Headworx

The Boosted Rev scooter is probably going to be on top of my list of 2019 gadgets. Yes of course it is a gadget. Despite the truth that it helps preserving the environment (I use this 1.5kW electric vehicle now to drive to work instead of my 250kW fossil fuel Subaru) and decreases my contribution to traffic jams that plague the city, first and foremost it is a fun toy. It is by far the best engineered scooter I've had an opportunity to drive. Limes, Birds, Jumps.... even the extremely successful Xiaomi, are all a far cry from this one. I'm not sure which feature I like the most, but probably the overall handling is what differentiates it from the crowd. And it also looks great. Despite its weight and power, it is extremely easy to ride. It has a wide platform that sits low (this is not a cross-country scooter) that contributes to the overall stability. It has wide inflatable wheels that, despite of the lack of a full suspension, deliver very smooth riding experience. And...

The discussion about pros and cons of running IP protocols to the end nodes in capillary mesh networks is as hot as ever. And as ever there are two camps: the IP camp absolutely wants to do it pointing the benefits and the no-IP camp that says "do it when needed, but not as the default option". Speaking of benefits - there is effectively just one: no application gateway, or in other words, no translation of the application layer when bridging a low power capillary mesh to a LAN network or the Internet. If an end node on a low power mesh network runs IP protocol, the application may use it and the gateway that connects this low power network to a backbone will just be a simplified bridge (or, more precisely, a border router). On the other hand when the end node does not run IP, but some other transport protocol, the gateway connecting to the backbone must understand that protocol and do some sort of translation. So the gateway becomes more complex. The reason for not r...

Living in a 4G-covered world blurs completely the notion of local ("I have it on my device") versus cloud ("I can access it with my device") origin of data. 5G (low latency) and Starlink (outreach) will contribute to that blur even more. So most people just don't care. But there are situations (some more and some less severe) when local matters. I seem to be one of the few who really care. Perhaps frequent travel is the reason why. Starting with those "less severe" situations, we typically have commercial flights and roaming. Many airlines offer "online" experience today, some with decent speeds, some completely terrible. Some even add most confusing business models on top - I remember flying Swiss from ZRH to LAX (en route to Las Vegas) when I realized I should look for Cirque du Soleil tickets in advance and had hard time figuring out how many kB of data I should purchase from the airline to safely book that ticket.... Still, for p...

I have recently stumbled upon goTenna . It is a great concept for off-grid peer-to-peer communications, but as other similar inventions, will likely die in its current form. The way goTenna works is there are goTenna Mesh "dongles" that pair with phones over Bluetooth LE and the dongles talk to each other forming a mesh network using proprietary sub-GHz radios. That allows groups maintain communication among the members, as long as there is a "path" between any two, meaning the single-hop distance is not more than a mile or so. The problem with this approach is that you need a physical goTenna device. I imaging only few people on the planet have them. What if every phone had that built-in already? This was the dilemma I was facing back in 2012-2013 when looking for a next generation mesh networking technology. I knew phone integration was a must. So how likely was it to convince the mobile phone vendors to include yet another radio? Chances were close to zer...

I've been naive. Naive thinking people would stop continue doing stupid things. Especially when in comes to security. Wrong. They would not. My home internet runs on mobile technology - LTE. After knocking on many wired Internet providers' doors, we gave up and brought an LTE router. The upgrade was instant, from 2Mbps DSL line to ~35Mbps LTE. That has been working fine, but looking for improvements (mainly in the stability of signal strength) I decided to experiment upgrading the setup. There is the interesting Huawei B2368-66 device that has the entire LTE radio (including a SIM card) in an outdoor package that connects over a PoE-enabled CAT-5 cable. It looks professional and works as intended. Only when setting it up I realized I was given the "user" password, which the device prompted me to change (good practice - of course!), while I anticipated there was also an "admin" password. After contacting the carrier, they told me they would not give the...