Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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The amount of personal data we have floating around out there on the internet is staggering. Online banking, shopping, social media; all filled to the brim with email addresses, passwords, financial information and more. We take for granted simply logging into a site, taking care of something such as a purchase or a financial transfer, and reaping the convenience of such. The trust we place with these sites and services is that they’ll do a good job of keeping that data safe and private. What happens, then, when this trust is misplaced and a w...
The internet in all its vastness, with its more than five billion users, can sometimes be a place filled with noise. An overwhelming amount of information from a near-infinite number of sources. Happily, there are systems in place which give us clues as to which sources are more reliable, and which accounts on social media are in fact who they say they are. How does one, then, use these tools to verify the source of any given post, tweet or article? What methods do sites and services use to make sure there isn’t impersonation of famous f...
Open the pod bay doors, HAL. Soylent Green is people. I’ll be back! While we’re not quite at the point of taking our flying cars to work while our robot maids dutifully dust and vacuum our homes, we’re inarguably living in a time where the thought of such things don’t seem too unreasonable. The movies, shows and literature of the past, at the time appearing deeply entrenched in science fiction, now at times appear very normal in how they portray future technologies. Self driving cars? Facial recognition? Virtual reality? Psh. How quaint!...
We know, accept and often welcome the fact that big technology companies exist. The likes of Microsoft, Apple, Meta (the company behind Facebook) and of course Amazon, all while sprawling in their reach, offer us the convenience of being one-stop sources to shop, work or learn. Often, we’ll pick favorites from these giants to capitalize upon that convenience. Amazon’s great pricing or Walmart’s reliable shipping - whatever the reason, we tend to put at least the majority of our eggs into one basket here. This becomes an issue though when one o...
The internet, in all its vastness and scope, does a wonderful job of delivering us things. Information, entertainment but also a seemingly unending stream of things to buy. Now, while I’m as guilty as the next person for my Amazon addiction, one can cast a much, much wider net. You can order food, clothes, furniture; truly anything your heart desires and your wallet allows. Whilst I (especially as a business owner myself) fully support shopping local, we do face limitations when it comes to choice. How did we get here though, to this land of e...
Language is a weird thing. It’s constantly evolving, changing and growing. Words fall in and out of common usage, are adopted from other dialects and just get plain old made-up then forced upon us colloquially. Something rather interesting has happened though with the rise of the internet, smartphones and general global connectivity. We’ve started supplementing our words in the classical sense with pictures, and it’s this group of pictures known as Emojis which now forms up to 92 percent of the online population’s daily language choice....
Some of us, the lucky ones arguably, are old enough to remember when ending a phone call on our mobile device was facilitated with a satisfying snap. It’s just not the same, thumbing the red “end call” button on the delicate pieces of glass we carry around now. Instead of fidget spinners, we had fidget phones. The great thing is however, they’re making a comeback! So long as you’re not an Apple user, there are now options for smart, foldable, snappy closing phones which do everything we expect from our modern devices. But are they any more...
But Is It Art? Artificial intelligence, as I’ve written in the past, is an exciting and powerful means of computers completing tasks which would previously have been impossible or too time consuming to be justifiable. Another more recently popular use for AI is the generation of images from simple text prompts. Say you’d like an AI’s idea of how a cat looks, you’d program it to analyze a set of photos of actual cats, then return what it thinks is the most accurate rendition based on that data. In the early days, this produced results which o...
With a lot of the summer behind us and school returning, we’ve some inside time on the horizon. With this, brings the tendency to spend more time online, on social media and interacting with others by use of our smartphones. Is there a risk though of our digital interactions coming back to haunt us in the real world? Could careless language or photos online bite us years later, irrespective of the context at the time? Of course, the answer is yes. But how do we avoid it, and is there a period after which we can exhale, free from past web transg...
Vacuuming sucks. Ba-dum tss. Now that I’ve cleared that obligatory dad joke hurdle, let’s talk about robot vacuums and the recent shift in power when it comes to their production. Vacuuming and more recently mowing are two industries which have perhaps seen the greatest traction when it comes to robotizing a manual task around the home. Really, they’re the perfect candidates due to their repeatability, low-risk and simple required function - both when drastically simplified only needing rotating mechanics and the ability to travel from point...
Money, it’s a gas. In a similar fashion to gas, it can also get quite expensive quite quickly. The iPhone for example has risen in average cost more than 60 percent since its launch in 2007. Inflation by contrast since then is only around 43 percent, so while your dollar is worth more, technology still carries a weightier price tag than it used to. Where then can we save some dollars? Are there opportunities when buying tech where it’s safe to save some money, or do “buy cheap, buy twice!” rules always apply? No need to have your credit...
Chips! Delicious, of course. But the less tasty ones make up the brains behind all but the very simplest of electronic devices. Smart phones, chargers, microwaves and cars alike all use integrated circuits (ICs for short) to perform whatever task they’ve been designed to do. As we know, we’re still recovering from the same chip shortage which has made buying those cars and electronics trickier, even this deep into 2022. This week however, Congress has made moves to help prevent this kind of supply squeeze from happening in the future. Will you...
We have a lot to thank the internet for. It enables us to be entertained by cat videos, stream endless music and inflict photos of ourselves holding a fish on everyone else using that dating app. The web as it looks today though is a far cry from what it was like a relatively short time ago. It’s still changing, too. Something called Web3 is on the horizon, and it stands to shake up how the internet is structured on the technical side, while offering greater conveniences to the average user. What then do we need to know about this new i...
The ability to capture and hold people’s attention is a valuable asset. Captivating a room, enthralling an audience, or convincing you that one more episode is worth the tradeoff for a ruined sleep schedule. Every silver lining has a cloud of course, and when that captivation relates to the endless stream of negativity available online, we end up suffering the affects of the newly coined “doomscrolling.” Bad news is in no short supply, but how do we avoid getting addicted to it? Has the internet fed our feelings of hopelessness to the point...
I love a good thunderstorm. Maybe it’s the crack of the thunder, maybe it’s the sound of driving rain, maybe it’s the bright flash of lightning as it streaks across the sky. Disengaging caveman brain for a moment however and remembering that I am in fact a technology professional, thunderstorms are a major pain in my proverbial. This lightning and the subsequent power outages are awful for electronics and, as we fill our homes with ever more sensitive flavors of such, they can get expensive if we don’t take the proper care. Let’s perhaps c...
They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Back in my day. Those were simpler times. We’re all, to some degree or another, a little guilty of harking back to a slightly rose-tinted version of something from our past. Before smartphones, before computers, before convenience. When it comes to technology there really is something to be said for recycling the joy you felt when first experiencing something; your first high score or when that first voice-activated doodad blew your mind. Were things ever really objectively “better” though? Are we chasin...
Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google. Almost all of us have some kind of relationship with at least one of these companies, perhaps even all four. We rely on them for staying in touch with loved ones, providing entertainment, answering our questions; truly the list goes on and on. As time progresses and tech becomes more integrated into our lives, this will only grow longer. How far does the reach truly go for these technology giants though? Are we unknowingly putting all of our technology eggs into one basket? If we are, is that really so...
Technology is great, but it can be expensive to keep up with. It’s also fair that a lot of us as consumers simply don’t need the latest and greatest model of any given electronics; a 2021 laptop is still going to be refreshingly zippy compared to your classic from 2012. The average user browsing the web or running Microsoft Office doesn’t really benefit from that 10% performance boost between model years. What then if there was a cheaper way of getting like-new technology at a discount rate? Something which had most of the benefits of buyin...
For all of the things we secure behind a password, I’ve yet to run into anyone who truly enjoys them. Financial details, our social media accounts, email, streaming services. They’re the keys to our digital lives. What if the end was on the horizon for hurriedly typing things into a box before having to hit that dreaded “I’ve forgotten…” button, though? Will we soon be able to ditch our least-favorite combinations of at least eight characters with capitals and numbers mixed in? I’ve written about passwords on a couple of occasions, bu...
The digital world in which we live, while sometimes daunting in its reach, does bear the fruit of convenience. It also offers secure storage for things we’d rather keep safe from prying eyes and criminals. It’s this security beyond that of a simple pass or card which has led to the development of virtual wallets built into our mobile devices, Apple Pay or Android Pay being the highest profile examples. The evolution of this however is bringing forth the ability to make redundant even more wallet-filling-material. Will the humble leather bil...
Snoozing. Slumbering. Catching some Zs. Sleep’s an incredibly important part of our lives and often one in which a lot of us will fall short either on quantity or quality. Technology as we know is generally seen as the enemy of this much needed rest, and rightly so. A technology professional myself, I’ve suffered first hand the effects of too much device time messing up my sleep schedule during busier stints. Is there a way though that we can achieve better, longer, more valuable shuteye through technology? Or has it firmly no place at our beds...
We’re blessed with some great outdoor spaces here. Despite the challenges our winters bring, it’s more than made up for by the temperate season. Time out by the lake, the great camping spots, the state parks just a day trip away; making the most of warmer weather is easy to do in this part of the world. With technology such an integral part of our lives nowadays, how do we safely use some of it to elevate our outdoor experience? What’s important and what isn’t when we’re looking to level-up our yard, poolside or forest time? I think the most...
Our computers are, in the most basic sense, tools. They’re tools for education, they’re tools for blowing off steam and they’re tools for productivity. Arguably it’s this ability to create, produce and construct which is the PC’s strongest suit, because anything else you might use a computer for was actually itself, created on a computer. The chicken vs. egg discussion aside, the landscape of programs we can use to get things done with a keyboard and a screen is vast. Where to start, then? And how can we maybe save some cash along the way?...
After a long, long winter we’re finally able to emerge and enjoy the outdoors! Our eyelashes won’t freeze to our face, the simple act of breathing won’t be painful; truly have we suffered. But before too long we’ll be planning getaways and trips and excursions and generally enjoying all the joys which leaving the house has to offer. Something we often tend to overlook is what tech to bring with us to help plan and capture these memories. I for one, being someone who’s relatively technology-heavy in their life, tend to over pack in this rega...
It wasn’t so long ago that mobile gaming meant loading up on AA batteries and taking your Game Boy with you on a road trip. Tetris, Super Mario Land and the now multibillion dollar franchise of Pokémon all saw significant time gracing that tiny, monochrome display. Simpler times no doubt, but how did this grey block meant for gaming on the go shape what we take for granted now in the ability to hop on an app store filled with thousands of free time-sinks? With everything else we can do on a phone, is mobile gaming even still popular? Our no...