Those who have known me for a while know I'm a lover of new technology. Aside from computer- and guitar-related items, I also like to listen to good quality sound playback. To further that goal I recently picked up a few FiiO devices. The M5 is a small, square, HD music player. It supports all Bluetooth protocols and when they are available up to a 2TB microSD card. While the unit will play back MP3s the focus is on the high-end codecs including FLAC. I paired this with the new FH7 in-ear headphones, which provided the broadest soundscape I have ever listened to and allowed me to follow a single instrument through the entire song. The last item was their BD3, a small unit that plugs into a cable allowing the headphones to act as a Bluetooth unit that can be paired to the M5 if I decide to wear it like a watch. As I found out when researching, you can pay some very large sums for headphones and related equipment but this set seems to be a nice sweet spot of quality and flexibility without going crazy.
- In related news, microSD cards currently peak out at 1TB in capacity but 1.5 and 2TB versions are in the pipeline. Micron has a new series of industrial versions, the i300 range, that includes 128, 256, 512GB and 1TB versions. Unlike the consumer C200 series these are aimed at equipment like security video recorders and so are more endurance rather than burst processing based. For sequential processing the i300 will read up to 100MB/sec and write at 45MB/sec. By comparison the C200 series reads at up to 160MB/s and writes at up to 90MB/sec to handle things like a quick photo series more easily.
- I still didn't understand why schools persist in demanding their students purchase iPads over the far less expensive Android equivalents until I read what I'm guessing is a representative story about Apple reportedly paying for Irish teachers to attend functions in the US. According to a leaked report, four teachers from a school with a compulsory iPad policy in Limerick, Ireland, have racked up 13 Apple-funded trips abroad since 2015. In a related report from the European Cooperation in Science and Technology, or COST, found that children absorb less from digital screens than they do from paper equivalents, i.e. books. This is not all that surprising.
- A bit of a view into the accuracy of some artificial intelligence algorithms was published recently in the nature research journal Climate And Atmospheric Science. The announcement is a prediction of where lightning will strike. Sounds great until you read further and the prediction is currently limited to striking somewhere in a 30km radius within 30 minutes of suspected touchdown. This is based on four variables: local air pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed. Using the same model predictions within 10 minutes had a 71% accuracy and there tended to be an over prediction i.e. more false positives. AI often sounds great until you drill down into the details.
- Apple's iOS version of Facebook has a new feature, it opens the phone's rear camera app in the background without your knowledge. Facebook seems to think it is a bug but based on their prior performance I'll leave it to readers to decide if this analysis is accurate or not. Once permission to open in background mode was revoked the bug vanished. An update is expected. The recommendation from some is to delete the Facebook app altogether and access it through your browser that you don't usually use. In related news, Facebook has launched their Facebook Pay service to "provide people with a convenient, secure and consistent payment experience across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp". Given the news of the past year if you are happy for Facebook to have access to your financial data I have a bridge I want to sell you.
- Your phone may support the Galileo GPS system, the one that failed for a while in the middle of the year. That Galileo. Some info is starting to come out suggesting that the system is in trouble and it's not because of that one fall guy who was blamed for the outage. The real cause is a complex mix of secrecy, self-regulation and organisational chaos. Only 21 of the 26 satellites are working and you need 24 for good accuracy. If the infighting is solved a few more satellites will be going up to improve the current state. The problems started with an update that had no available backup. Thanks to the complexity the reboot took a few days. So in summary a great idea started by talented individuals was borked because it had turned into a bureaucratic bunfight that had added unnecessary complexity -- an excellent analogue for the EU.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
