Showing 1 - 10 of 12
Robots get smooth moves
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/03/2026
» The subject of the week is robots. The amount of news on these keeps growing and growing. South Korea is first up here with their KAIST Humanoid. In the field test, the robot was shown running across a soccer pitch, jumping, taking shots on goal, and even doing dance moves akin to the Michael Jackson moonwalk. Many robot demonstrations still look a bit stiff but these moves were quite smooth. The robot can run at about 12kph on flat ground with the next goal at 14kph. It can climb a ladder with 40cm steps and the knees can generate 320 Newton metres of peak torque so it can push heavier objects. The current model is based on the lower human half but the goal is for a full humanoid form that can work with people in industrial environments.
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.
Microsoft's quantum conundrum
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/03/2025
» If you've been keeping up with quantum computer news, you will have seen the Microsoft Marketing announcement on topological q-bits and a potential quantum computer in a few years. I was planning to write about this in some detail, but it turns out the reality may not meet the marketing. Surprising, I know, but the announcement implying Microsoft has q-bit technology ready to go and scale is speculative. They don't have any physical models, just some tests and a theory that has already been challenged by the physics community. It will take a while to go through all the published data, but the Microsoft quantum computer could be decades, not years, in the future, if ever.
Bill has ways of forcing updates
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/05/2024
» If you are a Microsoft user, private or business, there is a site you should keep an eye on. Search "Microsoft end of life dates" and then select the result with the heading "Overview – Product End of Support and Retirements", associated with learn.microsoft.com. On the left-hand side there are years. Click on 2025, for example, and you will see that Office 2016 and 2019 products will no longer be supported after Oct 14 of that year. On that same date, Windows 10 will be retired. For both of these there will be no new security updates. For some, this will not be an issue, but organisations will need to take note as it means their security will be potentially compromised after a while. Even with Windows 10 still outselling Windows 11, Microsoft will be pushing people to upgrade over the next 18 months and for many, this will no longer be free. People and organisations tend to stick with what works and Microsoft doesn't like that, so it stops supporting older products. The site will tell you when you will start to be at risk and after that you can decide what to do.
Colour e-ink phones are here
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/08/2022
» It seems like it has taken forever, but colour e-ink phones are finally starting to arrive. Enter the Hisense A7 CC, with a 6.7-inch screen that can display 4096 colours at 100ppi.
Scams on the rise as inflation bites
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/07/2022
» We start this week with a webserver with extras in a single file that runs on any x86-64 operation system. Enter redbean 2.0. Created by Justine Tunney, it uses the "Actually Portable Executable" that you can read about here, justine.lol/ape.html. When you compile a program to its native binary, in this case x86-64 code, and don't call any external code, then the only difference between a Windows and a Linux would be the file format. If you can solve this, then it could run on any platform. To do that you need Cosmopoliton libc because any real program needs to make some calls, in this case the standard C ones. So, with Cosmo and the APE format, you can write a C program and compile it to a single file that will load and run on six very different operating systems and the same binary can also be booted directly from the PC BIOS. It's not perfect, but any programmer would be scratching their heads by now. Pause for techie amazement.
When internet platforms are the judge and jury
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/01/2021
» The start of this year does not bode well for freedom of speech advocates. Consider this thought experiment. You are a citizen of Mythomia. You enjoy decent internet speeds but a group of organisations dominate the social media space. Your leader communicates with the populace via social media. One day the organisations decide they don't like the politics of the leader and cut off all means of communication with the populace. How would you feel about that?
Social media censorship the stamp of 2020
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/12/2020
» Well, it's that time of year again when I see how well my predictions for the year performed. With the advent of Covid-19, I'm not confident that many of them came to pass.
Banner year for Zoom, Microsoft Teams subpar
Life, James Hein, Published on 09/12/2020
» 'Zoom records another bumper quarter" is an unsurprising headline. While Covid-19 still has a grip on leaders and businesses, online meetings remain a big choice, but for how long? Over the years I've noticed that management falls into distinct groups when it comes to working from home. Most want to see their workers in the office as much as possible but some do support remote work and work-from-home as long as the work is being completed. For those who have to travel long distances to and from work, it also provides an opportunity for more sleep and less stress. For an eye-opener on the importance of this, I recommend that everyone read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker for data on the importance of sleep, including its benefits to organisations.
Apple sours as rivals rise
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/12/2019
» Apple can't seem to win a trick these days. Overall phone sales in Europe picked up during the last quarter but iPhone sales did not follow the upswing and ended up 4% down on the same quarter last year. The problem is that the latest models are not giving many users a reason to upgrade. Their battery replacement programme and bad sales in China have not helped either. Overall market share worldwide has dropped from 20.8% to 18.6%. By comparison, Samsung has increased their share to over 35% in the same market. Huawei, in second place, sits about the same on 22.2%. Xiaomi is still in fourth place but well behind the others at 10.5%. The biggest impacts predicted going forward are 5G and Brexit though in reality I don't think the latter will have any real impact other than short term. The most popular Samsung models were the Galaxy A10, A20e, A40 and A50.