But even the next electoral cycle may be too soon for online voting. A report released this week, authored by Julienne Molineaux of the Auckland University of Technology, raises several questions about the feasibility of online voting.

Most damning is the section about security, in which Molineaux observes: "In short, most IT security experts believe secure online voting cannot be achieved. Reasons include: all complex computer systems have flaws in their code that can be taken advantage of; the internet was never designed with security at its core; and the requirements of a good voting system pull against each other."

She points out that Canada, Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom have all banned online voting at "national level elections" because the security risks are too high.

What about the benefits of online voting, chief of which is to improve the level of participation, especially among younger voters where there is currently a low turnout? Citing experiences overseas, Molineaux writes that online voting may not be the panacea to encouraging higher participation that we might have expected.

"Young people do not appear to prefer online voting over a paper ballot, when given the choice. The youngest voters (18-25) in Ontario and Norway are more likely to choose a paper ballot over an online voting option. Research in Switzerland shows that older voters are 'sticky' online voters - if they use this option once they use it in the next election, but this does not hold for young voters, who are more likely to abstain or choose a paper ballot the next election. Online voting does not appear to be the answer to young people's engagement."

Then there are the concerns about the "digital divide", which refers to those who can't access the internet for reasons that include location and economic circumstances, and who may be potentially shut out of e-voting. So that rather than extending participation, online voting might just entrench the status quo.

"Does online voting privilege the convenience of population groups who are already relatively privileged and whose interests are already well-represented?" Molineaux asks.

It looks like postal voting, which was adopted by all councils in 1989, is set to remain the default method for casting votes in local government elections for the foreseeable future. But as the postal service slowly contracts - the Postal Workers Union of Aotearoa says around 1500 post boxes have been removed in the past few years - how long can it be a viable method?

"Once considered a convenient method for casting a vote, concerns are now being raised about whether the postal system is fit for purpose," Molineaux writes.

The paper, available here, states that feedback is welcome. 

Currently I'm watching the #aabill twitter posts and it's a horrible, messy trainwreck. At best, it will be an astonishing breach of Australians' privacy and rights not to be monitored by their government. At worst it will be all that and will crash Australian tech companies' ability to innovate, destroy any chance Australian developers have of producing products that are trusted in the rest of the world and may force large operations like Amazon, Facebook and Google to retrench from the Australian market.

All told it's a pig's ear.

The AA Bill is actually the Assistance and Access Bill and it's designed to give Australian law enforcement (and others) access to secure communications around Australia. Forget asking nicely, under the AA Bill anyone offering encrypted message services will be required to decrypt those messages for agencies that ask nicely (and those who have a warrant).

If, for example, you were to send a message across Australia that was encrypted, as almost all messaging apps are, then the authorities can't tell whether you're saying "here's that photo you asked for" or "commence operations against our overlords, the uprising has begun" and so they're somewhat nervous about it.

But since none of the Australian members of parliament, senate, judiciary or any of their advisors (apparently) have ever used a computer or a phone or sent a message or bought a product online, they've decided the best way forward is to introduce a bill into the house requiring all providers of such services to provide a back-door through all this technology nonsense for the authorities to access that content.

This has not gone down well.

Amazon is unlikely to introduce such capability into its Amazon Web Services suite of products just for the Australian market. The same can be said for Google, or Apple with their various document sharing and messaging platforms. Facebook and WhatsApp are unlikely to be willing to produce an Aussie version of their apps either because while we're minute, the Aussie market isn't that big either.

But on top of that, anyone travelling through Australia or doing business with an Australian operation must consider whether the data they're carrying is secure in such a situation.

Take me, for instance. I have a range of clients, some of whom demand that I store and care for their intellectual property as if it were my first born. Actually, all of them do. They assume I'm not going to allow some random third party to access that information, and I'm required not to share it without express permission.

So what would I do at the Aussie border? Could I email an Australian with information that is confidential to my clients? How will I know whether or not my Australian-owned bank is sharing my data with the police and other authorities without waiting for a court order (oh, good news there for Westpac customers: you don't have to wonder as that's already happening in New Zealand).

And what of my telco? Will it be sharing my very location and who I meet with?

The bill allows for all of that and more.

So what of Australian software developers? Well, sadly they're probably stuffed as well. Nobody is going to buy Aussie Certified Software (Motto: it's fair dinkum and we'll know if you say otherwise because we can listen in on everything you do) or store their data in Australia or do business with Australian software companies that might have to install backdoors into their encryption capability but won't be able to tell you because that also is a crime under the new law. Yes, even telling your boss that you've put this in is a no-no, let alone telling anyone else.

All that aside, the very process by which the bill is being introduced is also totally bogus. No time for a normal process, the bill is being passed under urgency so there's no select committee review, no fine tweaking of the wording, no option for public consultation or feedback from the industry. There's not even time for the MPs and senators to read the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security's report into the bill which is less of a problem than you'd think because the committee has basically swallowed the whole thing and said it'll all be fixed later on, once it's introduced.

This is even stupid on all sides of the house because while the Opposition says the law is dumb, they're voting for it anyway. Erm… Have you thought this through?

If ever there was an example of politicians meddling in affairs about which they really do no understand, this is it. Building backdoors in to encryption just means you've introduced more ways for the bad guys to access the data, and while I don't care about my cat videos, I do care very much about my bank records, about my credit card information, about my health records and about my client's intellectual property.

And if this madness can happen in Australia, we should be very worried about calls for increased capability in New Zealand because that won't be far away.

TechRadar - Australian anti-encryption laws will be in place by Christmas

The Guardian - Why we are governed by idiots and you should be worried

ZDNet - Hasty PJCIS examination of encryption Bill produces rushed and contemptuous report

ZDNet - Australian encryption Bill raises bar for outrageous legislation: Comms Alliance

Kudelka Cartoon - Enigmatic

Buzzfeed - Labor: This Encryption Law Is Flawed. Also Labor: We Voted For It!

TenDaily - If encryption laws go through, Australia may lose Apple

Huawei CFO arrested

Speaking of poking the bear, the US has demanded Canadian authorities detain the CFO of Chinese equipment maker Huawei as she travelled across Canada in transit.

Canada has complied and Meng Wanzhou has been arrest. Meng is also deputy chairman of Huawei's board and just happens to be the daughter of the company's founder, Ren Zhengfei, so that's going to go well for all concerned.

Huawei has been the political football in the ongoing contest between Washington and Beijing over who gets to spy on the world around them. Washington suggests it should only be them, and is encouraging/requiring its allies to circle the wagons and refuse to allow Chinese companies, of which Huawei is the lead, to build critical telecommunications infrastructure in their countries.

Meng is being held because apparently Huawei violated international sanctions over Iran. Details are sketchy because that's how we do things these days, but Meng faces being extradited to the US to face charges in the coming days.

This isn't Meng's first brush with the law over Iranian sanctions, however. In 2013, Meng was on the board of Skycom Tech when it offered to sell Hewlett-Packard equipment to Iran. The deal didn't go through but the US will claim she has form in this area.

Meanwhile in the UK, former telco monopoly BT is in the process of pulling all Huawei kit from its networks. Apparently the only reason it has any is because it bought network operator EE and it had installed Huawei gear in its 3G and 4G networks, and the decision to remove it has nothing to do with the political climate no no.

Is this the start of the US and its allies providing the public with evidence of Huawei's nefarious deeds or is it just more posturing? It's hard to tell from here but I suspect this is a story that is far from over.

NZ Herald - Auckland academic sees serious fallout as Huawei CFO arrested at US request

Stuff - Huawei's woes deepen with arrest of CFO and British snub

The Register - Huawei CFO poutine cuffs by Canadian cops after allegedly busting sanctions on Iran

The Register - UK's BT: It's not unusual to pull Huawei from our core mobile networks

Engadget - DOJ is reportedly investigating Huawei for violating Iran sanctions

Per ardua ad astra

I watched the SpaceX launch live the other day and marvelled at the way the boosters are brought back down to earth. Well, in this case it was the landing ship but you know what I mean.

The way they line up and make it look so easy.

I read somewhere that they deliberately stepped out the dual landing from earlier in the year because having two boosters land simultaneously just looked weird, so they delayed one to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

As I write this I'm watching footage of the main booster fail to land terribly well. One of the stabilising fins appears not to have deployed fully so the craft got into trouble, took itself out over water and proceeded to bring itself back under control and land on a soft surface. There's hope the craft can be retrieved.

All of this is glorious and fills my space nerd heart with glee, because I don't care at all about low earth satellites but I do want to see us journey to another world and these early baby steps are exactly what are needed to get us there.

Never mind the booster fell over - the way it controlled itself and the way it worked are exactly what you'd need to land on a distant world. Even the "hey, let's put them down on a barge out to sea" shouts out that they want to try to teach these rockets how to land on unstable, unforeseen surfaces - what better than to practice on water.

So, for all his faults (and boy, he has a few) my hat is off to Elon Musk and to his team. Putting up that many satellites in one go isn't easy and they made it look routine, even if Rocket Lab did beat them to putting art into orbit by several months.

My hope is that one day soon we'll have so many launches it'll just be second nature and won't even get reported in the news. Then we'll know we've truly arrived in the space age.

Wired - SpaceX's failed landing still ended with a clean plop

Washington Post - SpaceX's rocket crash lands in water after spinning wildly

YouTube - SpaceX suffers 'bummer' landing as rocket's first-stage booster crashes on re-entry

NZ Herald - Disco ball in space (January 2018)

Wired - SpaceX is launching a piece of art into orbit

Shortly after 'landing' it felt like every news outlet was reporting daily on how the cities were adapting to Lime's arrival - what the e-scooters were like to ride, the accidents that were being caused, the money to be made. The initial "drop" was 600 e-scooters in Auckland and 400 in Christchurch, with the company licensed for up to 1000 in Auckland and 700 in Christchurch.

So, did all the coverage translate into uptake? According a Lime press release, since they first popped up on the streets of Auckland and Christchurch there has been over 500,000 rides and 150,000 unique riders. That is in cities with a population of 1.614 million and 374,900 respectively.

Lime Launcher Hank Rowe acknowledges the safety concerns that have been raised and says the company will address these at the first Asia Pacific Safety Summit at Eden Park next month.

"While we take all incident reports seriously, we are glad to say less than 0.5% of Lime rides in New Zealand have resulted in injury," he says.

"The Summit is part of Lime's US$3 million investment in reinforcing the importance of rider safety and responsibility through its campaign "Respect the Ride".

Howe also notes that Lime has enabled independent contractors to earn up to $150 a day as 'Juicers' collecting scooters at night and charging them in their homes, and then returning them to the streets the next day.

New Zealand cities were the first in Asia Pacific in which Lime launched its services. It is just one of several micromobility companies that have appeared in the last couple of years. Originally from San Francisco, Lime has spread quickly across the globe, and is targeting other cities in New Zealand, as well as in Australia.

"We have received numerous requests for more scooter pilots to be launched and we are in conversation with a number of cities discussing how Lime can benefit their communities," Howe says.

Lime was founded in June 2017 and is currently valued at US$1.5 billion. In recent days it has been reported  by Silicon Valley news service The Information that Uber is looking to acquire either Lime or rival Bird in a multi-billion-dollar deal.

Sarah Stuart-Black, director of the Ministry for Civil Defence and Emergency Management (MCDEM) says in a blog post that around three million phones will have received the test alert.

"Fast and reliable information is crucial when emergencies strike. Emergency Mobile Alert is another vital information channel for alerting people if their life, health or property is in danger," she says.

Emergency Mobile Alert uses cell broadcast technology, common in a number of countries around the world. Because it's pushed out to capable phones, there is no app or subscription required and users cannot opt out. Even international travellers with capable devices will receive the alert if they're in New Zealand.

"All you need is a mobile phone that is capable of receiving Emergency Mobile Alerts, and a network signal," says the Civil Defence website.

Last year's test saw around one third of New Zealand users receive the alert - this year that number is expected to top 50% as the user base upgrade their handsets.

Last month Hawaii used its Emergency Mobile Alert capability to warn of torrential rain and potential flooding in Honolulu. The signal did not get through to all users however, as some were sleeping off what was described as "jet lag".

Spark Managing Director Simon Moutter says the test lab is an opportunity for New Zealand businesses to learn more about the products and services that will be enabled by 5G technology, and businesses are invited to sign up for a tour.

"The Spark 5G Lab is primarily designed to give New Zealand companies - our customers and partners - access to a 5G network so they can experiment with live 5G technology. We want to be the easiest company to work with, with the most collaborative team, and with the best network. We are basing some of our engineers at the lab and will have technical support and a working space available for our customers and partners to come in and collaborate with us on co-creating the 5G future."   

The lab will also "host technologies that showcase some of the possibilities and benefits of 5G such as robotics, virtual reality, facial recognition, Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, emergency services drones and driverless cars."

In a Government paper issued earlier this year entitled, Preparing for 5G in New Zealand, 5G is described at a step change in mobile telecommunications with peak data rates of up to 20Gbps and fast response times (latency) of 1 millisecond. Although it is likely to require double the number of existing cell sites in urban areas, the pay-off is that 5G will enable technologies such as self-driving cars.

As with all new generations of mobile technology, the 5G launch will be dependent on the availability of spectrum, which Spark expects to be auctioned by the Government in 2019.  According to the paper citied above, the Government has identified 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz bands as high on the consideration list, with the former as the "top priority band for allocation for 5G".

As tech commentator Bill Bennett points out on Radio NZ today, Spark appears keen to press ahead with its 5G offensive ahead of the spectrum allocation for a number of reasons including getting the jump on the competition and negotiating a deal with equipment suppliers before the Government makes the decision on whether Huawei technology can be used in building the next generation of cellular networks. 

Spark's 5G lab was launched with Emirates Team New Zealand, which is based nearby. Head of Design Dan Bernasconi notes that "reduced latency and higher bandwidth means that through the on-water testing stage the Emirates Team New Zealand designers back at base will be able to get data and analytics in real-time."

"This will make a huge difference. In Bermuda our designers had to spend hundreds of hours out on the water on chase boats close to the yacht in order to get data to then upload and analyse once they were back on shore. From there, they would look at what needed to be done for the next test day," he says.

"With 5G our design-thinking can evolve faster, allowing us to explore more design options and buy us more of one of the most precious commodities in the America's Cup - time. This could be a game changer for us." 

New Zealand cities were never in the running - despite some interesting analysis from Lance Wiggs when the competition kicked off last year - because of the obvious point that Amazon didn't want to go outside America. But it is still a fascinating process to watch from afar. The idea that a company can hold a beauty contest to pick a location in which to build another headquarters, and that 236 cities knocked themselves out auditioning, with many investing serious money in trying to attract the online retail giant.

The prize was substantial - the company pledged to create 50,000 full time jobs with the average annual salary exceeding US $100,000 a year. Think of what all that spending power could do in your town!

So why did Amazon split their HQ2 in half, distributing 25,000 jobs each in Long Island City in New York City and National Landing in Arlington, Virginia (with a new operations centre in Nashville)? Amazon describes the process on its Day One blog (for those new to the Amazon lexicon, 'Day One' is how CEO Jeff Bezos says you consider every day - as if you were just starting out). I'm just going to summarise in bullet points the main reasons that Amazon says both cities were chosen:

• Excellent public transport links.
• Diverse communities that are culturally rich in arts, architecture, academia, night life and sport facilities.
• Both cities offered Amazon financial incentives such as refundable tax credits and cash grants.
• Proximity to tech talent, particularly in software development.

Being close to politicians in Washington DC and Wall Street bankers in New York was probably also a factor, which must leave cities in other parts of the US wondering if the whole 14-month exercise was just a smart way to get better financial incentives. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that Google is planning to double its New York workforce to over 14,000 but hasn't seen the need to extract maximum financial incentives in the same way (it must be kicking itself!).

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, where does that leave our cities, and is there anything we can learn from the process? Aside from the debate about whether local councils should pay a company to set up shop on their turf, those other factors cited by Amazon illustrate what to many might be obvious - fun, lively and liveable cities attract big spenders. Good public transport and a vibrant city cultural life are really important to tech talent, whose high incomes bring economic wealth to the places they locate to. It's something worth considering when those debates arise about whether cycle lanes and waterfront stadiums are too pricey.   

Minister for Finance Grant Robertson has this week provided an update, reporting on the second meeting of the Forum, which consists of himself, Business NZ CEO Kirk Hope and Council of Trade Unions President Richard Wagstaff. A major topic was that old chestnut - technology disruption.

The Forum heard from a McKinsey and NZ Tech, and the Minister summarised the discussion as follows:

"Globally we are seeing a massive growth in technologies that were once considered science fiction - things like robotic surgery, drones, artificial intelligence, cellular agriculture, inductive transfer and autonomous vehicles. All of these technological changes will make us more productive but they are also having significant impacts on the way we work," Grant Robertson says.

One sector that is grappling with the changes is manufacturing. With the term 'Industry 4.0' all the rage in the tech sector this year. Here's the Wikipedia definition, which is as good as any:

Industry 4.0 is a name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing and cognitive computing. Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution.

Industry 4.0 fosters what has been called a "smart factory". Within modular structured smart factories, cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralised decisions. Over the Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real-time both internally and across organizational services offered and used by participants of the value chain.

The term 'Industry 4.0' isn't referenced in Robertson's press release, but it does note that Forum has confirmed $250,000 of funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment towards supporting a Skills Shift in Manufacturing Initiative created and led by the NZ Manufacturers Network.

"A key element of adapting to this change is ensuring that we have the right skills for the future. We need to understand what measures will need to be taken to prevent technological unemployment and the aggravations of serious skills shortages in key industries such as manufacturing," says Wagstaff.

For those unfamiliar with the NZ Manufacturers Network it has, according to its website, been around for 137 years and was previously the NZ Manufacturers and Exporters Association. The first article in its latest newsletter is "Industry 4.0 as an Extension of lean - a local example from Germany", and is a report from the Chief Executive Dieter Adam on its equivalent organisation, called HTT, in Hannover. He notes that by looking at the workshops held by HTT in the past four years there is an "ever closer integration of Lean and Industry 4.0 topics."

"Just as we've come to realise in New Zealand, the group (HTT) sees and treats digital manufacturing technologies simply as 'a next step' in 'making the boat go faster'."

What would happen to New Zealand if there were no urban/rural divide in communications capability, if a basic 100/20 Mbit/s is available, wherever fibre is, at $46/month. What if work from home, for any employer on the globe, was available in our most distant and suffering regions.

Sports coverage, banking services, education, health and aged care and other services could achieve economies of scale over fibre while permanent bricks and mortar provision is shrinking.

Is 100% an unachievable aspirational goal? Perhaps. We have government to achieve what decision making by spreadsheet can't. Maybe 100% is too big an ask but we could at least do as well as previous generations in ensuring the same equity of connection for roading, electricity and landline telephony, none of which left 16% of New Zealanders to eke out an existence without these essential services.

There are economists who say this is possible. What is certain is that line companies have laid copper and carried generators' power further than Local Fibre Companies (LFCs) can carry other companies' light, and made good livings from it. Good enough to invest in wineries as a diversification.

While the 84% fibre footprint planned by 2022 was a risk in 2011, it is a triumph in 2018 with recent results showing one in three connections are now fibre. The business case assumptions from seven years ago have been well exceeded and the value to New Zealand of fibre connection is recognised.

The original conception of the UFB Project was an open access fibre network. This requirement was forborne due to the risk it would "impose significant costs and over-burden infant businesses investing in emerging technologies."

The active, bitstream product was given exclusively to the LFCs as a buttress against failure, an additional push during the early stages of the project.

Any need for exclusive grants to LFCs, who have all exceeded their business plan targets, has gone. Nevertheless the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill continues the forbearance on the open access regime.

While the bill is still in flux (improvements have been proposed in a SOP) there is time. We need to take the steps to make fibre a universal essential service. Fibre is one of the cheapest passive infrastructures, with the capacity to deliver an exceptional number of valuable diverse services.

Laying additional fibre is an economic development activity with exceptional returns, but not to the LFC. Their benefit is reliability and certainty of return. The exceptional gain is to the nation and will be reaped by us collectively. Happier people, lowered costs and increased economic activity all follow fibre's universal path.

We need regulation only in the laying, pricing, ROI and access to fibre. Competition at the active layer, bitstreams, will ensure efficient operation and the layer of RSP will provide the diversity of customer services of varying capabilities to serve the wide range of needs a modern information society and economy requires.

Persisting with the integration of passive and active layers exclusively in the hands of the LFCs, covered by a wholesale figleaf of RSPs will not deliver the optimum outcome for NZ. Open access will give a range of risk profiles and returns for investors, competition will drive out excessive margin, and retail will offer citizens a range of services at divide reducing prices and locations.

We've done better in the past, when the rewards were smaller. Let's get on and finish the job for all New Zealanders. Fibre, 100%.

Hamish is a long-standing ICT commentator, advocate for open access and former InternetNZ councillor. He is based in Wellington and can be reached on Twitter here.

It wasn't the most impressive figure announced at the TIN 100 Report launch in Auckland last night, but it was one of the most telling - the tech sector continues to grow in leaps and bounds. Here are some of the headlining stats:

• New Zealand's top 200 technology companies increased annual turnover by 11% to reach $11.1 billion in the past year.
• ICT companies accounted for almost half this year's TIN200 revenue growth, adding $521 million in combined revenue. For the first time in the 14-year history of the TIN Report, there are more ICT companies than High-Tech Manufacturing firms in the TIN200.
• Research and Development spend rose almost in line with revenue growth, rising 10.2% to $991 million.
• According to the TIN Report, the tech sector now employs 47,417 people globally with just over half in New Zealand (25,451).

The combined Greater Auckland and Northland regions accounted for 122 of the TIN200 companies, contributing 54.9% (or $604m) of total TIN200 revenue growth.

Each year, Shanahan asks a company executive from a TIN100 company to speak and last night it was Doug Hastie, Managing Director of Syft Technology. Hastie is described as a serial entrepreneur who is also a civil engineer, investment banker, pilot and the 'Chainui guy' from the TV adverts.

Syft Technologies provides real time gas analysis technology that is utilised by a number of blue chip clients across a wide range of sectors. It was formed in 2002 to commercialise academic research from Canterbury University.

Shanahan describes Syft Technologies as one of the "great tech turnaround stories". The company has pulled itself back from brink of extinction by focussing on how to service what, according to Hastie, is a $7 billion addressable market.

When Hastie became Managing Director in 2012, Syft Technologies only had three customers (admittedly they were good customers, buying from the whole range of products). He immediately set too, visiting potential customers and in his first trip he visited seven countries in six days and slept in airports. He says often tech companies are so enamoured with the product, they neglect the sales, and so the first slide of his first strategy session was: "We are here to make money."

The company now has over 100 customers, and in the past two years it has grown from 25 staff to 100. When asked what his exit strategy was, Hastie said he is in it for the long haul.

Syft Technologies was one of ten companies acknowledged in the "Scale Ups 2018" category, the list that recognises the Next 100 companies (ranked between 101-200 in the TIN 200) with the highest dollar value increase in revenue in the past year. It reported $4.5m revenue growth to record $11.6m in total revenue in 2018.

You can find out more about TIN Report here.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Customs New Zealand, and IRD's Business Rules Centre have been working with Datacom on creating a digital assistant named Tai, which according to the release is a "25 year old New Zealander".

The anthropomorphism presumably makes it easier for business people to interact with an AI tool that has been created to trawl through government agency websites on their behalf. Following a proof of concept in July, the focus has initially been on honey exporting because it requires interaction with two agencies - Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) and Customs.

"Users have the ability to ask export questions in plain natural wording and receive clear responses, also in plain language, across the honey exporting domain. The objective of the Proof of Concept is to find out if conversational AI works in a cross-agency regulatory context and if businesses would be open to have a conversation with a "machine" to reduce their effort searching for information to make decisions."

The AI tool is being coordinated by the Better for Business programme, a collective of ten government agencies set up to make it easier for businesses to interact with their services. MBIE is the lead agency, and others in the group are ACC, Inland Revenue, Customs, Stats NZ, MPI, Worksafe NZ, NZ Transport Agency, NZ Trade and Enterprise and Callaghan Innovation.

Better for Business Director Lisa Casagranda describes the AI proof of concept as "a perfect example of future-focused digital technologies enabling government service innovation for business customers. It's a catalyst to improve the consistency and coordination between agencies and is an important step for government's future customer facing digital channels and service delivery."

According to the release, Tai the digital assistant was also inspired by the 'Better Rules initiative', which showcased 'Human and Machine-consumable Rules' as a key component for the digital transformation of government.

"Better Rules worked across several government agencies to explore the ideas and practice of turning legislation into machine-consumable 'digital rules'. This process found opportunities for government in machine consumable legislation to capture benefits from new technologies - such as artificial intelligence. We have learnt through both of these initiatives that ultimately technology is only as good as the structure of the content and that by getting better at creating Human Consumable rules will have immense pay-back regardless of the Machine that needs to consume it, saving time, effort and money, and improved services to better deliver to people's needs."

The 10 partner agencies in Better for Business will look into how AI can be deployed in future, after the current proof of concept testing period is complete.

The 108-page Research, Science and Innovation System Performance Report is the second in what is intended to be a regular series that began in 2016. It provides a number of interesting graphs that show where the R&D spend is occurring and benchmarks New Zealand's progress against small advanced economies, OECD and Australia.

While the focus of R&D spend is changing slowly, the graph below shows that Manufacturing and Primary Industry are still the largest sectors to benefit (the percentages in brackets show changes in value since 2014).

This is also reflected in the composition of research papers that are produced, with the least amount in areas such as computer science, mathematics and engineering.

Meanwhile the proportion of male to female researchers to shows that the former continues to dominate in areas such as mathematics, physics and engineering & technology.

Only 20% of New Zealand graduates studied STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects, and when comparing New Zealand's performance against other similar countries, we appear to be running in the mid to low-end of the pack.

When it comes to business expenditure on R&D (BERD), New Zealand is at the bottom when compared to other small advanced economies, with just 0.63% spent on BERD as a percentage of GDP. As a result, the proportion of New Zealand firms reporting innovation is 49%, compared to top ranking Switzerland at 75%. BERD is increasing, however, with the report noting that BERD increased by $356m (29%) between 2014 -2016.

The report notes however that New Zealand's economic productivity "continues to lag its peers."

"According to the OECD and the Treasury, low R&D investment and innovation rates appear to be important factors behind New Zealand's low economic productivity. Strong business R&D investment coupled with a developing start-up ecosystem suggests system-change in this area. Increased business R&D was driven by higher average investment per firm in computer services and manufacturing."

Which is illustrated in the following graph that measures productivity by comparing New Zealand's GDP per hour worked against similar countries. (If you are wondering about Ireland, the report notes that its spike "reflects financial restructuring of multinational companies to take advantage of tax rules.")

Future growth may lie partly in the start-up community, and the report notes that start-up investment has quadrupled over ten years - from $21 million in 2006 to $87 million in 2016. It quotes the Start-Up Genome Ecosystem Report, which claims start-up activity here is gaining in momentum but currently lags behind similar countries and is characterised as being in the "activation phase". 

You can check out the full report here.

Lime scooters can be rented by users via an app for $1 to unlock the e-scooter and 30c a minute, or up to $18 an hour, to ride. They travel at speeds up to 25km an hour, and as they are dockless, the e-scooters can be picked up - and left - anywhere within a defined geographical area. According to the NZTA, riders aren't legally required to wear a helmet (although its recommended) and e-scooters can be driven on roads, footpaths and cycleways.

Lime, which was founded in June 2017, is one of numerous e-scooter transport companies to have launched in the USA in the past two years. The company has raised over US$467m in venture capital funding and is in over 100 North American and European marketts.

In the US, local authorities have differed in their approach to this new form of transport, with some more friendly to e-scooters than others. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, for example, has only granted licenses to two e-scooter companies - Scoot and Skip - to operate. Incidentally, these companies are licensed to deploy 625 scooters each, so Auckland is well stocked with Lime's 900 e-scooters.

New Zealand councils appear - on the face of it - quite welcoming. Stuff quotes Christchurch city councillor Vicki Buck as finding the scooters to be "zero emissions and a lot of fun".

Aside from concerns about pedestrian and rider safety the main beef with e-scooters is that they are randomly scattered around the city's parks and footpaths. Lime says the scooters will be picked up each night by independent contractors who will recharge and return them for the following day.

Lime's main rival in Auckland is Onzo, which launched a bike-share fleet in November last year and which, according to the NZ Herald, plans to add 500 e-scooters to its fleet later this month, with a further 2000 in the coming months.

While this may seem like an over-supply, the market for e-scooters is so brand-new that's it's difficult to say if it will be an enduring feature of city transportation. The companies that have sprung up to offer e-scooters are certainly bullish.  A recent conference call about micromobility by the Silicon Valley news outlet The Information with Scoot, Skip and Uber-owned Jump, showed that the market could be huge. Scoot CEO Michael Keating estimates that four trillion trips are made annually in cities around the world (that is, people going to work, school and home again etc) and it's estimated a trillion of those trips could be addressed by "small electric vehicles".

The e-scooter companies said on the call that a friendly local council was more advantageous then being first to a city, and that climate is a major factor when picking a city in which to launch (no surprises that Lime has arrived in springtime!). The most difficult part of the operation is the hardware - keeping the e-scooters on the road (or footpath) and recharged.

If overseas experience is any indication, e-scooters are proving popular with consumers, and there are no reasons to doubt that they won't take off over here to. The adoption of ridesharing apps such as Uber and Zoomy in our cities has been swift, aided by a Government willing to accommodate new and innovative forms of public transport.

New Zealand taxpayers spend millions funding and supporting research - but are we funding the sort of research that's going to be beneficial to the future of the country and generations to come? Are we working to move our economic reliance into future-focused areas rather than looking backwards?

Our Economy and Environment

Before getting to the research, let's look at some of the wider environmental factors at play.

The Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change released their latest report last week, and the long and short of it was that the current global targets were a drop in the bucket - to stave off climate change we're going to need unprecedented changes to our environment and economy.

Some quite sobering numbers include global net emissions of carbon dioxide need to fall by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and the problem for us as a country is that our biggest economic industry also pollutes excessively: around 54% of NZ's greenhouse gasses are caused by farming.

As hard as this pill may be to swallow, if we're serious as a country about tackling climate change, New Zealand's dairy and agriculture sectors are unsustainable in their current forms. It's that simple. If you're from a rural background, don't shoot the messenger here... these are the facts.

However it's not a case of just cutting back, as then other countries will just fill the gap and we won't achieve anything (other than a destroyed economy).

Separate from the environmental impact, other factors are at play too. For example, the whole way food is created is changing too - as shown by Air New Zealand's infamous "impossible Burger". 

Like it or not, alternative food is coming: A few short years from now, you'll be just as likely to eat meat grown in a lab as a field - and the lab stuff will be grown with next to no emissions.

I personally don't like that much - being a fan of American-style BBQ, the idea of "fake burgers" don't do it for me. But that doesn't change the fact that this change is happening, right now. 

And dairy's in the same boat. It's not a coincidence that Fonterra just made their first loss ever or that the forecast Farmgate price has just been reduced again. Sure, a large part of their loss was write-downs from bad overseas investments, but the underlying trend really isn't positive.

In the context of these changes, the tech sector has become even more crucial to the future of New Zealand. Technology has a huge role to play in making sure New Zealand is at the forefront of research into alternative food: meat in the lab, not the field. But also as a significant alternative industry that simply doesn't have the environmental baggage our current primary exports carry.

And that's why it was so disappointing to see the results of the Endeavour fund recently, a $249 Million Government fund for research that has the potential to be high impact and transformational for New Zealand.

MBIE's Endeavour Fund: $249 Million of research into... what exactly?

Given the above, you'd expect to see a strong balance in research investment between the new economy (tech) and making the old economy more efficient and environmentally sound (agriculture and farm-related research). Both are needed and we're not for a second saying it should all go to tech.

But while there were a couple of really bright lights, overall the balance simply wasn't there. The focus of investment remains on "old economy" thinking and nobody seems to have yet woken up to the fact that New Zealand's economy needs to be truly transformed. Given this fund ostensibly exists to fund economic and environmental transformation, what the heck's going on?

"That's the way we've always done it", I suppose. We're a farming nation.

So while there's plenty of research on "weed control" and "strategic mating", very little seems focused on actually breaking through new industries. To be fair it's not all bad - 1 or 2 of the 23 major research programmes funded were focused on tech, although often in context of agriculture still - for example, using robotics and augmented reality to assist with orchard picking. But that is genuinely great research.

What missed out?

One argument put forward by these research funds when we've raised it in the past is that there weren't good proposals put forward from tech and software researchers, but frankly, that's simply false here.

For example, I know of one major research proposal looking at transforming critical software - scientifically proving trustworthiness of software with huge spinoff applications in all sorts of areas, especially cybersecurity.

Basically transforming software using AI and other technologies to continually make itself more secure, available and reliable. A whole new paradigm for software and a breakthrough to the next generation, at a time when this is needed more than ever. And it wasn't just pie in the sky stuff - the idea was accompanied by a 197 page detailed proposal looking at exactly how it would work. It's seriously impressive stuff.

The project had the potential to significantly change how software is developed and could have been transformation for our sector, which is why the software research teams of all 7 of New Zealand's Universities (that have them) wanted to collaborate on the research, along with 27 of New Zealand's leading tech companies including the likes of Xero, Orion Health, Paymark and Catalyst IT.

Sound good? Not good enough apparently - it was rejected by the assessors largely because they couldn't agree on what "trustworthiness" meant, and because it's a global problem - so why bother solving it from New Zealand?

Um... because we have worldclass researchers here, for a start, and would quite like the economic benefit?

Again, it's not all bad - there is some great research funded and some that has specific tech (in our sense of the word) impact. We're not saying what was funded wasn't any good and we're not actually anti-farming in the slightest.

But if we're spending $249 Million on funding research on things that will transform our economy and environment, perhaps we should also focus on something other than agriculture?

</rant>

... R&D Tax Scheme looks good though

The "other end" of research - industry-based reseach - looks set to get a good boost however, with the updated details of the Government's R&D Tax Incentive Programme announced this week.

The draft version was released earlier this year and a number of folks including ITP raised some significant concerns about parts that could have had the effect of excluding large swathes of the tech sector. Nat Torkington said it better than anyone else on Techblog back in May.

We're really pleased to say that the Government seems to have listened and the changes announced this week are very positive. For example:

• The threshold for accessing the scheme has been halved to $50,000 (ie how much you need to spend on R&D in a year to qualify)
• A (limited) tax refund in the first year, rather than just carrying the loss forward. This was a particular concern to the software sector, where often growth is far more important than profit in the early years - basically negating the practical impact of the scheme until much later, when it wouldn't be as needed
• increase in the incentive from 12.5% to 15%. Still below other countries, but a really good start.
• Better definition of "R&D" - there was significant concern whether the old definition would exclude software, for example

Overall, these are excellent and very welcome changes.

It obviously remains to be seen whether the scheme will change R&D behaviour (or just accountants' behaviour in tagging things as R&D), but the fact remains that New Zealand was one of the few countries without such a scheme meaning companies were disadvantaged doing their R&D in New Zealand. This is a great first step towards a more even playing field.

RNZ New Technology segment

This was also the main topic of my RNZ Nine to Noon New Technology slot this week - you can listen here.

News that almost all of the sub-contractors employed by the contractors employed by Chorus to build the Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) network are exploiting their workers in one form or another has tarnished what should have been a world-class operation.

It was clear from the very beginning that Chorus (initially the network arm of Telecom) had under cooked its bid for the UFB regions and that it was struggling.

The initial months of the build were marred with stories of delay, expense, of poor communication with customers, of unhappy home owners and plenty more besides.

Chorus started work in the leafy green suburbs of inner-city Auckland, perhaps not the wisest place to test out new techniques and new processes. They could have dug up the footpaths on my street and reinstated them with an open pit and some planks and most of the residents would have seen it as an improvement, but no - Chorus had to start in Ponsonby and other well-heeled areas where residents apparently were more distressed by the thought of the footpaths being dug up than they were eager to see fibre to the door.

It went downhill from there.

The first few years of the build demonstrated a clear difference between Chorus's capabilities and those of the other local fibre companies, who were not only rolling out fibre more quickly but were also connecting more properties and offering a better installation process.

I personally watched a Northpower crew connect a house to fibre in under two hours - from the box on the pole to an external connection point, then on to the internal connection point. There was no arguing with the home owner about how far from the road the connection would be - an extra coil of fibre was included with the connection in case they wanted it moved later on. Compare that with Chorus and its unwillingness to connect houses at the rear of a section because they were deemed "non-standard" and you could see daylight between the two deployments.

And then there were the horror stories.

Connections stapled to fence lines. Gardens dug up. The legendary auger punched through the middle of a wall, and also through the sliding door inside the wall.

To top it all off, Chorus had the audacity to put up its hand and demand an extra $600 million to complete the project, although once EY was brought in to review its sums, the company suggested Chorus had more than enough tucked away and if it just got on with the job at hand it would be able to get it done without too much more excitement.

Now, when we look across the Tasman at the farce that is the NBN deployment, we can no longer smugly suggest that Kiwi Know How delivered a better result.

It wasn't Kiwi Know How at all - it was shoddy labour practices, cut-price workers brought to New Zealand with the promise of visas, minimal training and support and wages that would make an independent courier driver red-faced with embarrassment.

Chorus has started an internal inquiry and hired someone to have a look at what could possibly have gone wrong.

I trust they'll be given access to the Telco Carrier Forum minutes from about seven years ago because I distinctly remember raising the question of training for the UFB deployment and being told it was all well in hand.

Apparently that meant passing the responsibility on to contracting companies who passed on the country's largest network deployment since the introduction of electricity or running water to lowest-bid contractors.

Hardly the Kiwi way at all.

RNZ - Exploitative Chorus sub-contractors 'promising visas'

Techblog - UFB contractors breach employment standards: MBIE

NZ Herald - Chorus hires independent investigator after subbie exploitation claims

Newshub - Chorus subcontractors 'exploiting' migrant employees

Computerworld - Almost all Chorus broadband subcontractors breaching employment standards

Otago Daily Times - Chorus broadband subcontractors 'breaching labour laws'

NZ Herald - Why Chorus shares rose to near all-time high amid MBIE's subbie exploitation claims

EY report - Independent Assessment of Chorus' Financial Position (December 2013)

Zen Security Koan

If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Similarly, if a social network closes its doors but nobody uses it, should anyone care?

The answer is probably yes, because while nobody I know actually used Google+, the idea that Google would find a security flaw but then hide that news from its users for several months is too loud a story to ignore.

Google found the flaw in Google+ in March and promptly fixed it. While the bug had been embedded in the code since 2015, it was its actions after the discovery that count. Instead of telling its user base (nearly half a million are estimated to have been impacted), Google kept quiet because its mortal enemy Facebook was at that time in the centre ring defending itself against accusations of its own shoddy security practices alongside Cambridge Analytica. Someone at Google HQ had probably read the adage about never interrupting an enemy when they're making a mistake and thought "we'll stand back".

Unfortunately, while expedient in the short term, this decision has cost Google (sorry, Alphabet) any moral high ground it may have had in the ensuing debate on privacy and, if the US government can fit them in, no doubt will result in Google executives having to explain themselves before a hearing or two.

How the EU handles this will also be interesting, given the introduction of the GDPR with its mandatory reporting laws.

We of course don't have such mandatory reporting in New Zealand just yet, but once the Privacy Act is re-written I would hope it will include some fairly eye-watering provisions for this kind of cavalier approach to user privacy.

Wall St Journal - Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public

NY Times - Google Plus Will Be Shut Down After User Information Was Exposed

NZ Herald - Google Plus to close after bug leaks personal information

Marketplace - Is the Google Plus data breach a threat to Google's business?

Intolerance

I've just had to report yet another muppet for abuse, but I doubt much will happen to them.

At most their social media account may be suspended temporarily, possibly even permanently. That never stops them - they set up another and carry on regardless.

I've been subject to cyber-bullying myself, and while I make fun of it now at the time it was mortifying. I'm not going to link to the content, but someone with no scruples decided the best thing he could do is scare a lot of old people about why I was stealing their retirement savings, and give them my phone number to call. It was all around the Copper Tax and Chorus's begging for more money. It affected their share price and so of course, that meant old dears should ring me to tell me off.

One dear old couple did.

I try to be polite but it was clear they didn't want to listen to me explain why I wasn't stealing their retirement savings (I wasn't, honest). Eventually I did explain the reasons why TUANZ and I (and ITP and InternetNZ, and Consumer and countless other organisations) were arguing with Chorus about the price and they seemed to get it but frankly it was a good hour of time on a Saturday that would better have been spent mowing the lawn, or having a barium enema, frankly.

These days it seems the fun has mostly gone out of social networks. Unless you curate your followers, that is. I spend quite some time trimming, muting, blocking and generally disengaging from those whose only reason for being seems to be to pick a fight.

Initially I was concerned that this would leave me in a bubble, a consensus-cluster of like-minded folk, but that's not the case. I follow plenty of people that I disagree with and often engage in useful and entertaining discussions with them.

But the cyber-bullies (there are other words for them, but this is a family show so let's use that one) aren't interested in improving anyone's world view, they're only interested in harassing and debasing people they scarcely know.

Netsafe has published a report into the impacts of cyber-bullying (the real stuff, not old dears ringing me up at home) and even before you take into account the flow-on effects of time off work, of having friends and family spend time with you to support you, without the impact on your own ability to get on, the cost is a staggering $444 million a year.

It's worth reviewing your own company's policies with regard to this kind of behaviour. There's a lot going on that isn't all right, that simply isn't acceptable and it's high time we stopped turning a blind eye. It's time to be intolerant of intolerance.

RNZ - Cyber bullying: The growing menace costing NZ $444m

Newshub - Cyberbullying costing New Zealand $444 million a year - NetSafe

NZ Herald - The true cost of cyberbullying to NZ: $444m each year

NZ Herald - Lizzie Marvelly on cyber bullying: a 'tidal wave' of online attacks 

Some of best sector-based journalism is funded by subscription content, and two examples of Silicon Valley media that I subscribe to show how it's possible to grow a loyal audience that is quite willing to pay for content they find useful.

The first is a daily newsletter called Stratechery. It's written by Ben Thompson, an American who lives in Taiwan and who has previously worked or Apple and Microsoft. His niche is writing about the product and business strategies of big tech companies, and he emails his subscribers four updates a week. While many people have an opinion about tech, very few can make a living out of it. Here's the first paragraph of today's update:

If the first stage of competition in consumer technology was the race to be the computer users went to (won by Microsoft and the PC), and the second was to be the computer users carried with them (won by Apple in terms of profits, and Google in terms of marketshare), the outlines of the current battle came sharply into focus over the last month: what company will win the race to be the computer within which users live?

The second subscription-based outlet is The Information, which was started by a former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin. It specialises in writing in-depth investigative articles about Silicon Valley companies (often complete with an org-chart). The business model is a mix of subscription and events, in which it attracts the likes of Kevin Systrom (Instagram founder who just left Facebook). They also hold conference calls for readers in which a journalist interviews company CEOs on a topic and readers can ask questions. I attended one last week on micromobility, and it was a lively discussion.

In New Zealand, Freeman Media, which was established by Matt Freeman in 2002, operates a similar model, serving the Energy sector with a mix of subscription-only content and events. The journalists on these publications are immersed in the sector and are therefore able to provide indepth news and analysis. It's not my area of interest, but I absolutely cheer on Freeman Media for creating a thriving news outlet that serves it readership. Telco readers will remember that Freeman pioneered the idea in New Zealand with The Line in 2000s, which has since become part of the Australian-based publication CommsDay.

Of course, there are those tech publications that have been successful by sticking to their knitting, such as Reseller News NZ and CIO NZ.  In 2013 when Fairfax resigned the licenses of these publications (owned by IDG), their fate appeared far from certain. Picked up by the Australian arm of IDG, the print versions were retired and the websites converted to the Australian template.

CIO hardly missed a beat in the transition, due to its editor Divina Paredes who completely understands her market and continues to serve it well with a mix of online content and events. Reseller News has James Henderson as its editor and it appears to be thriving, with fresh New Zealand content each day targeted to its readers, and an events programme that includes an Innovation Awards attended by 450 people this week.

The threshold of $100,000 spending per annum on R&D has been lowered to $50,000 making it much more accessible to smaller companies, and instead of returning 12.5% of tax paid, the figure will be 15%.

The higher rebate rate and lower point of entry means the scheme will cost more and $1 billion has been set aside for it in the first year.

Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods says the changes are the result of extensive consultation with industry.

"We pride ourselves on being an innovative country, but our spending on R&D lags behind many of our international competitors, and this government is not content to languish at the bottom of the table," she said in a written statement.

While this new tax credit regime marks a significant change for New Zealand's approach to R&D, it barely gets us on the table alongside heavy investors such as Canada (which offers 35% was refund), the Netherlands (32%), France (30%) or Ireland (25%).

New Zealand has relied heavily on government grants in the past and as a consequence, private sector investment in R&D has been among the lowest in the OECD. New Zealand typically spend around 1.3% of its GDP on research and development - almost all of that coming from public spending - putting us at the tail end of the developed world. This new regime hopes to boost that spending to 2% by 2028, a figure which is still south of the mid point in OECD rankings.

The point is - there are not as many subsea internet cables lying beneath the world's oceans as you might expect.

So, it's welcome news that the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) has just been completed by NEC. Funded by Angola Cables, it connects Luanda, Angola to Fortaleza, Brazil. Inside the Fortaleza-based datacentre SACS connects to a cable system between Brazil and the USA. Among the most interesting points is that this is apparently the first trans-Atlantic link between Africa and the Americas. Previously traffic was routed through Europe.

For the telco geeks, the SACS is designed with 100Gbps coherent WDM technology with an end-to-end solution. It has four fibre pairs that offer a design capacity of a 40Tbit/s in total between Fortaleza, Brazil and Luanda, Angola. What this means in practice is that the cable will provide data speeds that are five times faster and improve latency by 60% between Africa and the Americas.

While there is no direct benefit to New Zealand (it's a connection across the Atlantic, not the Pacific), it is another welcome connection between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, as Angola Cables CEO António Nunes points out.

"By developing and connecting ecosystems that allow for local IP traffic to be exchanged locally and regionally, the efficiency of networks that are serving the Southern Hemisphere can be vastly improved. As these developments progress they will have a considerable impact on the future growth and configuration of the global internet."

Alex Sims, Principal researcher and Associate Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Auckland says cryptocurrencies are here to stay and that this country is missing a trick if it doesn't get to grips with the technology.

"New Zealand has fallen behind countries we like to compare ourselves with, including Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan. So now we need to live up to our reputation as nimble, agile and innovative and rapidly follow the lead of those other countries. That's the only way we can maximise the opportunities that blockchain offers," she says.

"There is a lot of denial about how disruptive blockchain will be, but this is not a flash in the pan. It will be more transformative than the internet."

Countries embracing cryptocurrencies are Sweden and the Marshall Islands, which Sims says are looking to introduce their own central bank-issued cryptocurrencies. In addition, large corporates such as IBM are using cryptocurrencies to shift value around the world.

It isn't all about Bitcoin either, which is just one of hundreds of cryptocurrencies - albeit the one that grabs all the headlines.

"Beyond changing the way we pay for things, the use of cryptocurrencies in combination with smart contracts (which also utilise blockchain technology) has the potential to profoundly transform everyday commerce," Sims says.

The research examines the advantages of 'smart contracts', which are self-executing computer programmes embedded in a blockchain. According to the report, smart contracts allow for some cryptocurrencies to be programmed so that they can only be accepted by certain people or organisations, and the limitations can remain for a set period or forever - something which conventional money simply cannot do, says Sims.

"Smart contracts are being used, or are planned to be used, in everything from the secure storage of patient health data, clinical trials, and electronic voting to health and safety. Smart contracts can also be used to track products from source to consumer, offering unparalleled transparency around provenance, food safety, fair trade and sustainability."

While the New Zealand Government is currently taking a "hands off" approach to cryptocurrencies, the report's authors propose that it should look to actively encourage blockchain businesses to set up here. Their recommendations include that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) trials the creation and issuance of a New Zealand cryptocurrency, the Inland Revenue Department accepts cryptocurrencies for the payment of taxes and cryptocurrency exchanges be encouraged, with clear and detailed guidance provided as to their anti-money laundering/counter-terrorism financing obligations by both the Department of Internal and the Financial Markets Authority.

The full report is authored by Sims, Dr Kanchana Kariyawasam of Australia's Griffith University Business School and the late David Mayes, Professor of Banking and Finance from the University of Auckland Business School, to whom it is dedicated. You can read more details here.

For a 90 second refresher on blockchain, go here. 

Of course, with Facebook, that's probably just the tip of the iceberg because of the massive amounts of data Facebook stores on its user base.

This vulnerability is unlike the Cambridge Analytica breach - which was based on a third party company using access to Facebook's data incorrectly, according to Facebook.

This time round, Facebook has no-one else to blame as it appears the breach is via up to three security holes in its own API software.

The flaws, which have been in place since July 2017, weren't spotted until unusual activity alerted Facebook to the problem in August 2018 - presumably the hackers have had some time to do whatever it is they set out to do.

While 50 million have been told they have problems, a further 40 million have also been forced to reset their passwords as a precaution. While 90 million affected users make this one of the biggest security breaches in recent times, with a user base measured in billions it is a small part of the Facebook base.

The timeline of the Facebook hack may prove challenging for the company, especially in Europe where the General Data Protection Rules (GDPR) require any such data exposure to be reported within 72 hours.

Facebook uncovered the attack on Tuesday last week, notified the FBI on Wednesday and on Thursday fixed the vulnerability. Whether it also reported the breach to EU officials remains to be seen.

Facebook has also reported declined to publish links to a Guardian story about the breach, defining them as spam. Facebook threatened to sue the Guardian after it reported on the Cambridge Analytica breach, but did not follow through after the company was fined for the breaches.

Stories about the current breach published by other outlets were able to be shared by Facebook users.

A few weeks ago we talked about the EU and its plan to introduce new copyright laws in the shape of Article 11 and Article 13. I suggested the EU would be stupid to do so because they don't understand what they would mean for the internet. I hoped they would be watered down or rejected entirely and that saner minds would prevail.

Reader, they did not.

So the EU now has a new approach to copyright which will entrench existing businesses as leaders in their fields (think Google, YouTube, Facebook et al) and make it cost prohibitive for any new provider to enter the market. The Two Pauls' World of IT will, I am sorry to say, not be coming to a web browser near you any time soon.

The two articles are in and of themselves quite laughable really but put together they spell out the end of the internet as we know it.

The internet is, as one pundit said so eloquently, a giant copying machine. Everything we do is copied and shared around. My email doesn't travel, despite our terminology, it isn't 'sent' anywhere. I have the original on my machine, a copy is made by my ISP, it's copied to the recipient's ISP, from there to the machine they use to receive it, and so on.

However, now if we're sending and receiving materials that may be copyrighted (that is, if I talk about Mickey Mouse or post his likeness for example) my ISP is liable to do something about it.

Of course, I'll be using acceptable and commonplace laws to defend myself. It was free speech. It was parody. It was a quote for review purposes. It wasn't actually their copyright to begin with.

But none of it will matter because the ISPs and those responsible for hosting content will strike first, lest they be sued as a co-defendant. And knowing the American legal fraternity as I do (motto: sue them all, let god sort it out"), we're likely to see attacks on free speech, on parody and on content that isn't actually owned by the attacker, but which they might try to secure a fee for "protecting".

So that's Article 13. And to be fair, I can live with that. It's stupid but it's unpoliceable. The meme police will never keep up. I'm a social media addict and I can't keep up. Forget it. As the Bard famously, said "THIS CONTENT REDACTED FOR LEGAL REASONS".

But Article 11 is the really stupid, kick in the teeth. This is the article that says if you link to something copyrighted, you'll have to pay a fee. The "link tax" is going to cripple sites like Wikipedia (which is infuriating but so very valuable as a resource) because every man and his dog will charge a fee to connect to materials. Google will absorb the cost and grumble but carry on as before, but the aforementioned Two Pauls Site of Fun and Frivolity won't be able to do the most basic thing on the internet - share information - because the fees will cripple the plucky little start up.

And let's not forget, sharing links to content is what the internet is. CNN, the New York Times, this newsletter, the BBC, NBR, the New Zealand Herald, Stuff, every movie that's been released since The Phantom Menace, they've all made use of the internet as a marketing tool, to share links as a way of encouraging attendance at, or purchasing of, content.

Scroll to the bottom of this page and you'll find dozens of links. Every underlined sentence is a link. It's ubiquitous and essential and now the EU says it's taxable.

I shall have to take it further. Every time I'm quoted in a news story, every time a tweet is taken by a newspaper and shared as if it meant something, every time a newspaper refers to another source of information, I shall issue a takedown notice and see how far I get.

That's just silly, you say. And you're absolutely right. It's absurd.

Wired - What is Article 13? The EU's divisive new copyright plan explained

The Hollywood Reporter - What New EU Copyright Law Will Mean for Media, Tech Companies and Users

The Verge - EU approves controversial Copyright Directive, including internet 'link tax' and 'upload filter'

Gizmodo - The End Of All That's Good And Pure About The Internet

This statement is untrue.

It's 125 years since New Zealand women were given the vote.

I've written that sentence several times this week and every time I've had to re-write it, because of course "New Zealand women" were not "given" the vote: the fought for it, and wrestled it off the patriarchy.

So it's 125 years since women won the right to vote in New Zealand, but we still use the passive voice when talking about women and we still refer to women as if they were something else (even this sentence assumes you're male).

And we still have a skills shortage in New Zealand and indeed around the world because women don't like to do maths or software development or engineering, it's not our fault but they don't want to.

Except that's not true either.

I know plenty of women in technology. I've seen plenty of women who can code, who can run teams, who can own businesses, who can compete in online games, who can work for multinationals and deliver results. I know women who fly planes for a living and who are far more capable at tech-related activities than I am.

But somehow we still don't seem to have many women joining the ICT field.

At TUANZ I was a regular attendee at tech events. I would always count the crowd (old habit as a journalist - count the front row to get a base, count the number of rows of seats, report accurately on the number of people) and would count the number of women on one hand. Always it was on one hand. When you exclude the conference organisers (nearly 100% women) and the PR people (at least 75% women) there were generally only enough to fit on one hand, regardless of the size of the audience.

Surely this year, I thought, we'd see an end to all that, but then of course Facebook reared its ugly head.

Facebook (motto: it's all our money, you can't have it) has of course become an advertising behemoth and as has been discussed before, those who pay get priority over your aunty's holiday pictures or that post from the group you belong to about saving the whale.

Those who pay get a tremendous dashboard to fiddle with. You can target advertising at a geographical region, at an age group, at fellow racists, at left handed New Zealanders living in the US who earn more than $45,000 a year.

You can also target your advertising at men, and exclude women, if you so wish.

This is of course discriminatory and arguably illegal or, as Facebook would have it, a feature not a bug.

Guys (and I do mean guys) we need to get past this. We need to address the elephant in the room and 99 times out of 100 that elephant is us. Let's figure it out, eh?

Stuff - Claim Facebook let US companies target men, exclude women, in job ads

Wired - ACLU says Facebook ads let employers favour men over women

Facebook Business - Why can I only target ads to men and women when folks can select other genders?

Stuff - Cracking code all in an afternoon's work for the girls at CodeCamp

Trees and wifi

I do like that old adage about "if trees provided wifi we'd all be out planting them everywhere but they don't, they just provide oxygen" which is funny because it's true.

Now of course trees that get in the way of the wifi (or, in this case, the fixed wireless signal) are up for the chop because one court believes internet access is some kind of basic human right or something.

It's quite a conundrum.

I like trees, but I also like wifi and internet access, but if my neighbour chopped down one of my trees (I have a gorgeous "dwarf" pohutukawa that will never grow more than 3m high. Currently it's about 12m and about to turn a gorgeous red) I would burn his house to the ground or some other excess of hyperbole.

While the judge in this case said no, you can't chop the trees down (they mostly block the view and the internet interference could be resolved with a receiver on a pole) she did say: "undue interference with a wi-fi signal caused by trees could constitute an undue interference with the reasonable use and enjoyment of an applicant's land for the purposes of s 335(1)(vi) of the [Property Law] Act" which is legal code for why not try it and see what happens.

I'd like to think we could live in harmony, our trees and our wifi receivers, our fibre connections and our driveways, but this is not to be. Not yet, at any rate.

Speaking of driveways (ED: I see what you did there), it's time to update you all on the seemingly never ending saga of Getting Fibre Put On At Home.

Astute readers with good search engine skills may recall that I had fibre put on at home quite some time ago. Despite setting a time when a chap would visit to assess the property, some fellow turned up at random and started walking around wearing his high-viz vest.

With rat-like cunning I went out there to derail his plan to claim I wasn't home. We talked about how the connection would go and it went like this:

Me: I'd like the connection to come in at the back of the house where the home office is.

Him: No. It will attach overhead at the front where the old phone line went.

Me: Ah but I have a star-configuration CAT6 network throughout my house and the access point is at the back.

Him: I don't know what that means but I'm not connecting there, it's going in overhead to the front.

Me: But that just won't do.

Him: If you reject my design you'll go to the back of the queue and we'll revisit your connection after we've done the rest of the Auckland peninsula.

Me:….

Him:….

Me: Fine. You win.

The connection is in and works well but it means that at one end of the house I have poor internet because reasons.

So now that we're ripping up the driveway to put down one that isn't made of crazy paving and tree roots I thought "Great, I'll get in touch with my RSP who will arrange it all and I'll just grit my teeth about the cost."

Sadly, that cost is, apparently $4500 for a connection that's roughly 15m in from the kerb, and which won't be buried under the new drive but will have to be micro-trenched across the damned thing.

Maybe wifi isn't a bad option after all.

NZ Herald - Property owner can be forced to cut trees if they interfere with a neighbour's Wi-Fi, judge says

Stuff - Court rules trees blocking broadband can face axe

These stats are taken straight out of the Government's Broadband Deployment Update, released this week - and it must be acknowledged that this is a huge achievement. Especially when you consider that in 2006 this country was in the ignominious position of being one of the two (along with Mexico) in the OECD not to unbundle the local loop (that is, allow companies other than Telecom to put their equipment into telephone exchanges) and our broadband speeds and uptake reflected this woeful position.

At the time it was a position that felt intractable. We would never catch up to the world, the country would be dragged under by the tyranny of distance, unable to rise above the stranglehold of Telecom's monopoly position, which was defended by many as some kind of free-market sacred cow. Regulation was a dirty, dirty word.

But the Communications Minister, at the time, David Cunliffe forced LLU to take place, and even went as far as to enact the Operational Separation of Telecom.  Shortly after this announcement, at a TUANZ event in May 2006, Australian analyst and commentator Paul Budde suggested that the government throw $1billion at a national network. "Think big," he said (perhaps not understanding the full implications of that 'Muldoonism'). "Throw the little funds into a big heap and say we can use this more cleverly."

And we did. Or at least the next Communications Minister Steven Joyce did, when he was put in charge of spending the $1.5 billion the National Government pledged for a nationwide fibre network. And Joyce (perhaps borrowing a trick from Cunliffe's playbook) pushed even further and forced the Structural Separation of Telecom, so that now the company has disappeared and been replaced by two companies - Chorus and Spark.

Also, we have three international cables, where before there was only one. The Southern Cross Cable is now competing with Hawaiki on the route from New Zealand to the US (via Australia and the Pacific), and there is also trans-Tasman cable owned by Spark, Vodafone and Telstra.

But is it enough? Well, fibre to 87% of New Zealand's population by 2022 (the end-goal of the UFB roll-out) is a good thing, and competition in the area of international connectivity should bring down pricing. But, we do have some way to go, when compared with other countries in the OECD, as noted in a previous Techblog post. Although fibre broadband is increasingly available, the number of broadband subscriptions in New Zealand that enable connections speeds in excess of 100Mbps is only 8%, well below the top performer Korea, which boasts 76% of all subscriptions enabling speeds in excess of 100Mbps. Also, Akamai's average speeds recorded by the OECD put New Zealand at 10.5Mbps is well below the OECD average (for the record Korea is at the top with 29Mbps).

The hard part - digging the trenches, laying the fibre - is being done, and will be complete by the end of 2022.  But that doesn't mean we can take the pedal off the metal. The conditions are there for New Zealand to be in the top five for the best performing countries for broadband connectivity.

Successive Governments have created the conditions, the taxpayer has underwritten the bill, it's now time for the industry to seize the momentum and take the country up to the top of the OCED pile.

AirPower would, from the outside, appear to rely heavily on PowerbyProxi's technology - at the very least its formidable armoury of patents in this area - but there was no sign of it at the recent launch in the US.

Apple itself has gone very quiet on the matter - quieter than usual - with one commentator suggesting the product may have been scrapped altogether.

That seems unlikely, given both the investment and level of interest in the concept of wireless charging, but for now Apple has nothing further to add on the debate.

PowerbyProxi was created by 2007 by entrepreneur Fady Mishriki as a commercialisation of his research while at the University of Auckland. Initially aimed at industrial use (wind turbines, for example), the move into consumer goods was inevitable and could present a step change for battery-powered devices of all kinds, from electric toothbrushes to watches and on to larger-format devices such as tablets and laptops.

Although other companies have been working on a wireless charging solution - and there were several competing standards for a while - PbP has cornered the market at least in terms of key patents relating to this sector. 

In 2013 the company made plans to list on the NZX, however that plan fell apart as bankers began shying away from tech stocks. Last year, Apple payed a rumoured $100 million for the company.

"The electricity sector stands on the threshold of change that - depending on each participant's role - will be disruptive, unpredictable, promising or hardly noticeable," the report notes.

While much of the report is, appropriately, focussed on retail pricing and security of supply, the section on technology provides a brief insight into some of the changes that are coming down the line.

There is mention of the ability of those who generate their own power (for example through solar panels) to sell it to others via peer-to-peer trading. The creation of alternative payment systems, such as blockchain, will help facilitate this. Blockchain is defined in the footnotes as:

"Blockchain, originally developed for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, could provide alternative payment methods for consumers, such as peer-to-peer trading. It could in time supplement or replace the electricity sector's trading and payment processes. It is too early to say how big its impact could be, or when it might be felt. However, regulatory frameworks will need to be flexible enough to take account of Blockchain and its derivatives should this technology make any significant inroads into the electricity sector."

Of course, blockchain is about the means of payment, the real disruptors will be electric vehicles and solar panels - two things that are beloved by the tech industry. Sales in New Zealand are currently low compared to other countries cited in the report: "In Norway, 40 per cent of new car sales are electric. In Germany, some power companies will top up householders' electric vehicles for free overnight - provided consumers allow their car's batteries to be drawn from in an emergency. In California, solar panels will be compulsory in all new homes by 2020."

What has driven high adoption of solar panels and electric cars is government subsidies, rebates or tax deductions, but the report notes that "the proliferation of solar panels has nearly overwhelmed the capacity of some countries' network and threatened their reliability". It adds that Australia and Germany have scaled back on solar panel subsidies to "let a more balanced and integrated system emerge."

Meanwhile, the social impact of these changes is also canvassed in the report. There is discussion about how solar panels and electric vehicles can adversely affect lower income households, who won't be able to afford the new technology, but who could end up paying for it in other ways, as the report notes:

"Lower-income households will bear some of the costs that better-off households will avoid by installing solar panels, which we predict will become more common. The same goes for electric vehicles. Lower-income households will bear a disproportionate share of the cost of building extra network capacity if these vehicles are widely used and recharged during peak hours."

The report is available here, with submissions due on Tuesday 23 October.

Sadly a second ritual is becoming apparent - the slight sigh of disillusionment as the digital curtain is whisked back to reveal, well, a slight variation on the iPhone.

This year we have two - the iPhone XS (S being the in-between model refreshes update) and the XS Max which is the size of paperback book.

In a twist on its naming conventions, this year's whisking also introduces the iPhone XR, presumably short for "inexorable" but pronounced in true Apple fashion: Ten Arrr. This then, is the pirate phone.

The XR camera has features that camera folks are cooing over. The battery is better. The screen is nicer. The "notch" in the iPhone X is now standard on this phone as well, and it's available in a range of new colours.

The ridiculously useful thumbprint scanner has been replaced by the face recognition solution Face ID which feels somehow less cool and geeky and more as if you're just lifting your phone up to use, but will no doubt save countless seconds in the pursuit of efficiency so we can be grateful for small mercies.

The current iPhone line up gets a bit of a shuffle in terms of pricing but leaves us with:

iPhone 7

iPhone 8

iPhone XR

iPhone XS

iPhone XS Max

Pricing and availability in New Zealand are yet to be announced.

However, tucked away in the whole launch there is a nugget of news, a soupçon of intrigue. Quietly, Apple has finally launched the product that will terrify the consumer arm of every mobile telco in the world. The eSIM is here at last, if by 'here' you mean the places where eSIMs will work.

For those not familiar with mobile phone technology, the SIM card is the identifier that connects the phone to a particular customer and that customer with a particular network provider. In New Zealand only one SIM is available per mobile phone number (one of the reasons we don't have problems with cloning of phones as happens elsewhere).

Apple has long since driven a huge lever between the customer and the telco and now will pry that relationship apart even further. With an eSIM it becomes the work of but a moment to switch between providers. Your phone can determine which network you should belong to on the day and make the call for you. Today, your calendar might say you're in Sydney for the day, so the phone will migrate you to an Australian service of your choosing. Tomorrow you're in Auckland so back it'll come to the New Zealand network. Perhaps you'll base your choice on network speed and quality, or perhaps on price - the decision will be yours.

Of course, that won't happen immediately. For now, the eSIM is so you can have two numbers for whatever reason you'd want to. In Europe it would work for those country-hopping workers who live on one side of the border and travel regularly to another nation and therefore another network operator, but whether that is allowed remains to be seen. China already bans eSIMs so iPhones sold in the People's Republic will have two SIM card slots - dual SIMs are not uncommon for those travelling between Hong Kong and the mainland.

For Apple's immediate purposes, the eSIM means you should be able to make and receive calls via your iPhone Watch (and a new version of that is on its way also) without needing the adjacent iPhone to power the connection. Whether that is enabled in New Zealand remains to be seen - New Zealand telcos will need to figure out whether breaking "the one number one SIM" model is a good idea or whether it's even technically feasible with our current systems.

Kupu (which is directly translated to 'word') has been developed by Spark and Te Aka Māori Dictionary. According to Spark's release, the app uses Google Cloud Vision backed by Te Aka Māori Dictionary data, powered by Google's Artificial Intelligence technology. Kupu is free to download on the Google Play Store and iOS app store.

A key adviser on the project is Dr Dean Mahuta, a Senior Lecturer at AUT and Māori language researcher at the National Māori Language Institute. He describes Kupu as "the first learning tool to translate pictures in real-time".

"Using technology and digital platforms is a great way to encourage the use and learning of Te Reo Māori. Te Aka Māori Dictionary has over 300,000 visitors to its website per month, with over 50% of those visitors being new users," he says.

As Kupu uses AI technology that is constantly learning and iterating, translation accuracy will improve over time as users are encouraged to log inaccuracies. A nice feature of the app is that if the photo contains several objects, or if there are different ways to interpret the same object, it provides multiple options. For example, while it detected rorohiko pōnaho (laptop), it also gave me options such as hangarau (technology) and rorohiko (computer).

The app's privacy policy states that users' photos are shared with Google Asia Pacific, which provides the translation service, but these are stored temporarily and for the purpose of image recognition. It's recommended however that users don't upload any personal or financial information. Also, the app collects data such as the number of downloads and the geographical location of the user and it may publish this aggregated data but won't disclose information about individual users.

Meanwhile, Vodafone has also launched an app this week to promote te reo Māori. Hika Vodafone is a staff app to "engage the organisation in revitalising te reo. This means staff will have the opportunity to learn te reo and incorporate it into everyday life - at work and at home."

In its release Vodafone says it has formed a strategic partnership with the Māori Language Commission, and signed a Mahi Tahi agreement. The commission's chief executive Ngahiwi Apanui says it is exciting to work with a "big company that is taking serious and genuine steps to increase the use, status and modern day relevance of the language."

"This is a big win for te reo Māori because here we have a company telling more than three million of their customers there's a special place for the language in everyday life and in big business New Zealand." 

We are primarily focusing on two of Labour's aspirational goals - Closing the Digital Divide and ICT as the 2nd largest contributor to GDP by 2025 - while also providing the Ministers with advice on a diverse range of initiatives before them. 

People most often ask me how does it work? so in this post I will focus on the workings of a Ministerial Advisory Group and my experience - while promising to write a followup post on the issue where I am most focused, ICT as 2nd largest contributor to GDP. 

DEDIMAG operates under a Terms of Reference and is supported by officials from both DIA and MBIE, these details along with our meeting minutes are all available on MBIE's website here.

As a digital technology focused group we have certainly embraced technology, exposing the officials to a slightly different way of working in the process. We conduct the majority of our conversations online, meetings online and share files (from a drive) instead of emailing them as attachments. The benefits of online collaboration with a geographically diverse bunch of busy business people, it also means we can invite guests for short conversations as input into our thinking easily.  We do hold the occasional in person half day meeting which has been invaluable for getting to know the 14 others in our group. 

The biggest surprise for me has been working alongside the government machine - as a business owner I am used to just doing things! so am learning the art of consultation (extremely widely) to ensure our advice, while grounded in our research and experience, also reflects everything Government is already doing in a given space. Dave Moskovitz has a beautiful phrase for describing the last few months - we are "learning how to dance together" which sums the scenario up pretty well well. 

I thoroughly enjoy working with this diverse group of minds who challenge my thinking and assumptions. Personally I have to moderate my years of frustration wading through issues with government, such as Procurement Policy, when bringing DEDIMAG members who are completely new to these longstanding challenging issues up to speed - and I am afforded the same patience by those who have had years of experience in other domains. 

We are very focused as a group on being Open and Transparent so in the future plan a website where we can share our work, thinking and provide opportunities for anyone who is interested in these visionary changes for New Zealand to engage. 

Our biggest challenge as a group however is time. We are paid for 2 days per month of reading time plus meetings at pre-published Ministerial advisory rates of $414/day or $51.75/hour. The reality is all of us donate far more time than billed and as busy business people we all face very real time constraints wanting to contribute more, consult more widely and dig deeper. To compensate for this we have split the group into 5 focus groups - Digital Technology Industry, Adaptation, Digital Inclusion, Small and Medium Enterprise, and Digital Connectivity. This enables greater throughput of activity while creating continuity of those involved in a given topic. 

How digital technology can contribute towards transformation of New Zealand's economy is certainly a fascinating challenge to be involved with and has enabled me to interact with some impressive economists, educators, future thinkers, passionate government employees and committed peers in the private sector. I'll tell you more about our approach to this in the next instalment. 

Finally, it is worthy noting I have not covered in this instalment recent political challenges, this has been written from my perspective as a DEDIMAG member to share how it works only. While our Chair, Frances, is aware I am writing this post she hasn't seen it prior to publication - it is important to us that we maintain our independence as an advisory group.

Victoria Maclennan is the Managing Director of OptimalBI, Chair of the Digital Skills Forum, member of Digital Economy and Digital Inclusion Ministerial Advisory Group, Chair of Code Club Aotearoa, Director and Investor.

The speed at which a mobile page loads became more important since Google began including it as a factor in organic search in July. The message to businesses with an online presence is to speed-up because Google claims that the longer it takes to load your mobile site, the more likely you are to lose customers, here are their stats:

Rainsford's message to the capacity audience at the SkyCity theatre was threefold - if you want to stay ahead of the game you have to provide the following customer experience - fast, relevant and seamless. 

Another tip is be personal, apparently customers are ahead of the curve when it comes to wanting a personal experience, and Google data shows that 66% of customers expect brands to know their history. Rainsford has noticed an increasing use of the words "for me" appearing in search results.

While consumers might be quick to adopt new ways to interact with brands, unfortunately New Zealand businesses are lagging. Rainsford cited a survey which showed only 2% were in the top category for digital competency.

The example that is often cited of a New Zealand company that "gets it" is Air New Zealand. Enabling Koru Club members to order their coffee via the mobile app and have it ready for them when they arrive at the lounge is an example of how technology can provide "human experiences".

Internationally, an example is the Hilton Hotel chain which has digitised key aspects of the customer experience. Customers can check in, select a room via and even open the door to their room with their mobile phone, without once having to speak to the receptionist.

In the video shown by Rainsford, the hotel chain was gearing up for 'voice applications'. So too is Google in New Zealand, with Rainsford hinting that Google Home is close to launching here. This follows Amazon's launch of its Echo earlier in the year.

Both Google and Amazon are promoting the ability to buy goods with verbal commands, known as 'voice shopping', with some analysts forecasting it will be worth as much as $40 billion a year globally. But media reports last month showed that only 2% of people with the Amazon Echo speaker have actually made a purchase with it in 2018.

Many see having a voice app as more of a marketing exercise, than a sales tool. Even so, it would make sense for New Zealand businesses to get familiar with Voice apps, as it's inevitable that they will become an increasing presences in e-commerce. In the meantime, you can take another step towards digital competency by checking out how fast your mobile site loads here.  

Economic Development Minister David Parker says under an agreement between the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and NASA, New Zealand tertiary students can apply to participate in NASA's International Internships Programme.

"Through the programme, high-achieving students will have the opportunity to work in NASA's best and most advanced research facilities, with access to expert mentors. The experience could inspire someone to begin the journey to becoming an astronaut or to follow in the footsteps of great Kiwi scientist Sir William Pickering who led the successful effort to put the first US satellite in orbit," Parker says.

Aside from providing four clever students with the opportunity to hang out at NASA next year, Parker says the agreement strengthens the country's connection with global space networks and raises our profile as a location for space activities.

"New Zealand is well-positioned to become a hub for new space activities with its highly-skilled workforce and expertise in physics, energy, engineering and computer science research."

Driven by the establishment of Rocket Labs, which has built a launch pad in Mahia on the East Coast, MBIE has been busy creating the necessary legal settings for a space industry in this country.

According to information on MBIE's website, the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Act 2017 was passed into law in July last year and came into effect in December 2017. It regulates launches into outer space, launch facilities, high altitude vehicles (HAVs) and payloads, through licences or permits. The process is administered by the New Zealand Space Agency within MBIE.

When it comes to the space industry it seems the old 'tyranny of distance' works in our favour, with the MBIE site noting New Zealand's remote location provides advantages such as clear skies and seas, and relatively low levels of air traffic.

Keen to attract more space entrepreneurs, researchers and investors, the MBIE site promotes a number of initiatives including the Centre for Space Science and Technology (CSST), which helps New Zealand businesses to access space-based data to develop satellite data products and solutions. Based in Alexandra, CSST is about a year old and its inaugural CEO is Steve Cotter, who was previously Chief Executive of GÉANT, the pan-European Research and Education Network serving nearly 50 million users based in the Netherlands. Prior to that Cotter was CEO of REANNZ.

There is also MBIE's role in leading New Zealand's involvement in the international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array. Last time I checked in New Zealand was considering becoming an associate member to ensure our scientists remain involved in the global project.

What's exciting about these initiatives is that New Zealand is not just lending it's remote location, it's also working hard on providing its own smarts. 

These statistics are contained within a report by app marketing company Liftoff. It's an interesting mix of data and research assembled from a range of different research and analytics companies. It's well worth a read if you are thinking of applying your tech and design skills to creating mobile games.

Among its findings is that female gamers are the most valuable mobile players - they cost less to acquire and spend more on in-app purchases, than men. But it doesn't appear that women (who incidentally make up 46% of all gamers, according to Newzoo) are being well catered to, with a survey of the top 100 games on Google Play showing that most have male characters and another study showing that 60% of women don't believe that games are made for them.

This may be on account of the fact that women are generally under-represented in the tech sector, especially in countries like New Zealand. In a speech earlier this month to the NZ Games Developers Association, Communications Minister Clare Curran said 21% of employees in game development were female, compared to 23% in the tech sector. While recognising the need to improve the participation of women in the sector, Curran noted that there are some great initiatives already underway.

These include the Girls Behind Games movement started by Runaway, which promotes gender parity and diversity in the gaming industry, the Media Design School's 'Girls in Games' scholarship for one female game artist and one female game programmer, and the organisation She Sharp [She#] which connects young women with women working in the tech industry so that they can see the opportunities that tech qualifications can provide.

While not quite approaching the eye-watering billion-dollar figures quoted in the Liftoff report, the NZ Game Development sector is on the up, this year recording a 43% in annual revenue growth to $143 million.

So, if you are planning on increasing the pie and want to target women mobile games, the Liftoff report suggests that the games that will most appeal are puzzles. Men apparently prefer strategy and action games. Casino games are "gender neutral". It's all a bit too much like stereotyping, and I'm sure we could debate the veracity of these insights, but on the other hand, if 60% of women don't feel they are being catered to, then maybe there is some helpful information in there.

Finally, it should come as no surprise that the top market for mobile gaming is China, according to the Liftoff report. It is the largest market by app store consumer spend, and nearly half the top apps were owned by China-headquartered companies.

You can read the full report here.

Luckily talking about algorithms lends itself to many film references so I was able to provide context for the non-technical in the audience - although only quarter of the room had seen Prometheus, so my example of distribution to the medical industry didn't land as well as expected. Below is an overview of the talk.

How do we solve the problem of algorithmic bias?

Algorithmic bias occurs when a computer system behaves in ways that reflects the implicit values of humans involved in that data collection, selection, or use.

We are only just beginning to discover how extensive this bias may be. AI and Machine Learning technologies can all analyse and process your data, predict outcomes, make decisions and operationalise processes in a cost effective accessible way. These platforms are increasingly becoming accessible to operators who are not educated or trained in methodologies or statistical sciences. There is a risk knowingly, or unknowingly, prevalent biases will be baked into decision making and actions taken. 

US Examples include - systems used to rank teachers, criminal sentencing algorithms, gender bias in pre-employment tests. 

How do we solve this? how do we identify whether a programme or algorithm contains bias? how do we ensure invisible programmes don't impact the way we live and work?

Are dystopian future novels on the right path?

"It's a misconception that AI is objective because it relies on mathematical computations; the construction of an AI system is an inherently human-driven process. It is unavoidable that such systems will contain bias." WEForum

Dystopian future novels and movies have painted a range of hypotheses where humans are either segmented by status/wealth (what constitutes wealth changes), race or gender; or where humans are marginalised by machines. In both of these scenarios computers of various forms are involved in the profiling, identification, segmentation and enforcement activities depicted.

Recently we read an article about a man who was fired by a computer, followed up by the supposition "better AI could have saved him". In 2016 an investigative journalist found the sentencing recommendation software used by courts and judges in the USA predicted black offenders as more likely to re-offend twice as often as white offenders - this article spells out some shocking examples and evidence this bias was overriding other factors including past convictions.

"When the data we feed the machines reflects the history of our own unequal society, we are, in effect, asking the program to learn our own biases". Guardian. 

What can be done?

At a high level the concepts I discussed with the students are listed below, they asked great questions about what society can do to avoid bias in our everyday lives, I pushed them to think about what technology companies can do including: 

• being attentive to context;
• consciously understanding the purpose for which data is collected;
• clarifying the questions we are asking of data, auditing and explaining algorithms;
• testing assumptions and features for referencing behaviour;
• ensuring teams who are developing technology are inclusive and diverse;
• and incorporating equitable, ethical and just into the core values of systems.

None of this touches on everyday operational activities so I will continue with a series on capability development and bias awareness for analysts and teams.

Victoria spends much of her time focusing on Digital Inclusion, Digital Literacy and Digital Rights.

You can read her other blogs here.

Reposted with kind permission.