Showing 1 - 8 of 8
Privacy an artefact of times past
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/07/2018
» If you have learned nothing else from my many years of writing, it should be that unless extraordinary steps are taken, personal data privacy doesn't exist, except perhaps in the deluded minds of government officials. The only thing privacy laws do these days is stop you from returning someone's lost phone. In just one day in the news, I read reports about Huawei infiltrating Facebook, another Spectre CPU problem, political data harvesting in the UK, insecure military servers in the UK, Chinese hackers interested in Cambodia (and the rest of the world) along with other items about lost or hacked data. Yahoo and Google collect far more than the whole of the US spy agencies combined, though at least the latter doesn't deliberately spread it around or sell it to marketers.
SSD can be a fragging pain also
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/03/2015
» A solid state drive (SSD) has no moving parts and for the most part is — or at least should be — faster than a regular platter based hard drive. Over the years I have had a 128, 240 and more recently a 512GB SSD that I use as my system drive. After the installation of the last one, things started to slow down until it took less time to copy to a regular hard drive than to my new SSD. As you should when you want to check on something, I Googled (any other search engine will also work) for anything to do with my SSD model having problems. Unfortunately, while it is a Samsung 840 series, it is not the one that has had all the problems, so no useful suggestions. Finally, I decided to see if it was slow because it was fragmented.
A sexy new way to pay
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/02/2014
» Forget PayPal, what you really need is at least as The Register in the UK quaintly puts it "pay by bonk". Using the system, you knock your smartphone against another smartphone or device in a store to transfer funds from one account to another. A new payment system is also being planned at Apple, who wants to lead the near field communications (NFC) race. It will no doubt heavily feature the iTunes store (i.e. you pay money into your iTunes account and then use that to purchase items in the real world). This could essentially work like an iTunes-based debit card. Remember, however, that these NFC payment systems are also subject to those of a more unsavoury nature passing close to you and grabbing some cash for themselves. It is early days yet, but I expect that this will turn into a real issue. As for me, I bought myself a woven stainless steel wallet that acts as a Faraday cage. You could also just wrap it in tin foil, I suppose.
Sysadmins know all the best secrets
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/09/2013
» After all the hoopla about Edward Snowden, now a new resident of Russia, you may be asking yourself how he managed to walk off with all that information. After all, the US National Security Agency, or NSA, is meant to be the be-all and end-all of security. They can supposedly listen to everyone's phone calls and all information is carefully monitored with employees blocked from copying files. So people are calling him a genius who brilliantly made off with all that sensitive information. The truth is a little more mundane. He belonged to a group known as System Administrators.
Is your phone spying on you?
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/05/2013
» I've long been a fan of Firefox, but I somehow missed the announcement of its new OS coming out for mobile phones. Geeksphone, a Spanish start-up, sold out of the first devices with the new OS within a matter of hours and had to shut down its online store as demand unexpectedly exceeded supply. The new units were meant for developers only because the new Firefox OS is still in a very early stage of its evolution. Application development for the new OS is based on HTML5, JavaScript and Open Web standards. The official OS launch will be some time later this year and Google is working with ZTE in China on the project. The first commercial units will be manufactured in Brazil so this is a truly international effort and may be one to watch in the future.
Office 2013 is now ready for lift-off, but will it soar?
Life, James Hein, Published on 30/01/2013
» I got my hands on Office 2013 a.k.a. Office 15 or even Office 365. The last one is the online subscription model, being the ideal version for Microsoft because you are essentially hooked forever. This comes in two versions with access to different features you can look up and starts at $100 (about 3,000 baht) per month. The advantage is you get access to the latest version at all times and you can access it from anywhere.
Backtracking Apple allows ad tracking
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/10/2012
» So you have your new iPhone 5 and you love it; good for you! The first time you access iTunes you'll need to provide a payment gateway of some kind. Unlike with Android-based devices, you'll need to give Apple financial access in order to be able to get to the free stuff. My advice, especially if you have children, is to use a debit card with a low ceiling on spending, or something similar, so that when your children use your phone and inadvertently start paying for stuff, your liability will be kept within acceptable limits.
How to create your dream house with a 3D printer
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/08/2012
» It wasn't that long ago when printing something involved at least one sheet of paper and some ink. In recent times this has changed to no sheet of paper, an engineering plan and some exotic printing materials.