• OPINION

  Is your phone spying on you?

  Life, James Hein, Published on 01/05/2013

  » I've long been a fan of Firefox, but I somehow missed the announcement of its new OS coming out for mobile phones. Geeksphone, a Spanish start-up, sold out of the first devices with the new OS within a matter of hours and had to shut down its online store as demand unexpectedly exceeded supply. The new units were meant for developers only because the new Firefox OS is still in a very early stage of its evolution. Application development for the new OS is based on HTML5, JavaScript and Open Web standards. The official OS launch will be some time later this year and Google is working with ZTE in China on the project. The first commercial units will be manufactured in Brazil so this is a truly international effort and may be one to watch in the future.

• OPINION

  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. 

• TECH

  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.

• TECH

  Entering the darkness

  Life, James Hein, Published on 03/06/2015

  » You may have heard of the terms "Dark Web" or "Deep Web", then again you may not have. First of all these two terms refer to different things. The first is a series of websites that provide illegal services, such as ordering drugs, and a range of other things typically purchased using Bitcoins. The second refers to all the unindexed sites that exist across the World Wide Web. According to some reports, Google indexes about 16% of the internet, leaving the majority of sites not findable through most search engines.

• TECH

  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.

• TECH

  A quantum leap for computers

  Life, James Hein, Published on 22/02/2017

  » According to Prof Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, he and his team have the first practical design for a quantum computer. Like millions of others, I have struggled to come to an understanding of quantum mechanics and how a quantum computer might work.

• TECH

  Surprisingly, your personal data isn't safe with Facebook

  Life, James Hein, Published on 10/10/2018

  » Facebook has been in the news recently having large numbers of public profiles harvested by marketing conglomerates. Estimates from this incident alone range from 50 to 90 million users and there may be a lot more. The "more" part comes from the user search and account recovery features that may have been abused to scrape up to 2 billion or more accounts. In other words, if you are on Facebook and have any kind of public profile someone has more info on you than you might like. The feature has since been turned off but not before a lot of information went to the marketers.

• TECH

  Next-gen Wi-Fi technologies on the way

  Life, James Hein, Published on 07/11/2018

  » The fixed line versus Wi-Fi debate continues to be a popular one. And with technologies like Wi-Gig and Wi-Fi 6 in the pipeline, the debate will only intensify. Current Wi-Fi technologies work inside the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands; they also have user-friendly version numbers now. Wi-Fi 4 came out in 2009 under the name 802.11n, Wi-Fi 5 arrived in 2014 as 802.11ac and Wi-Fi 6 is due in 2019 as 802.11.ax. In the near future, you'll see these numbers start to appear on your devices, but not every manufacturer will bother to use the new designations. Wi-Fi numbers 1-3 represent even older, now mostly unused versions.

• TECH

  Will fold-out phones start a new revolution?

  Life, James Hein, Published on 27/02/2019

  » Lower cost Google phones will be arriving this year. There will be mid-range offerings somewhere in the 4,700-22,000 baht range and another below that as a low-range product. The target is emerging markets that are fairly well saturated with other brands, both Korean and Chinese. The Google Pixel is the high-end product and is supposed to have the best camera, for now, but they are not cheap. The new range will round out the lower end of the market.

• TECH

  Human override here to stay

  Life, James Hein, Published on 10/04/2019

  » Computers are useful tools and they will emotionlessly churn through thousands of operations in the blink of an eye to produce whatever results they were programmed to do. Most of the time the results are welcomed. When it comes to malware the results generate a different reaction, and then there are those spaces in the middle. The situation surrounding the Boeing 737 Max MCAS aircraft and the recent crash is an excellent example. The latest analysis would seem to indicate that the computer engineers made some choices that have had unintended consequences. In this case overriding the wishes of the pilots by assuming the plane was crashing, when it wasn't, and not allowing the human pilots to correct the computer's decisions.

1 2 Next Last