Showing 1 - 10 of 29
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.
Sabine has the science you're after
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/10/2025
» Sabine Hossenfelder is one of the people I regularly watch on the YouTube platform. She is a physicist but also veers into other areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. For her latest video -- In Which I Lose Faith In Quantum Computing -- she makes a number of interesting observations. In short, apart from some very specific applications, quantum computing, even if it is scalable from current technology, has limited application. It also has the potential of bringing down a number of current companies highly focused on this technology, or at least some of their divisions. Artificial intelligence takes up a lot of the space that quantum computing could do well in, but for the present at least, AI does it better. The next 10 years, or less, will be important to see how both of these directions develop, or not. If you are interested at all in physics, maths and occasionally quantum computing, then Sabine Hossenfelder provides some interesting perspectives.
Will Tesla's camera-only autonomy prove its mettle?
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/07/2025
» I'm still not convinced that Tesla's camera-only approach will work well in all situations. According to a quick AI search, Elon doesn't like Lidar based on "cost, complexity, and philosophical disagreement with its necessity". Other manufacturers seem to have no problem with the first two of these and I challenge his last reason. I would have thought that a combination of available technologies would give you the safest options for all circumstances.
Popularity of cable news is waning fast
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/11/2024
» The age of the cable news provider is waning. Within 24 hours of the Joe Rogan podcast with former US president Donald Trump, it had over 30 million views on YouTube alone. This is far more than any mainstream news or media outlet gets for any of its shows or presentations.
Turning smart glasses into surveillance tools
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/10/2024
» I'm sure most readers are familiar with the Apple Vision Pro, and may have also been witness to someone wearing one out in the real world, because I have. Since then, there has been a new version of the Meta Ray-Bans that look like a pair of nerd glasses from the 1970s. The latter have turned into something from the TV series Person Of Interest by a couple of Harvard undergrads. The pair, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, are known for their punch-activated flamethrower. This time they built a system that allows the Ray-Bans to scan faces of people in view, pass this to an AI system that scans the internet for identification, and builds a dossier that is passed back to the glasses. It's called I-XRAY and challenges the concept of privacy because, if available, it will even provide details like address and social security number.
Q&A, truth, lies, the web and you
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/04/2024
» The online world is changing and not necessarily for the better. I'm old enough to remember what you were looking for came up as the first search result, when there was a search facility, that is. The old Bulletin Boards kept their subject matter to the topic of the board with opinions kept to opinion sites. Sites on science were not one-sided as they presented the facts along with the supporting data for checking and verification. If people disagreed, they also brought their data along to challenge a thesis and a healthy and often robust debate followed. That was then.
Advertising ruins everything
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/02/2024
» Remember this day because I have a prediction. Recently, for the first time, I had two ads appear when watching a Rumble video. Rumble is a YouTube alternative that until now had been ad free. The platform allows those banned by YouTube for political reasons to make their presentations, along with anyone else who wants to post videos. My prediction is that the current ads, currently 30 second ones you can skip after a few seconds that appear at the start of your video, will gradually become more prevalent and longer, without being able to skip, and eventually will become as annoying as Facebook.
The future of AI is LAM
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/02/2024
» After my earlier article, I realised I was somewhat scant on what a Large Action Model (LAM), also called Large Agentic Models, are. As already mentioned, these have derived from the Large Language Models (LLM), or what people now refer generically as AI, discussed before.
Rabbit R1's AI action intrigues
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/01/2024
» A new device out of CES 2024 in Las Vegas caught my eye. At first glance, the Rabbit R1 doesn't look all that interesting. It's a US$199 (in America), orange, handheld device that looks like an old-style gaming machine of some kind about the size of a stack of Post-It notes. It comes with a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a camera, a voice command button and a 4G LTE SIM card slot for connectivity beyond Wi-Fi. This is not a smartphone and won't replace it as there are no onboard apps, it won't pair with your smartphone and it doesn't talk to application APIs like cloud service gateways.
AI is causing concern again
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/12/2023
» There have been two big stories in the IT world over the past couple of weeks. The biggest one concerns OpenAI and its three-day boardroom drama. In a nutshell, the board voted Sam Altman and other members out of the company. The next day, Microsoft picked them up and anyone else who wanted to head over to a new division. That same day, 700-plus employees of OpenAI signed a letter saying they would go if a rogue board member did not quit and bring Sam Altman back. On the third day, Sam was back and three board members were gone.