Showing 1-10 of 18 results
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The reality of AI is less scary than the movies
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/08/2022
» I was talking to someone at work recently and mentioned the Palm Pilot. He never heard of it. Some of us remember it being released in 1996 before the smartphone and social media, and in the early days of the internet. It drove the creation of the smartphone, though the people at Intel at the time didn't see how a portable, hand-held device like this could become common. One of the founders and inventors was Jeff Hawkins who also founded Handspring and worked on the Treo that evolved into a very early smartphone with a camera, which this brings us to today's topic, artificial intelligence.
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Computing genetic manipulation
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/05/2015
» What is the next big thing? Microsoft and some others would like you to believe it is all things cloudy. The problems with that are factors like communication channels between continents, security of information, the reliability of a server somewhere else versus on-site and the army of hackers trying to get into all that information just sitting there. If you have seen the intro to CSI: Cyber you will know what I mean. Another group want it to be virtual reality glasses for all, but as the Google Glass demonstrated, people walking around with even small glasses were not appreciated. At least the VR goggles will mostly be at home. This technology still has quite a way to go.
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There's no such thing as free tech
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/01/2015
» Can hackers really ruin your day? Consider the story a friend of mine recently told me. He has been playing the game Stronghold Kingdoms for a couple of years now. Apparently, as a result of hacking, some players gained points and certain advantages and had their accounts spoofed.
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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.
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Huawei facing tough time outside China
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/07/2020
» China, and in particular Huawei, is not winning these days. Huawei has some excellent hardware. Their latest phones are as good in many aspects as any other manufacturer. However, the fuzzy area is the company's links to the Chinese government. Huawei claims they are not directly linked to the government but many others say there are direct and nefarious links. Huawei recently lost their foothold in the United Kingdom as their 5G network has been disallowed or marginalised for the future. This leaves only Canada as part of the five eyes intelligence partners still supporting Huawei 5G. Other nations have also been hesitant to adopt the technology.
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Diminishing returns
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/06/2019
» The first three months of 2019 saw Apple and Samsung collectively selling 17.5 million fewer smartphones globally compared to last year. As I've previously noted, we have market saturation and a lack of yearly upgrades for many users. I upgrade with roughly every third model, for example. The premium end of the market also continues to move out of the reach of many, meaning fewer people can upgrade as often. The innovation jump in successive models is also diminishing, so they lack the wow factor that drove earlier upgrades. These figures do not include the impact of the latest Samsung S10 range which shipped at the end of the quarter. The top three remain Samsung, Huawei and Apple. This may change with the recent US Huawei bans, or at least reduce any growth. Even after price cuts, Apple's sales fell 17.6% in the quarter leaving Samsung as the one least likely to lose their position in the next few months. Oppo and Viva rounded out the top five in sales with Xiaomi nibbling at their heels.
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Australia still trailing Thailand in broadband coverage
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/09/2018
» Wither now comms in Australia? With the National Broadband Network or NBN a certified failure, Australia seems to be working hard to ensure that to make the NBN look reasonable, any emerging 5G network must be made to hobble by banning technology companies like Huawei from providing the same kind of support it has been giving over the past 15 years to the local telcos. The given reason is a lack of trust in any Chinese company, keeping the spying eyes of China out of the country. To be fair, there is some justification for this, as China has not been the poster child of espionage abstinence across the globe. What earth-shattering useful secret info they might get from the Australians is debatable, but it looks like the Land Down Under will not be improving their communications any time soon. Thailand is still well ahead on that front.
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Data security is of utmost importance
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/06/2016
» If you are a security manager or in charge of a company's PCs, when it comes to what people can do on their machine I have a few warnings for you. I recently went through the process of a new Ops Manager at work deciding to limit access on my PC to the point where I couldn't even see the contents of a ZIP file anymore,making it impossible to do some aspects of the job. This lasted for a couple of days and while it was possible to have someone else do it for me that wasn't the point, it was the issue of security becoming so restrictive that I couldn't do my work. I'm sure that there are many readers that have experienced this at some time or other but in the modern age for it still to be occurring is either a lack of thinking about consequences or perhaps an indication that those it happens to should start looking for a new job.
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Sour Apples, high Notes
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/10/2014
» Apple, at the time of writing, says it has sold more than 10 million iPhone 6 units — which is an amazing claim. Of course, the figure for units sold, as we have seen in the case of other manufacturers like Microsoft, could also include orders sent to stores. After some people had lined up for the iPhone 6 for days, reports are starting to come in about some of the problems experienced by these eager, first-time users. Phones are bending in pockets; there are video-formatting issues with the larger unit; and the software on both units is behaving the same, for example the same number of icons being displayed per line on the larger screen. It seems that in the rush to come out with a larger screen, the support and software was not adapted to this new format. The iPhone 6 (both versions) can still be spoofed with the same fake fingerprints the iPhone 5S were susceptible to. All in all, no wow factor and nothing that could attract anyone with a comparable phone in the same market space.
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The power of power
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/08/2014
» During a recent power failure I contemplated how reliant we are on technology. I suspect the quickest way to hear people scream these days is for any nearby telecom tower go offline. This would affect phones, tablets, notebooks and anything else that requires a data or wireless connection for internet access.
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