PC Pro September 2022

p46 REVIEW OF THE MONTH HP Envy 34 All-in-One Whisper it, but the all-in-one PC may be in the midst of a revival. Hot on the heels of the gorgeous Huawei MateStation X (see issue 334, p46) comes this significantly speedier 34in widescreen machine from HP. It most definitely doesn’t have the looks of Huawei’s all-in-one or the iMac, but it packs in the features: a magnetic webcam, a super-wide screen that makes it phenomenally easy to work on two apps side by side, and so many connectivity options you need never be offline again. It doesn’t win our hearts in the way the MateStation did, but it certainly wins our minds. p26 SMART ADVICE OF THE MONTH Alexa, Google and Siri can all add smartness to your home, but people who want real smarts –…

A question keeps creeping into my mind, one that has been haunting me for years. Perhaps the only way to rid myself of it is to use this page as a confessional. So here goes: has technology made the world better? Taking a macro view, the answer seems a simple yes. Here in the 21st century we are surely much better off than our hunter-gatherer predecessors. Technology, using the word in its broadest sense, has extended our lives, made those lives more comfortable, and freed up our time to spend it on knowledge, art, music, literature. Even if we narrow our focus to the past hundred years, the answer seems a pretty firm yes. The quality of life of someone in 2022, certainly in the West but also in most of the…

When a country is suddenly plunged into war and citizens have been mobilised to fight back against the invaders, it is no wonder that supplies of critical medical supplies such as tourniquets run low. This was, of course, the exact situation Ukraine found itself in when Russia invaded. “All of a sudden you have 100,000 people who are mobilised to the Territorial Defence Force,” said Jakub Kaminski, a medical robotics engineer based in Massachusetts. “They are getting a gun, a few magazines of ammunition, but they are not given tourniquets.” Tourniquets are critical on the battlefield, as it can be a matter of minutes before someone who has been hit bleeds to death. This is where Kaminski has stepped up to help. He and his colleagues have designed a 3D-printable tourniquet (3dprintingforukraine.com)…

Twitter has been playing too fast and loose with the phone numbers and email addresses it uses for two-factor authentication, according to the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. As a result, the company is on the hook for a $150 million fine. According to the two agencies, between May 2013 and September 2019, if you handed over your phone number to Twitter to add an extra layer of protection to your account, the company wasn’t just using it to keep you safe – without disclosing it, it was also using your number to target its advertising. “The $150 million penalty reflects the seriousness of the allegations against Twitter, and the substantial new compliance measures to be imposed as a result of today’s proposed settlement will help prevent further misleading…

Last year, Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, partnered with sunglasses brand Ray-Ban to release a pair of camera-equipped glasses that can post video clips directly to Instagram Stories. The Ray-Ban Stories came hot on the heels of Snap, the company behind Snapchat, doing something similar with its camera-equipped “Spectacles”. More importantly, we’re probably only a year or two away from at least one of the major tech players making a significant stab at making true AR work. Meta is reportedly working towards a 2024 release date for its first AR glasses, with several devices currently in development scheduled for after. What about the biggest player in mobile, Apple? Perhaps the worst kept secret in tech is that Apple is working on its own AR glasses, as evidenced by the relentless…

Exclusive investigations into technology practices. Email probe@pcpro.co.uk if you have a story We already have computers in our pockets and on our wrists, and in the not-too-distant future we’ll be strapping them to our faces, too. All of the major players in Silicon Valley are hard at work developing augmented reality (AR) glasses that will blend the physical and digital worlds, literally in front of our eyes, which are expected to hit the market over the next few years. We have, of course, been here before, with devices including the Google Glass (see “Out now and coming soon”, below). What makes the device manufacturers believe that consumers will find their AR kit any less weird and disturbing than the failed devices of before? A warning from history “The idea of being constantly watched…