James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Director (also co-writer) Benjamin Dickinson’s recently released film, Creative Control, is one of few movies over the past several years to take recent technological advances seriously, inasmuch as the technology isn’t far from what we already have. The filmmakers have said that the setting is …
Microsoft and Facebook say they have ended the gender pay gap
The issue of the gender pay gap, in the tech industry, and many other industries, is still a huge issue – and one that won’e be solved for a long time. The American Association of University Women says equally qualified women earn 78 percent of what …
Trust a (digitized) woman to do all the hard work
“Siri, you know that being a woman makes you subservient, don’t you?” “Hey Cortana, can you wear that sexy skirt to the office tomorrow?” This is not how you should speak to your secretary, but is it what tech companies have in …
Inside the Exclusion Zone: Experience the Chernobyl disaster through virtual reality
Almost 30 years to the day, one of the world’s worst disasters took place at the Chernobyl (Ukrainian spelling is Chornobyl) Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine when an explosion sent radioactive particles across much of the former western USSR and parts of …
Microsoft’s Windows 10 update brings tons of goodies including Cortana making herself a lot more useful
Only a week after Microsoft promised at Build 2016 it would be giving its OS a bunch of appealing new features, Redmond has made good on that promise after announcing the latest Windows 10 upgrade (Windows 10 Build 14316) for Windows Insiders …
Digitizing sex with virtual reality headsets is going to be huge
Considering that more than a 10th of websites on the internet are pornographic, and those websites combined get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter, we can deduce that when a new, or vastly improved medium of porn consumption comes around – …
Missing: Windows Phone at Build 2016
Microsoft may have wooed us with its ambitious vision of the future at this year’s Build conference, but there has been one notable absence throughout the entire event: Windows Phone. Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group, Terry Myerson, …
It’s wasn’t so much boys in tech behaving badly but more a consequence of inequality
“F**k you Xbox” and “F**k you Microsoft” were parting remarks in a series of Tweets lately, following what turned out to be a disastrous decision by Xbox to hold an after-event (GDC16) party that featured dancing girls clad in school uniforms. Unlike …
Bots and holograms are the future: Microsoft thinks big at Build 2016
Microsoft is thinking big, and at Build 2016 the people at Redmond gave us a glimpse of the future. Not surprisingly Microsoft’s augmented reality headset HoloLens made an appearance – CEO Satya Nadella has said the device will figure greatly in the company’s …
Microsoft’s chatbot Tay is brought back to life … and within hours killed a second time
Microsoft’s A.I chatbot Tay has gone and done it again: got herself taken offline. Tay, a product of Microsoft’s Technology and Research and Bing, didn’t exactly get off to a good start last week when she quickly became a ranting racist and conspiracy …