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  • News & article

    Advertising ruins everything

    Life, James Hein, Published on 28/02/2024

    » Remember this day because I have a prediction. Recently, for the first time, I had two ads appear when watching a Rumble video. Rumble is a YouTube alternative that until now had been ad free. The platform allows those banned by YouTube for political reasons to make their presentations, along with anyone else who wants to post videos. My prediction is that the current ads, currently 30 second ones you can skip after a few seconds that appear at the start of your video, will gradually become more prevalent and longer, without being able to skip, and eventually will become as annoying as Facebook.

  • News & article

    Manipulating populations is very easy

    Life, James Hein, Published on 25/10/2023

    » Have you ever heard of the term SEME, or Search Engine Manipulation Effect? The term was coined back in 2014 by the psychologist Robert Epstein, in his paper "The Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) And Its Possible Impact On The Outcomes Of Elections".

  • News & article

    Microsoft on the naughty list again

    Life, James Hein, Published on 15/03/2023

    » Some of you may have already noticed, Microsoft is getting very pushy about installing Windows 11. On one of my machines, it started the process under the guise of a standard update. Softwarekeep.com has an excellent article titled "How to Cancel Windows 11 Update and Stay on Windows 10" that covers many ways to handle this. One option is to revert back to Windows 10 within 10 days of Windows 11 being installed, found here: Start menu > Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options > Recovery > Previous version of Windows. After this arbitrary 10 days, you need to do a clean Windows 10 install. I also recommend the free Windows Update Blocker, currently at version 1.7, as a way to control your Windows updates.

  • News & article

    Beware of scammers

    Life, James Hein, Published on 25/05/2022

    » As things in the world get worse, such as inflation, along with a lack of basic goods and services, there has been a corresponding increase in overall malware and scammers. It is sadly the nature of some to take advantage of those who are more vulnerable and less informed about this subject. Adding to the issue is the massive amount of data sharing that is passed or sold to bad actors. Governments seem to be heavily involved in this. I recently had to fill out some material and within a day I received a scam call relating to that activity. I have no way of knowing if there was some kind of active hack or if someone regularly sold the data, but it happens very fast these days. Sign up for just about anything now and you will probably receive an email or phone call relating to that, not from those you signed up with, but from people pretending to be.

  • News & article

    Prediction hits and misses for 2021

    Life, James Hein, Published on 22/12/2021

    » It is time once again to look back at 2021 to see what happened and how my predictions panned out.

  • News & article

    Samsung's future flex

    Life, James Hein, Published on 26/05/2021

    » So whatever happened to the rollable displays we were promised some time back? Turns out companies like Samsung have been working on them, presenting a few at the recent Society for Information Display (SID) annual exhibition. The key to this technology is the OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display because it doesn't need a backlight. This allows for paper thin, flexible displays. In keeping with their usual nomenclature, Samsung calls their first device the S-foldable. Their range starts at phone size and unfolds twice to a 7.2-inch screen. They also presented a slidable screen that pulls out to give a wider view. Then came the 17-inch foldable screen that starts as a tablet that can be used as a small monitor tagged as the "Carrying Small Seeing Big". For now, these are concept devices that we should see in the wild next year. Not to be outdone, LG demoed a 65-inch rollable OLED TV along with a 12.8-inch rollable device. China is also in the mix with Visionox showing their rollable OLEDs.

  • News & article

    The fight for a freer web continues

    Life, James Hein, Published on 17/03/2021

    » The social media platform Telegram has over 500 million users with over 55 million active every day. Unlike other platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and others, you are free to express your opinion there without being cancelled, shadow banned or throttled in searches.

  • News & article

    Google Android refreshes itself

    Life, James Hein, Published on 07/06/2017

    » Android 8 -- or O -- will be coming out soon, with the beta already available for lucky Nexus and Pixel users. Google is introducing "Fluid Experiences" that include picture in picture, Notification Dots, autofill and smart-text selection. The first will allow you to have an app open but with also, say, a small window running a YouTube video, just like TVs can do. Notification dots show that you have an app notification. A long press will bring up the item, which is useful. You have all seen autofill on forms and for passwords; this is finally appearing in Android. As has been the case for the last few versions, Google is also focusing on maximising security, optimising boot times and app performance, and intelligently limiting background activity for apps to save battery life. These are all welcome enhancements.

  • News & article

    New year, new iPhone rumours

    Life, James Hein, Published on 13/01/2016

    » What would the week be without more rumours about an upcoming iPhone? Even though a new Apple phone isn't due out until September, speculation is already flowing rapidly. It will of course be called the iPhone 7, no surprises there. It will come in two sizes, just like the 6 range, allowing those users afraid of the larger screens to remain calm. It will have a better CPU and be a tiny bit thinner. It probably won't have an AMOLED screen but will have a better battery. The most interesting rumour is the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack to be replaced with a wireless lightening port. This will instantly disconnect a plethora of current devices from the phone and increase revenues for Apple iPhone-only peripheral products, including headphones. So far not even the predictions are encouraging, but it is very early days yet.

  • News & article

    There are two sides to malware

    Life, James Hein, Published on 20/01/2016

    » Why do people write malware? Some people do it for fun and these people typically do so only on their own computers to see how this kind of thing works. I admit that when I was younger I tried the same thing but never let anything loose into the wild. Since then the software has become far more sophisticated. Others are just nasty and want to cause as much mayhem and damage as possible. Some do it for a cause or to highlight a perceived injustice. The group Anonymous for example are considered to be in this category. In another category are those groups paid by a Nation State to spy on other counties or disrupt a specific activity, as was revealed by the Stuxnet malware.

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