Showing 1 - 7 of 7
Caveat emptor is undefeated in online shopping
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/03/2026
» It is becoming more common to buy things online. The majority of my shopping, not counting groceries, is now done that way. In the past I've warned about prices that are too good to be true, like a 4TB thumb drive for a few dollars from sites like Temu and AliExpress. There is now a kind of middle ground where the price could be correct and it's coming from, say, Amazon. Recently, even though I had some doubts, I bought a 5TB SSD drive from Amazon for around half of what I'd expect it to be. I did this knowing I can easily send things back to Amazon.
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.
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.
Beware of TikTok snooping on your phone's data
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/03/2022
» If you didn't already know, TikTok is potentially dangerous. The app bypasses both Apple and Google protections and is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. According to reports, the app passes all your data back to servers in China, including unposted information and the contents of your phone. The app also has many security vulnerabilities allowing hackers to take over your phone. This is in addition to the expansion of your digital footprint across the planet. In China, people are rewarded for posting serious videos like those showing them using a chemistry set. Those outside China are rewarded for the dumbest presentations. I'll let the readers work this last one out for themselves.
World wide the web isn't free
Life, James Hein, Published on 30/09/2020
» The dream of an open, transparent Internet that accepts all and their opinions is all but dead. The story starts on Jan 1, 1983, when the then ARPANET adopted the TCP/IP protocol and then really started to take off in 1990 after Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. It began like most things, simply, with topic driven bulletin boards and online forums, then it moved to personal websites and the first blogs. At the turn of the century this morphed into the Web 2.0 where social media platforms were developed and started to grow and opened up the world and different countries to each other at the personal level.
Limiting discourse, leaking borders
Life, James Hein, Published on 19/06/2019
» It is difficult to ignore the latest moves by social media providers like YouTube to change their terms and conditions so as to block individuals and groups they don't like. The shift from an open platform, where all ideas are welcome, to one more concerned with the window of discourse is disappointing, and points to the huge pressure being applied by a small number of special interest groups, mostly via advertisers. The really sad part of this is that there are already indications that Minds, a supposed open alternative, is already censoring content, so for the moment at least I need to withdraw my recommendation for that platform.
Liberal fascism is destroying social media
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/08/2018
» In general I try to keep out of politics but the issue of what is currently occurring on the most popular social media platforms is a critical one to consider, for everyone. I've briefly touched on this subject in an earlier article.