regards to young people who often don’t have verifiable ID such as a driver’s licence. Now a promising AI powered age estimation system, called YOTI, which analyses a person’s face is gaining popularity. Shiroma Silva has been testing it out on her colleagues – including Gareth – and reports how some major platforms are using it to keep younger users safe online.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.
Studio Manager: Tim Heffer
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
(Image: Power outage, blackout in Ukraine. Credit: Anton Petrus/Getty Images)
42 min
January 03, 2023 Agritech Special Edition
This week and to start the New Year we take a look at the use of technology in agriculture around the world. Agriculture as an industry is keen to clean up its act on emissions, so what could be better than an electric tractor. But will it be able to manage all that farming throws at it? Gareth puts the questions to Praveen Penmetsa who is co-founder and CEO of Monarch Tractors which recently launched a ‘Smart Tractor’.
It’s no use having a tractor smart or not, if your crop has been devastated by insects. Pests destroy up to 40 percent of global crops and cost 220 billion US dollars of losses worldwide annually, according to The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the FAO. Matej Stefancic the Chief Executive Officer of Trapview a Slovenian company, has developed intelligent insect traps. He explains to Gareth how they monitor bugs in the field, in an effort to cut the need for indiscriminate use of insecticides.
And once you’ve grown your crop you need to harvest it, and in the case of soft fruit it needs careful picking and packing for the market. With a shortage of skilled labour around the world a robot picker capable of matching a human would be ideal. Well, one developed in Britain is currently doing just that on a farm in Portugal, and fruit picked by it could be on sale in supermarkets very soon. The academic founder and Chief Science Officer of Fieldwork Robotics Martin Stoelen is the brains behind this robot and he explains to Gareth the challenges involved in developing it.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson.
Studio Manager: Steve Greenwood
Producers: Ania Lichtarowicz and Alun Beach
(Image: Smart Farming graphic
Credit: Jackie Niam/Getty Images)
43 min
December 27, 2022 The Tech of 2022
We’re looking back on the technology year that was 2022. We go firstly to Ukraine to look at the booming tech industry before the war and discuss how that is doing now. Also how the cybersecurity declaration signed in Africa is already leading to the beginnings of a legal and regulatory framework across the continent. There was trouble for visually impaired patients using an implant to improve their sight – with some of the hardware becoming obsolete and finally the amazing popularity of flight tracking apps.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington, Angelica Mari and Bill Thompson.
Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald
Producers: Ania Lichtarowicz and Alun Beach
(Image: Getty Images)
42 min
December 20, 2022 Eight million SIMs blocked in Ghana
More than 8 million unregistered SIM cards have been blocked in Ghana. The Ministry of Communications and Digitisation set a final deadline for mobile phone users to link their SIM card to their identification cards and now those who have not been able to register cannot use their SIMS. Opposition parties and civil liberties groups are protesting as the SIM needs to be registered with the biometric Ghana Card. The scheme has been full of delays, but it looks as though the government is standing firm this time. BBC reporter in Accra Thomas Naadi is on the show.
Heart attack on a chip
Researchers at the University of Southern California have developed a “heart attack on a chip” to ultimately test new drugs and even personalise medicines. Prof Megan McCain and Dr Megan Rexius-Hall speak to Gareth about how the chip can monitor oxygen imbalances that happen in the heart during an attack. The heart muscle doesn’t regenerate as well as other tissue in the body, meaning patients are often tired and do not recover to the previous levels of fitness. The chip will allow researchers to watch a ‘heart attack’ as it happens, which isn’t possible in animals, and see how damage is being done. They hope to be able to monitor and see how the cells on the chip respond to different concentrations of oxygen as this too cannot be studied in animals or humans.
The end of hard copy games?
Nowadays, video games are getting so big, that you can't even fit them onto a CD anymore! In fact physical copies of the latest Call of Duty Game - Modern Warfare II, were essentially links to download the game, which is a massive 130 gigabytes! Our gaming reporter Chris Berrow has been finding out if it really is the end of physical games.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson.
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
Studio Manager: Michael Millham
(Photo: SIM cards. Credit: Getty Images)
44 min
December 13, 2022 Shopee in Thailand – is it safe?
One of the biggest platforms in South East Asia, which is as popular as Google, YouTube and Facebook, has stopped bank transfer payments. Users have reported money missing from their accounts – the transactions should have been secured with a one-time passcode but according to social media they we processed without permission. Shopee have now stopped customers from linking their accounts to the platform directly. The company also denies they were hacked and that they had taken the decision to stop bank transfers last month. It also says that the customers were probably victims of phishing scams. The BBC’s Tossapol Chaisamritpol has been covering the story and joins us from the Bangkok Bureau.
Facial recognition plans dropped in Sao Paulo – for now
Plans for the controversial facial recognition surveillance system in Sao Paulo have been scrapped – at least for now. Twenty thousand cameras, half of which had facial recognition capabilities, were to be erected across the city – making it one of the largest facial recognition rollouts in the world. Much opposition from civil liberty groups – who claim that the system would allow the city authorities to track people’s activities on social media with the data they gathered through the cameras – has forced this announcement. However, many people fear this may just be a postponement. Angelica Mari explains more.
3D printed violins
Imagine printing a violin in library for just $7US? That’s what Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Brown, the Director of Montreal-based AVIVA Young Artists Program, has managed to do. The instrument at this cost is suitable for a young child to play, and full size instruments can be 3D printed but with industrial printers, not ones we have at home or in local libraries. Dr. Brown is on the show to explain the technology behind the printing and why she is determined to make learning musical instruments much more accessible.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Angelica Mari.
Studio Manager: Bob Nettles
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
(Image: Getty Images)
46 min
December 06, 2022 Predicting cyclones with mobiles
Due to climate change cyclones are increasing in frequency and intensity. Data available to study these weather phenomena though is quite scare, so a new project at Imperial College in London, hopes to harness the computing power of people’s mobile phones to create a virtual supercomputer and create a massive public database of simulated cyclone models to help predict future events. Professor Ralf Toumi, Co-Director of Grantham Institute, is leading the project and is on the show. Listeners are being invited to take part by downloading the Dreamlab app to help process the billions of calculations needed for the project.
What is the Fediverse?
If you’re on twitter then you’ve probably heard of Mastodon, you may even have moved onto it. It’s the largest service on what is known as the Fediverse. We speak with Cindy Cohn, the Executive Director of the Electronic Freedom Foundation to find out what the Fediverse is and why we should be part of its growth. It’s not a single social media platform like Twitter or Facebook. It’s an growing network of entwinned social media sites and services that you can interact with even if you don’t have an account for each one. The big difference here is that the Fediverse isn’t owned by big tech giants or multibillionaires – Cindy Cohn argues “You don’t fix a dictatorship by getting a better dictator. You have to get rid of the dictator. This moment offers the promise of moving to a better and more democratic social media landscape.”
An app that helps you buy medicines if you’re blind
The tiny print on medicine packet instructions is hard to read for many people, and for those people with low literacy skills, learning disabilities like dyslexia, impaired sight or who are blind it can be impossible. Now the Seeing AI app – a joint project between Haleon and Microsoft- has been upgraded to be able to read out loud the detailed information on more than 1500 products across the UK and US. Our reporter Fern Lulham has been testing out the new functionality of the app.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson.
Studio Manager: Tim Heffer
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
(Image: Getty Images)
42 min
December 01, 2022 Robots that can assemble almost anything.
Researchers at MIT have made significant steps toward creating robots that could practically and economically assemble nearly anything, including things much larger than themselves, from vehicles to buildings to larger robots. Many objects could be built from tiny identical lightweight pieces e.g. an airplane wing or a racing car, and this latest work is a big step towards a fully autonomous self-replicating robot assembly system. Two of the authors are Professor Neil Gershenfeld, Director of the Centre for Bits and Atoms, and doctoral student Amira Abdel-Rahman, they explain how these robots self-assemble.
War of words on Wikipedia.
We’ve reported on the disinformation on the War in Ukraine on Twitter and Facebook, now reporter Shiroma Silva looks at what’s happening on Wikipedia. From paid editing, harassment of editors and using multiple online identities to push certain messages, Wikipedia entries are being pushed towards a pro-Kremlin stance. It’s not the first time that these coordinated activities have happened. Last year the Wikimedia Foundation banned seven editors linked to a mainland China group for editing articles with the objective of promoting “the aims of China”, potentially threatening the very foundations of Wikipedia.
Can AI predict suicide risk?
Predicting if someone is at risk of suicide is incredibly difficult and increasingly researchers are attempting to train AI to be able to do this. However with data bias and complex medical histories of patients the AI being developed are not yet reliable. Even if accurate machine learning can be created, will there be services in place for those patients identified as being at high risk of suicide? Much needs to be considered before this type of diagnosis is used in patient care. Joseph Early from Southampton University and Karen Kusuma from the Black Dog Institute at the University of South Wales in Australia explain more.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.
Image: MIT - Swarm Robot
Courtesy of the researchers at MIT
Studio Manager: Bob Nettles
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
43 min
November 22, 2022 Twitter – what next?
What is happening with Twitter and what can we expect? Bill Thompson give us his assessment while Angelica Mari discusses the how the new direction of the platform
Pix payments two years on
PIX payments have revolutionised how people in Brazil use money – especially the 40 million of the population who are unbanked. We discuss with Fintech expert David Birch why Pix has been so successful and where does it go from here.
What’s new in WhatsApp
Angelica Mari brings us up to date with WhatsApp’s latest plans for one of its biggest markets. It aims to bring "everything that matters to business and consumers" into its app. WhatsApp is central to people's lives in places like India and Brazil, and the company want to monetise that by taking people of browsers and allowing them to complete transactions from start to finish on the app. Could this signal the end of some apps e.g. food delivery apps?
Can video games improve your memory?
Parents often worry about the harmful impacts of video games on their children, whether it's staying indoors too much, or the impact of the online world on their mental health. But a large new study in America indicates that there may also be benefits associated with the gaming – although the work does pose many more questions than it answers. Our gaming reporter Chris Berrow has been finding out more.
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Angelica Mari.
Image: Twitter logo displayed on a phone screen.
Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Studio Manager: Bob Nettles
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
37 min