BY PAUL T HORGAN I inherited my Hewlett-Packard (HP) DeskJet 2600 from a relative. It’s a basic 3-in-1 printer. It can scan, print, and thus take photocopies. I also inherited the obligation to the subscription service for ink, which now costs over £4 a month. My main use of the printer was to scan texts, and very occasionally some printing. Yet if the printer was … Continue reading A Licence to Print Money
BY PAUL T HORGAN A person mentioning the humorous magazine Punch to most people under the age of 50 will be met with blank stares. Punch closed, barring an abortive resurrection, in 1992, when today’s 50-year-old would have been in their teens, and by that time, Punch‘s mass appeal had long gone as monolithic markets began to break into smaller segments. A decision sometime in the mid-1960s had seen the magazine redesigned … Continue reading Artificial Dishonesty
CITY GRUMP An old City colleague led me to a letter in the Financial Times last week. It is an eye-opening wake-up call to our politicians, civil servants and anyone else who professes to be interested in spurring on what the letter writer calls the “UK tech ecosystem”. It concerns the takeover bid for a £1.2bn UK listed investment company you probably have never heard … Continue reading Hark the Herald, the Goths Rush in
BY ROGER WATSON I am sure that I am not alone. My life is dominated by series of electronic devices which include a MacBook, an iPad, an iPhone (providers other than Apple are available) and a Kindle (Country Squire passim). It is not so much the fact that my whole life is on these devices, having fallen totally for the convenience of the digital age, … Continue reading Tech Grandpa
BY NIALL McCRAE Everyone knows of the vinyl revival, which has steadily grown since the turn of the millennium. Remarkably, cassettes are now making a comeback too, and the biggest interest is in youth. Indie bands are releasing music on tape, sometimes as the only medium offered. In a backlash against the digital world, anything tangible gives a sense of radical resistance to the Great … Continue reading Audio Nostalgia: The Unexpected Return of Cassettes
When it comes to safeguarding our history, the stakes have never been higher. The memories and achievements of our ancestors, encapsulated in various forms of heritage, give us a sense of identity and belonging. It’s crucial, then, to employ every tool at our disposal to ensure these treasures are preserved for future generations. With the advancement of technology, we’ve been handed a powerful set of … Continue reading Heritage Conservation: Tech Tools For Documenting And Preserving The Past
BY JACK WATSON Snapchat has recently introduced its own AI chatbot which, according to Snapchat, is an experimental, friendly bot which can offer advice and ask questions. It can answer a burning question about virtually anything; offer advice on a gift for someone; help plan a holiday and suggest what to make for dinner. Also, it is powered by OpenAI’s GPT. Helpful, perhaps, but there … Continue reading Spy Media
BY JACK WATSON An electric scooter, or e-scooter, is a two-wheeled manual scooter, except it is propelled by a motor. Many people seem to be in awe of them at the moment, including Toby Young of The Spectator, and they have become a popular mode of transport. Others find them a nuisance and if they cannot be made safer or if people do not start … Continue reading E-legal Scooters
BY ROGER WATSON Admittedly, this is somewhat of a late review. Kindle is now in its sixth generation with an array of devices, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. While my wife was an early adopter along with three of my daughters, I was not convinced. The original models had no backlight, and this was sold as an advantage as the backlighting on other … Continue reading To Kindle or not to Kindle
BY NIALL McCRAE Cash is not king nowadays. Certainly not on the bustling King’s Road in Chelsea, where my efforts to buy a coffee were frustrated by a ‘card only’ regime. On principle, my bank card stayed in my pocket, as I offered the exact coinage (typically over three quid for a flat white in this posh part of town). Consequently I walked a long … Continue reading Cash Dethroned on the King’s Road
BY ALEX STORY After a week away from home, I walk in. Not a sound. I take a few tentative steps into the flat. I open the door to the living room. There in total silence, my four children, each with their own devices, slouch on the sofa. They barely notice me. For a second, a pair of eyes zeroes in on me, only to … Continue reading Live Life to the Full
BY QUENTIN PIGG With every beat the thuds sound wetter. Once the scene comes into focus, we see the source of this conduction: a golf club, and this is the symphony of some poor sap who has found himself on the wrong end of it. Unpleasant though the image may be, it is not the act of murder in this leaked game footage that is … Continue reading Gorgons of Gamergate
Rural internet: a slower pace of life, but not in a good way Part of the joy of living in the countryside is remaining a few steps out of sync with the modern world, in splendid isolation. While they whizz busily head, we’re usually content to trot along at a slower pace, enjoying time-honoured traditions and basking in the glory of nature. But there are … Continue reading Rural Internet
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Attend an Extinction Rebellion meeting and there are dozens of iPhones and laptops on show. Did you know you can buy Extinction Rebellion decals to stick on your car bumper – you know, near the exhaust pipe? Visit the anti-capitalists at Momentum headquarters and the place is more dripping in capitalist tech than you’d imagine. There’s a Fairtrade café in Bristol cram-packed … Continue reading Machine Hypocrisy
BY BEN EVERITT HS2 Ltd continues to cause outrage and disbelief in my part of the countryside with ‘enabling works’ and ‘de-vegetation’. Somehow contractors are allowed to continue the project’s environmental vandalism, even though the whole caper is currently officially on hold. It’s a monumental waste of money and it’s an answer to a question that no-one’s asking. When I travel to London for work … Continue reading End HS2 – the Countryside Vandal
BY TARQUIN SUTHERLAND “I am not a number, I am a free man!” So began the seminal 60s TV series, The Prisoner. Upon recently revisiting this evermore prescient work by the sorely missed Patrick McGoohan, I was struck by the thought; ‘I wonder what he witnessed?’, as it is chock full of the echoes of future-shock. “Be seeing you” the characters chirpily say to one … Continue reading Big Tech Too Big
Country life is the only life I could imagine. As much interest as the city can hold when it comes to newer developments, living in it is not a price which I, or many others, would pay to enjoy such rarities. Instead, I’ve found a lot of luck recently turning to more technological solutions. It requires a little knowledge work getting here, for sure, but … Continue reading Getting Ahead to Enjoy the Classics at a Distance
BY THE EDITOR A few weeks ago I was having a cup of tea with some Monitoring BDS ladies in Hampstead – those brave souls who attend Corbyn meetings and video antisemitism from the Hard Left. I asked them why their output on Twitter was so hard to locate, whereas their Facebook pages seemed easy to find and were always replete with content. And their immediate … Continue reading Badge of Honour
BY JAMIE FOSTER Currently government proposals are being considered that would prevent online trolls who intimidate election candidates or campaigners from standing for public office. The length of a ban from standing for or holding public office will be part of a consultation. At present in extreme cases of intimidation there are jail sentences available for those who commit these offences. It feels like this … Continue reading Trolls Banned from Public Office?
BY CRYPTO Humans are essentially tribal, people with similar traits and beliefs group together. You can see this played out on the Internet every day. It’s very clear. Ancient humans understood this early on and realised if you can set the base axioms for a group, the narrative, i.e. answer the mother of all questions, what’s the meaning of life. Then you can control and … Continue reading Why the Hysteria?
