Showing 1-10 of 14 results
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EU demands Apple play fair
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/06/2022
» It looks like the Apple-specific charging cable may be a thing of the past with the European Union demanding that all smartphone makers use a universal USB-C port for wired charging by 2024. The same rule will be applied to many other electronic devices like tablets, cameras, headphones, handheld video game consoles and e-readers. In the future, laptops will need to follow the same rule.
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X remains an influential platform
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/04/2024
» How influential is Twitter/X? Some will remember a while back when Elon Musk gave his opinion on Disney. I won't repeat it here but it was very direct. Up until recently, Disney hadn't posted anything on X but about a week before you read this, they were back with a gold checkmark. These cost about US$10,000 (368,000 baht), which while not expensive for Disney, indicates how they see X as a platform for communicating to all those potentially interested in all things Disney. Elon Musk is still supporting people like Gina Carano in suing Disney for what they did to her and others based allegedly on their political and religious views.
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Silicon Valley is not an arbiter of free expression
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/08/2018
» It is somewhat disconcerting that Silicon Valley -- which occupies about 300 square miles, and where most think the same and have the same politics -- can determine allowable content for the rest of the planet. Some of us remember that many of the major platforms were developed using government grants and public funding. With this base they should represent all views, of all types, and not just the ones they happen to like. This was the initial declaration at least, but in the modern world, that seems to have changed. I am certainly no great fan of Alex Jones, but that a cabal of providers can effectively execute social termination is very worrying for the future of open platforms and freedom of expression.
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Your life ain't over till FB says it is
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/11/2016
» There's a well-known line in the movie Monty Python And The Holy Grail: "I'm not dead." If you received a Facebook death notice recently, you were not alone. Facebook made an error by flagging a large number of people's profile pages as belonging to the deceased, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This was of course a mistake, and they fixed it fairly quickly, as people started sending complaints and others were shocked by a death notice they couldn't easily verify other than via Facebook. When large organisations mess up, they tend to do it in a big way.
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Windows 10 seems a success story
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/11/2015
» It has been a while now and the feedback on Windows 10 has generally been positive. I know a few people that have taken advantage of the free upgrade offer and with few exceptions they have been satisfied with the results, including those that have been critical of versions 8.x. As I have mentioned previously, getting a replacement Start menu is helpful. Another thing to do before upgrading is to check that there are Windows 10 device drivers for all of your hardware. This may require a visit to the websites of the manufacturer of your peripherals especially for printers, scanners and music interface devices. If they don't have them then you may have a problem.
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Buyer's market for smartphones
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/11/2014
» With the Western markets saturated, the pattern for smartphone sales is starting to change. It is a very good time to be the buyer as competition is fierce for those upgrading and for the tiny minority who don't yet have a model from the upper end of the market. Last month, LG was the only major retailer who had a positive number in their earnings statement. By comparison Samsung, HTC and Sony did not do so well. Elsewhere, like in China and India, the markets are expanding and people are starting to update from a regular phone to the smarter variety, but in the lower price range.
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USA? It's the United Spam of America
Life, James Hein, Published on 30/10/2013
» Hands up if you know which country is the biggest spammer in the world? No, not China; they're fifth. The winner of this year's inglorious gold medal goes to the US which generates over 14% of the world's spam emails, nearly triple that of Belarus, which lies in second place. Besides advertising dodgy products, many carry malicious attachments designed to make your computer _ and sometimes personal life _ miserable. If you were wondering when the first spam was sent, this is attributed to Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, who were lawyers that back in 1994 sent immigration service offers to all the Usenet groups at the time. The biggest problem in the US is the large number of unprotected computers that get used as spambot hosts.
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Sysadmins know all the best secrets
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/09/2013
» After all the hoopla about Edward Snowden, now a new resident of Russia, you may be asking yourself how he managed to walk off with all that information. After all, the US National Security Agency, or NSA, is meant to be the be-all and end-all of security. They can supposedly listen to everyone's phone calls and all information is carefully monitored with employees blocked from copying files. So people are calling him a genius who brilliantly made off with all that sensitive information. The truth is a little more mundane. He belonged to a group known as System Administrators.
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Formicidae, neurons and the tweeting mass of life
Life, James Hein, Published on 03/07/2013
» The members of an ant colony work together as if they were a single organism. The human brain has neurons that work together in the same way: one neuron is not "intelligent", as such, but a whole lot of them acting in unison make us what we are. The secret is communication, connectivity and the processing of information. In the modern world millions of people are communicating with each other in almost real time using Twitter, SMS, Facebook and other social networking tools. If a billion people are doing this and we think of each person as a single neuron, does it mean that we starting to create some kind of global intelligence?
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It's time for an overhaul
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/04/2013
» So the question of the next big thing seems to be, why would you need to have a watch and a phone? I have noticed that most of the younger generation, the ones with a smartphone, don't have a watch because the time is prominently displayed on the phone. One simple answer might be that a watch is still useful for when your hands are full, or swimming underwater, or when you are doing something that doesn't include pockets.
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