Showing 1-7 of 7 results
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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.
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Don't call AI bigoted
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/11/2019
» Despite what some claim, Artificial Intelligence is not racist. Google built a system to detect hate speech or speech that exhibited questionable content. Following the rules given, it picked out a range of people with what some try to claim was a bias toward black people. Wrong. The AI simply followed the rules and a larger number of black people and some other minorities, as defined in the US, were found to be breaking those rules. It didn't matter to the machines that when one group says it, it isn't defined as hate speech by some; it simply followed the rules. People can ignore or pretend not to see rules, but machines don't work that way. What the exercise actually found was that speech by some groups is ignored while the same thing said by others isn't. As the saying goes, don't ask the question if you're not prepared to hear the answer.
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AI-aided hope on the horizon
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/02/2019
» Despite some of my criticisms in the past there are some excellent examples of emerging artificial intelligence technologies. I've mentioned some of these from the medical world in earlier articles but a new one caught my eye this week, figuring out in which hotel a picture was taken. No, not to help people remember where holiday snaps were taken but to track down human trafficking where pics of women are taken to sell them for sex. The three groups behind this identification technology are from George Washington University, Temple University and Adobe, all in the US. Like many AI systems a large amount of source data is used and to help with this more than a million images have been collected from 50,000 hotels worldwide. Using all the room elements in backgrounds a neural network is being trained to identify a hotel chain and then a location.
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Need a new phone? Put it on hold
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/05/2015
» So how do you pick a new mobile phone these days? There are hundreds of models to choose from in every price bracket, and with China starting to mass produce smartphones the country is hitting a price point about half that of the big names such as Apple, Samsung and HTC. Xiaomi, for example, has a new model coming out with a 20MP camera and lots of other top end features for a very reasonable price. I suspect it will shake up the order at the top of the stack in the near future. Huawei is another Chinese contender releasing its new P8 range in a few months time, with rumours that one model will be like the Russian Yota2 and have an eInk based screen on the back. The release will include thin and powerful models, though at this stage not with the same screen resolution as, say, the Samsung S6, but at a lower price point.
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Producers don't give a 4K about Ultra HD
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/02/2015
» Will Ultra HD, sometimes called 4K, technology take off? As someone who likes new technology that provides a sharper picture, I hope so, but the industry pundits are lukewarm on the subject for the simple reason that there are very few ways to get any content with movie studios and TV producers slow out of the gate.
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When upgrading can be a backwards step
Database, James Hein, Published on 10/11/2010
» It can sometimes be interesting to see how people view computers and applications. Many years ago I put together a small Access application that was used by my father, an archaeologist, to track pottery sherds discovered in digs in Thailand. It wasn't a very complex application in IT terms _ a simple database and a couple of forms _ but it was very useful to my father for his work.
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How to get around your ISP or country's restrictions
Database, James Hein, Published on 21/07/2010
» Internet control around the world seems to be settling out into a number of different camps. On the one hand there are the open Internet societies such as you might find in places like the United States. Next are those places that specifically restrict subject matter on a case by case basis if it causes some offence, like Qatar, Pakistan and Bangladesh. At the bottom of the stack or the restrictive nations that actively censor all manner of sources, like you may find in places like China and North Korea. Places like Thailand are not as free as the US but nowhere near as restrictive as China.
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