Last Viewed Technology Blogs (218)

Males, no spoilers please.

Kasih, no fair telling the other women.

Thanks to technology we are becoming the most impersonal society the earth has to offer. Driverless cars will be the norm very soon, so no more face to face with the police officer that pulls you over
his laptop will have to talk to the cars onboard computer. How about the virtual doctor, no more visits to the doctor, diagnosing will be over broadband. We already have online colleges, so no more beer pong.

Robotics are growing exponentially. Today Japan introduced their robot called Pepper, the robot with EMOTIONS....hmmm! no worry about the menopause cycle here.
Pepper costs about $1,600. And like all good mobile products, there’s a $120 per month data fee, as well as an $80 per month damage insurance fee. (Feelings don’t come cheap.)

What a world we are creating, the loss of human feelings will be like the pen and paper....lost forever....

The IT department of the last company I worked at had more than 30 computers connected to their intranet that synchronized with a remote service over a fiber link. Huge amounts of data passed through their system. At the end of each business day it did an offsite backup that took nearly an hour. If you needed to use the system during that time you were guaranteed to wait for information stored on the server.

The technician warned everyone who streamed music that only low bandwidth services were ( like Pandora ) were allowed. That didn't stop employees from downloading YouTube videos. That presented two problems... the employees were watching videos and not working and the overall bandwidth use was very high.

The place I'm at now does the same thing on a smaller scale. Streaming music and videos. While some are out on appointments and client meetings, the music on their computers plays on endlessly. One coworker plays movie soundtracks and goes off to meetings. Knowing he's out, I stop the music. I'm there to work and not entertain myself.

In the old days there were bandwidth caps where the service was reduced to a crawl and you had the option to pay for more monthly bandwidth or be frugal and choke your business data because some plans had crazy up-charges for exceeding your quota.

I'm thinking what could happen when more people update their cellphones and get 5G models with 50 times the bandwidth capacity. 5G is advertised free but what happens when excessive use reaches your plan limits. It's time to call and up your limit... or end wasted bandwidth and save your money.

I remember the old style pay phones and maybe you do too.
They had a coin slot at the top and it was ten cents to make a local call.
This was more than 40 years before they invented caller ID.
Doing so, made it easy to be in informant of illegal activity and not having the call traced.
A simple call to the Police to let them know of some suspicious activity and hang up.
That's where the term 'Drop a Dime' came from.

Pay phones have become a thing of the past.
Hopefully, no one reading my blog has money in a pay phone company.
I knew of a guy was was on the front technology for phone cards that offered low cost long distance service. That lasted a generation and all the competition made rich men poor men if they didn't get out when 'everyone and their grandmother' was selling phone cards.

Soon after, low price cellphone plans put the 'kibosh' on calling cards.



I still see pay phones everywhere I go.
Unfortunately, if I didn't have a cellphone, it would be a long walk to find a pay phone that actually worked!

There seems to be some politics going on with app stores Apple and Google and their relationship with Twitter. Maybe a threat or dare if those stores no longer support the Twitter app.

Elon Musk dreams up manufacturing his own alternative phone if "...there is no other choice"

Google says there are over 200 million smartphones in America... Does Elon think introducing a new phone to support Twitter to be a viable enterprise?

What percent of America would run out and buy an "alternative" $700 MUSK phone that isn't compatible with all the existing Apple and Google apps just to run Twitter?

Elon, take a hint... offer your own app that supports Apple and Android, available via Twitter. That's got to be a viable solution as manufacturing and distribution of an entirely new product could be light years into the future!

WASHINGTON, D.C. – AI has the potential to both benefit and harm the U.S. in unknown and unimagined ways but Congress has hardly any experts on the rapidly developing technology, lawmakers told Fox News.

"AI is going to help us in many ways. It can also kill us," Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat said. "As a recovering computer science major, my understanding of AI on a scale of one to 10 is about a five. There's a lot I don't know."

Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis said: "We've got a long way to go before we have any sense of its true capabilities and understanding what people like Elon Musk see as its capabilities going forward. I put my knowledge on a scale of one to 10 at about a 1.5."

Musk and more than 1,000 others called for an immediate pause on "giant AI experiments" last month, warning the rapidly developing sector may pose security threats. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman disagreed, saying pausing development is not an optimal way to address the issue.

AI "has the potential of civilizational destruction," Musk told Fox News' Tucker Carlson this week. He said if the industry is left unregulated, the consequences could be dangerous.

"I don't think Congress is prepared intellectually and resource-wise" to regulate AI, Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat, told Fox News. "There's no doubt that AI is going to be highly consequential."

"I don't want to say the Congress knows nothing," Takano continued. "Staff has been going to briefings on AI."

Read more:

Internet Making Us Crazy?

Yesterday and today I upgraded my Windows 10 laptop to Windows 11. I started the upgrade yesterday at 11:30 AM and it was still downloading and installing when I went to bed last night at 9:30 PM. 3 more hours this morning of installing and I finally got the computer to operate about 1 hour ago. Desktop looks the same. Very few visible changes.

A lot of time for a little nothing.

Four years ago, I went shopping for a Smart TV. The salesman explained (at the time) the current Smart models had a processor/engine that was slower than some models that weren't Smart. I asked if I buy a non-Smart TV, how do connect it to the internet and his reply was with an add-on device called CHROMECAST.

His whole focus was, I should get a TV with a faster engine. The analogy was watching a golfing event and the ball streaking across the screen. Did I want to see the ball clearly or or a with a tail like a comet? The slower engine has limitations on fast moving objects.

So, I bought the TV with a faster engine and a Chromecast. It was great. Easy hookup and I was able to 'cast' YouTube videos to the TV from my desktop computer!

My son-in-law complained that he had to rent another 'box' from the cable company so he could watch Netflix on the TV in the bedroom. I bought him a Chromecast for Christmas and he said it was the BEST gift he ever received.

He preferred to control it via his cellphone. iPhone to be exact.

It's been months since I moved and we hooked up the 4 year old TV via the cable box as part of my HOA package, but... I didn't get around to connecting the Chromecast.

Last week, we purchased a new TV for the living room... yeah, Smart TV. This time, we had the option of one with a faster engine, much better than the older models. It's not that I wanted to watch golf balls streaking across the screen, I wanted something new. So far, I only hooked up the cable box and bypassed the setup routine.

The old TV got moved to the bedroom and this weekend, I got around to connecting the Chromecast on it. What a pain. Google Chrome for desktop no longer supports Chromecast. I've got to link everything to a phone (or tablet) to make things work now. That involves logging in to create an account as the new app that connects to Chromecast is Google Home, as 'we' now have to power to connect any smart device to other smart devices via this app. I say, f'king great...

Third time's a charm... Chromecast was willing but Google Home failed. It's amazing how I b*tch and send out service tickets and 'right after' it miraculously works!
Anyway, I have it connected to an old phone using Wi-Fi. What I didn't experience on my desktop is advertisements. I'm unable to play YouTube videos in Chrome, it routes to the YouTube app that not only plays commercials before each video, it's got them jumping up around the selections. One wouldn't go away until I made a selection.


Next time around I'll be looking to download ad blockers for YouTube and Chrome.

Info junkie stuff, pretty informative vid,