Showing 1 - 10 of 11
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.
Connectivity conundrums
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/06/2025
» I'm travelling as I write this, so I thought it would be a good time to cover things like connectivity and the kind of issues I face even in 2025. Connectivity will typically revolve around your smartphone and I recommend you prepare for this in advance. Option one is a new sim card that you put in when you get to your destination.
Manipulating populations is very easy
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/10/2023
» Have you ever heard of the term SEME, or Search Engine Manipulation Effect? The term was coined back in 2014 by the psychologist Robert Epstein, in his paper "The Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) And Its Possible Impact On The Outcomes Of Elections".
Fact-checking AI content... Is it possible?
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/04/2023
» Everywhere I turn these days, there is another comment or opinion on artificial intelligence or AI. Digging a little deeper, it would appear the concerns are for what comes after GPT-4.
Samsung's A series phone is a big fat L
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/10/2022
» Nothing at all back from Samsung corporate on the A53-5G, if that changes I'll let you know. The new phone is a brick and after some research it turns out that more often than not Samsung only has a local warranty. I've since spoken to a number of people who've had issues with charging.
Elon's Twitter bid reopens censorship debate
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/04/2022
» Without a doubt, the biggest news of the last couple of weeks has centred around Elon Musk. It started with a tweet where he asked his followers if they thought that Twitter followed free speech principles. Over 2 million responded, with 70% indicating it didn't, and some asked him to buy Twitter. A week or so later he purchased 9.2% of Twitter. This triggered a swathe of wild speculation. Elon then rejected an offer to sit on the board because this would limit his ability to purchase more stock. A week or so later he offered to buy all of the remaining Twitter shares for US$54.20 (1,840 baht) a share, above the current market price and well above pundits' sell price only a little while earlier. The Left went crazy. The board started talking about introducing a financial "poison pill" share approach to both increase the number of and dilute the value of Twitter shares to make it more difficult for Musk to purchase more than 15% of Twitter.
Post-Covid world is challenging
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/11/2021
» In the Covid and post-Covid world will the online meeting still reign? For many in the workplace who are working from home it is their lifeline with colleagues and managers. According to chief analyst Matthew Ball, one of the five issues currently challenging industry is better human collaboration.
Alternative social platforms can be expensive
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/11/2021
» The alternative social media platform Rumble recently bought out another platform for creators called Locals. Rumble is a YouTube-like platform and Locals is aimed more at the alternative blogging community, including names like Scott Adams and Dan Bongino. I don't think this will be a long-term successful merger for a simple reason, and that is money. To be fair Locals is an alternative to Patreon, a platform that will nuke your account if it doesn't like your politics as evidenced by a long list of conservative commentators being axed without warning.
The benefits and risks of neural interfaces
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/02/2021
» This week is dedicated to the brain-computer interface, or BCI. For some time now, sci-fi movies and TV series have presented the idea of a mind-to-computer interface that controls technology, retrieves information and displays it on virtual screens. Meanwhile, in the background, a number of companies have been working on this and the technology is close to realising some of the outcomes only seen in fiction so far.
An English-always app workaround
Life, James Hein, Published on 30/01/2019
» On a recent overseas trip I noticed that some of my Android phone Google-related apps would change language settings and feeds based on the country I was in. Unless you can read in multiple languages this is really annoying. Even more so is that this behaviour is the default one and apparently unchangeable. If you are using Google as a browser you can at least stop this when browsing by using the URL google.com/ncr where the "ncr" stands for No Country Redirect. The result is an English always result regardless of where you may be in the world at the time.