Showing 1 - 10 of 18
Free speech and pedestrian blues
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/12/2022
» Let's take a look at my predictions for 2022, a mixed year for technology. How did I do? Virtual reality didn't advance as much as I'd hoped. Artificial intelligence made some incremental games including as I pointed out in an earlier article, for music producers. The Neuralink interface did improve this year, if indeed that is something you're interested in, but still not available for broad human use. I also was wrong on cryptocurrency. With the FTX exposure the private firms took a hit, but governments have started to get interested in the technology. The world is poised for a crypto explosion, but not this year.
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.
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.
Social media censorship the stamp of 2020
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/12/2020
» Well, it's that time of year again when I see how well my predictions for the year performed. With the advent of Covid-19, I'm not confident that many of them came to pass.
A tablet of note
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/11/2020
» I have used my new Onyx Boox Note Air for a couple of weeks now and I like it. Having a user manual in English would be very useful but I finally found the setting to enable the auto rotate feature.
Recognising the limits of recognition protection
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/12/2017
» So how good is biometric protection really? In a recent TV series, I watched as the good guys artificially massaged the bad guy's heart to activate the biometric-fingerprint system on his phone. Many modern biometric systems require some evidence of life to work, so the old system of just severing a finger is no longer reliable.
Pokemon, an oops and a US Navy blunder
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/07/2016
» Pokemon Go has taken the world by storm, well everywhere apart from places like China where Google is banned altogether so the frustrated potential Chinese players need to make a trip to Hong Kong to get to play. Pokemon players are fairly easy to spot. They are looking at their phone screens, heads down, fingers not moving or only occasionally. They will normally be seen in groups as everyone is trying to grab a Pokemon character at a specific location. Depending where you are in the world and the popularity of the game in your general area you may have noticed a drop in Internet speed.
Microsoft to port to Linux
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/03/2016
» As covered in an earlier article Microsoft is not porting Android but they are porting to Linux. According to a recent announcement Microsoft's SQL Server 2016 will be available for Linux users to use by the middle of 2017. The Microsoft marketing perspective is that the Linux version will "enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud" in addition to providing customers "even more flexibility in their data solution".
In the right domain
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/07/2015
» How important is picking the right website name or URL? I have been involved in the website selection process a number of times and it is an interesting exercise. If, for example, you have a company name like Dritzz then you are probably not going to have many problems finding a domain like www.dritzz.com, which incidentally currently does not exist.
Groupthink is so Orwellian
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/07/2015
» I have been using the internet since it first became public. In the early days the main aim was basic communication and the sharing of information. It was actually a lot easier to find information quickly back then because the groups and sites tended to be highly focused. Discussion groups were often moderated and if you strayed too far from the central theme of the group you were encouraged to look elsewhere.