Headworx

Last week I had an overnight layover at the San Francisco airport. Landed in the afternoon and then took the hotel shuttle bus to the nearby hotel. It turned out the bus could not enter the hotel parking area: the automatic barriers were lowered and a number of cars before us was already lined up. We ended up disembarking the bus on the street and walking up to the hotel. The front door did not open. "We have a power outage" - a staff member explained - please use the side door. I did. Then the check-in was by means of writing my name and CC number on a piece of paper and walking up the stairs to the 3rd floor. I still could open my room with the keycard (battery-operated?) but inside it was dead silent - no usual ventilation hum. There was no WiFi either.  They fixed the power in the evening, but many systems still did not work. Elevators required a service company next day to get started. WiFi was on but the captive portal did not work until next morning. This whole situati...

Last week, with 184 visa-free countries, Polish passport has moved up to #5 rank globally. Interestingly there are 3 other post-communist European eastern block countries at #5. Actually positions 3-8 are all occupied by European countries. #1 is Singapore an #2 Japan and Korea. This is just one illustration of the transformation the former Soviet-block countries have gone through. But also Europe as such, despite much criticism about bureaucracy, poor state-driven economy, lack of entrepreneurial spirit and general over-regulation, to quote Fareed Zakaria, Europe has done something very extraordinary, even as it has declined in terms of raw power. Europe has shown that past a certain level of economic wealth, what matters is not just sheer economic wealth. What matters is quality of life, what matters is certain level of equality, and things like that Europeans have. For most of history, general quality of life was closely correlated with wealth. The richer you were, the better. A...

July was not travel-heavy. A week in Trondheim, Norway (a great place to be in Summer) and then the rest of the month at home / Krakow. Ah if you don't count a weekend trip to Spa, Belgium for the F1 GP race. But it was busy preparing for the intense 2nd half of the year. It starts just now, with the Korea Build in Seoul this week followed by the IES26 in Denver, CO, so another RTW trip. And three presentations to deliver over the next two weeks - the keynote in Seoul, the Bluetooth NLC roadmap in Denver and a joint webinar with US DoE / PNNL / IES on lighting systems integrations. Three different venues and events, three different topics, so plenty of preparatory work on my end. Add to that the Embedded World America (that is in September) and my days were busy compiling PowerPoint slides. I like doing that, but always the tedious part were illustrations. Text-only slides are boring. Visuals help. But when doing them on my own the results were not that great. And working with a gr...

Sustainability discussions have become mainstream now. And the theme is very broad, touching essentially every aspect of our lives. Cars have however always occupied the center stage, especially now as electric vehicles (EVs) take over traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) based - mostly in China and Europe. Feeling a bit guilty here - as an owner of a 20+ years old Subaru Forester, I did some math (seeking some absolution). I don't drive much with this car though, maybe a bit over 5000km per year, so the initial feeling was that my contribution to the global carbon footprint would not be super high. For comparison I took the additional footprint of flying intercontinental in business class vs economy (more floor space, heavier seat etc., and all those bottles of champagne on board) and the global reduction impact of the lighting control software my company makes. So here is my math: The car: 5000km is about 600 liters of fuel. Burning 1 liter produces roughly 2.3kg of CO2. ...

I feel I am more fortunate than an average person to find issues and bugs in IT systems. Basically whatever I touch, there are problems. Some fairly benign like the United Airlines app losing all my flights (the flights could be accessed through a desktop browser via booking codes stored in email confirmations). And some looking more serious. On the lost flights the comment I got from one of my colleagues was "what do you expect - it is AI vibe coding". Fair enough. Release cycles spinning faster (that is what everybody wants: faster, faster, faster, right?). AI tools enabling this spin acceleration, but then the automated CI / test systems not coping with the changes. Code review also done by AI. And the result is the code spinning (pun intended) out of control of protein / carbon - based engineers. Apps get released, more features faster, KPIs improved. Users find bugs, but have no one to report them to, other than AI-based automated support systems. The bugs get eventually...

As a follow up to the last week's story about car dashboards - an addendum from my rental experience. It was a 2-day trip to Germany. My company has a rental agreement with SIXT, with some preferential rebates and integrated invoicing, so I went there without thinking too much. I liked SIXT in the past for their quite seamless "skip the line" online check-in (scan the driver's license and an ID, get a code to open a lockbox with the car keys). And it went OK like that this time too. But there were several things that were not OK.  During the booking process I got a number of really silly-looking options. Like "get Bluetooth for 5 EUR/day". And then "get Apple CarPlay" for additional 5 EUR/day. CarPlay requires Bluetooth so technically selecting it should select the Bluetooth option too... "Get parking sensors for 5 EUR/day".... the list was long. SIXT are you serious? There is no way to enable / disable these options remotely (or maybe th...

Cars peaked around 2005. This is the model year of my Subaru Forester STI (SG9). The best and coolest car ever made. 350 hp,  1500 kg (3300 lbs), frameless side windows, ultimate performance (including offroad), driver-focused interior, sub-5s 0-100km/h acceleration, unbelievable handling. The dashboard is driver-focused too with clean instruments panel featuring central tachometer and all distractors moved away. The other controls are just three well know knobs for ventilation (fan direction, fan speed, temperature). Then I have a 2-din aftermarket radio unit with capacitive touch and wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay . It also has tons of other functions including a CD/DVD player but I don't use them. Android Auto / Apple CarPlay is all that is needed these days. OK maybe an FM receiver for some old schoolers. As I travel a lot, I drive many rental cars too. The problem they all indicate is the car industry got drunk with semi/automated driver assistance subsystems and comp...