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  New chatbot can do a lot, but can you trust it?

  Life, James Hein, Published on 18/01/2023

  » Over the New Year break, I was digging a bit more into artificial intelligence and especially how the ChatGPT can be used and how it could affect society.

• TECH

  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.

• TECH

  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.

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  The benefits and risks of neural interfaces

  Life, James Hein, Published on 17/02/2021

  » This week is dedicated to the brain-computer interface, or BCI. For some time now, sci-fi movies and TV series have presented the idea of a mind-to-computer interface that controls technology, retrieves information and displays it on virtual screens. Meanwhile, in the background, a number of companies have been working on this and the technology is close to realising some of the outcomes only seen in fiction so far.

• TECH

  Transpacific cable is cut, for now

  Life, James Hein, Published on 16/09/2020

  » In light of the problems between the USA and China, and that those in power in Beijing want to grab data from US networks, Google and Facebook have dropped plans to build an undersea cable between the US and Hong Kong. The new target limits the landing points to the Philippines and Taiwan and now excludes Hong Kong. The HK section of the cable is built but will not now be activated due to a national security agreement between the US and Google and Facebook. I will predict that if Joe Biden wins the next US election this decision will be revisited.

• TECH

  Even writers need to think before tweeting

  Life, James Hein, Published on 16/08/2017

  » Without the internet, there would only ever be part of a story. Consider the recent example of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. She watched an edited video and then took to the internet using her fame to decry the treatment of a small child by a prominent leader. Her concerns were quickly and widely spread but the unedited footage showed the opposite. Even the mother of the child finally got involved and asked the internet to please tell J.K. Rowling that she was wrong. At the time of writing Rowling had apologised to the mother but not the leader she smeared. In the current fast pace and instant Twitter-response world it is important to take a step back and do some personal investigation before reacting, often incorrectly, to a flash tweet or news story. If you see a clip try and find the full or unedited version, that extra time can save you from future embarrassment, though some personalities seem to be immune to it.

• TECH

  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.

• TECH

  Fact checkers get it wrong

  Life, James Hein, Published on 13/09/2023

  » First off, I have some follow-up news on an earlier story. The Australian fact checking group I mentioned being paid by Meta has been suspended for providing a series of "false" fact checks that turned out to be actually true. As I pointed out, many of the so-called fact checkers don't have any experience in the field they are apparently providing the check for. This will be particularly true in any politically charged area.

• TECH

  The World Wide Web turns 30

  Life, James Hein, Published on 10/05/2023

  » The public version of the World Wide Web turned 30 recently. Back in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a global hypertext system called Mesh. The next year he added a hypertext GUI browser and editor and called the result the WorldWideWeb. Inside CERN, people loved it and by January 1993 the world had around 50 HTTP servers. By February, the first graphic browser appeared known as Mosaic and by April of that year, CERN decided the project belonged to humanity and the public domain version of the WWW was born. The rest and billions of web pages later, is history.

• TECH

  Fact-checking AI content... Is it possible?

  Life, James Hein, Published on 26/04/2023

  » Everywhere I turn these days, there is another comment or opinion on artificial intelligence or AI. Digging a little deeper, it would appear the concerns are for what comes after GPT-4.

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