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"Since the world's first CCTV camera was installed in Germany in 1942, the number of surveillance cameras around the world has grown immensely. In fact, it only took us 79 years to go from one camera to nearly one billion of these devices. In the above interactive graphic, Surfshark maps out how prevalent CCTV surveillance cameras are in the world's 130 most populous cities. "

"The Raspberry Pi opened the doors to low-cost devices that could be used to introduce kids to programming and hardware development. "

"Geofence warrants, or reverse-location warrants, are a fairly new concept. With permission from a judge, they allow law enforcement to obtain anonymized data from Google from almost any device that was in a certain geographic area at a specific time. Police can then go back to Google for more specific user information on anyone they deem a suspect."

""Employers are increasingly exploiting metadata logged by software and devices for performance analytics and algorithmic control," Christl added. "MS is providing the tools for it. Practices we know from software development (and factories and call centres) are expanded to all white-collar work.""

"On the other hand, users (as distinct from developers) are about to see an upside of Apple's monopoly power. The next update of its mobile operating system, iOS14, includes a change that should have a dire impact on many online advertisers. The industry assigns a unique code to each device called an IDFA. Knowing your IDFA can help advertisers tell whether their ads are effective, particularly when they've shown you the same ad in multiple places. Facebook uses the IDFA as part of Audience Network, its ad network for developers."

"TL;DR: all recent macOS devices are no longer safe to use if left alone, even if you have them powered down. The root of trust on macOS is inherently broken They can bruteforce your FileVault2 volume password They can alter your macOS installation They can load arbitrary kernel extensions"

"Some ideas include building mechanisms into devices or platforms that cause them to shut down automatically after two hours, or nudges that make it more difficult to keep spending money in an app. The problem is that tech companies are ruled by a profit model built on capturing more of our attention to sell to advertisers. Designing platforms so they limit the amount of time we spend on social media runs counter to this model."

"The combination of software and IP in every device is a sea-change for the organization of our society. As firms have become increasingly concentrated - as monopolies have emerged in every sector - they have also figured out how to infuse their products with just enough software that they can invoke IP to control their competitors, critics, and customers. These are market power monopolies backstopped by creators' monopolies, which create IP rights that supercharge their market power."

"If anything, I think in the 50s and 60s - because so few people had direct experience of computers - there was even more concern than there is now. Computers were associated with vast power. It was only with the arrival in the 1980s and 1990s of the personal computer we were sold the idea that the technology was participatory and liberal. I think we have returned, in a way, to the original fears, now we sense that these personal devices very much represent the power of vast corporations. "

"Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network, as part of the company's plan to fix connection problems for its smart home devices."

"The type of device matters-some are associated with worse student outcomes. Geography matters-technology is associated with higher student outcomes in the United States than in other regions. Who is using the technology matters-technology in the hands of teachers is associated with higher scores than technology in the hands of students. Intensity matters-students who use technology intensely or not at all perform better than those with moderate use. A school system's current performance level matters-in lower-performing school systems, technology is associated with worse results."

"At the Seco Innovation Laboratory in Fagersta, Sweden, R&D technician Jan Gravningsbråten, could easily be mistaken for a mad scientist, surrounded by blinking red lasers, trays of inserts under observation, diagnostic equipment and countless other measuring devices, all in aid of his ongoing work with data matrix codes, also known as QR codes."

"The long-running issues of traceability, transparency and enforcement were colourfully illustrated in September 2017 when a group of investigators from the Basel Action Network (BAN) - a non-for-profit group that monitors compliance with the 1989 United Nations Basel Convention on the trade of hazardous wastes - attempted to learn where exactly Australia's e-waste was going. The group fitted 35 old CRT televisions, LED monitors and printers with GPS devices of a special make. Out of this sample the team quickly focused on the fate of three LCD screens dropped at Officeworks storefronts around the Brisbane metro area. Hayley Palmer, BAN's chief operating officer, was on the team that followed where they went afterwards. As the signals left the country, Palmer, her nine-month-old and a colleague tracked the monitors to a warehouse in Hong Kong and then on to an illegal dump-yard in a rural part of Thailand where they talked their way inside."

"People have been censored or blocked from the platform because their names sounded too fake. Ads for clothing disabled people we removed buy algorithms that believed they were breaking the rules and promoting medical devices. The Vienna Tourist Board had to move to adult content friendly site OnlyFans to share works of art from their museum after Facebook removed photos of paintings. Words that have rude popular meanings but other more specific definitions in certain circles - like "hoe" amongst gardeners, or "cock" amongst chicken farmers or gun enthusiasts - can land people in the so-called "Facebook jail" for days or even weeks."

"The problem is, a lot of those electronics were being used to monitor students, even combing through private chats, emails and documents all in the name of protecting them. More than 80% of surveyed teachers and 77% of surveyed high school students told the CDT that their schools use surveillance software on those devices, and the more reliant students are on those electronics, unable to afford supplementary phones or tablets, the more they are subjected to scrutiny."

"A new botnet is actively targeting IoT devices using payloads compiled for a dozen CPU architectures and uses them to launch several types of DDoS and to spread various types of malware. The Dark Nexus botnet as it was named by the Bitdefender researchers who discovered it has gone through a very fast development process since it was initially spotted."

Natal... The future of gaming, be able to control your 360 in your sitting room... However, they neglected to mention how the device has a motion-sensing camera meaning that your living room is more susceptible to being hacked now... 

3D TV! At last, a new input device that will allow us to be drawn even more into our Televisions =D

""As with all technology, there are caveats around making sure that it is used responsibly and not as a licence to cheat, but none of that is insurmountable," he said. In contrast, New York City schools have already banned the use of ChatGPT on all devices and networks because of concerns it will encourage plagiarism. Dr Thomas Lancaster, a computer scientist working at Imperial College London, best known for his research into academic integrity, contract cheating and plagiarism, said it was in many ways a game changer. He said: "It's certainly a major turning point in education where universities have to make big changes."

"Nor are car owners the only consumers learning that software can be tricksy in a way hardware cannot. In 2017, Apple admitted that its software was slowing down the performance of older iPhones. It said that the design was aimed at saving battery life, but critics said it was an example of "planned obsolescence" - artificially shortening the life of a device to make buyers upgrade sooner. In 2009, Amazon provided a perfect metaphor for the potentially dystopian implications of the subscription economy when, without warning, it revoked copies of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four from all its Kindle e-readers."