Headworx

Fingerprint readers have become one of the most silently widespread technology. Technology that just works, is almost invisible to ordinary users, is extremely convenient. It also marries fire and ice, by making security really secure and extremely easy to use at the same time. The old school says security does not go in line with ease of use. Fingerprint readers defy that logic. iPhones are now almost legendary secure, leaving with even FBI helpless when trying to access locked devices. Mobile phones and other devices we routinely carry with us hold lots of information that should be carefully protected. Banking accounts, brokerage accounts, corporate email, smarthome access applications, cloud files. Not long ago they were all protected using passwords and we were forced to enter passwords on many occasions. Fast forward to 2018. I (almost) never use a password or a pincode to unlock my phone. I (almost) never use a password to access my bank via a mobile banking app. I (almost...

Recently I have had some great trekking opportunities, all of them taking advantage of being in (or close to) a particular location. These were The Subway ( Zion NP, Utah ), Toubkal Massif ( High Atlas, Morocco ) and the West Coast Trail ( Vancouver Island, Canada ). While the Subway and the West Coast Trail are officially considered "for experienced backpackers only", this consideration is a typical western - world - style exaggeration. It is not possible to get lost there. High Atlas is a different story. Precise topo maps do not exist and while there are many trails you may try to follow, some of them may lead to impassable (in Spring) high mountain passes and some are faint enough to lose when weather conditions deteriorate. Locals are even reportedly messing up with the markings, so the trekkers feeling insecure are more willing to hire a guide (I do not believe this though, nor found any signs of that being a true story). But still, considering the altitude, there i...

Life was easy in the analog era. Enter the digital and it all "is complicated" (as Facebook would say). The relationships have become maybe not complicated, but at least complex. This is a subtle difference. Complicated is rather bad, complex does not have to be (if the complexity is nicely hidden). A jet engine is complex, but hey, we all love them. So how about the relationship of a switch and a luminaire? It used to be very straightforward - connected by a single copper cable. It is way more complex in the realm of digital systems: in a commercial building luminaires belong to to a facility manager, while switches belong to tenants. Luminaires are controlled by systems programmed with control scenarios. They have sensors and they "know" when to turn on or off. A switch is not required. But still is handy and may be used: to adjust the light level, to select a scene, to turn the lights off or turn them on at full brightness when cleaning. And while facilit...

Silicon Labs posted a long expected performance analysis of low power mesh network s: ZigBee, Thread and Bluetooth mesh. There is a lot of information that can be found in the report, that BTW looks very professional. But as it is always the case, it should be taken with a grain of salt. So firstly, I do not question their results. I have seen the test network they have and the setup is impressive. But what has to be made clear, the presented results are reflecting their implementations of mesh and there may be other implementations that deliver different results. So while reading statements like " Mesh network performance including throughput, latency, and large network scalability is presented. "you should be aware this really means " Performance of SiLabs implementation of Mesh networks, including throughput, latency, and large network scalability is presented ". This first published report brings very interesting insights but what would be interesting to see...