The main problem with virtual reality? It's almost as humdrum as real life

Nov 19, 2019 03:00 am UTC| Insights & Views Technology

Just a few years ago, virtual reality (VR) was being showered with very real money. The industry raised an estimated US$900 million in venture capital in 2016, but by 2018 that figure had plummeted to US$280...

Domestic violence will spike in the bushfire aftermath, and governments can no longer ignore it

Nov 19, 2019 02:58 am UTC| Insights & Views Life

Over the past two weeks, bushfires have raged across New South Wales and Queensland. While the narrative appears focused on potential causes and political point-scoring, whats lost in this discussion is the role of...

An 8-year-old made US$22 million on YouTube, but most social media influencers are like unpaid interns

Nov 19, 2019 02:58 am UTC| Insights & Views Business

Like any eight-year-old, Ryan Kaji loves to play with toys. But when Ryan plays, millions watch. Since the age of four hes been the star of his own YouTube channel. All up his videos have gained more than 35 billion...

Chat bots, James Dean ... can the digital dead rest in peace?

Nov 19, 2019 02:53 am UTC| Insights & Views Technology

To be dead, wrote the 20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, is to be a prey for the living. Even Sartre, though, would have struggled to imagine casting James Dean in a movie 64 years after the actors...

Turn down for what? Why you turn down the radio when you're trying to park your car

Nov 19, 2019 02:51 am UTC| Insights & Views Life

Youre driving down an unfamiliar street on a clear spring evening. Youve been invited to a friend of a friends party, at a house youve never been to before. Tracking the street numbers, you see youre getting close, so...

Global Geopolitics Series

Paul Keating attacks media for 'pious belchings' over China

Nov 19, 2019 02:48 am UTC| Insights & Views

Former prime minister Paul Keating has launched a scathing attack on the Australian media for its coverage of China, denouncing the nominally pious belchings of do-gooder journalists who live on leaks from security...

Humans light 85% of bushfires, and we do virtually nothing to stop it

Nov 19, 2019 02:47 am UTC| Insights & Views Nature

Its hard to comprehend why someone would deliberately light a bushfire. Yet this behaviour regularly occurs in Australia and other countries. We would go a long way to preventing bushfires if we better understood this...