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
Out of the 130 million smartphones floating around the U.S., can you guess how many of them were assembled stateside? If you said anything higher than "zero," you guessed too many. There's not a single smartphone factory in the U.S., though Motorola is determined to change that and plans to open the first such...
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Flexible, bendable display technology spend a lot of time in the headlines these days, and even Apple is getting swept by the fad, though not in the traditional sense. Rather than focus on display technologies that can fold, roll, or wrap around an object, one of Apple's newest patents is for a flex screen feature...
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Samsung has a penchant for going big, like its Note phablet line and its generously sized Galaxy S smartphones, but the South Korean handset maker is also aware that there's a market for smaller, less expensive mobile phones. Enter the Galaxy S4 mini, a slightly larger follow-up to the S3 mini. It's best if you think of it that way rather...
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If you've been holding out for a price drop on Apple's fifth generation iPod touch line, perhaps today's newest addition will be of interest. It's a 16GB model that Apple quietly slipped into the lineup, and not only is it the least capacious, it's also the least expensive with a $229 price tag. Where was this SKU...
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If you're rocking an iPhone or iPad device and use Google+, head over to the App Store and grab the latest update. Version 4.4.0 brings about a bevy of new features, though the primary focus was placed on enhancing and managing photos, including a new feature that's quite literally Awesome. No joking, that's what...
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Remember when Steve Jobs thrashed the concept of a 7-inch tablet, calling it a tweener device that sits between a smartphone and what he viewed as a traditionally sized slate (9.7 inches)? At the time, it seemed unlikely Apple would ever launch an iPad smaller than 9.7 inches, but then came the iPad mini, which is giving its bigger brother...
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A Reddit forum user is claiming that his Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone overheated and caught on fire in the wee hours of the morning, burning a hole in his mattress and filling his two-story home with the foul stench of burning plastic and electronics. It was a "loud noise and a weird squeaking sound" that...
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Before smartphones became virtually ubiquitous there were feature phones, and prior to that pagers ruled the day. And before that? It's hard to remember how we ever got along without today's technological wonders, especially when you examine how dependent we've become to certain devices. To wit, a new study by Experian reveals that the average...
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Maybe sometime in the future, Google Glass will find a market among the masses and we'll be walking around with wearable computers on our heads. It's Google's vision to one day get to that place where a head mounted display (HMD) could replace many of the functions we all use our smartphones for, from snapping...
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If you thought the mobile wars were interesting now, just wait until Mozilla enters the fray with its Firefox operating system. Firefox, as you know, enjoys a rather large following in the browser market, and though the smartphone and tablet categories are both dominated by Android and iOS (in that order), Mozilla may have what it takes to...
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Bug bounties are a great way for budding programmers and developers to earn a bit of extra cash. Companies that offer them pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars per bug, depending on the severity of the security vulnerability that was discovered, resulting in a more secure product by the vendor and a little more jingle in the pocket of...
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Mojang, the developer that brought Minecraft to the masses, originally wanted to launch Scrolls, a card collecting strategy game, at the end of April. That didn't happen, though Mojang has committed itself to a release date, announcing that Scrolls will launch in "Open Beta" on June 3 for Windows and Mac OS X. Ahead...
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There's talk that LG Electronics isn't interested in building a next generation Nexus handset for Google (more on that in a moment), but while the two sides may be parting ways on the manufacturing side of things, they have one more product to unveil. Today LG announced the launch of the Nexus 4 White, the newest...
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We all know that solid state storage is the sexy option these days, but a lower cost per gigabyte and higher overall capacities have kept mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) from becoming irrelevant or otherwise obsolete, especially in datacenter environments. It's no surprise, then, that Western Digital continues to...
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Samsung has a few new products up its sleeve that it's planning to unveil at its upcoming "Premiere 2013" event in London on June 20th. What exactly Samsung has in store remains to be seen, though the company did provide a few teaser shots and mention that it will entail new Galaxy and ATIV devices. There are three...
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Stealth specializes in the industrial computer and peripherals market, and its newest product, the LPC-480FS, fits right in with that mold. It's a rugged mini PC that doesn't have any cooling fans, so other than any electrical noise that might possibly emanate from the system, it's silent rig designed for a variety of...
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You know G.Skill as a maker of memory products, including system memory and solid state drives (SSDs). The company is also active in the overclocking scene where its modules have set frequency records. All of that is fine and dandy and will continue to be a focus, but moving forward, G.Skill also wants to be...
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Don't accuse Yahoo of being afraid to spend, and spend big, on acquisitions it thinks will give it an edge against the competition. Enter into evidence exhibit A, Yahoo's recent $1.1 billion acquisition of blogging service Tumblr that has a few industry analysts scratching their heads. Now less than a week later Yahoo...
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You can always tell when Apple is getting ready to refresh a product line. For one, there are all the rumors, speculation, and leaked information that precede events like Apple's upcoming World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), which will take place this year on June 10. But even more telling is when the Cupertino...
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The always-on controversy surrounding what we now know as the Xbox One has quickly taken a backseat to a semi-related topic: Used games. Specifically, how is Microsoft planning to approach the used games market since titles will be installed directly to the hard drive, and just as important, will a used game market...
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Don't tell Lenovo the PC market is in a slump. The OEM apparently hasn't gotten the memo, and as they say, ignorance is bliss. In this case, it's also quite lucrative. Lenovo this week announced record full-year sales of $34 billion, up 15 percent year-over-year, and record earnings of $635 million, up more than a...
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As much as I've wanted Microsoft to hit a homerun with its advertising efforts, I haven't been super impressed its commercials the past few years. I didn't really care to see Seinfeld shopping for shoes or Bill Gates talking about churros, neither of which were worthy retorts to Apple's Mac vs PC ad spots. And let's not even talk about Microsoft's...
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