Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Imagining a world without cash
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/05/2024
» How safe are you in a purely digital economy? If you are carrying cash, someone can of course rob you, or you can lose it or give it to someone. You can also have a stash of it at home for emergencies or for buying something from a garage sale. For the most part, you retain control over any cash you manage. Electronic cash can still be stolen and your ability to spend it can be taken by someone else if your details get into the wrong hands. However, it's convenient, just tap and go, or in some cases, just wave your smartphone over a pad. While you have no idea where your money actually is, a small piece of plastic, your watch or a phone can retrieve it for you for a payment. You can even use it to get cash from a wall.
Raising the bar on performance
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/09/2017
» Have you ever wondered why sometimes you have full bars on your phone and a few steps later none? Worse if you are in one room of your house it's all good but elsewhere no bars. There are many factors that can affect your reception including distance from your cell tower, the number of people using the network, what is in between cell towers and you and more.
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.
Samsung fires up new chips
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/10/2016
» The jokes just keep coming at Samsung's expense with labels like "pocket explosive maker" and "next year's exploding phones". To be fair other manufacturers have had similar problems, although not quite to the same extent and usually due to third party batteries. Ignoring all of this for the moment, Samsung has announced that they have started mass production of the world's first 10nm FinFET (Fin-Shaped Field Effect Transistor) system on a chip.
Not so hot off the press
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/04/2016
» For some time now I have been mildly excited by the concept of 3D printing. For the most part people only see the technology in movies where the bad guy prints up a plastic gun to bypass the security scans. We read of amazing future possibilities with printing of human organs from hearts to more complex structures. Back in the wider real world the sales figures are not matching the hype. Yes, there has been some increase sales, primarily under the US$5,000 (175,700 baht) mark, but the higher end devices saw a drop in sales over the same period. For the time being at least it looks like the focus is on the fun, toy level of the marketplace.
Can’t hide your head in the Cloud
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/07/2014
» According to marketing hype, the Cloud is good for businesses, both small and large, and for social media (i.e. everyone). Microsoft, Amazon, Google and a whole bunch of others will sell you Cloud-based access with a wide range of options and plans. To be fair, there are a lot of businesses out there that don’t care where their data is kept. There are also banks, healthcare providers and a range of others subject to privacy and strict data protection laws that do care where and how their information is looked after. Since we are talking about the Cloud, your data could be held in countries that don’t care for such things, or those which have different rules on privacy. In that case, what could you do to stop them from accessing your data? Hint: not much at all.
Heartbleed causing heartache
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/04/2014
» One of the hottest topics in the computing world over the past two weeks has been a problem with the security of OpenSSL named Heartbleed. The short version is that this popular security layer has had a bug for the last couple of years that allowed people to grab not only information from a computer, but also passwords and decryption keys. The fix is to go to the OpenSSL site download and apply the latest version, anything past 1.0.1f, from here, www.openssl.org/related/binaries.html. If your Android phone is 4.1.x, then download a Heartbleed detector from the Play Store and check your exposure. For the technically minded, the problem is a missing bounds check so that the attacker can grab 64KB of memory. There are code samples on the net if you want more details. I suspect that system administrators have been busy all over the world patching their machines, generating new public and private keys and notifying all users to change their passwords on affected systems. I also suspect that there will be administrators and users who will not take any steps at all, either due to laziness or hubris. There is strong evidence that you should change all your important passwords at places like banks.
Windows 8 not foolproof after all
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/11/2012
» With all the marketing in full force across the planet it is hard to avoid talking about Windows 8. This also means that different types of people are looking closely at the new operating system and finding issues. You may remember a few weeks back that Windows 8 was going to be the new bastion of security.
Flaws in the scramble for safer driving
Database, James Hein, Published on 01/12/2010
» Imagine the uproar if the government announced that all cars would need to have scrambling technology installed so that drivers - and, by extension, passengers - could not use a mobile phone while the car was in motion.