Showing 1 - 10 of 35
And the winner is...
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/02/2025
» The words and the verdicts on Oscars 2025.
The euthanasia debate
Life, Thana Boonlert, Published on 25/02/2025
» A request for euthanasia from a terminally ill patient -- a controversial practice that remains illegal in Thailand -- inspired Dr Isaree Siriwankulthon, a palliative care physician-cum-author, to write a popular novel in 2023.
Doom, not gloom kicks off my 2025
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/01/2025
» Over the years, the game Doom has been ported onto some amazing platforms including a pregnancy test kit screen. The latest iteration of this practice has turned up in a version that will run in a .PDF file. If you are like me, then this will cause your mental processing to pause for a moment and your next thought may well be: "Wait, what?" The Portable Document Format (PDF) was developed to present documents in a manner that is independent of the software, hardware and operating system showing them. While it does this well, some malware writers have exploited its complexities.
Turning smart glasses into surveillance tools
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/10/2024
» I'm sure most readers are familiar with the Apple Vision Pro, and may have also been witness to someone wearing one out in the real world, because I have. Since then, there has been a new version of the Meta Ray-Bans that look like a pair of nerd glasses from the 1970s. The latter have turned into something from the TV series Person Of Interest by a couple of Harvard undergrads. The pair, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, are known for their punch-activated flamethrower. This time they built a system that allows the Ray-Bans to scan faces of people in view, pass this to an AI system that scans the internet for identification, and builds a dossier that is passed back to the glasses. It's called I-XRAY and challenges the concept of privacy because, if available, it will even provide details like address and social security number.
Latest AI reveals its bias yet again
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/03/2024
» Google's latest version of AI, once Bard but now called Gemini, is yet another indication of how biased the current batch of AI platforms are. I was going to include a bunch of examples but this has received so much coverage that everyone should have seen it by now. Basically, the product offers anything but a white-skinned person in requested pictures. This gave rise to some short-lived pub games. Many found this amusing but after a while it became obvious that Google has shut Gemini down for re-education.
Fusing different musical worlds
Life, John Clewley, Published on 13/02/2024
» Klezmer is the music of Ashkenazi Jews, who created the music in Central and Eastern Europe in the 16th century. Although mainly instrumental, the music is usually sung in Yiddish. It was hugely popular before the destruction of Yiddish communities in Central Europe during the Holocaust. Professional Klezmer musicians who escaped to the US founded large klezmer orchestras in the first two decades of the 20th century, who competed with jazz ensembles and Irish big bands in New York.
All things in Harmony
Life, Jesse McKinley, Published on 14/11/2023
» Barry Manilow is superstitious. Such a statement may come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the 80-year-old pop legend's career, with decades of hits, endless Las Vegas residencies and international fame as a still-smooth crooner who wrote the songs that made the whole world sing.
False Eden, real hell
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/05/2023
» Sometimes Cannes pulls a poker face and smacks a big surprise down on its famous red carpet, all without a blink or a wink. This year, it comes in the form of a three-and-a-half-hour documentary about Chinese sweatshop workers, shot entirely in a crummy garment district on the mainland's eastern coast.
Gay cowboys and glorious flesh
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/05/2023
» After the lukewarm opening film -- Maiwenn's Jeanne Du Barry, a fluffy costume drama starring Johnny Depp as King Louis XV -- the 76th Cannes Film Festival had its hottest ticket in a short film. Not just any short though: it's Pedro Almodovar's queer cowboy movie Strange Way Of Life, which saw patient festival-goers queuing up in the Rivera drizzle for nearly an hour to fill up even the worst seat of Salle Debussy on Wednesday.
On the naughty Stephff
Life, Dave Kendall, Published on 07/04/2023
» 'Hard cover. 160 color pages of pure old-fashioned sexism, outrageous political incorrectness and borderline humor with a touch of ugly neocolonialist patronizing that will definitely make this book strictly forbidden in 20 years."