Remember this day because I have a prediction. Recently, for the first time, I had two ads appear when watching a Rumble video. Rumble is a YouTube alternative that until now had been ad free. The platform allows those banned by YouTube for political reasons to make their presentations, along with anyone else who wants to post videos. My prediction is that the current ads, currently 30 second ones you can skip after a few seconds that appear at the start of your video, will gradually become more prevalent and longer, without being able to skip, and eventually will become as annoying as Facebook.
- It's the nature of things that when a company starts to get some income from a different source that it will eventually try and maximise this income, just like the now out of control ad crazy YouTube. I hope I'm wrong.
- A significant number, and I've heard as much as 30%, of new Apple Vision Pro users are sending them back because the slight delay between reality and what they are seeing interferes with perception ability in a percentage of the population. It's a bit like those people who can't watch 3D movies, but at a higher percentage. If you have been asleep or off planet, the new Apple Vision Pro was a device I wrote about some time back but has since been released and is being talked about everywhere. Yes, that is a bit of an over-exaggeration, but the headsets are the talk of the tech crowd these days.
- As I wrote back then, they are also very expensive and original prices touted were indeed accurate. Yes you could replace your large screen TV with one of these, unless you are very rich with a large family. You can take 3D photos, watch something or many somethings while also being able to see through the goggles. There are even videos of a person in a self-driving Tesla using one. It has eye tracking so it knows which virtual screen you're looking at and it tracks your hand movements to simulate a mouse click or moving something on the virtual backdrop. Yes, it's quite a piece of technology, but providing all that functionality in a headset also brings issues like battery life and the earlier mentioned headaches for some.
- So, do I think this will be a widely adopted device? No. Perhaps by version 3, regular earning people will be able to afford one but walking around with a large set of goggles on your face is not something many people will go for. If they can duplicate this technology with a much smaller system, or better one that sends the image directly to the retina, then yes. Until then, no.
- TikTok users are being flooded with multiple videos, each with thousands of views, telling people that deleting their Windows System32 folder will improve their graphics frame rate. If that means down to zero with nothing on the screen then yes, it will do that. That folder holds much of the Windows system so deleting it means no system. There are YouTubers who've demonstrated what happens if you do this for those interested in seeing the destruction happen, but not on their own machines. Unlike X, which has community notes, many have been caught out by this deliberate attempt to inconvenience people. Don't do it.
- A reminder to be very careful investing in anything from platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Based on my experiences over the past two years, they do not protect their buyers and seem disinterested if a project just vanishes leaving all the investors without their money or product. I've stopped all activity unless it's for an updated version of a product I've been happy with before. Also of note is that a few weeks after the end of a given project, many times I've found the same thing on sites like AliExpress for less money. One note, if the item is a few dollars there but hundreds elsewhere, it's a fake. Classic example is a memory device with huge memory, 16TB costing 750 baht? No chance this is real.
- OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has tried unsuccessfully to trademark the term GPT, which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. The US trademark people said the term was merely a descriptor, not a phrase that is unique for a service or product. GPT describes a family of neural networks and is used by other AI firms for their generative models.
- On the subject of chatbots, Google will keep any conversation you've had with their product, Bard now Gemini, for three years. You can delete the app, but in particular anything reviewed by a human will be stored. After this announcement Google helpfully pointed out that users should be careful with any personal details they share with the chatbot. There is currently no way to know if someone has looked at your conversation so it will be a roll of the dice here. Thanks Google.
James Hein is an IT professional with over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
