• OPINION

  None more black

  Life, James Hein, Published on 25/09/2019

  » Accidental discoveries have been responsible for many useful items like rubber and penicillin. A couple of science types at MIT in the US wanted to see if they could grow carbon nanotubes on aluminium to increase its conductance properties. Instead they found they had made the blackest substance yet known to man. It absorbs 99.96% of the light from any angle making it 10 times blacker than the current options. Potential uses include telescopes, optical blinders and art. Carbon nanotubes, is there anything they can't do, eventually?

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  A down vote for MS Skype

  Life, James Hein, Published on 20/06/2018

  » It has been a while since I've used Skype, and I had no idea just how much Microsoft has stuffed it up. Skype for the multi-device user is all but useless. I tried to find a way to allow someone to call into my PC's Skype but to no avail. I shut down Skype on my phone and was able to call out but not receive anything. This removed the possibility of using a good sound card and microphone for the mix, and all I could use in the end was my phone. BM -- or Before Microsoft -- Skype was usable and useful. PM -- Post-Microsoft -- you should look for any other alternative. Line seems to be most popular with those I know. This is not the first time Microsoft has taken over a product, and its usage has dropped dramatically. Of course that could have been the plan all along.

• OPINION

  Words don't come easy to millennials

  Life, James Hein, Published on 23/05/2018

  » Next time you're in a restaurant or where people gather in small groups, sit and watch for a while. Note how many of the groups are silent, all doing something on their phones. When you find such a group, note how long they go without saying a word to each other. There is an interesting behavioural shift occurring in the phone-enabled world where casual conversation skills are being replaced by surfing, messaging and instant posting. It won't be too long before the best way to find out what the person next to you is thinking is to live feed their Facebook, send them an SMS or Line message, or heaven forbid a tweet.

• OPINION

  Best to avoid FB's Onavo Protect VPN

  Life, James Hein, Published on 28/02/2018

  » If you use Facebook, you may have seen an option in the Settings menu under Protect to download the Onavo Protect app for Android and the iPhone. Don't. It is basically an app that allows Facebook to spy on you, even more than it already does. The app is a Virtual Private Network or VPN. In simplest terms this will encrypt and route all your network traffic through a server in addition to the one your ISP provides. This allows you to appear to be somewhere else, so you can watch, say, local content there for free and it will stop most agencies from spying on what you might be doing.

• OPINION

  Potential legal trouble for Apple over old batteries

  Life, James Hein, Published on 17/01/2018

  » The first couple of weeks of 2018 have provided a series of revelations. It started with Apple finally confirming that they have been throttling the performance of their older phones. The official line is that they do this to ensure that as the batteries degrade, the retarding of performance ensures that their devices won't overheat. Some people weren't buying what Apple was shovelling, and there is a series of class-action lawsuits in the making.

• OPINION

  The problem with KRACK

  Life, James Hein, Published on 25/10/2017

  » I decided to start this week's article by exposing a secret typically only held by IT Experts and specialists. I'll likely lose my secret decoder ring over this but the big secret is, read the pop-ups. As any IT person knows when they are called over to their parent's, friend's or work computer, the first thing to do is read the pop-up messages.

• OPINION

  Google Android refreshes itself

  Life, James Hein, Published on 07/06/2017

  » Android 8 -- or O -- will be coming out soon, with the beta already available for lucky Nexus and Pixel users. Google is introducing "Fluid Experiences" that include picture in picture, Notification Dots, autofill and smart-text selection. The first will allow you to have an app open but with also, say, a small window running a YouTube video, just like TVs can do. Notification dots show that you have an app notification. A long press will bring up the item, which is useful. You have all seen autofill on forms and for passwords; this is finally appearing in Android. As has been the case for the last few versions, Google is also focusing on maximising security, optimising boot times and app performance, and intelligently limiting background activity for apps to save battery life. These are all welcome enhancements.

• OPINION

  No new Vistas for us to view?

  Life, James Hein, Published on 29/03/2017

  » After Microsoft Bob and Windows ME, Vista would have to be the least-loved Windows operating system. It arrived in 2007 on Jan 30, and on April 11 will no longer be a supported OS. That means no more security updates, no hotfixes and no support options, paid or otherwise. Readers will not be surprised to learn that Microsoft is recommending that any remaining Vista users upgrade to Windows 10. You may be thinking that if you are a really large organisation and are willing to pay, Microsoft will provide support just like they still do for some XP customers. But the word on the street is they won't for Vista.

• OPINION

  Android finally matures with sweet new Nougat update

  Life, James Hein, Published on 12/10/2016

  » Unless you are a Google Nexus owner you may not be aware that Android Version 7 aka Nougat is out. This is an even more stable version than the last one and it finally feels like Android is getting to the place where it has matured as an operating system. Performance is better, multitasking is smoother and the look and feel is familiar. It is essentially the same interface as Marshmallow but there are a few changes like the new Settings menu, though many of the upgrades have occurred behind the scenes.

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