Showing 1-10 of 78 results
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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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How to be a Scrivener
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/08/2016
» As readers might appreciate I have been writing in some form or other for many years. This includes two-and-a-bit novels the first of which I am in the process of final editing and until recently I was using Microsoft Word. In the world of self-publishing and preparing for Amazon’s Mobi or for everyone else’s ePub, Word is not the right tool. My recommendation is Scrivener which is available for Mac or Windows. This appears to be the ultimate tool for the writer, be they fiction, non-fiction, researcher or blogger. The application is inexpensive even for a lifetime licence that covers everyone in your household. It handles everything you will need to prepare what you are writing for publishing apart from your own creativity. My only criticism is the lack of a version for Android but hopefully that will come. You can get a 30-day free trial from www.literatureandlatte.com and there is a lot of free training materials available.
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Connected to the grid for life
Life, James Hein, Published on 03/08/2016
» I had an unsettling experience recently where all of my Yahoo emails seemed to vanish and I mean everything. When I logged into my account it was completely bare. While it was all there a couple of hours later it made me realise just how dependent I was on my email account. Thinking a bit more I realised that I also depend on Skype and to a smaller extent Yahoo. Then I thought about the people who have a much larger online presence. For some who are always sending electronic messages it could be a terrifying experience to be suddenly cut off from all regular communication. This kind of effect is a very modern one and I suspect that it has not been investigated very thoroughly in the journals as yet but I suspect it will be a newly defined psychology condition sometime in the near future.
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Smartphone slowdown is inevitable
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/02/2016
» The big duo of mobile phones Apple and Samsung are wondering how 2016 will be in terms of sales and they are not super confident. Apple did have a great year posting US$18.4 billion (654 billion baht) in profit, the most of any company ever. They did this by selling a tiny number more devices than last year, over 74 million of them. What they didn’t do was sell a lot more than the same time last year and shareholders are asking why. The latest versions are similar to the previous ones at least in design but Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed out that global economic conditions are not good, currencies are dropping in key markets so that less can afford the newest top end units. I think that the top end of the smartphone market is saturated and a slowdown is inevitable.
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Operating without support
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/10/2015
» For most customers, Windows Server 2003 ran out of even extended support back in July but there are still plenty of people using it, including the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) where half of their servers are still running on the old but very good at the time operating system. For some, running an old operating system has no downside. What software and functionality that is running on it has probably happily been doing so for a decade or more and also in all likelihood without any problems. If the device is not connected to a public network of any kind then the risk of security breaches is also very low so missing out on any security updates is likely to have no impact. There is also no need to upgrade hardware to support a later and more demanding operating system. For some users this is a win-win.
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Samsung: Wannabe Apple Corp
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/08/2015
» I recently spent a week roughly south of Buri Ram in the Northeast. I was far enough away that my AIS SIM could not reliably pick up data and it was an interesting feeling to be disconnected for such a time. There are now apparently psychological conditions being defined for those who feel a lack of continuous connectivity but for my part at least it was a short enough time to be a novel experience. It did highlight just how much those who are part of the modern world rely on connectivity for news and contact. When I was younger we thought nothing of waiting a few weeks for a reply to a written letter. These days some feel put out if they don’t get a reply within a few seconds.
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Tweet all about it, or twitter ye not
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/08/2015
» In Twitter news this week, the share price rose after better-than-expected revenues were reported at around US$500,000 (17.5 million baht).
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Waterproof and other protection
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/07/2015
» A friend of mine was walking along the beach and dropped his phone. Sometime later he realised he'd lost it but didn't know where. Luckily someone found it and using the pop-up notifications on the screen managed to track him down to give it back telling him that the phone was found in the water.
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Faster than a speeding bullet? No
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/07/2015
» It still surprises me how little the average individual understands about internet speeds and the sharing of a connection. Around the world, companies make grand advertising statements like "up to 100MBs connection speeds", which is, in almost anyone's language quite fast, certainly fast enough to stream ultra high definition video that requires somewhere around 25MBs to perform well. If the server providing the file can provide it at this speed and there is essentially a direct connection between your computer and the server that maintains the speed then yes, you will get the performance advertised. Ironically, if you are connected via some kind of torrent delivery system then it could be 1,000 computers combining to provide the video and you will also get those kinds of speeds in total.
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Facebook stalking; hijacked smartphones
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/06/2015
» I am not a big social media user. I keep my profiles trim and any pictures to a minimum. I don't like Twitter at all for various reasons and I find most of the users of Tumblr focused on social engineering directions I don't agree with. All of that aside then, there is Facebook. Like many others I use Facebook to connect to people I have lost touch with, such as old high school friends whom I have no way of tracking down. In my case my Goodreads account is linked to Facebook to let people know what I am reading or have read. If you like reading and haven't tried it then take a look at www.goodreads.com. For me it also a great way to track what I have read and haven't in, say, a series I like.
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