If you didn't already know, TikTok is potentially dangerous. The app bypasses both Apple and Google protections and is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. According to reports, the app passes all your data back to servers in China, including unposted information and the contents of your phone. The app also has many security vulnerabilities allowing hackers to take over your phone. This is in addition to the expansion of your digital footprint across the planet. In China, people are rewarded for posting serious videos like those showing them using a chemistry set. Those outside China are rewarded for the dumbest presentations. I'll let the readers work this last one out for themselves.
- There are some rumours going around that if you want to install Windows 11, you will need a Windows account. While this was true for a recent Windows 11 Pro preview build, as of writing it was not required for consumers, yet. Microsoft argues that there are so many benefits to having a Microsoft account, like OneDrive access, cloud backup and access to the Microsoft Store. Real-world people however may want to use their computers offline or have virtual machines. Even Apple doesn't demand you have an account tied to cloud services. Let's see if Pro users in the near future will be required to have that account.
- Is the image you are looking at real? According to a study in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, many humans can no longer reliably tell the difference between a real human face and an image of a face generated by artificial intelligence. Sophie Nightingale from the Department of Psychology at the UK's Lancaster University and Hany Farid from Berkley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department in California studied human evaluations of both real photographs and AI-synthesised images. Before training, people got it right 48.2% of the time and peaked at 59%. Technology has now evolved to the point where on average half the time we may not know we're looking at a fake face.
- Why is it that every time Microsoft does a Windows update I need to reset and fix my network connections and connectivity and even my folder settings?
- While we are seeing new smartwatches appear all the time, in parallel, there are sports watches also being released. Consider the top-of-the-line Garmin Fenix 7X, 51mm solar watch. It has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS with a 280 by 280 screen. They are aimed at sportspersons but also have functions like Calendar, Weather, Find My Phone, Find My Watch and Garmin Pay. They can store and play songs and have a heart monitor and oxygen saturation measurement, but not blood pressure as yet. The "solar" label means the watch will recharge in sunlight. There are a whole bunch of battery life figures and with this one you are looking at up to 37 days life, and 41 hours with full GPS tracking and music playing. Is this a watch for everyone? No. Is it necessary for the casual exerciser? No. Is it ideal for professional athletes or ultra-marathon runners? Yes. This would place it in a fairly narrow marketplace. You can get many similar features with more functionality from other brands for far less money.
- There are phones other than the Pixel 6, Apple 13 and Samsung S22. Take for example the OnePlus 9 Pro. In partnership with Hasselblad, the latest version has finally addressed the camera issue. Still, there is no telephoto lens and no expandable storage, maxing at 256GB, but decent charging and a 4,500mAh battery. You get a 6.55-inch display with a small hole in the top left for the selfie camera. Availability and versions will depend on where you are. Good specs, affordable price but not quite as good as the other top-end players. If you want an affordable gaming phone, check out the Asus ROG 5. With 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage, the Ultimate version will cost as much as a Samsung S22 Ultra. It is heavy, has a 6.78-inch display and has great speakers. It is, however, possibly the best gaming phone available today.
- What uses hundreds of thousands of GPU processors and is spread out across the world? If you guessed Chinese bitcoin mines, then you'd be close but in this case, it is Microsoft's Singularity project, a planet-scale distributed scheduling service for artificial intelligence workloads. From the prepress paper, it is designed to "transparently pre-empt and elastically scale deep learning workloads to drive high utilisation without impacting their correctness or performance". While, as far as we are aware, the network has not yet gained sentience, this is how it begins in sci-fi novels. On a more serious note, that is a whole lot of processing power that could be used for anything.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
