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  YouTube ramps up ads, moderation

  Life, James Hein, Published on 01/03/2023

  » If this was a YouTube video you would have to sit through up to 30 seconds of ads before you could even start. YouTube seems to be stepping up its advertising while at the same time providing less service. I still use it because it has things I'm interested in, like Chinese martial arts series and info on music products I like. If I'd written this using ChatGPT you would not see some of the material because the trust and safety filters on the AI product have repeatedly been found to be biased towards the US political left in the content it will return. Some people associated with ChatGPT have acknowledged this but it remains to be seen if anything will change.

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  Those pesky pixel trackers

  Life, James Hein, Published on 12/10/2022

  » I've written about the tracking in TikTok. I recently found out you don't need to have the app installed to be providing tracking data to this platform. The term you need to learn today is "tracking pixel".

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  Don't get caught out on camera

  Life, James Hein, Published on 21/07/2021

  » - In the new Covid world, office workers are now regularly in meetings from home. Many of these meetings these days now also include a video feed. The first thing others in the call do when someone pops up, is to check the background and immediately zoom in, mentally or physically, on anything that seems out of place in the background. Last night's dishes, haphazardly discarded clothing and even a pot plant seemingly out of place will be the object of interest. Some use a green screen behind them and have an image placed on that by software.

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  Password ain't a password

  Life, James Hein, Published on 01/02/2017

  » How many people do you know, including yourself, who are avid Facebook users? Be honest. You will know that your account contains a large amount of information, much of it quite personal, that data thieves would be happy to mine and use. A solution is to protect this information.

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  Look before loading

  Life, James Hein, Published on 01/06/2016

  » Loading a couple of Android apps on the new tablet, I was about to load Facebook before I stopped to read the permissions required, something unnecessary if you use a PC. The list is 56 items long and reading through them it seemed to be about the same as holding your computer out in the street and saying: "Take me". One question I have is: "How many people actually read the required-permissions list?" Some scary permissions you might miss include "Find accounts on the device" and "Send email to guests without owner's knowledge". Then there is "Read your text messages", "Modify or delete contents of your USB storage", "Record audio" and "Full network access".

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  Plugged in, but not all wired up

  Life, James Hein, Published on 27/04/2016

  » So I was talking to a young couple the other day who expressed some surprise at me having a fixed line ADSL connection as my primary internet source at home. They were part of the ever-growing group of younger users that do not have any fixed line services, phone or data. According to the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for example they have found that in the past two years American households having no fixed line services and relying on mobile networks instead has doubled to 20%. This has been accompanied by a drop in ADSL and satellite connections. So while wired connections are still in the majority in the US they are falling.

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  There are two sides to malware

  Life, James Hein, Published on 20/01/2016

  » Why do people write malware? Some people do it for fun and these people typically do so only on their own computers to see how this kind of thing works. I admit that when I was younger I tried the same thing but never let anything loose into the wild. Since then the software has become far more sophisticated. Others are just nasty and want to cause as much mayhem and damage as possible. Some do it for a cause or to highlight a perceived injustice. The group Anonymous for example are considered to be in this category. In another category are those groups paid by a Nation State to spy on other counties or disrupt a specific activity, as was revealed by the Stuxnet malware.

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  Canon is zooming to the top spot

  Life, James Hein, Published on 23/09/2015

  » I have been thinking about the new 250MP CMOS sensor from Canon that can capture up to 19,580 x 12,600 pixels or around 420 or so of the highest resolution and uncompressed shots on a 128GB card. This is still over 11 rolls of the old film and of course with memory cards larger than 128GB already available it isn't really a limitation. My thinking was more along the lines of, with this kind of resolution, whether there would be a need for a zoom lens anymore.

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  Web of possibility

  Life, James Hein, Published on 19/11/2014

  » A decade ago the PC was the primary way that millions of people, mostly running a Windows operating system, interacted with companies and applications. At that same time many used Microsoft Office for building documents and Internet Explorer was the browser king of the era after deposing Netscape.

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  Insecure about data?

  Life, James Hein, Published on 08/05/2013

  » Each year a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) details what online firms provide the best protection for your data. This year, despite being hacked, Twitter came out on top with Verizon and MySpace at the bottom. Also polling badly, getting only a single star out of a possible six, were Apple, AT&T and Yahoo! with Amazon and Comcast not far behind with only two stars. Apple, as a member of the Digital Due Process coalition, should have done better, but it doesn't observe any of the other best practices that were measured.

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