Showing 1 - 10 of 10
What to expect in the year ahead
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/12/2025
» The coming year will be full of artificial intelligence, robots and a Starlink communications experience that will have many moving from their current providers. Let's dig in with my predictions for 2026.
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".
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.
Prediction hits and misses for 2021
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/12/2021
» It is time once again to look back at 2021 to see what happened and how my predictions panned out.
Samsung again pushing foldables
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/08/2021
» Samsung is betting on foldables. The new Galaxy Z Fold 3 will come with IPX8 water resistance, support for the S-pen and an under-display selfie camera. It will be interesting to see how they solved the clarity issue Apple faced with that last one. The front screen will be an adaptive 7.6-inch 120Hz.
The cloud calls, banks don't hear
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/07/2021
» Is the industry rushing too quickly into the clouds? Cloud computing has been expanding steadily over the past few years and is starting to dominate as the primary platform for many organisations. Providers love it because it allows them to charge a service-based fee instead of a once-off payment for a product. There are rumours that Microsoft through Windows 11 will push to have a similar approach for their next version.
AI deserves our human paranoia
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/08/2019
» For most of my IT career I have seen promises of the "silver bullet" application. The modern iteration of this is the overused promise of Artificial Intelligence. Every man and his dog are jumping onto this marketing bandwagon and Microsoft has been no exception making it part of their database offerings.
The internet grows darker
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/05/2019
» Social media has reached danger levels of influence and like anything powerful it can be used for positive or negative purposes. In countries like China you can say as many good things about the government on social media as you like but anything negative typically triggers a rapid response. The US and UK has its own sets of problems, with a tug-of-war between liberals and conservatives over the truth, with each side seeking to banish the other from social media. Self-defined open, inclusive and balanced social media platforms like Twitter are removing accounts on one side of politics in countries before elections, effectively meddling in elections.
The world knows where you've been
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/01/2019
» A reminder for those operating in the digital world. This includes the internet, your phone, social media and basically anything in the public sphere. You can all but guarantee that everything you post online is eventually available to everyone. It doesn't matter what promises your provider might offer -- and maybe they're even being as honest as they can be -- eventually your data will turn up on a public server somewhere. The golden rule is simple: if you don't want everyone to see something, then don't post it anywhere on public networks.
A work around for Microsoft's landmines
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/07/2018
» The law in the European Union that I mentioned in the last article was passed as expected and the response from many quarters has been savage. At the time of writing it has yet to be ratified but it has seeded confusion in the online world as to what will be allowed and what won't. It could end up being a subjective nightmare but that is what you get when you are run by a group of essentially faceless bureaucrats in Belgium. I don't think we have heard the end of this one.