Showing 1 - 8 of 8
YouTube ramps up ads, moderation
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/03/2023
» If this was a YouTube video you would have to sit through up to 30 seconds of ads before you could even start. YouTube seems to be stepping up its advertising while at the same time providing less service. I still use it because it has things I'm interested in, like Chinese martial arts series and info on music products I like. If I'd written this using ChatGPT you would not see some of the material because the trust and safety filters on the AI product have repeatedly been found to be biased towards the US political left in the content it will return. Some people associated with ChatGPT have acknowledged this but it remains to be seen if anything will change.
Google bets on offline stores
Life, James Hein, Published on 09/06/2021
» Google is looking to venture into the area where Microsoft failed but Apple still does well, the brick-and-mortar retail store. The first of these will be opened in Chelsea, New York, allowing customers to find their devices like Pixel phones and Pixelbooks, Fitbits and Nest at a physical location. All subject to the latest Covid rules of course.
The benefits and risks of neural interfaces
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/02/2021
» This week is dedicated to the brain-computer interface, or BCI. For some time now, sci-fi movies and TV series have presented the idea of a mind-to-computer interface that controls technology, retrieves information and displays it on virtual screens. Meanwhile, in the background, a number of companies have been working on this and the technology is close to realising some of the outcomes only seen in fiction so far.
Don't call AI bigoted
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/11/2019
» Despite what some claim, Artificial Intelligence is not racist. Google built a system to detect hate speech or speech that exhibited questionable content. Following the rules given, it picked out a range of people with what some try to claim was a bias toward black people. Wrong. The AI simply followed the rules and a larger number of black people and some other minorities, as defined in the US, were found to be breaking those rules. It didn't matter to the machines that when one group says it, it isn't defined as hate speech by some; it simply followed the rules. People can ignore or pretend not to see rules, but machines don't work that way. What the exercise actually found was that speech by some groups is ignored while the same thing said by others isn't. As the saying goes, don't ask the question if you're not prepared to hear the answer.
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.
A quantum leap for computers
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/02/2017
» According to Prof Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, he and his team have the first practical design for a quantum computer. Like millions of others, I have struggled to come to an understanding of quantum mechanics and how a quantum computer might work.
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.
Computing genetic manipulation
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/05/2015
» What is the next big thing? Microsoft and some others would like you to believe it is all things cloudy. The problems with that are factors like communication channels between continents, security of information, the reliability of a server somewhere else versus on-site and the army of hackers trying to get into all that information just sitting there. If you have seen the intro to CSI: Cyber you will know what I mean. Another group want it to be virtual reality glasses for all, but as the Google Glass demonstrated, people walking around with even small glasses were not appreciated. At least the VR goggles will mostly be at home. This technology still has quite a way to go.