Beyond Infinity

Spotify has complained to the European Commission that Apple's AppStore rules "purposely limit choice and stifle innovation" and asked the regulator to take action to guarantee fair competition. Apple has countered that "Spotify's aim is to make more money off others' work" and that it under-pays artists.

The Disinformation and 'Fake News' Final Report has been published on parliament.uk. It is scathing of social media platforms, especially Facebook's role in illegally influencing democratic elections and referenda in Britain, going back to 2014. The Commons Select Committee calls for tough modern regulations and far more law enforcement oversight of social media companies, with heavy penalties for breaches.

To highlight potential advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence, a website called thispersondoesnotexist.com displays believable images of AI generated people who don't exist. Meanwhile, OpenAI's GPT2 "deep fakes for text" can produce believable stories with no connection to reality or truth, revealing AI's mastery and comprehension of language. And 'Summit', the world's most powerful super computer, is using machine learning to help with long-term weather forecasting and earlier warnings of storms and floods.

A ripping yarn about the hugely successful New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, by Alan Stern, principal investigator and astrobiologist David Grinspoon. After 25 years of painstaking work, scientists involved were astounded to find that the icy world has been geologically active throughout its four billion year history. No wonder they say that Pluto is the new Mars!

Russia wants a 'kill switch' on its internet connection to the outside world to protect it from cyber attack, while Australian political parties have been targeted in a sophisticated hack into parliamentary servers by a so-called state actor.

A study by the Lunar and Planetary Lab at the University of Arizona suggests that Mars could still be geologically alive. Researchers think a suspected lake beneath the south pole could only be kept liquid by a hot magma chamber. Internal heating raises the chance of finding underground life.

A study of 14 and 15 year old teenagers by the UK's venerable Royal Society finds no link between violent video games and acts of violence in the real world.

Simon gives the low down on his recent activism, including the removal of Capilano's Allowrie branded honey from supermarket shelves. He goes through several different retail honey brands and offers his thoughts and concerns. He has a campaign to crowd fund German lab tests to determine exactly what retail honeys contain, explaining the tests would look for neonicitinoids, antibiotics, fungicides and glyphosate. Simon also gives us a state by state run down of the health of the bee industry in Australia.

After a good showing as an independent candidate in the 2018 Victorian state election for the seat of Nepean, Simon now intends to run for the seat of Flinders in the upcoming federal election to be held in May. He gives his thoughts on the fate of the incumbent, health minister Greg Hunt.

Verily, part of Alphabet, is creating algorithms which use machine learning to create completely new medical insight, without human direction. One use is to analyse eye scans to make accurate predictions about a person's risk of heart attack.

Recent studies using advanced brain scanning techniques are revealing new details of how LSD effects different parts of the brain. These insights could be important in the development of new medicines.

Big companies like Samsung and KFC are curtailing their use of single use plastic and moving towards recyclable and biodegradable packaging materials. Hawaii and Bali are moving to get in on the act too by banning plastics for food and water in an effort to clean up their environment.

Coinciding with Safer Internet Day which aims to create a better internet for young people, Google releases a new Chrome feature that warns about compromised logins.

The Amazon CEO and world's richest man faces personal embarrassment over leaked sexting with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez. But the matter has widened into a massive political scandal, with accusations the Saudis and Trump are involved.

Cyber security experts say the world's democracies should fear the development of artificial intelligence as a means to automate control in authoritarian states.

2844 people were surveyed after giving up Facebook for a month. Many reported increased personal happiness, less extreme political views and more time spent disconnected from the internet. A large number reportedly stayed off social media after the survey was over.

The Swiss Blue Brain Project aims to create biologically detailed digital reconstructions and simulations of rat, and ultimately human brains. Aided by super computers, the project provides a radically new approach to understanding the multilevel structure and function of the brain.

Efforts intensify to revive the Opportunity rover, silent on Mars since June 2018; the InSight lander deploys instruments to study the Martian interior at Elysium Planitia and New Horizons completes its successful flyby of Ultima Thule, the most distant object ever visited.

Are elections downunder vulnerable to manipulation like the 2016 US election? Are the 9 million Instagram users sitting ducks for an all-out meme assault?

Malicious software can cause enormous physical damage to older, insecure infrastructure. It can even black out the internet for entire countries.