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
Apple likes to tout that it's iPhone 5 features diamond-cut beveled edges and other fancy amenities, but when you're talking about luxury phones, Vertu is a name that quickly comes to mind. One of Vertu's newest creations is the Vertu Ti, which is powered by Android, driven by a 1.7GHz quad-core processor, and is the...
Read more...
It seems hard to fathom, but a rather rudimentary computer assembled in a garage almost four decades ago could bring in north of $500,000 in an upcoming auction. This isn't just an ordinary system, however, it's a rare Apple 1, one of the first Apple systems ever built. The man who owns it didn't pay a dime for the...
Read more...
Apple has gone and put together a pie chart showing the percentage of iOS users rocking the latest version of its platform (iOS 6) versus earlier versions, and like Google, the figures are derived from users who've accessed the App Store in the past 14 days (Google plucks its Android data from Google Play and also uses a 14-day window). Unlike...
Read more...
Samsung's Premiere 2013 event in London is well underway and as you might expect, product announcements are coming in fast and furious. One of the new items Samsung unveiled at the event is the Galaxy NX, purportedly the world's first interchangeable lens camera with 3G/4G LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity baked in...
Read more...
Best Buy is renewing an iPhone trade-in promotion in which you can waltz into your local Best Buy location, hand over your iPhone 4 or 4S handset, and essentially receive a free iPhone 5. You actually earn a credit of up to $150, which you can then use the cover the cost of a 16GB iPhone 5 in either black or white...
Read more...
The swashbucklers who founded and ran The Pirate Bay (TPB), an online torrent site notorious for turning a blind eye to illegal file downloads, are no strangers to the legal system in Sweden. More recently, TPB co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg received a two-year prison sentence by a District Court in Sweden for...
Read more...
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said this week there have been more than a dozen reports of ATG lithium-ion replacement batteries for the MacBook Pro catching fire, prompting Best Buy to issue a recall. There have been 13 documented cases so far, and in one instance, a faulty battery caused a "serious...
Read more...
France's National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties (CNIL) has initiated proceedings against Google over privacy violations and has given the sultan of search three months to fix things or face fines. Should Google drag its feet, it faces a maximum fine of 150,000 euros (~$198,000), along with 300,000 euros...
Read more...
Apple's $99 streaming box just got a little bit better today. Effectively immediately, HBO GO and WatchESPN are both available directly on Apple TV, a duo that will appeal to movie buffs and sports fans alike. As for the former, HBO subscribers can now enjoy unlimited access to shows like True Blood and Game of Thrones, as well as hit movies,...
Read more...
Do you use Java? If so, be aware that Oracle just released its "June 2013 Critical Update for Java SE," a collection of code that provides 40 new security fixes. All but three of them are security holes that can be exploited from a remote location without any kind of authentication. Four of the vulnerabilities affect client and server deployments,...
Read more...
In an effort to offer Internet users some transparency and to deflect negative attention from recent revelations that big companies have been sharing user data with the government via the National Security Agency's (NSA) PRISM program, Google is seeking permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to...
Read more...
Woe is the PlayStation 3 gamer who jumped at the chance to install Sony's newest firmware update, version 4.45. After it was made available, it didn't take long for complaints to surface on Twitter, Reddit, and Sony's own support forum lamenting the fact that the update was bricking consoles, turning their gaming...
Read more...
If you were to wave a magic wand over the HTC One and magically give it a bigger screen, faster processor, and a longer lasting battery, you'd end up with the Butterfly S, HTC's latest high-end handset. Oh, and then you'd have to banish it Taiwan, where it would be start selling July for NT$22,900 (~$769 USD). A magic...
Read more...
Huawei is proud as a peacock over its new Ascend P6 smartphone, an Android handset the company claims is the thinnest in the world. It measures a scant 6.18mm (0.24 inches) thick and has a 4.7-inch display, the same size screen found on the HTC One, which is 3mm (0.1 inches) thicker. Pretty impressive. Analysts who...
Read more...
In this episode of "Microsoft Knows Best," Outlook.com is phasing out support for multiple email addresses. Going back to the Hotmail days, linked accounts were introduced in 2006, and Microsoft fully acknowledges there are several legitimate reasons for using multiple email addresses, such as not wanting to hand out...
Read more...
Easily one of the more anticipated product launches is the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset that had a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. Oculus VR managed to raise over $2.4 million on Kickstarter, well north or the company's comparatively modest $250,000 goal, and the money is still flowing in. Announced today, Oculus VR just...
Read more...
When you're getting spanked the competition, one thing you can do is to pretend they don't exist and focus solely on yourself. So it goes with LG Electronics, the South Korean handset maker that would like nothing more than to swipe some smartphone share out of Samsung's pocket. While LG is losing to Samsung, the firm...
Read more...
Bolstered by the recent mad dash by consumers and manufacturers alike towards mobile computing, truly ARM has become too large to ignore. ARM has benefited the most from mobile device sales, proving that it's a capable architecture and a worthy competitor to x86 silicon, so it shouldn't come as a shock that NVIDIA equipped its CUDA 5.5 Release...
Read more...
Good news, Jay-Z fans. The hip-hop artist and part owner of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets is back with a new album titled "Magna Carta Holy Grail." It's due to release on July 4, 2014, and it will feature various artists such as Drake, Nas, and Justin Timberlake, all of whom have been working on the album. As a special...
Read more...
Verizon Wireless is reportedly looking to expand its wireless service north of the border into Canada. Should VZW go through with it, Canadian mobile phone subscribers would then have access to four major wireless carriers to choose from, as Big Red would be competing against Telus Corp, BCE Inc's Bell Unit, and...
Read more...
Chin up kids, it's time to wipe away those tears for the loss of Spongebob, Dora the Explorer, and all the rest of Viacom's entities that skipped ship over to Amazon's Prime Instant Video service. There's still plenty of kid-friendly content on Netflix, especially now that the big daddy of streaming media inked a...
Read more...
Sorry to break it to social networking curmudgeons, but the Oxford English Dictionary now officially recognizes "tweet" as a noun and verb in the social networking sense. Such is the power and influence of social networking services like Twitter that not only did OED expand its entry for the word tweet, but it broke...
Read more...
