Showing 1 - 10 of 12
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.
AI will overpromise and underdeliver
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/08/2025
» Let's start with a few brief comments on the current state of artificial intelligence. Specially targeted and trained AI models are improving. These are things like detecting something in an X-ray or hunting for potential chemical candidates for a compound to attack a specific condition. Generating pictures and videos is also improving rapidly, and by the end of the year the majority of people will not be able to tell the difference between the real thing and the AI fake. Large Language Models are still unpredictable and can give false or fake answers depending on the structure of the prompts, so be careful with the answer you get from these. The current corporate buy-in for AI is well beyond what it can deliver. This is driven by marketing, not the actual state of capabilities. My prediction is there will be a lot of out-of-pocket organisations of all types disappointed by results.
Beware the AI bots
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/06/2025
» I recently joined a Facebook group that supposedly represented Kat Timpf, a regular presenter on the Gutfeld! show. I posted a couple of comments and a couple of weeks later, I received a tag in social media purportedly from Dana Perino, a regular on the Fox show The Five. Initially this was a surprise. Why would a famous TV star want to chat with me? After a few chats, it became obvious something was off. The tag name in Messenger was just Dana Perino but the conversation had a few structural errors, not something a former press secretary would make.
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.
You are being tracked and here's how to avoid it
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/02/2022
» I decided to spend some time this week addressing security and data sharing. This was prompted by me reading Permanent Record by Edward Snowden, watching Dr Robert Epstein on The Joe Rogan Experience, my son enrolling in a cyber security course and my experience over the years.
Chip shortage over by 2023... maybe
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/09/2021
» The current chip shortage could should be a thing of the past by 2023... maybe. The current foundries are booked out for the rest of the year and are starting to catch up with current demand. New plants will be coming online by the end of 2022. The maybe part here is the potential shortage of raw materials needed in the fabrication process. This could be a problem by 2023, or perhaps we may have new manufacturing process by then. Fingers crossed that all is good by the end of next year.
Transpacific cable is cut, for now
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/09/2020
» In light of the problems between the USA and China, and that those in power in Beijing want to grab data from US networks, Google and Facebook have dropped plans to build an undersea cable between the US and Hong Kong. The new target limits the landing points to the Philippines and Taiwan and now excludes Hong Kong. The HK section of the cable is built but will not now be activated due to a national security agreement between the US and Google and Facebook. I will predict that if Joe Biden wins the next US election this decision will be revisited.
Happy birthday, Windows 95
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/09/2020
» Exactly 25 years ago on Monday, Aug 25, Microsoft launched Windows 95. This was a pivotal time in computer history. At that time in the US, only about 20% of households had a computer and most of them were either techies or nerds. The World Wide Web was just starting to grow and the word processor and spreadsheet were also in their early days. Windows 95 changed the landscape from the earlier 16-bit technology to a 32-bit operating system and added a bunch of new features and extensions. It was the first time we saw the start button, long filenames, right-click context menus and the recycle bin along with Plug and Play technology. For those that had a drive, there was a CD for installing programmes and of course the FreeCell game, which I still play today. The marketing campaign, which featured The Rolling Stones, actually had people buying Windows 95 without even owning a computer.
Edit your apps
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/07/2020
» - I've never been a Twitter user as I find that platform full of bullies and one-sided, poorly researched commentary. By comparison I am now active on Parler, which is a similar platform, but is not restricted to only those ideas that Twitter supports. It is populated by people whose ideas I enjoy reading. If you are bored with the Twits on Twitter then come on over to Parler as an alternative.
Biggest IT fix you never heard of
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/01/2020
» The clock ticked over to 2020 and the UK giant Lloyds Bank fell over -- well it had some problems populating bank accounts with payments at least. The problem? Apparently a Y2K bug that affected mobile apps and web logins. A similar problem occurred again on Jan 2. Well before the year 2000 was reached I was one of those involved in Y2K mitigation. Large teams spent months making sure that software didn't fail when 2000 and 2001 kicked over along with a few other key dates, one of which was indeed Jan 1, 2020. Now I'm not sure if these issues are Y2K related but the Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks in the UK had similar issues that Lloyd's did, not processing payments into customer accounts. Latter reports did indicate the issue was with processing date problems.