Showing 1 - 10 of 22
Robots get smooth moves
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/03/2026
» The subject of the week is robots. The amount of news on these keeps growing and growing. South Korea is first up here with their KAIST Humanoid. In the field test, the robot was shown running across a soccer pitch, jumping, taking shots on goal, and even doing dance moves akin to the Michael Jackson moonwalk. Many robot demonstrations still look a bit stiff but these moves were quite smooth. The robot can run at about 12kph on flat ground with the next goal at 14kph. It can climb a ladder with 40cm steps and the knees can generate 320 Newton metres of peak torque so it can push heavier objects. The current model is based on the lower human half but the goal is for a full humanoid form that can work with people in industrial environments.
Bill has ways of forcing updates
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/05/2024
» If you are a Microsoft user, private or business, there is a site you should keep an eye on. Search "Microsoft end of life dates" and then select the result with the heading "Overview – Product End of Support and Retirements", associated with learn.microsoft.com. On the left-hand side there are years. Click on 2025, for example, and you will see that Office 2016 and 2019 products will no longer be supported after Oct 14 of that year. On that same date, Windows 10 will be retired. For both of these there will be no new security updates. For some, this will not be an issue, but organisations will need to take note as it means their security will be potentially compromised after a while. Even with Windows 10 still outselling Windows 11, Microsoft will be pushing people to upgrade over the next 18 months and for many, this will no longer be free. People and organisations tend to stick with what works and Microsoft doesn't like that, so it stops supporting older products. The site will tell you when you will start to be at risk and after that you can decide what to do.
X remains an influential platform
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/04/2024
» How influential is Twitter/X? Some will remember a while back when Elon Musk gave his opinion on Disney. I won't repeat it here but it was very direct. Up until recently, Disney hadn't posted anything on X but about a week before you read this, they were back with a gold checkmark. These cost about US$10,000 (368,000 baht), which while not expensive for Disney, indicates how they see X as a platform for communicating to all those potentially interested in all things Disney. Elon Musk is still supporting people like Gina Carano in suing Disney for what they did to her and others based allegedly on their political and religious views.
Headlines are disappointing
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/11/2023
» If you have been in any way involved in social media over the past few years, there will be words that immediately have you wondering if the headline is in any way real. My favourite recently was "SpaceX Launched REAL UFO In ISRAEL! HAMAS And Iran Shocked!" on YouTube.
AI is the new marketing buzzword
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/11/2023
» Some readers will remember back a decade or three when the big term was "turbo". Everything was turbo something. Turbo speed, turbo clearing, turbo graphics and so on. Today, the equivalent term is AI. I saw an advertisement recently for glasses described as AI technology that adapts to your sight. It was a regular lens with some design elements, perhaps from an AI, perhaps not, with claims of predictive focus. Rubbish. There was no inherent active or dynamic AI technology in the lenses to back up this claim and I don't think such a technology at that level is even available at any price in the current time. The same goes for many other claims preceded or appended by the AI moniker. Like turbo, it is the current marketing buzzword and since many don't understand it and what the current engineering and technological limitations are in 2023, it has become part of the mindscape.
YouTube hypocrisy deserves flagging
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/09/2023
» YouTube is behaving badly again. A prominent presenter I occasionally watch, who has millions of subscribers, has been demonetised, for some possible actions 20 years ago. This is not a commentary on potential innocence or guilt, but on YouTube's processes. There are people whose lives are supported by revenue from their presentations on YouTube. This ranges from small fries all the way up to the big fish like the one here. When an individual is demonetised they can lose the ability to support themselves. In this case allegations were made by the media, not the police or authorities, and at the time of writing there have been zero charges made. YouTube is essentially saying, bring us all your viewers so we can hit them with ads and we can make lots of money, but you will be getting nothing for your work.
Apple sets sights on VR market
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/06/2023
» The biggest announcement of the past week or two was the Apple Vision Pro VR system. There has been so much on this recently. The quick summary is -- two 4K eyepieces, no controllers required and it can replace your TV and computer monitors. I was more interested in the battery life being two hours, or if you were using them, not enough for the full Apple presentation. The price is also an amazing US$3,500 in America so out of the range of most people. One argument is that by the time you don't need to pay for a TV upgrade or new monitors it is worth the investment. My counter is if you have a four-person household that price becomes $14,000, a lot more than the cost of a new TV. Oh, and you can mostly only use it with Apple kit which really limits options.
The World Wide Web turns 30
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/05/2023
» The public version of the World Wide Web turned 30 recently. Back in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a global hypertext system called Mesh. The next year he added a hypertext GUI browser and editor and called the result the WorldWideWeb. Inside CERN, people loved it and by January 1993 the world had around 50 HTTP servers. By February, the first graphic browser appeared known as Mosaic and by April of that year, CERN decided the project belonged to humanity and the public domain version of the WWW was born. The rest and billions of web pages later, is history.
Metals and energy shortage is a looming threat
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/07/2022
» I know the word rare gives it away but the world is facing a rare earth metals shortage. The Chinese are currently the largest producers of this resource and they recently cut their production by half. Turkey is another potential source but that region has been unstable for centuries. Most modern technology cannot expand further without these resources and the whole idea of ramping up renewables requires lots of them. Elon Musk has said we don't have enough in the world for all the plans of our governments and other experts agree.
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.