Update from ITPNZ
The ITP team is hard at work preparing for the finals for the Tahi Rua Toru Tech Digital Challenge, including arranging to fly over 100 finalist school students from around New Zealand to Wellington for the mini-expo and national championships on 5th December. We hope you'll join us!
Also this week: Father of the Internet in Wellington, and Weltec's IT project showcase.
Brislen on Tech
This week I thought I'd rejoin Facebook just so I could quit again in rage. Something really needs to be done to rein in a company that has combined the utter decimation of the media landscape with the total abdication of responsibility for the content it pumps into people's lives.
It's billions of users, clicking through and seeing hundreds of millions of ads, don't appear to be enough for the juggernaut. Instead of being happy to serve advertising to the masses, the company has decided it needs to also serve up news and other forms of content and, instead of being happy with that, it would also enable wholesale sharing of propaganda and fake news stories.
[PLUS: Google takes over direct ownership of a company that accesses health data. And toothbrushing IoT style.]
Can I interest you in a firewall for your toaster?
In September, the California state legislature enacted two identical bills regulating Internet-connected devices sold in California, aimed at developing minimum security standards for devices that make up the 'Internet of Things', or 'IoT'.
The bills are among the first regulatory measures to be implemented worldwide that are specifically aimed at hastening the industry's response to the threat of IoT-based cyber-attacks.
$40m top up for rural broadband
The Coalition Government has dipped into its $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) to invest $40 million in rural connectivity. The funding will be used to expand the Rural Broadband Initiative Phas…
Future of Work - update
With the latest labour market statistics showing that the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.9%, you might wonder why anyone with bother with a Future of Work Forum, but the Labour Government seems det…
Broadband Compare TUANZ Award winners are...
More than 200 professionals from New Zealand's ICT sector celebrated the industry's efforts at this year's Broadband Compare TUANZ Awards held late last week in Auckland.
Brislen on Tech
I listed the digital divide as the single biggest issue facing the new CTO, as something that needed to be addressed immediately.
That didn't work out so well but the issue remains high on the list…
Examining digital exclusion
The digital divide is often spoken about in terms of numbers - the 2020 Trust estimate that 100,000 school-aged children don't have internet access at home, Internet NZ estimate that 16,000 rural ho…
Fibre: Finish the Job
How much simpler, cost-efficient and effective would the services and support you deliver to New Zealand households be if you could assume fibre availability the way you assume roads, electricity and …
Stats NZ seeks public input in legislation refresh
Generation X was making its first baby steps into the world, and Generations Y and Z had not even been thought of, when the Statistics Act 1975 came into being. But for 40 years the country's data has…
