Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Apple launches new 12″ MacBook
Attention early adopters, teenage girls and all those obsessed with anything and everything rose gold, Apple has debuted a new 12″ MacBook that comes in (you guessed it) rose gold! Apple’s goal with the ultra-thin MacBook is to do the impossible, “engineer a full-size experience into the lightest and most compact Mac notebook ever.” The new laptop…
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Australia has the world’s most expensive internet
Confirming what most rural households know to be true, the World Economic Forum has rated Australia the lowest score for internet access affordability. According to the Forum, around four million Australians live in households without internet access. The high price of internet access disproportionately affects poor, elderly and Indigenous Australians. It is estimated that 57%…
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iPhone users are unlocking their phone how many times a day?
According to Apple, the average iPhone user unlocks their phone 80 times per day. That means that phones would be checked around 6-7 times an hour in a 12 hour day or in other words, once every 10 minutes. Analyst Ben Bajarin wrote, “Prior to Touch ID for example, many organisations required eight, and sometimes…
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Sydney to trial contactless transport payments
The NSW government has announced that passengers will be able to use their credit or debit cards to pay for transport from 2017. Much like the current Opal card, users will be able to tap on or off the train or bus easily but without having to top up. In NSW, approximately 92% of trips…
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Driverless cars in NSW soon
Transport Minister Andrew Constance said today that he expects that driverless cars will be on NSW roads within five years. Speaking to the Future of Transport summit, Constance said that driverless cars will be tested and developed in research laboratories in Western Sydney. An Innovation Centre test lab will be set up in Huntingwood where the…
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The Gloves That Are Revolutionising the Way We Communicate with the Hearing-Impaired
Two sophomore students at the University of Washington have been granted $10,000 as part of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. The two boys named Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor, studying business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering, respectively, won the prize with ‘SignAloud’, the gloves that will monitor hand movements in sign language and translate it into verbal…
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Aldi’s advance
Supermarket chain Aldi is catching up to industry leaders Coles and Woolworths, according to research company Roy Morgan. The German supermarket chain is renowned for its cheap prices and odd brands but it’s also charming the hearts (and winning the wallets) of Australian consumers. Did a round up of my fave Aldi and Lidl brands.…
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Australia 2nd Most Likely to Suffer Debt Crisis
Forbes recently released a study into which top seven countries were the most vulnerable to a debt crisis in the next 1-3 years, and we in Australia were #2 – second only to China. Australian economist Steve Keen writes for Forbes that the same financial mishaps that were the cause of the Global Financial Crisis…
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Islamic State Hackers Target Small Australian Businesses
It appears Islamic State has reached our shores in a very strange, unexpected way – through the websites of some small Australian business. The group calls themselves the United Cyber Caliphate, and is an amalgamation of three former groups named Caliphate Cyber Army, Sons Caliphate Army and the Kalashnikov Team. For some reason yet to be determined,…
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Australia’s first medicinal cannabis farm
Local MP and acting PM Barnaby Joyce officially launched Australia’s first medicinal cannabis farm today called the DanEden farm. The 47-hectare farm located just near Tamworth has been named in honour of Dan Haslam who died from bowel cancer last year aged just 25-years-old. Dan was an advocate for legalising medical marijuana in Australia and…
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