Showing 1 - 8 of 8
We know they know we know about privacy
Life, James Hein, Published on 03/12/2025
» Strap in, because today I'm covering what is going to be happening over the next few months to get even more data about you and what you are doing on the internet. Let's start with the recent exposure of around 3.5 billion phone numbers from WhatsApp, the private platform.
Who checks the fact checkers?
Life, James Hein, Published on 30/08/2023
» The information landscape has changed a great deal over the past five years. Back in the 1990s, information exchange was mostly between academics and IT people. The majority of the information was accurate and typically scientific or technical in nature. The communication was polite and debates were just that, debates. It was an inclusive community, though in some cases you were required to stick to the topic at hand. Then came the social media platforms.
Microsoft stock booming on AI run
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/06/2023
» It's not a good time to be working for Microsoft, but it is a good time to be a shareholder or executive. Stock is up over 30%, net income is up and the CEO Satya Nadella got a nice 10% raise. Regular workers received no pay rise, or effectively a 5% pay cut due to inflation. Microsoft has rationalised it as pat and generic reasons like a "competitive environment" and the "global macroeconomic uncertainties". In reality, Microsoft is using the money to jump into the AI wave through a multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI.
Scams on the rise as inflation bites
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/07/2022
» We start this week with a webserver with extras in a single file that runs on any x86-64 operation system. Enter redbean 2.0. Created by Justine Tunney, it uses the "Actually Portable Executable" that you can read about here, justine.lol/ape.html. When you compile a program to its native binary, in this case x86-64 code, and don't call any external code, then the only difference between a Windows and a Linux would be the file format. If you can solve this, then it could run on any platform. To do that you need Cosmopoliton libc because any real program needs to make some calls, in this case the standard C ones. So, with Cosmo and the APE format, you can write a C program and compile it to a single file that will load and run on six very different operating systems and the same binary can also be booted directly from the PC BIOS. It's not perfect, but any programmer would be scratching their heads by now. Pause for techie amazement.
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.
Change is nigh?
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/10/2020
» A long-awaited US congressional report into Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google has been published. The surprise for some is that this report from the Democrat-run House Judiciary Committee concludes that the online giants are monopolists that need to be broken up.
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.
Universal sounds, universal sights, universal rights
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/04/2019
» Those reading my columns for long enough will know that I play the guitar. I'll never be Eric Clapton but I'm OK. Among the sources I use to improve my technique or break down a difficult lick are the helpful people that post guitar tutorials on YouTube. That could be about to change.