Our new study, published today in the journal Information Research, suggests that leaving all your emails in the inbox is likely to leave you dissatisfied with your personal records management.

In an exploratory survey, we asked participants how they dealt with their personal records such as bills, online subscriptions and similar items. Many of these arrive by email.

We found that most respondents left their electronic records in their email. Only half saved items such as bills and other documents to other locations, like their computer or the cloud. But having a disorganised inbox also led to problems, including missing bills and losing track of important correspondence.

The risk of losing track of your emails

Receiving bills, insurance renewals and other household documents by email saves time and money, and reduces unnecessary paper use.

However, there are risks involved if you don’t stay on top of your electronic records. Respondents in our research reported issues such as lapsed vehicle registration, failing to cancel unwanted subscriptions, and overlooking tax deductions because it was too much trouble finding the receipts.

This suggests late fines and other email oversights could be costing people hundreds of dollars each year.

In addition to the financial costs, research suggests that not sorting and managing electronic records makes it more difficult to put together the information needed at tax time, or for other high-stakes situations, such as loan applications.

What did we find?

We surveyed over 300 diverse respondents on their personal electronic records management. Most of them were from Australia, but we also received responses from other countries, such as the United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland, Portugal and elsewhere.

Two-thirds of the respondents used their email to manage personal records, such as bills, receipts, subscriptions and more. Of those, we found that once respondents had dealt with their email, about half of them would sort the emails into folders, while the other half would leave everything in the inbox.

While most sorted their workplace email into folders, they were much less likely to sort their personal email in the same way.

The results also showed that only half (52%) of respondents who left all their email in the inbox were satisfied with their records management, compared to 71% of respondents who sorted their email into folders.

Of the respondents who saved their paperwork in the cloud (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox and similar), 83% reported being satisfied with their home records management.

The study was exploratory, so further research will be needed to see if our findings apply more universally. However, our statistical analysis did reveal practices associated with more satisfactory outcomes, and ones that might be better to avoid.

What can go wrong with an inbox-only approach?

Based on the responses, we have identified three main problems with leaving all your email in the inbox.

First, users can lose track of the tasks that need to be done. For example, a bill that needs to be paid could slip down the line unnoticed, drowned by other emails.

Second, relying on search to re-find emails means you need to know exactly what you’re looking for. For example, at tax time searching for charity donation receipts depends on remembering what to search for, as well as the exact wording in the email containing the receipt.

Read More: Stop emailing yourself: the best file sharing options across devices

Third, many bills and statements are not sent as attachments to emails, but rather as hyperlinks. If you change your bank or another service provider, those hyperlinks may not be accessible at a later date. Not being able to access missing payslips from a former employer can also cause issues, as shown by the Robodebt scandal or the recent case of the Australian Tax Office reviving old debts.

4 tips for better records management

When we asked respondents to nominate a preferred location for keeping their personal records, they tended to choose a more organised format than their current behaviour. Ideally, only 8% of the respondents would leave everything in their email inbox, unsorted.

Our findings suggest a set of practices that can help you get on top of your electronic records and prevent stress or financial losses:

• sort your email into category folders, or save records in folders in the cloud or on a computer
• download documents that are not attached to emails or sent to you – such as utility bills and all your payslips
• put important renewals in your calendar as reminders, and
• delete junk mail and unsubscribe, so that your inbox can be turned into a to-do list.

• Matt Balogh is an Adjunct Lecturer, University of New England
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

Just days after South Africa’s PlayStation distributor confirmed the launch of the PS5 Slim in April, we’re hearing news of Sony’s next big thing: the PS5 ‘Pro’. This isn’t coming from Sony directly, of course. It’s coming, as everything that counts as ‘news’ these days does, from an unofficial source (it was leaked) — by YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead. And later confirmed by Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson.

Oh, and it’ll be arriving sometime in the holiday shuffle — to better target those Christmas wishlists — as long as it pumps out enough first-party titles, that is. Good thing Nintendo stood aside this year, huh?

Anyone familiar with the scene knows who Tom Henderson is, and that he doesn’t mess around. He verified that the documents seen in Moore’s Law is Dead’s video are the real thing, coming from a PlayStation developer portal — with the documents hitting relevant developers a few weeks back.

We won’t bore you with all the nitty-gritty details. This is a PS5 Pro, after all. It’s a PlayStation with hardware befitting the four-year gap between itself and the original console — one that’s reportedly being kitted out to best suit any customers picking up GTA VI when it drops next year thanks to its improved GPU that’ll apparently render up to three times faster.

A more consistent frame rate is expected at 4K resolutions, and there’s talk that its ray tracing capabilities could be three (or even four) times faster than the previous iteration. PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling (PSSR) has been rumoured to use Sony’s machine learning — similar to AMD’s FSR or Nvidia’s DLSS image upscaling features to possibly boost graphics up to 8K.

Source

Let’s settle this on LinkedIn…

Anyone against the idea of starving themselves to death probably has a LinkedIn account, perhaps against their will. Microsoft’s social platform has long been a place to go in search of jobs, or employees to fill those jobs — with everyone patting themselves on the back in the process. Now, the platform is looking to branch into gaming.

That might sound like we’re pulling your leg, but it’s true. The billion-strong userbase will soon be treated to at least three of the company’s in-house games; akin to the surge of simple internet games like Wordle or something from neal.fun. They’re called Queens, Inference, and Crossclimb. It isn’t Linkle or something equally Wordle-y, so the NYT should leave them be.

The obvious implementation would be to allow employees to compete against one another, or against other companies. And, according to app researcher Nima Owji, that’s exactly what’s happening.

LinkedIn later confirmed in a message to TechCrunch that it was indeed working on a selection of games, though failed to provide any sort of release window. “We’re playing with adding puzzle-based games within the LinkedIn experience to unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations,” the spokesperson said in a message to TechCrunch.

It’s… a strange move. A website aimed at professionals, would-be or otherwise, succumbing to the pull of time-killing games — designed to kill company time? We hope it all works out.

Source

Sony hits the pause button on VR

Virtual reality (VR) isn’t for everyone, apparently. You’d think Sony, a company where the bucks flow out of every orifice, would find a way to make it work. But if the rumours are true, the Japanese conglomerate has hit the pause button on PSVR 2 production and begun stockpiling the headsets thanks to declining sales quarter after quarter. Yikes.

We’re just spitballing here, but we reckon the R15,000 price tag — or the fact that it requires a PS5 to work — might have something to do with the declining sales. Don’t even get us started on the lacklustre support for games since its debut, riding on the Horizon Call of the Mountain high ever since. The closing of the PlayStation London division, reportedly working on VR titles, hasn’t helped.

The company’s saving grace could be its decision to allow PC support for the PSVR 2 headset. Or it might continue to sink deeper into this mess, as more people flock towards the similarly priced Meta Quest 3.

Source

Google’s Gemini on Apple iPhones

AI might be coming to Apple’s iPhones sooner, rather than later. That isn’t thanks to a massive push to get Apple’s in-house AI out sooner, but because of a possible deal that’ll put Google’s Gemini engine on Apple’s devices, according to Bloomberg’s sources familiar with the matter. If the reports are true, Apple’s also explored the possibility of plugging OpenAI’s engine into the development of its next phone.

Whatever the case, we won’t be hearing about it until June at the earliest at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. It seems that nothing has yet been agreed upon between Apple and Google — with no ideas of how a partnership would work, or how the AI would be introduced to the devices.

Whether this will affect Apple’s long-rumoured plans to develop its own artificial intelligence in-house has yet to be seen. Just last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook was going on about the massive potential of AI, and that the company was investing heavily in the area in general.

Source

Struggling to find relevant sources for your review? Inciteful will list suitable articles with just the click of a button. Are your human research participants too expensive or complicated to manage? Not a problem – try synthetic participants instead.

Each of these tools suggests AI could be superior to humans in outlining and explaining concepts or ideas. But can humans be replaced when it comes to qualitative research?

This is something we recently had to grapple with while carrying out unrelated research into mobile dating during the COVID-19 pandemic. And what we found should temper enthusiasm for artificial responses over the words of human participants.

The rise of AI in academia sparks a debate: How do we balance technological advancement with ethical integrity in research? Misidentification and casual accusations highlight the fragile line between innovation and authenticity. Nature https://t.co/JuB9ZoV2jI

— Genetic Literacy Project (@GeneticLiteracy) March 15, 2024

Encountering AI in our research

Our research is looking at how people might navigate mobile dating during the pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our aim was to explore broader social responses to mobile dating as the pandemic progressed and as public health mandates changed over time.

As part of this ongoing research, we prompt participants to develop stories in response to hypothetical scenarios.

In 2021 and 2022 we received a wide range of intriguing and quirky responses from 110 New Zealanders recruited through Facebook. Each participant received a gift voucher for their time.

Participants described characters navigating the challenges of “Zoom dates” and clashing over vaccination statuses or wearing masks. Others wrote passionate love stories with eyebrow-raising details. Some even broke the fourth wall and wrote directly to us, complaining about the mandatory word length of their stories or the quality of our prompts.

These responses captured the highs and lows of online dating, the boredom and loneliness of lockdown, and the thrills and despair of finding love during the time of COVID-19.

But, perhaps most of all, these responses reminded us of the idiosyncratic and irreverent aspects of human participation in research – the unexpected directions participants go in, or even the unsolicited feedback you can receive when doing research.

But in the latest round of our study in late 2023, something had clearly changed across the 60 stories we received.

This time many of the stories felt “off”. Word choices were quite stilted or overly formal. And each story was quite moralistic in terms of what one “should” do in a situation.

Using AI detection tools, such as ZeroGPT, we concluded participants – or even bots – were using AI to generate story answers for them, possibly to receive the gift voucher for minimal effort.

Contrary to claims that AI can sufficiently replicate human participants in research, we found AI-generated stories to be woeful.

We were reminded that an essential ingredient of any social research is for the data to be based on lived experience.

Is AI the problem?

Perhap the biggest threat to human research is not AI, but rather the philosophy that underscores it.

It is worth noting the majority of claims about AI’s capabilities to replace humans come from computer scientists or quantitative social scientists. In these types of studies, human reasoning or behaviour is often measured through scorecards or yes/no statements.

This approach necessarily fits human experience into a framework that can be more easily analysed through computational or artificial interpretation.

In contrast, we are qualitative researchers who are interested in the messy, emotional, lived experience of people’s perspectives on dating. We were drawn to the thrills and disappointments participants originally pointed to with online dating, the frustrations and challenges of trying to use dating apps, as well as the opportunities they might create for intimacy during a time of lockdowns and evolving health mandates.

Read More: Emotion-tracking AI on the job: Workers fear being watched – and misunderstood

In general, we found AI poorly simulated these experiences.

Some might accept generative AI is here to stay, or that AI should be viewed as offering various tools to researchers. Other researchers might retreat to forms of data collection, such as surveys, that might minimise the interference of unwanted AI participation.

But, based on our recent research experience, we believe theoretically-driven, qualitative social research is best equipped to detect and protect against AI interference.

There are additional implications for research. The threat of AI as an unwanted participant means researchers will have to work longer or harder to spot imposter participants.

Academic institutions need to start developing policies and practices to reduce the burden on individual researchers trying to carry out research in the changing AI environment.

Regardless of researchers’ theoretical orientation, how we work to limit the involvement of AI is a question for anyone interested in understanding human perspectives or experiences. If anything, the limitations of AI reemphasise the importance of being human in social research.

• Alexandra Gibson is a Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
• Alex Beattie is a Research Fellow, School of Health, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

But this year, Boeing has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. In January, an emergency door plug blew off a Boeing 737 MAX in mid flight, triggering an investigation from United States federal regulators.

More recently, we have seen a Boeing plane lose a tyre while taking off, another flight turned back as the plane was leaking fluid, an apparent engine fire, a landing gear collapse, a stuck rudder pedal, and a plane “dropping” in flight and injuring dozens of passengers. A Boeing engineer who had raised concerns regarding quality control during the manufacturing process on the company’s 787 and 737 MAX planes also died earlier this week, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

As members of the travelling public, should we be concerned? Well, yes and no.

Many problems, but not all can be blamed on Boeing

The recent parade of events has certainly been dramatic – but not all of them can be blamed on Boeing. Five incidents occurred on aircraft owned and operated by United Airlines and were related to factors outside the manufacturer’s control, like maintenance issues, potential foreign object debris, and possible human error.

A United Airlines 777 flying from San Francisco to Japan lost a tyre on takeoff, a maintenance issue not related to Boeing. The aircraft landed safely in Los Angeles.

They’re called Boeing because that’s the sound their wheels make when they fall off the plane

— 7/11 Truther (@DaveMcNamee3000) March 12, 2024

A United Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles had to return to Sydney due to a “maintenance issue” after a fluid was seen leaking from the aircraft on departure.

A United Airlines 737-900 flying from Texas to Florida ended up with some plastic bubble wrap in the engine, causing a suspected compressor stall. This is a disruption of air flow to an operating engine, making it “backfire” and emit flames.

A United Airlines 737 Max flying from Tennessee to Texas suffered a gear collapse after a normal landing. The pilot continued to the end of the runway before exiting onto a taxiway – possibly at too high a speed – and the aircraft ended up in the grass and the left main landing gear collapsed.

The fifth event occurred on a United Airlines 737-8 flight from the Bahamas to New Jersey. The pilots reported that the rudder pedals, which control the left and right movement of the aircraft in flight, were stuck in the neutral position during landing.

Manufacturing quality concerns

The exit door plug failure in January occurred on an Alaska Airlines flight. US regulators are currently investigating the company’s manufacturing quality assurance as a result.

The door plug was installed by a Boeing subcontractor called Spirit AeroSystem. The door plug bolts were not properly secured and the plug door fell off in flight. The same aircraft had a series of pressurisation alarms on two previous flights, and was scheduled for a maintenance inspection at the completion of the flight.

Spirit got its start after Boeing shut down its own manufacturing operations in Kansas and Oklahoma, and Boeing is now in the process of buying the company to improve quality oversight. Spirit currently works with Airbus, as well, though that may change.

Read More: Boeing confirms it was the victim of a ransomware attack

What changed

Critics say the culture at Boeing has changed since Airbus became a major competitor in the early 2000s. The company has been accused of shifting its focus to profit at the expense of quality engineering.

Former staff have raised concerns over tight production schedules, which increased the pressure on employees to finish the aircraft. This caused many engineers to question the process, and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fine Boeing for lapses in quality oversight after tools and debris were found on aircraft being inspected.

Several employees have testified before US Congress on the production issues regarding quality control. Based on the congressional findings, the FAA began to inspect Boeing’s processes more closely.

Several Boeing employees noted there was a high staff turnover rate during the COVID pandemic. This is not unique to Boeing, as all manufacturing processes and airline maintenance facilities around the globe were also hit with high turnover.

As a result, there is an acute shortage of qualified maintenance engineers, as well as pilots. These shortages have created several issues with the airline industry successfully returning to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. Airlines and maintenance training centres around the globe are working hard to train replacements, but this takes time as one cannot become a qualified engineer or airline pilot overnight.

So, is it still safe to fly on these planes? Yes it is. Despite dramatic incidents in the news and social media posts poking fun at the company, air travel is still extremely safe, and that includes Boeing.

We can expect these issues with Boeing planes now will be corrected. The financial impact has been significant – so even a profit-driven company will demand change.

• Doug Drury is a Professor/Head of Aviation, CQUniversity Australia
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

With Table Mountain like a flicked-up collar, Cape Town has the confidence and smoothness that George Clooney-esque greying European men have. It has everything. Glorious coastlines, beautiful beaches (and 1-inch freezing cold water in the Atlantic, unless you go to the Muizenberg side, an hour’s drive away, here the warmer Indian Ocean flows passed) and scenic splendour aplenty. Unless you go in winter – where it’s both cold and windy; and rains too.

But summer is splendorous and November to March is a good time to be there. The seas are deep blue, and it’s worth the drive out along the escapement from Clifton to Hout Bay and then on the cliff-hugging Chapman’s Peak to a viewpoint that looks back on Cape Town in all her glory. Visit Robben Island – if the ferry is working.

The Grand | Haul Rd, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, 8002

The Grand is a chic beach bar with a private beach, masses of seagulls flying by and a fairly good menu if you want to eat. It’s a fun, upmarket place, with tables on the beach. Go late afternoon for sundowners. The snobbish types can be easily avoided because the view is so good.

It’s just near the Waterfront, which is a tourist trap hell and to be avoided at all costs.

Long Street | Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town, 8001

Go drinking in Long Street. Pick a bar, any bar. It’ll do.

Woodstock is the equivalent of New York’s Soho or San Franciso’s Mission. A peri-industrial, working-class suburb that has been gentrified and is now filled with ad agencies, digital cool kids and good restaurants.

Old Biscuit Mill market | 375 Albert Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town, 7915

Great Saturday morning thing to do. Good food, organic “farmer’s market” and lots of craft beer. In a part of Woodstock, which is the cool part of town. Lots of great little stores nearby, selling old stuff or locally-made things.

Woodstock Exchange | Albert Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town, 7915

Woodstock Exchange is one of those converted factory-type spaces filled with one-off shops offering quirky furniture, hand-made leather goods, and small art galleries (mostly stocking unknown and mostly untalented artists; but staffed with earnest art snobs). San Franciscans will feel right at home.

Superette | Albert Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town, 7915

One of the lesser pretentious places in Woodstock Exchange is Superette, which serves wholesome food and good coffee. Again, very Mission-esque.

The alternative city guide to Cape Town, South Africa – The Guardian

Written by my friend Nechama Brodie:

“Cape Town is often described as being like a European city as if this were something African metropolises should aspire to. In some ways, it is not an entirely inaccurate description. The compact city centre, hemmed in by the harbour and the curve of Table Mountain, Lion’s Head and Signal Hill, is almost entirely walkable. Or, if you prefer, it’s also an easy trip on a MyCiTi bus or a hop-on, hop-off open-top Red Bus.

“The “grachts” – Buitengracht, Heerengracht, Keizersgracht – all sit above what were once freshwater canals, running from the mountain to the sea (gracht is the Dutch word for canal). The early Dutch-era street grid has been overlaid with later Victorian structures, and there are clusters of 20th-century brutal modernist buildings pointing towards the Foreshore (which is built on land reclaimed from the sea).

“Long Street has an assortment of bars, clubs, backpackers’ lodges, shops and restaurants. Just two blocks up, Bree Street, particularly between Buitensingel and Strand, is a little less frenetic and much more stylish. And there are hundreds of other little spots to be discovered, not just on the trio of Long, Bree and Loop Streets, but in the side alleys in between.”

Rather than typing up notes on my laptop during an interview, I can have a conversation with someone and record it. In the past, I seldom used the recordings I routinely made during interviews because it took so long to transcribe them.

For a few years, I used a transcription service (which wasn’t cheap) but then came AI transcription websites. Take your recorded .mp3 and upload it. Within 15 minutes, you have a pretty good transcript of that conversation. These days there are numerous such offerings, but I have been team Otter.ai for a good while now. The entry-level price of $10 – or R186 – a month seems steep, I know, but I often subscribe for a month or two and then unsubscribe until I need it again.

It also means I get two different work products, a podcast and an article, with minimum effort. I call this lazy journalism. But then again, I am a high-functioning lazy person.

For the last few years, I have used a dedicated recorder – made by a Japanese firm called Zoom, which predates the Covid-era software of the same name. I also schlepped a pair of Sennheiser microphones (and XLR cables) with me. I have flown to New York and Nairobi with these and was always aggrieved at the extra weight that made my backpack that much heavier.

But technology moves on, and often very swiftly.

Read More: 6 podcasts for your business brain

I was showing a friend yesterday (let’s call him Lyal) how I no longer carry an extra 2kg of audio gear for podcasts. Instead, I use lapel mics, known in the audio industry as lavalier mics, that connect to a USB-C or Lightning port. I’ve been using an excellent Sennheiser lapel mic with a Lightning adaptor and recently bought another with USB-C that I use with my iPad or MacBook. They weigh less than 100 grams together.

I can still record podcasts with ease – as I did with Workday’s Sayan Chakraborty in November – but I save myself from schlepping that extra gear.

As I was telling my friend, a friend of his (let’s call her Za) asked which mics to use.

There’s a brand called Boya, which makes the BY-M3 clip-on USB-C lavalier mic, and a Lightning connector BY-M2 model. They’re both on Takealot.com.

I use the Motiv Audio app from Shure for recording. It’s good and connects to Dropbox, which I use to upload and send to Stuff’s genius director of audio, Hans Baumgarten, for editing. Motiv is available on both Apple and Android.

What can get into my water that will make me sick?

Two things.

You can have chemicals in the water that are toxic, or you can have pathogenic organisms which can make you ill. These lead to different diseases and have different treatment strategies.

As a general rule, South Africa’s water works are able to remove almost all chemicals such that the water is safe to drink. The water treatment works also disinfect the water, killing harmful bacteria and viruses. This is primarily done with chlorine, but the water is overdosed slightly. This leaves a little chlorine in the water for “residual” disinfection. The residual chlorine travels with the water down the pipe to the reservoir and into your home, keeping the water pathogen-free. Pathogens include viruses, bacteria and small animals such as worms and larvae.

This is why the water from taps sometimes smells a little like chlorine. This is a good thing. It means your water is safe.

Is my tap water safe to drink?

As a rule, the answer here is yes, but probably only if you live in a big city. If there is a continuous supply of water, the pressure in the pipe prevents contaminants from entering the pipeline. And if the water has residual chlorine in it, that means the supply to your home is good.

Unfortunately, this relies on drinking water treatment works functioning properly, which is not always the case. The department of water and sanitation runs an auditing process of the water treatment works and the water they supply. The results are released as Blue Drop reports. Johannesburg has been classified as having excellent quality of supply, both chemically and microbiologically. However, the overall scores in Gauteng, the province Johannesburg is located in, are dropping even though they are still high.

Across the country 46% of drinking water is classified as “unacceptable” and scores of towns and cities have substantially declined in the last decade. The latest Blue Drop report shows a decreasing quality of drinking water supply across South Africa.

My water supply has been interrupted a lot. Is my tap water safe to drink?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question may not be yes, depending on a range of factors.

If there is no water in the pipe, and there is an underground sewage leak near the water pipe, or contaminated storm water near the pipe, there’s a real possibility that contaminated water can enter the pipe. Or, if maintenance work is done on a pipeline, as happens after any major leak, there is no real way to prevent soil and external untreated water entering the pipeline.

As water supply returns, this “first flush” down the pipe has the potential to contain contaminants. Because there is no way to know what it looks like underground around the pipe, it is sensible to protect yourself as water returns. You can protect yourself by flushing your taps until the water is fully clear. I would recommend that you wait until after the air has finished exiting the pipe and give it another minute or so, or until fully clear. Collect this water in a bucket for watering plants or flushing toilets. Once the water is clear, your quality should be similar to the bulk supply.

If you are worried, boil the water before use.

If your water remains brown or discoloured, report it and drink purified water.

I get my water from a mobile water tanker. Is this safe to drink?

Here the answer is supposed to be yes. But there are far too many instances of unscrupulous, roaming water tanker suppliers selling water, especially in areas with no access to safe tap water.

Since water supplies have become less dependable, the state has turned to businesses to supply water to communities. This has developed into a big business, as is clear from the size of one of Johannesburg’s tenders for vacuum trucks (honeysuckers) and water tankers. As a result, fraud and collusion are on the rise.

Read More: From waste to clean water: tiny carbon particles can do the job

Unfortunately having no access to piped tap water is the daily reality more than 4 million South Africans. If this is the case, it is sensible to purify the water.

What are the diseases that make drinking water unsafe? How are they spread?

There are a number of water-borne diseases that can cause very serious illness and death.

When water is sent to a laboratory for testing, the first test is for an organism called Escherichia coli, or E. coli.

E. coli is found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals. It does not necessarily cause disease. But if it is found in the water, there is absolute certainty that the water has been contaminated with faecal matter which has not been properly treated. This is why it is used as a screening tool for more serious diseases which are also spread through faecal matter.

Not all water that has E. coli will have pathogens. But the presence of E. coli is a serious warning that there is a high chance of other pathogenic organisms in the water such as cholera.

Cholera is caused by a bacterium found in the faecal matter of sick people. It is highly contagious and can spread by contact mainly from drinking contaminated water, food or from unwashed hands. The symptoms of cholera are watery diarrhoea (runny tummy), vomiting and leg cramps.

If I store water in bottles, how long before it’s unsafe to drink?

This is a really tricky question to answer. There are too many factors that can cause your water quality to deteriorate. For example, is the cap of the bottle open? How warm is the water? Is the container very clean or just rinsed? Water safety cannot be fully assured without analysing the actual water.

At the Centre of Water Research and Development we are doing research partly funded through the Water Research Commission to develop test strips to give a rapid analysis of drinking water quality that can easily be understood by the general public.

But I’d recommend that you try not to keep water for too long. Preferably not more than a day. And if you do, then boil or purify the water before drinking it.

Is purifying water difficult?

At the University of the Witwatersrand we commissioned a short animation in all of South Africa’s 11 official languages as well as French and Portuguese on how to prevent cholera transmission and how to purify your water to ensure you stay safe.

We have also shared guidance on how to purify your water to make it safe.

• Craig Sheridan is a Professor, University of the Witwatersrand
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

Pick n Pay renewals no more

Pick n Pay did not announce the service’s departure from its bouquet of offerings traditionally, instead contacting MyBroadband in an attempt to remove the retailer’s name from the outlet’s list of available licence disc renewal services offered around the country, simply noting that it “no longer offered this service at present.”

Visiting Pick n Pay’s online portal for disc renewal submissions led us to a similar notice — “Please note that we no longer offer this service.”

According to the Wayback Machine, as of 3 October 2023, Pick n Pay’s portal noted that the service had been taken offline and that Pick n Pay “will soon launch [its] exciting new Licence Disc Renewal Service!” It isn’t yet clear if those plans to launch a revamped service are still in play, as the portal’s current iteration does not mention anything about a revamped ‘Licence Disc Renewal Service.”

Read More: Why should we pay for our SABC TV licence?

Should Pick n Pay’s old plans eventually come to fruition, it’s likely to bring with it new features and a far reduced price in an attempt to counter FNB’s R100/renewal fee (now R70 until 30 June 2024). Despite numerous price cuts to Pick n Pay’s service while it was still alive, it was still the most expensive option, charging R240 for a renewal, plus a hefty R100 delivery fee.

Source

This is the view of Ishmet Davidson, the chief executive officer of Media24, South Africa’s largest digital news publisher, which is owned by internet firm Naspers. He was testifying at the country’s Competition Commission inquiry into Google’s dominance in search and digital advertising.

Davidson has “played an active role in resisting any potential threat by government to interfere in or to curtail press freedom” in his 30-year career in publishing. But the biggest “threat to press freedom in our country is not from government, it’s from one of the wealthiest and most dominant companies in the world, Google.”

The Fourth Estate plays “a vital role in our democracy” which is “enshrined in our constitution,” he told the Media And Digital Platform Marketing Inquiry. “Yet today we find ourselves not just facing challenges relating to freedom of the press but challenges relating to the very existence of the press.”

The South African digital advertising revenue market grew from R3.5-billion in 2015 to R14.5-billion in 2022, Davidson said. But based on the latest statistics from the country’s IAB advertising body, with PwC, Google and Meta are “absolutely dominant with 97% market share, leaving publishers with the crumbs.”

“What’s particularly concerning is that in 2015, publishers had an 8% market share, which by 2022 had declined to 3%. On the other hand, during this time, Google’s dominance grew from 67% to 78% of the digital advertising market (with close to 100% of the search market).”

He added: “Even more shocking is Google’s advertising revenue growing to over R11-billion, at an average annual growth rate of 25%.”

In effect, Google’s dominance in digital advertising has done what South Africa’s apartheid government was never able to do and shut down critical voices, while weakening democracy. The National Party, which introduced Apartheid, spent decades trying to silence the mostly English-language newspapers, including independent media outlets like The Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad. It was voted out of power in South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, which saw Nelson Mandela elected as president.

Moneyweb editor Ryk van Niekerk told the hearing that the mainstream media has played a “critical role during the past decade in exposing state capture” and has “contributed significantly to protecting our constitutional democracy”.

State capture is the phrase used to describe government corruption under the current ruling ANC party, which has crippled the provision of electricity (with as much as 12 hours a day without power due to rolling blackouts), as well as infrastructure and logistics. As much as $34 billion (ZAR500 billion) was looted during the “nine wasted years” of former South African president Jacob Zuma, said his successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa.

‘Fundamentally misunderstand’

Google and Meta have made written submissions and will testify later this month. X, formerly known as Twitter and owned by South African-born Elon Musk, has refused to participate.

Google claims in its written submission that it does not make much revenue from news. “While we appreciate that both publishers and search engines have an ads-funded business model, there is no competitive interaction between Google Search and a news publisher in relation to searches with news intent,” said the Google submission.

Meta’s submission claimed the competition investigation “fundamentally misunderstand the relationship between publishers and the Meta platforms, and materially exaggerate the degree to which publishers’ content drives users to access Feeds and, by corollary, advertising content on Meta’s platforms.”

Referring to its global Google News initiative, the search giant said it gave publications funding and training.

But Davidson said this $300-million it has given to the world’s media in the past six years represents just 0,03% of its global advertising, totalling $1,07-trillion, according to figures from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Google for the years 2018 to 2023.

This “is just altruism disguising greed” much “like tossing crumbs to appease the peasants,” he told the commission, adding it “is designed to increase their stranglehold over the media industry”.

“We don’t want their charity. What we do want is to be fairly compensated for our content.”

‘40% of Google Search from news’

A Swiss media study last year found that Google makes as much as 40% of its revenue from media content, or “$176-million per year in Switzerland alone,” while news content “accounts for the majority of Google’s $280-billion annual revenue,” wrote Courtney Radsch, the director of the Centre for Journalism & Liberty and a fellow at the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy.

The study, conducted by FehrAdvice & Partners, concluded that Google searches using media content bring in an estimated revenue of around $440-million a year.

US publishers are owed between $11-billion and $14-billion a year by Google and Meta, according to research published last year by academics from Columbia University and the University of Houston.

Davidson’s views were echoed by Van Niekerk, who is also Moneyweb’s commercial manager. He said his digital publication “is trapped in Google’s ecosystem” with 43% of its traffic directed to it by the search giant.

Publishers are also at the mercy of Google’s own agendas. “Unfortunately, Google changes the algorithm often without informing publishers, which, in Moneyweb’s case, has led to a sudden drop in traffic. It is a big problem for us,” he told the hearing. “If Moneyweb is not part of this [Google] ecosystem, we will close our doors.”

Google reaps the rewards

Google reaps the major economic rewards from the work the media does. “Moneyweb invests heavily in editorial content, and it seems that Google and other digital platforms benefit financially from the content,” Van Niekerk said.

“Journalism is in danger,” Caxton chairman Paul Jenkins told me. “Digital advertising follows eyeballs and does not discriminate between clickbait, fake news and cutting-edge journalism.” Moneyweb is part of the Caxton stable.

Despite generating 2.36-billion search page impressions in 2023, News24, part of Media24 which is South Africa’s largest digital news publisher, received only 4% of click-throughs. The balance was “monetized by Google,” CEO Davidson told the hearing.

News24’s total number of Google impressions – from its search, News and Discover offerings – totalled 5,2 billion, with a 5% click-through rate. Some 5 billion – or 95% – of the impressions were “for Google’s benefit.”

But, said Davidson, that 5% clickthrough, represents 44% of News24’s referral traffic.

“So, without Google, we’d lose almost half of our referral traffic and would be in even deeper trouble.”

“As Google likes to pretend, news may well be ‘insignificant’ in the global Google universe, but it’s hardly insignificant when we take the contribution in impressions.”

Sbu Ngalwa, the chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum, told the hearing the day before that “the entire industry is in trouble.”

“Fair compensation to us should be based on the value that the platforms derive from the content. The reality is that we don’t know what that value is because the tech companies do not provide that information,” he said.

Khadija Patel, from the International Fund for Public Interest Media, and a former editor of South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper, warned that “what we are mourning is not the death of newspapers. What instead we are really afraid of is a future without access to news at a low price point. When I say news, I mean high-quality independent news. That’s what newspapers ultimately represented.”

Adriaan Basson, News24’s editor-in-chief, summed up the dilemma for the media industry, which actually creates the content, in that Google, “without a newsroom” and without generating its own content, makes the most money from that content.

This article first appeared on Forbes, where Toby Shapshak is a senior contributor.

A wide range of industries already use emotional AI, including call centres, finance, banking, nursing and caregiving. Over 50% of large employers in the U.S. use emotional AI aiming to infer employees’ internal states, a practice that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, call centres monitor what their operators say and their tone of voice.

Scholars have raised concerns about emotion AI’s scientific validity and its reliance on contested theories about emotion. They have also highlighted emotion AI’s potential for invading privacy and exhibiting racial, gender and disability bias.

Some employers use the technology as though it were flawless, while some scholars seek to reduce its bias and improve its validity, discredit it altogether or suggest banning emotional AI, at least until more is known about its implications.

I study the social implications of technology. I believe that it is crucial to examine emotion AI’s implications for people subjected to it, such as workers – especially those marginalized by their race, gender or disability status.

Workers’ concerns

To understand where emotion AI used in the workplace is going, my colleague Karen Boyd and I set out to examine inventors’ conceptions of emotion AI in the workplace. We analyzed patent applications that proposed emotion AI technologies for the workplace. Purported benefits claimed by patent applicants included assessing and supporting employee well-being, ensuring workplace safety, increasing productivity and aiding in decision-making, such as making promotions, firing employees and assigning tasks.

We wondered what workers think about these technologies. Would they also perceive these benefits? For example, would workers find it beneficial for employers to provide well-being support to them?

My collaborators Shanley Corvite, Kat Roemmich, Tillie Ilana Rosenberg and I conducted a survey partly representative of the U.S. population and partly oversampled for people of colour, trans and nonbinary people and people living with mental illness. These groups may be more likely to experience harm from emotion AI. Our study had 289 participants from the representative sample and 106 participants from the oversample. We found that 32% of respondents reported experiencing or expecting no benefit to them from emotion AI use, whether current or anticipated, in their workplace.

While some workers noted potential benefits of emotion AI use in the workplace like increased well-being support and workplace safety, mirroring benefits claimed in patent applications, all also expressed concerns. They were concerned about harm to their well-being and privacy, harm to their work performance and employment status, and bias and mental health stigma against them.

For example, 51% of participants expressed concerns about privacy, 36% noted the potential for incorrect inferences employers would accept at face value, and 33% expressed concern that emotion AI-generated inferences could be used to make unjust employment decisions.

Participants’ voices

One participant who had multiple health conditions said: “The awareness that I am being analyzed would ironically have a negative effect on my mental health.” This means that despite emotion AI’s claimed goals to infer and improve workers’ well-being in the workplace, its use can lead to the opposite effect: well-being diminished due to a loss of privacy. Indeed, other work by my colleagues Roemmich, Florian Schaub and I suggests that emotion AI-induced privacy loss can span a range of privacy harms, including psychological, autonomy, economic, relationship, physical and discrimination.

On concerns that emotional surveillance could jeopardize their job, a participant with a diagnosed mental health condition said: “They could decide that I am no longer a good fit at work and fire me. Decide I’m not capable enough and not give a raise, or think I’m not working enough.”

Participants in the study also mentioned the potential for exacerbated power imbalances and said they were afraid of the dynamic they would have with employers if emotion AI were integrated into their workplace, pointing to how emotion AI use could potentially intensify already existing tensions in the employer-worker relationship. For instance, a respondent said: “The amount of control that employers already have over employees suggests there would be few checks on how this information would be used. Any ‘consent’ [by] employees is largely illusory in this context.”

Lastly, participants noted potential harms, such as emotion AI’s technical inaccuracies potentially creating false impressions about workers, and emotion AI creating and perpetuating bias and stigma against workers. In describing these concerns, participants highlighted their fear of employers relying on inaccurate and biased emotion AI systems, particularly against people of colour, women and trans individuals.

For example, one participant said: “Who is deciding what expressions ‘look violent,’ and how can one determine people as a threat just from the look on their face? A system can read faces, sure, but not minds. I just cannot see how this could actually be anything but destructive to minorities in the workplace.”

Participants noted that they would either refuse to work at a place that uses emotion AI – an option not available to many – or engage in behaviours to make emotion AI read them favourably to protect their privacy. One participant said: “I would exert a massive amount of energy masking even when alone in my office, which would make me very distracted and unproductive,” pointing to how emotion AI use would impose additional emotional labour on workers.

Worth the harm?

These findings indicate that emotion AI exacerbates existing challenges experienced by workers in the workplace, despite proponents claiming emotion AI helps solve these problems.

If emotion AI does work as claimed and measures what it claims to measure, and even if issues with bias are addressed in the future, there are still harms experienced by workers, such as the additional emotional labour and loss of privacy.

Read More: Demand for computer chips fuelled by AI could reshape global politics and security

If these technologies do not measure what they claim or they are biased, then people are at the mercy of algorithms deemed to be valid and reliable when they are not. Workers would still need to expend the effort to try to reduce the chances of being misread by the algorithm or to engage in emotional displays that would read favourably to the algorithm.

Either way, these systems function as panopticon-like technologies, creating privacy harms and feelings of being watched.

• Nazanin Andalibi is an Assistant Professor of Information, University of Michigan
• This article first appeared in The Conversation