Showing 1 - 10 of 24
SCOTUS slaps down YouTube copyright actions
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/04/2026
» Following on from my previous observation of the music industry harassing content creators, the Supreme Court in the US just rewrote the rules of secondary copyright liability. On March 25, the Supreme Court unanimously held that simply knowing your users might infringe copyright is not enough to make you liable. This negated the old theory that "knowledge plus material contribution" was enough.
Sabine has the science you're after
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/10/2025
» Sabine Hossenfelder is one of the people I regularly watch on the YouTube platform. She is a physicist but also veers into other areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. For her latest video -- In Which I Lose Faith In Quantum Computing -- she makes a number of interesting observations. In short, apart from some very specific applications, quantum computing, even if it is scalable from current technology, has limited application. It also has the potential of bringing down a number of current companies highly focused on this technology, or at least some of their divisions. Artificial intelligence takes up a lot of the space that quantum computing could do well in, but for the present at least, AI does it better. The next 10 years, or less, will be important to see how both of these directions develop, or not. If you are interested at all in physics, maths and occasionally quantum computing, then Sabine Hossenfelder provides some interesting perspectives.
Is your internet speed too slow?
Life, James Hein, Published on 09/04/2025
» How important is a good internet connection? This is one of those how long is a piece of string or what computer should I get questions. Back in the day, it was a huge jump from zero bits per second to a 2400 Baud modem. People and businesses were willing to pay a large sum to get connected because it opened up a new world of possibilities, ranging from not needing to go to the library as often and being able to sell and market products online. When and how often you paid for the next upgrade depended on your use case and the capabilities it provided. The next major jumps in speed were 4800, 9600 and 14400bps and everyone jumped to one of these as a next step. During this period, the mid 90s, the T1 at 1.544Mbps was the imaginary godlike speed we all dreamed about but didn't have money to afford. That speed provided real time video conference calls and was limited to government and large business concerns that typically involved a dedicated screening room. This was also when the concept of data compression started to gain popularity as you could send more with less bits.
Jetsons cars finally take off
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/03/2025
» Some readers will remember the old cartoon The Jetsons. This promised a future with flying cards, robot assistants and helpful computer tools. We have or are getting very close to the robot assistants, and the latest artificial intelligence offerings seem to be the automated helpers. Missing to date are the flying cars. That may have changed with the new Jetson ONE, a single person flying car I saw a demonstration of in a recent video. It looked good, seemed to fly with good stability and landed without any issue. You can find the demos with a simple search. The craft has vertical take-off and landing capability. However, I shudder to think of what thousands of these might look like in the skies above a city without some serious improvements in driving and collision avoidance.
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.
Microsoft stock booming on AI run
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/06/2023
» It's not a good time to be working for Microsoft, but it is a good time to be a shareholder or executive. Stock is up over 30%, net income is up and the CEO Satya Nadella got a nice 10% raise. Regular workers received no pay rise, or effectively a 5% pay cut due to inflation. Microsoft has rationalised it as pat and generic reasons like a "competitive environment" and the "global macroeconomic uncertainties". In reality, Microsoft is using the money to jump into the AI wave through a multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI.
The future is here and it's all about AI
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/01/2023
» Well, here we are in 2023. The last two years of Covid are behind us, some organisations are starting to rebuild and the future will hopefully be brighter.
Free speech and pedestrian blues
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/12/2022
» Let's take a look at my predictions for 2022, a mixed year for technology. How did I do? Virtual reality didn't advance as much as I'd hoped. Artificial intelligence made some incremental games including as I pointed out in an earlier article, for music producers. The Neuralink interface did improve this year, if indeed that is something you're interested in, but still not available for broad human use. I also was wrong on cryptocurrency. With the FTX exposure the private firms took a hit, but governments have started to get interested in the technology. The world is poised for a crypto explosion, but not this year.
Waste no time, delete your TikTok
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/09/2022
» Most people know that social media platforms collect their personal information. Location, ordering patterns, browsing history and more are passed into Google, Meta, Amazon, Twitter and others' analytics. The newest and potentially scariest of these is TikTok.
EU demands Apple play fair
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/06/2022
» It looks like the Apple-specific charging cable may be a thing of the past with the European Union demanding that all smartphone makers use a universal USB-C port for wired charging by 2024. The same rule will be applied to many other electronic devices like tablets, cameras, headphones, handheld video game consoles and e-readers. In the future, laptops will need to follow the same rule.