Alexa, Siri... Elsa? Children drive boom in smart speakers

 Voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri will become common in children’s bedrooms, according to a new report from Internet Matters, the online safety body, which says it is critical for parents to spend more time understanding new technology.

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of new technology at home by “three or four years”, the researchers said, and families in the UK will become much more reliant on voice-enabled devices over the next five years.

The report’s author, Lynne Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Sunderland, said we would even see the emergence of a range of celebrity voice assistants.

“You’d have Elsa from Frozen,” Hall said. “You can imagine that with every Disney film that came out there would be a new voice skin.” Amazon has already launched a novelty Samuel L Jackson voice for its Alexa devices, although it does not enable all voice commands.

The “Living The Future” report, based on interviews and surveys of parents and academics, says that 42% of families have been using tech together more often over the last three months – playing online games together (34%), watching tutorials (51%), streaming videos (41%) or online shopping (36%).

Only 7% of parents said they wanted to return to the workplace full time, which is likely to further fuel a boom in home tech controlled by voice assistants, the report said.

“The home is becoming less and less private and we need to think about what data is being shared,” said Carolyn Bunting, the chief executive of Internet Matters. “We need to make sure we’re not sleepwalking into a world where we’re just giving away all of this information without thinking about where it’s going, who’s holding it or how it’s being used.”

Although voice assistants usually process commands using voice recognition, Apple, Amazon and Google have all used call-centre staff to check recordings and some have heard children sharing the home address and phone number, according to a Bloomberg report last year.

Hall said her research showed that children were encountering voice assistants almost from the day they are born. “Women are buying a voice assistant for their child’s bedroom when they’ve had the baby,” she said. “If you’ve got your hands full, it’s much easier to say, ‘Alexa, ring my partner’.”

Children do not see voice assistants as their friends, Hall said. “They don’t anthropomorphise. It’s very much a tool. But voice assistants are starting to learn how little children speak. Children try to teach the voice assistant if it doesn’t understand – they give it more information.”

Since parents play a vital role in children’s acquisition of language, there are unanswered questions about how hearing a mother or father giving orders to voice assistants might affect their development.

Australian academics Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy have voiced concerns in their book The Smart Wife that the devices reinforce gender stereotypes since they are usually voiced by young women, take orders and are linked to domestic responsibilities.

There are potential safety benefits to using voice assistants, Bunting said, since children using them for information will usually accept the first answer.

Bunting called for better regulation. The government’s online harms bill, obliging social media companies to prevent children seeing harmful content, is likely to be published this winter, “but they are struggling with these softer issues,” she said.

She said that tech firms also needed to design an internet for children: “It’s wrong that in the Covid pandemic we saw six or seven-year-olds up to secondary school age children being thrust into Houseparty and Whatsapp video chats. None of those services are designed for little people. We need safe playgrounds for children online.”

The Guardian

James Tapper

Sun 18 Oct 2020

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Coronavirus: Europe experiencing 'pandemic fatigue'

 Survey data reveals the scale of this "pandemic fatigue", estimated to have reached over 60% in some cases.

Many people are feeling less motivated about following protective behaviours after living with disruption and uncertainty for months, says the WHO.

Although weary, people must revive efforts to fight the virus, it says.

Until a vaccine or effective treatments are available, public support and protective behaviours - washing hands, wearing face coverings and social distancing - remain critical for containing the virus.

Coronavirus is continuing its spread across the world, with more than 35 million confirmed cases in 188 countries and more than one million deaths.

Dr Hans Henri Kluge, WHO's regional director for Europe, says fatigue is to be expected at this stage of the crisis.

"Since the virus arrived in the European region eight months ago, citizens have made huge sacrifices to contain Covid-19.

"It has come at an extraordinary cost, which has exhausted all of us, regardless of where we live, or what we do. In such circumstances it is easy and natural to feel apathetic and demotivated, to experience fatigue.

"I believe it is possible to reinvigorate and revive efforts to tackle the evolving Covid-19 challenges we face."

He says there are strategies to get us back on track, with communities at their heart:

• Understand people by measuring public opinion regularly and acknowledge their hardship
• Involve communities in discussions and decisions as part of the solution
• Allow people to live their lives, but reduce their risk by looking at innovative ways to meet continuing societal needs - for example, delivering meals to vulnerable people or organising virtual catch-ups

He highlighted virtual celebrations during Ramadan or floating cinemas as successful new approaches that could help people adapt to the new conditions imposed by the pandemic.

The UK does its own regular survey on coronavirus and social attitudes and behaviours, based on a poll of around 2,200 adults.

Latest data suggests:

• nearly nine in 10 adults across Great Britain say they have enough information about how to protect themselves against Covid - similar to June
• eight in 10 who have met up with others say they have always or often maintained social distancing - similar to July
• more than nine in 10 adults say they use a face covering to slow the spread of coronavirus - again, similar to July

                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                  BBCNEWS, 6 Oct 2020

Climate crisis exerting increasing impact on UK, says Met Office

And nothing compares to the situation in Spain.

More extreme heat, less frost and snow, and trees coming into leaf earlier are among the signs seen in 2019 that the climate crisis is exerting an increasing impact on the UK, the Met Office’s annual climate report shows.

The year was 1.1C above the 1961-1990 average and the all-time high temperature record was broken in July when Cambridge hit 38.7C. The record-high for winter was also broken, with 21.2C in February at Kew Gardens in London.

Weather conditions are the result of the warming trend driven by global heating and natural variability. Last year was the 12th warmest year on records dating back to 1884 and one of the least snowy years on record. It was also the sixth consecutive year with fewer frosts than average. The last decade has seen 16% fewer days of air and ground frost compared with 1961–1990.

“Our report shows climate change is exerting an increasing impact on the UK’s climate,” said Mike Kendon, lead author of the Met Office report. “Since 2002 we have seen the warmest 10 years in the series. By contrast, to find a year in the coldest 10 we have to go back to 1963 – over 50 years ago.”

The Central England Temperature Series is the longest instrumental record in the world, stretching back to 1659. It shows the average temperature this century so far is 10.3C, which is 1.6C higher than the period 1659-1700.

“Seeing these temperature records go down like sweaty skittles is a stark reminder that climate change is still tightening its grip on all our futures,” said Prof Dave Reay, at the University of Edinburgh. “No corner of the UK is immune to the impacts of climate change.”

In June, research showed the likelihood of the UK experiencing deadly 40C temperatures for the first time is “rapidly accelerating” because of the climate emergency. Another analysis, from Public Health England showed the summer heatwaves of 2019 resulted in almost 900 extra deaths. A wide range of business, economics, health and environmental groups are urging governments including the UK to implement a green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Gareth Redmond King, at WWF, said: “The whole world has to act ahead of next year’s UN climate conference and as hosts we must urgently raise our ambition to show global leadership.”

The Met Office report also found rainfall in the UK in 2019 was 12% above the 1961-1990 average. Dr Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, said: “It was a particularly wet year across parts of central and northern England [with] some very severe flooding in early November.

“Since 2009 the UK has now had its wettest February, April, June, November and December on record – five out of the 12 months,” he said. Warmer air can hold more water vapour and therefore produce more intense rainfall.

Dr Darren Moorcroft, at the Woodland Trust, said: “In response to the warm winter and mild spring, the first leaves appeared on trees nearly 10 days earlier in 2019, compared to our baseline period [of 1999-2018]. Whilst this may not sound like much, research has shown this can have dire impacts further down the food chain.”

Moorcroft added: “It is a stark reminder of the need to take immediate action on climate change. Trees are not only a measure of what’s happening, they’re a vital part of the solution: as natural carbon stores they’re key agents in fighting climate change.”

The sea-level section of the report was contributed by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and showed levels continuing to rise due to increasing melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets, mountain glaciers, and the warming of the ocean.

The NOC director, Prof Edward Hill, said: “An immediate consequence will be higher extreme sealevels [during high tides and storms], which cause flooding and threaten lives, property and key infrastructure.” But he warned: “Only one of the long-term tide gauge sites is producing data of sufficient quality. High-frequency, high-accuracy, coastal sea-level monitoring is essential.”

Click here to read the original article: Climate crisis

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Michael Jordan condemns George Floyd death and 'ingrained racism' of US

Michael Jordan has released a statement on the death of George Floyd, condemning “ingrained racism” in the United States.

“I am deeply saddened, truly pained and plain angry,” wrote Jordan in a statement posted by the Charlotte Hornets, the NBA team he owns. “I stand with those who are calling out the ingrained racism and violence toward people of color in our country. We have had enough.”

Jordan has often been criticized for his reluctance to speak up on political matters, especially when compared to the activism of other NBA stars such as LeBron James and Guardian columnist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. During a 1990 Senate race in his home state of North Carolina, Jordan refused to endorse Democrat Harvey Gantt, an African American who was running against the incumbent Republican Jesse Helms, a notorious racist.

Jordan, who at the time had already won the first of his five NBA MVP awards, explained away his refusal to take a stance by saying: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

Jordan has since insisted the comment was made in jest.

The six-time NBA champion, widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time, said on Sunday that Americans needed to work together to find answers to the country’s problems.

“I don’t have answers, but our collective voices show strength and the inability to be divided by others. We must listen to each other, show compassion and empathy and never turn out backs on senseless brutality,” he wrote.

Curfews were in place in more than a dozen US cities on Sunday and Jordan urged people to protest peacefully. “We need to continue peaceful expressions against injustice and demand accountability,” he wrote.

Jordan finished his statement by expressing his sympathy to the family of Floyd and others. “My heart goes out to the family of George Floyd and to the countless others whose lives have been brutally and senselessly taken through acts of racism and injustice,” he wrote.

The former Chicago Bulls star has been in the news lately due to the popularity of The Last Dance, a documentary telling the story of his final championship season.

The Guardian, 1 June 2020