Showing 1 - 10 of 30
How YouTube fails its creators
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/04/2026
» YouTube is failing in customer protection, especially in certain categories. As a case study, consider YouTuber Davie504. Unless you are a bass player or interested in bass lines, you probably haven't heard of him. He spends time practising and demonstrating bass playing in a proficient and sometimes amusing fashion. He is unassuming and obviously works hard to present good content. In general, if you are playing any musical selection in a teaching presentation, particularly if you are playing it yourself, or if the section is short and not the full song, then this should be all covered by "fair use". Enter the music industry. When you think about overbearing corporate control, this is the perfect example. Within this, some artists are worse than others, with the absolute worst being whomever represents The Eagles.
What to expect in the year ahead
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/12/2025
» The coming year will be full of artificial intelligence, robots and a Starlink communications experience that will have many moving from their current providers. Let's dig in with my predictions for 2026.
Microsoft put on the naughty step by Aussie regulator
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/11/2025
» Microsoft has been at it again. The Competition & Consumer Commission in Australia has started a legal process against the Redmond giant for apparently misleading users of the policies for its Microsoft 365 bundle. Microsoft advised users with a Personal and Family plan that "to maintain their subscription they must accept the integration of Copilot and pay higher prices for their plan, or, alternatively, cancel their subscription".
Can you trust search engines?
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/08/2024
» So how do conspiracy theories start and how does the internet and major search engine players contribute to them? As I type this, depending on where you are in the world, if you type "assassination attempt" in your search engine, and in particular one associated with Alphabet, the autofill options will have everything except "Trump" in the result set. You can get Kennedy, Hitler, Putin and George Wallace, but not the most prominent one so far this year that was one of those "where were you when you heard" events that some people saw in real time on their TV. The reason Alphabet offered for not giving the result was something along the lines that their policy is not to show political violence. You can of course find a plethora of political violence videos and examples from their search results, just not for this particular instance. Another example if you type "President Donald", the autofill adds Duck and Reagan but not Trump. Or if you Google Donald Trump you get a bunch of Kamala Harris results.
A new low in online scams
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/07/2024
» According to the Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), scammers are now targeting scam victims with fake offers to help them recover from scams. The con is to use information from those scammed in the past and approach these people with an offer to recover the funds they have lost for, of course, an up-front fee.
Microsoft gets more invasive
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/06/2024
» Microsoft Windows has added a new feature that will record everything you have ever done on your computer. It does this through a new AI feature called Recall for Copilot+ that allows Windows 11 to take screen snapshots every few seconds. Allegedly these are encrypted and saved to your hard drive (filling it up?). No, this is not a new episode of Black Mirror, but a disturbing change in Microsoft's attempt to track everything you do and fill up your hard drives. It may do this for your Zoom calls and meetings (it will record other people on the other end of a call without their permission). This may also include capturing the data you enter into secure forms, including passwords.
Predictions for 2024
Life, James Hein, Published on 03/01/2024
» I hope you all had a great holiday break and are ready to dive into whatever 2024 brings us. Once again I will try and guess what we will see this year. The first one is easy, a bigger focus on artificial intelligence and even more marketing using the term AI. I wonder if we will see Turbo-AI appear. There will be more funds diverted to the growth of AI in many of the major manufacturers. I'm not convinced we will reach General AI this year but it is a possibility.
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.
When AI is not smart enough for the job
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/09/2022
» I was wondering what to write about this week and then I saw the Japanese Amazon story and how it relates to artificial intelligence. Labour unions in Japan have been a thing since World War II, but delivery drivers for Amazon Japan were not unionised, until recently.
Moving images to the next level
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/03/2022
» Let's start this week with a couple of software and technology announcements. The first is from the developer Dominic Szablewski. He has developed a simple, new image format. You will have heard of PNG, JPEG, MPEG, MOV and MP4, which he calls complex. Enter the Quite OK Image Format (QOI). Most of the older formats are closed, need libraries and a lot of computing power to implement and use.