Showing 1 - 10 of 10
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.
The future of AI is LAM
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/02/2024
» After my earlier article, I realised I was somewhat scant on what a Large Action Model (LAM), also called Large Agentic Models, are. As already mentioned, these have derived from the Large Language Models (LLM), or what people now refer generically as AI, discussed before.
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.
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.
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.
Don't get caught out on camera
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/07/2021
» - In the new Covid world, office workers are now regularly in meetings from home. Many of these meetings these days now also include a video feed. The first thing others in the call do when someone pops up, is to check the background and immediately zoom in, mentally or physically, on anything that seems out of place in the background. Last night's dishes, haphazardly discarded clothing and even a pot plant seemingly out of place will be the object of interest. Some use a green screen behind them and have an image placed on that by software.
Big firms fuzzy on their AI thinking
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/10/2020
» Everything you see these days is AI enabled in some way, or according to the marketing they must be. Software, fridges, cancer detection and lots of other examples are all based on some kind of AI implementation. Google, Microsoft and all the big players are heavily invested in at least the buzzword, but the proof of delivery as promised is elusive.
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.
Got those work from home blues
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/05/2020
» Working from home is fine if everything is working. I use a two-monitor set-up with one for work and the other for home use. The work monitor reverts back to home use when the end of the day comes. Both monitors run off a Display Port connection from each of the graphics cards. Last week, one of the monitors decided to stop working. At first, I was thinking of a quick way to get a new monitor but after a bit of reflection, I plugged the non-working one into an HDMI port on my home computer and it worked just fine. Thinking it was the cable, I ordered a new one but when it arrived, the monitor still didn't work with the Display Port so it was obvious that port had stopped working.
AI -- what is it good for?
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/08/2019
» Why do we care about machine learning and the kind of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems I mentioned last time? The amount of data being taken in by systems in modern times is outstripping the ability of humans to keep up. Enter machine learning systems to pre-process the information, highlight patterns and identify the bits and pieces that humans may find interesting. Key areas include fraud detection, whereby a set of rules is applied to data and flagged if those rules are detected. It also includes the age-old problem of the best delivery routes to bring manufactured goods to customers, with the additional benefit of using less fuel. A recent McKinsey report found that AI improved on "traditional analytics techniques" in 400 use cases across 19 industries and nine business functions. As far as the current situation, AI or machine learning is not an end state. Human intervention is still required to make sure the results make sense and also to ensure stuff isn't being missed in the process. There is also continuing training and refinement being regularly applied. It's a growing field and those organisations that are not at least aware of it could be left behind by their competitors. At least, until Skynet takes over.