Showing 1-10 of 119 results
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Surprisingly, your personal data isn't safe with Facebook
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/10/2018
» Facebook has been in the news recently having large numbers of public profiles harvested by marketing conglomerates. Estimates from this incident alone range from 50 to 90 million users and there may be a lot more. The "more" part comes from the user search and account recovery features that may have been abused to scrape up to 2 billion or more accounts. In other words, if you are on Facebook and have any kind of public profile someone has more info on you than you might like. The feature has since been turned off but not before a lot of information went to the marketers.
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Facebook stalking; hijacked smartphones
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/06/2015
» I am not a big social media user. I keep my profiles trim and any pictures to a minimum. I don't like Twitter at all for various reasons and I find most of the users of Tumblr focused on social engineering directions I don't agree with. All of that aside then, there is Facebook. Like many others I use Facebook to connect to people I have lost touch with, such as old high school friends whom I have no way of tracking down. In my case my Goodreads account is linked to Facebook to let people know what I am reading or have read. If you like reading and haven't tried it then take a look at www.goodreads.com. For me it also a great way to track what I have read and haven't in, say, a series I like.
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Transpacific cable is cut, for now
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/09/2020
» In light of the problems between the USA and China, and that those in power in Beijing want to grab data from US networks, Google and Facebook have dropped plans to build an undersea cable between the US and Hong Kong. The new target limits the landing points to the Philippines and Taiwan and now excludes Hong Kong. The HK section of the cable is built but will not now be activated due to a national security agreement between the US and Google and Facebook. I will predict that if Joe Biden wins the next US election this decision will be revisited.
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Mind your passwords
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/01/2017
» Google, Facebook and Apple are the names of a few companies working on artificial intelligence (AI). I don't mean the kind of AI that simply teaches machines to be useful to humans, though that is also being done everywhere. I mean the self-aware kind. After so long at it I think the bigger organisations are locked in a series of dead end paths. Instead, I predict the first breakthroughs will come from small, even one-man operations thinking outside the cube. As an aside, when it comes to the search giants like Google or Yahoo and social media sites like Facebook, they all have their biases so the results you see may not be all that comprehensive, balanced or accurate.
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Alternative social platforms can be expensive
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/11/2021
» The alternative social media platform Rumble recently bought out another platform for creators called Locals. Rumble is a YouTube-like platform and Locals is aimed more at the alternative blogging community, including names like Scott Adams and Dan Bongino. I don't think this will be a long-term successful merger for a simple reason, and that is money. To be fair Locals is an alternative to Patreon, a platform that will nuke your account if it doesn't like your politics as evidenced by a long list of conservative commentators being axed without warning.
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Think twice before going with Huawei
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/04/2021
» The Chinese firm Huawei is in the limelight again for allegedly snooping on the Dutch prime minister's phone calls, with the information used to track down Chinese dissidents. This was a while back and it only came to light now because back then the Dutch were worried about exposure. Huawei was able to do this because they have core components in the Netherlands' mobile network. The result was that Huawei employees could not only listen in on any conversation but also identify those in the conversations across their 3G and 4G networks. Even today, the Chinese have admin-level access due to the network management outsourcing deal. Huawei strenuously denied any wrongdoing but those thinking that their 5G Huawei networks will be safe might want to rethink this or look very carefully at the access granted under the contracts.
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Think twice before going with Huawei
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/04/2021
» The Chinese firm Huawei is in the limelight again for allegedly snooping on the Dutch prime minister's phone calls, with the information used to track down Chinese dissidents. This was a while back and it only came to light now because back then the Dutch were worried about exposure. Huawei was able to do this because they have core components in the Netherlands' mobile network. The result was that Huawei employees could not only listen in on any conversation but also identify those in the conversations across their 3G and 4G networks. Even today, the Chinese have admin-level access due to the network management outsourcing deal. Huawei strenuously denied any wrongdoing but those thinking that their 5G Huawei networks will be safe might want to rethink this or look very carefully at the access granted under the contracts.
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Microsoft Paint might be fading
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/08/2017
» What is the one program you can count on to be in Windows, apart from say Minesweeper? Microsoft Paint. It's the poor man's drawing tool and screen capture tool where it is as simple as Alt-Printscreen, Start-Run MSPaint, CTRL-V, Crop Marquee Select Crop, CTRL-A CTRL-C, Switch to email and CTRL–V to get something from your screen into an email (or anything else).
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Size counts in the world of IT
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/05/2016
» When it comes to implementing systems, it is all about scale. If you have ever been a system tester you will know that what works one at a time may not work well if a whole bunch of them are processed all at once. Those who have ever used an old fashioned typewriter will understand this. Volume testing and scalability of system is one of the biggest problems a development testing team faces.
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AI remains a beta tool for journalists
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/03/2024
» Unless stated otherwise, I do not use AI tools to write my articles. The main reason is that I enjoy the discovery and research process. I state this because apparently 45 finalists for this year's Pulitzer Prize in journalism disclosed their use of AI tools while developing their work to varying degrees. I tend to use examples from past work environments, articles on the latest technologies and other interesting reports that catch my eye. Given the latest revelations from the current crop of AI Large Language Models, if you use them without care, what you are reporting or writing about could be completely inaccurate. For the time being it's recommended you use such tools as a possible confirming source, rather than a primary one.
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