Those reading my columns for long enough will know that I play the guitar. I'll never be Eric Clapton but I'm OK. Among the sources I use to improve my technique or break down a difficult lick are the helpful people that post guitar tutorials on YouTube. That could be about to change.
- One of my online "teachers" is Paul Davids who posted a disturbing video recently on how organisations in the US, and in particular Universal Music, are cracking down and demonetising anyone who breaks their idea of copyright. The most extreme example was a video demonetised in the US because Paul opened a video with a Dsus2 chord. This is a chord that anyone who has ever played guitar has used many times but it happens to be the opening chord in a song that Universal Music owns. For Universal Music to seek to demonetise a video for this is, of course, absurd. Even more absurd is that YouTube went along with it. No one owns a chord. Even the so-called "Hendrix chord" is not owned by Hendrix or his estate. The solution is of course to use a VPN if you live in the US and to like Paul Davids' learning videos.
- Microsoft has finally released the first official preview build of its new Chromium-based browser. It is essentially Edge redone in Chrome. Installation is simple but you'll need to manually handle any extensions and not all transfer from Google Chrome as neatly as you'd like. To solve this, use the "allow extensions from other stores" switch and slurp from the Google store. The default search engine will switch to Bing, no surprises there, but you can of course switch back. Given the mess that is Edge it may be worth giving this a try. As an aside, I recently installed DuckDuckGo as my search engine because it doesn't apply the same filtering and ranking algorithms that Google does.
- According to Gartner, foldable phones will have only captured 5% of the market by 2023 and I'm inclined to agree with them. In recent years we have seen screen sizes creep up to the whopping 6.7-inch Samsung 5G and similar models. The new range of foldable smartphones are smaller but thicker and heavier, and I predict a number of teething problems over the next couple of years before people get to liking them. Then there is the price. For the same money you can get a really good notebook computer. Screens scratch, foldable things break at the seams; the models to date are no more than interesting curiosities still in the early development stages. Are foldables that much different from tablets? Tablets didn't do all that well after the initial "gee these things are neat" stage. Me, I'll probably get the new Samsung 5G model and leave the foldable for another time. Also, as part of the same report, Gartner predicts a drop in PC sales but a rise in ultralight notebooks, the primary challenger to foldables.
- With the higher end models increasing in price, this leaves a bigger middle range market that manufacturers are targeting. The Chinese are doing well in this area, but a couple of new models from Samsung in their A model range will provide competition. Departing from the now ubiquitous slab, the A80 has a slide up reversible camera that doubles as a front and back camera. Onscreen fingerprint sensor and fast charge with 8GB/128GB of memory make for very nice mid-range specs with the unit priced a bit under the S10E model. No headphone jack or microSD support are bad decisions, however. Like the A80, the A70 has a 6.7-inch screen but a better battery. No rotating camera but three rear and one front facing, with microSD support up to 512GB and 6 or 8GB RAM. There is also a lower spec A50 in the new range.
- I haven't written about them for a while but Microsoft and Adobe continue to release bug and security fixes. The last one was close to 100 changes and most of them were security issues. Updates are useful if for no other reason than to help protect you from security vulnerabilities. Windows 10 Home users will have no choice, the updates will be applied automatically. For the most part Adobe users will need to apply the patches directly.
- The biggest news of the month was that humans took a picture of a black hole the size of our solar system, 55 million light years away, using effectively an Earth-sized telescope and validating a scientific theory from Albert Einstein detailed in 1916. The term itself comes from astronomer John Wheeler in 1967. Yes, the pic was a bit fuzzy but when you consider the processing required and how far away it was, the result is an amazing mix of technologies working together.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
