You can hear me on RNZ Nine-to-Noon talking to Kathryn Ryan about UK government moves to clear up what children and younger teenagers can access on phones and laptops.
Here are the raw notes I made while preparing for this section of the show, you can see how I anticipate potential questions:
UK government asks tech companies to block access
Starmer tells Apple and Google to ban nude images on children’s phones (BBC)
The UK prime minister says:“This is not an impossible challenge. These are some of the most innovative companies in the world and I believe they can solve it.”
Not everyone agrees with this and there’s a lot of noise in the UK saying it doesn’t address the underlying problems of online harm.
The UK government is pioneering a new, more aggressive phase in online safety regulation, shifting the focus from technology companies handling content moderation to baking the protection in a the device-level.
Supporters argue that drastic measures are necessary because the status quo is a catastrophic failure with hundreds of victims.
There are a couple of good aspects to the idea:
Top of the list it takes the burden off of children and their parents. At the moment young people or their parents are expected to report if they see abusive material and parents are expected to quickly become expert in dealing with online safety while the big tech firms, some of the most profitable businesses in the world with huge resources take little responsibility.
The other part of this is that the technology already exists and is in use, but only in limited places and rarely switched on by default. No other nation has managed to do this
The **EU **depends on voluntary codes of conduct and age verification under the Digital Services Act.
**Australia **is developing a Children’s Online Privacy Code and, in theory, has a social media ban for under-16s that does not appear to be working in general.
While the US has nothing, some US states do have age verification laws for pornography sites, but these are regularly challenged on First Amendment grounds.
The UK is becoming something of a leader in this kind of regulation and many other nations will watch closely.
Critics argue that turning on on-device image scanning for every child effectively creates a state-mandated monitoring system.
And banning images doesn’t fix the main problem which is online grooming although many parents and former victims think it will reduce the harm.
Whether this move protects children or overreaches into dangerous surveillance territory is the big question.
PC, laptop and gaming console prices are rising much faster than inflation
AI data centres use huge numbers of memory chips.
Memory chip makers such as Samsung and Micron have decided to prioritising the higher-margin chips used by these data centres.
Which leaves less production and supply for PCs, laptops and consoles. Supply and demand means the chips that do turn up are more expensive. The extra costs can be absorbed by companies buying more expensive business-class devices, but prices of consumer devices are shooting up.
There’is some, but less impact on phones.
Experts (research companies like Gartner and IDG) expect this to continue well into 2027, so you might want to take better care of your laptops and iPads.
On top of that, our dollar has fallen substantially.
AI data centres are squeezing memory supply worldwide, but the weak NZ dollar means local buyers feel the pain more acutely than consumers in countries with stronger currencies.
What’s going on in New Zealand
Sony put up the price of the Playstation a year ago…Nintendo is about to raise its Switch console price by 20%.
New Zealand prices are going up a lot faster than Australian prices, but that is more to do with our falling dollar.
PC makers are sneakier. They don’t announce price rises, they launch new models with the similar specifications to old models but with higher prices.
So far this year the prices of a low-end laptop has gone up 10%. Upmarket laptops have gone up between 5 and 8%. Gaming PCs are up by 15%.
If you buy memory or solid state storage for your computer, prices have gone up by as much as 40%.
You can expect to see prices go up by at least the same amount again over the next six months.
The golden age of streaming is over
Streaming and fast broadband have changed how we watch sport and other video entertainment, but the golden age is over. Where will digital media go next?
Based on story on my main website: Streaming ain’t what it used to be.
The “golden age” of streaming (roughly 2015–early 2020s) is over. What was once cheap, ad-free and simple has become fragmented, expensive and consumer-hostile.
What SpaceX’s IPO means for NZ telecommunications
Also based on a story at my main site.
What SpaceX’s IPO means for NZ telecommunications.
This was written and broadcast before the float completed.
Starlink is no longer a niche service. It is starting to act like a mainstream telco. The IPO will accelerate this.
