Showing 1 - 5 of 5
Microsoft put on the naughty step by Aussie regulator
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/11/2025
» Microsoft has been at it again. The Competition & Consumer Commission in Australia has started a legal process against the Redmond giant for apparently misleading users of the policies for its Microsoft 365 bundle. Microsoft advised users with a Personal and Family plan that "to maintain their subscription they must accept the integration of Copilot and pay higher prices for their plan, or, alternatively, cancel their subscription".
Latest AI reveals its bias yet again
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/03/2024
» Google's latest version of AI, once Bard but now called Gemini, is yet another indication of how biased the current batch of AI platforms are. I was going to include a bunch of examples but this has received so much coverage that everyone should have seen it by now. Basically, the product offers anything but a white-skinned person in requested pictures. This gave rise to some short-lived pub games. Many found this amusing but after a while it became obvious that Google has shut Gemini down for re-education.
Tech giants, gatekeepers of the cloud
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/05/2022
» AWS, Microsoft and Google collectively made up 65% of global spend on cloud computing in Q1 2022, and their share is increasing year-on-year. At least two of these organisations have shut down users and companies they decided did not align with their ideologies. If you put your data on the cloud, it sits somewhere. In many cases, it's on the servers of these three companies who may or may not decide to cut you off without warning sometime in the future. It is also important to remember these three companies have servers across the globe and if a country decides to remove itself from the pack, it could take a peek at what you are storing there.
The borders of security
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/05/2019
» It's becoming more common for agents at some borders to demand your device passwords so they can check what you have on them. Given the power of the modern smartphone, partially indicated by the cost of the top-end models, this makes sense, as they are basically mini notebook computers. If you really want to protect your data, keep it elsewhere.
Next-gen Wi-Fi technologies on the way
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/11/2018
» The fixed line versus Wi-Fi debate continues to be a popular one. And with technologies like Wi-Gig and Wi-Fi 6 in the pipeline, the debate will only intensify. Current Wi-Fi technologies work inside the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands; they also have user-friendly version numbers now. Wi-Fi 4 came out in 2009 under the name 802.11n, Wi-Fi 5 arrived in 2014 as 802.11ac and Wi-Fi 6 is due in 2019 as 802.11.ax. In the near future, you'll see these numbers start to appear on your devices, but not every manufacturer will bother to use the new designations. Wi-Fi numbers 1-3 represent even older, now mostly unused versions.