• TECH

  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.

• TECH

  Seamless synchronicity

  Life, James Hein, Published on 11/09/2019

  » As I was walking to work thinking about this week's column, I did a quick self-inventory. I was listening to On Liberty by John Stuart Mill through my noise cancelling headphones. The audio was being sent by Bluetooth from my Samsung Galaxy S10 5G phone that I was also using to play a location-based game, Ingress. This was being fed my position by satellite and receiving information from the internet via my phone's data connection. Occasionally I would pull down the notification tab to see what was on for the day and who had tried to contact me via a number of social-media services.

• TECH

  No more games

  Life, James Hein, Published on 10/06/2015

  » Official Windows 10 will be available on July 29, this year. By the time you read this, legal software owners should have received their notification from Microsoft to register for the free upgrade. Yes, there are indeed some nice new features that may or nor be available to you at release but there are what some will consider negatives to the product as well.

• TECH

  Digital world backslides into autocratisation

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

  » - I love new technology and I often pick up the latest gadgets from sites like Kickstarter. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder are one step closer to using humans as batteries.

• TECH

  Learning in the time of crisis

  Life, James Hein, Published on 08/04/2020

  » There is a mix of good and bad information regarding Covid-19 on the internet so be careful that what you are reading isn't fake news, especially when it comes to numbers and cures. The numbers available are those reported by each country and are based on testing and the honesty of each government, so will vary from the actual state. This is where the major social media platforms are being exposed even more. They are deleting valid information, such as on hydroxychloroquine trials, while promoting hit pieces on globalisation.

• TECH

  Human override here to stay

  Life, James Hein, Published on 10/04/2019

  » Computers are useful tools and they will emotionlessly churn through thousands of operations in the blink of an eye to produce whatever results they were programmed to do. Most of the time the results are welcomed. When it comes to malware the results generate a different reaction, and then there are those spaces in the middle. The situation surrounding the Boeing 737 Max MCAS aircraft and the recent crash is an excellent example. The latest analysis would seem to indicate that the computer engineers made some choices that have had unintended consequences. In this case overriding the wishes of the pilots by assuming the plane was crashing, when it wasn't, and not allowing the human pilots to correct the computer's decisions.

• OPINION

  Potential legal trouble for Apple over old batteries

  Life, James Hein, Published on 17/01/2018

  » The first couple of weeks of 2018 have provided a series of revelations. It started with Apple finally confirming that they have been throttling the performance of their older phones. The official line is that they do this to ensure that as the batteries degrade, the retarding of performance ensures that their devices won't overheat. Some people weren't buying what Apple was shovelling, and there is a series of class-action lawsuits in the making.

• OPINION

  Looking into IT's crystal ball

  Life, James Hein, Published on 03/01/2018

  » So it is that time again when I try and gaze into the crystal ball and guess what 2018 will bring the IT world.

• TECH

  The eternal debate between privacy and security

  Life, James Hein, Published on 01/03/2017

  » What is the line dividing privacy from national security? If you are a privacy advocate, the line is closer to "everything is private". If you are a nation state wanting to protect its interests, that line falls somewhere nearer to your preschool diary. Homeland in the US is working on a policy requiring selected non-citizens entering the US to provide the passwords to their social media accounts to gain entry. This has triggered feedback from human rights groups, civil liberties groups and a bunch of professors. Given that every nation has a right to protect its borders and a customs official can search everything else you bring in, why not information in the digital realm?

• OPINION

  Samsung's woes continue

  Life, James Hein, Published on 19/10/2016

  » Where to start this week? Samsung's woes just keep on going. The latest versions caused fires within a day in a couple of cases, including a fire on a plane when the unit was off. The Korean giant has now recommended that all Note 7 users turn their phones off and not use them. This will mean a whole new replacement program of some kind. Not sure where this leaves Samsung though their S7 and S7 Edge units all seem to be fine and going well with customers. It will now be interesting to see what happens to the Note range and what the next version will look like. It has cost Samsung around US$2.3 billion, so far.

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