Showing 1 - 10 of 12
Marketeers have simple choices
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/02/2026
» If you use a mobile phone for playing any games, then typically along with that comes all of the advertisements and marketing presentations. First however, there is the "free download", this means you can download it for free, install and run it. After that, things may not be free at all. This is to be expected as advertising is one of the few ways to make any income from the games being played by millions of people across the planet.
Headlines are disappointing
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/11/2023
» If you have been in any way involved in social media over the past few years, there will be words that immediately have you wondering if the headline is in any way real. My favourite recently was "SpaceX Launched REAL UFO In ISRAEL! HAMAS And Iran Shocked!" on YouTube.
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.
Huawei facing tough time outside China
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/07/2020
» China, and in particular Huawei, is not winning these days. Huawei has some excellent hardware. Their latest phones are as good in many aspects as any other manufacturer. However, the fuzzy area is the company's links to the Chinese government. Huawei claims they are not directly linked to the government but many others say there are direct and nefarious links. Huawei recently lost their foothold in the United Kingdom as their 5G network has been disallowed or marginalised for the future. This leaves only Canada as part of the five eyes intelligence partners still supporting Huawei 5G. Other nations have also been hesitant to adopt the technology.
Fujitsu in first big WFH move
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/07/2020
» - As predicted, Fujitsu provided a great example when it announced the permanent closure of half of its office real estate in Japan. They will instead have 80,000 workers working from home permanently. This is a huge redefinition of work culture in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak. Called the "Work Life Shift" campaign, Fujitsu is to study data on how employees use offices, with a view to giving them more tools and options to work from home, at hubs or be more mobile. This will end the habit of employees commuting to and from offices. It also indicates the allowance of a higher degree of autonomy based on the principle of trust, Fujitsu announced.
A new era for Windows?
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/01/2020
» When you read this, Windows 7 will have reached its end of support, but it still has about 27% of the current market share on Windows desktops. The Microsoft term "end of support" refers to technical support and security updates/fixes, and it means that over time your operating system will become less secure and more open to attack by malware.
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.
In 2020, China heads into 1984
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/10/2019
» China will have 626 million CCTVs installed by 2020. That's close to one for every two people in the country. By the end of 2019, any application for Internet access will require first having your face scanned. In 2020, if you want to surf the web you will first have to pass a facial recognition process. If you are recognised and your social score is high enough you will be able to connect. This directive comes from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Technology.
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.
Human override here to stay
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/04/2019
» Computers are useful tools and they will emotionlessly churn through thousands of operations in the blink of an eye to produce whatever results they were programmed to do. Most of the time the results are welcomed. When it comes to malware the results generate a different reaction, and then there are those spaces in the middle. The situation surrounding the Boeing 737 Max MCAS aircraft and the recent crash is an excellent example. The latest analysis would seem to indicate that the computer engineers made some choices that have had unintended consequences. In this case overriding the wishes of the pilots by assuming the plane was crashing, when it wasn't, and not allowing the human pilots to correct the computer's decisions.