Showing 1 - 10 of 11
Marketeers have simple choices
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/02/2026
» If you use a mobile phone for playing any games, then typically along with that comes all of the advertisements and marketing presentations. First however, there is the "free download", this means you can download it for free, install and run it. After that, things may not be free at all. This is to be expected as advertising is one of the few ways to make any income from the games being played by millions of people across the planet.
Online Safety Act is a bad joke
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/08/2025
» The UK now has their Online Safety Act (OSA) and Australia is blindly following in their footsteps. In the UK it didn't take very long for the tech aware under-18s to bypass all the rules and regain access to adult content. Think about it, if China can't completely block everything do you think the UK had any chance? There were some creative solutions but the most common was a simple Virtual Private Network (VPN). In related news, some VPN companies reported a 1,400% increase in sign-ups since the OSA came into force.
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.
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.
The reality of AI is less scary than the movies
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/08/2022
» I was talking to someone at work recently and mentioned the Palm Pilot. He never heard of it. Some of us remember it being released in 1996 before the smartphone and social media, and in the early days of the internet. It drove the creation of the smartphone, though the people at Intel at the time didn't see how a portable, hand-held device like this could become common. One of the founders and inventors was Jeff Hawkins who also founded Handspring and worked on the Treo that evolved into a very early smartphone with a camera, which this brings us to today's topic, artificial intelligence.
Alternatives sought as chip shortages disrupt production
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/03/2021
» - There is a silicon shortage, which is another way of saying that getting your next computer will either be difficult with long wait times or that prices may rise soon, so you'd better get in earlier rather than later. A couple of fires, a cold snap in Texas and Covid-19 restrictions are some of the causes of the shortages which shows that it doesn't take a lot to disrupt supply chains.
Big firms fuzzy on their AI thinking
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/10/2020
» Everything you see these days is AI enabled in some way, or according to the marketing they must be. Software, fridges, cancer detection and lots of other examples are all based on some kind of AI implementation. Google, Microsoft and all the big players are heavily invested in at least the buzzword, but the proof of delivery as promised is elusive.
AI -- what is it good for?
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/08/2019
» Why do we care about machine learning and the kind of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems I mentioned last time? The amount of data being taken in by systems in modern times is outstripping the ability of humans to keep up. Enter machine learning systems to pre-process the information, highlight patterns and identify the bits and pieces that humans may find interesting. Key areas include fraud detection, whereby a set of rules is applied to data and flagged if those rules are detected. It also includes the age-old problem of the best delivery routes to bring manufactured goods to customers, with the additional benefit of using less fuel. A recent McKinsey report found that AI improved on "traditional analytics techniques" in 400 use cases across 19 industries and nine business functions. As far as the current situation, AI or machine learning is not an end state. Human intervention is still required to make sure the results make sense and also to ensure stuff isn't being missed in the process. There is also continuing training and refinement being regularly applied. It's a growing field and those organisations that are not at least aware of it could be left behind by their competitors. At least, until Skynet takes over.
An opaque Windows upgrade
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/08/2018
» I have heard a number stories of users having problems with Windows 10 who upgraded from Windows 7 without a clean install. This has happened to people with notebooks, PCs and recently a server. It started a few updates back when rebooting took a long time, which was resolved with a subsequent update. A more recent issue has occurred for those who did not do a clean Windows 10 install, ie they directly upgraded from Windows 7 or 8, having problems ranging from slow to almost unusable speeds and even system lockdowns. If you find yourself having problems, backup your data and do a clean install directly from Windows 10. In short, reformat your system drive and install from scratch. For some this has been the only solution, others have been a little luckier.
Words don't come easy to millennials
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/05/2018
» Next time you're in a restaurant or where people gather in small groups, sit and watch for a while. Note how many of the groups are silent, all doing something on their phones. When you find such a group, note how long they go without saying a word to each other. There is an interesting behavioural shift occurring in the phone-enabled world where casual conversation skills are being replaced by surfing, messaging and instant posting. It won't be too long before the best way to find out what the person next to you is thinking is to live feed their Facebook, send them an SMS or Line message, or heaven forbid a tweet.