Showing 1 - 10 of 13
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.
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.
Colour e-ink phones are here
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/08/2022
» It seems like it has taken forever, but colour e-ink phones are finally starting to arrive. Enter the Hisense A7 CC, with a 6.7-inch screen that can display 4096 colours at 100ppi.
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.
Tesla Pi gets my motor running
Life, James Hein, Published on 19/01/2022
» I admit it, I'm getting excited about the Tesla Pi phone due out this year. The rumours have been flying fast and furious but there are some seemingly solid predictions. The phone will have a specially designed CPU. It will have a nice screen just under the 7-inch mark, four cameras and be deliberately priced a few hundred dollars under the top-of-the-line Apple phone. There is apparently some bad blood between Elon and Apple so that last one is a deliberate choice. Like the next Samsung range, it may have an under the screen front facing camera. There'll be lots of memory and a bunch of Tesla-like features with apparently a solar charger built into the back so you can always recharge during the day. I'm due for a new phone this year so I'll be holding off on the new Samsung and waiting to see what comes out.
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.
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.
Someone, somewhere still uses IE
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/02/2020
» A Microsoft engineer, Eric Lawrence, who worked on moving the Edge browser to a Google-driven open source base code, has suggested that people need to stop using the more traditional version of Internet Explorer. His plea was a personal one on his own blog but Microsoft cybersecurity chief Chris Jackson expressed the same sentiment a year earlier. IE still has a couple of percent of people using it -- probably those who had it installed on their machines -- that have yet to be upgraded. The technology is old and full of security holes but a number of organisations demand that it still be used.
A tangled web
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/12/2019
» Yes, it is the time of year where we see how well I did at predictions for 2019.