Paul Lilly
Paul is a seasoned geek who was first seduced into the world of computers and technology by the Commodore 64, and through the years he’s courted a number of OSes and platforms from DOS on up to the latest version of Windows. Having joined the HotHardware team in 2011, Paul is now a mainstay of the site covering the news beat and reviews, and resident wiseguy who keeps the mood light. He’s also an experienced freelance technology writer whose work has appeared in a number of online and print publications.
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
You have our utmost respect if you've ever run into the "Map 256 Glitch" in Pac-Man. The show stopping bug thwarted even the best Pac-Man players with an impossible to beat level, and it's also the theme of Bandai Namco's newest Pac-Man...
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One of the first things we all do when firing up a new smartphone for the first time is to see which unwanted apps we're allowed to uninstall. It's not just wireless carriers and smartphone manufactures that are guilty of pre-loading their...
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Amazon's been working hard to improve Alexa, the cloud-based voice service that makes its Echo gadget more than just an ordinary Bluetooth speaker. Back in June, Amazon made available its Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), a collection of...
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Mozilla on Friday announced some major changes coming to the development of add-ons for its Firefox browser. One of the biggest changes is a new extension API called WebExtensions, which isn't all that different from the one used in Chrome...
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The Android Wear platform was pretty rad to begin with (kids these days still say "rad," right?), but now it's even better. To start with, Android Wear users now have access to three interactive watch faces. With just a simple tap, you can...
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Loved today, hated tomorrow. That's how it goes on the Internet, which is made up of a fickle community of users that will turn on your in an instant if there's a perceived slight. Spotify, long considered one of the so called good guys of...
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Amazon is the latest major tech company to kick Adobe's Flash platform to the curb. Effective September 1, 2015, the world's most popular online retailer will no longer accept Flash-based advertisements on its main site or through it's third-party Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP), the company...
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Sony continually patches its PlayStation 4 console, and if you want to help test future firmware updates, you now can. Ahead of its next major system software update, Sony has opened up a beta program and is inviting PS4 owners to sign up...
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The cost of entry to own a modern generation DS console has been lowered to a Benjamin. Actually, just shy of a Benny -- Nintendo dropped the price of its 2DS handheld to $99.99, down from its previous suggested retail price of $129.99. And in case you're wondering, yes, it still comes bundled...
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At least one market research firm believes that China, the biggest country for smartphone sales, has reached saturation. As a result, worldwide smartphone sales grew 13.5 percent year-over-year, the slowest growth rate since 2013, with...
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We all recognize that backing up data is important, but do you have backups for your backups? A single scheme isn't always enough, and if you think uploading your valuable documents to the cloud is all the protection you need, think again...
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Sony on Thursday announced its second generation fitness wearable, the SmartBand 2. Described as a "multi-sensor lifelogger," the SmartBand 2 combines an accelerometer with new heart rate sensors that work together to monitor your pulse...
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It seems like we went for years without any real kind of innovation in the monitor market. For the longest time, if you wanted a high-end display, you shopped IPS panels topping out at 30 inches with a 2560x1600 resolution. And these days?...
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I've been looking forward to two movies this summer. The first is Straight Outta Compton, which I caught last week (and it didn't disappoint), and the second is The Martian, a flick that will come out when kids and college students are...
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Famed phone leaker Evan Blass (you might know him better by his Twitter handle, @evleaks) is at it again, this time with a few more shots of BlackBerry's forthcoming Venice handset. According to Blass, Venice has been "confirmed" to launch...
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Karma's a dirty little devil, a fact that as many as 37 million unfaithful online users may find that out the hard way. That's because the hackers who infiltrated Ashely Madison, a dating website for married folk to practice infidelity...
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Google wants to solve your wireless woes with a new router that's designed for ease-of-use and ongoing upgrades without the fuss. Called OnHub, the spiffy looking router is the result of a joint effort between Google and TP-Link, the...
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Sprint's big pitch to consumers is that it offers truly unlimited data (in addition to unlimited talk and texting). However, it was Sprint's previous CEO, Dan Hesse, that pushed unlimited data as a point of focus. His replacement, Marcelo...
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Who knows when or even if Apple will ever launch its long-planned streaming TV service (the latest buzz is that those plans have been pushed to 2016 due to stalls in negotiations with media companies). In the meantime, the company stays...
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Amid all the praise Windows 10 is receiving around the web, there is one thing that's at the center of most complaints -- automatic updates. Windows 10 Home users generally don't have a choice in the matter, the updates are mandatory and...
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If you were planning a new PC build within the past several months, the phrase you might have heard over and over again was "wait for Skylake." Well, Skylake is here, and the new architecture comprises Intel's 6th generation Core line of CPUs. If you haven't done so already, be sure to check...
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Considering that Android is installed on around eight out 10 smartphones around the world, it was pretty scary to find out about Stagefright, a vulnerability that's present on almost all of them. Even more frightening is that in many...
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