Headworx

It has been almost 4 years that I've been a faithful user of the Garmin fēnix watch. The model I have now is the D2 Delta PX and I must say I really really like it. It has great aviation features and includes topographic maps for North America. It also has memory big enough to upload other topographic maps. Such as Tenerife , where I'm going to hike the volcano next month. Or any other map. Global offline topo maps are phenomenal, when you consider you can have them in a watch. One annoying detail about the Garmin watch is the charging cable. There is no Type-C version of it. No genuine and not even a Chinese one on AliExpress. My patience has ended this week and I decided to build my own. Which actually turned out to be a fairly easy wire-cutting and soldering exercise. To start with I took the Amazon Basics Type-C to micro-B USB cable (it has all the necessary circuits to ensure the micro-B side is getting proper 5V voltage) and an aftermarket Garmin - compatible char...

It happens to me quite often that I am assigned an emergency exit row seat on a plane. Airlines probably have preference to seat frequent flyers there, as (logically) they probability of them acting properly in an emergency is higher. Frequent flyers are more accustomed to handling different flight situations. It is interesting though how the onboarding procedure for emergency exit passengers differs among airlines. Some time ago I had a discussion on that with a Lufthansa fight attendant. She was instructing me to open the exit only when I receive the "passenger evacuation" message FROM HER. One question I had was what if she is not able to give such command (this can be easily imagined in an emergency situation). She was indignant: "this will never happen". I was not convinced however... The other more relevant question was about authentication: how do I know IT IS YOU? What if somebody else shouts "passenger evacuation" (this can be easily envisio...

I've been a great fan of the USB standard since the very beginning. Most of the readers have probably never experienced the era before - ruled by DB-9, DB-25 and Centronics connectors. Big, bulky plugs and sockets plus separate power cables. USB through the universal data transfer and integrated power supply has solved most of mouse / keyboard / printer connection issues. That was of course hugely helped by great support for USB in Windows ( promotion of USB actually started with the famous BSOD with Bill Gates on stage ). The next frontier is to eliminate all other connectors (except probably for the Ethernet's RJ-45). And Type-C is great in making that happen. It is small. Fits in every device type. It is reversible. So you can plug it either way and it works. It provides up to 100W of power (that one I just was not sure about from the reliability standpoint - I was expecting cables overheating and wearing out, but nothing like that happened over almost two years of...

Regional content restrictions are definitely the Internet's #1 fail of the decade. While we have been able to break free from the bounds of local radio / TV stations' radio range, the Internet is far from global. This has been increasingly frustrating, as content is not only restricted by a platform. Being forced to subscribe to Netflix or HBO or YouTube just to watch this or that limits my willingness to spend money on content at all. Wired has just published a great list of documentaries and all of them look like I wanted to watch them. And it turns out I am not able to do this legally. Even if I wanted to pay money. Cheating or stealing is probably the only way. Setting up a VPN account to bypass the geographical restrictions or simply find the file to download on an illegal download network. YouTube or iTunes or Spotify have been able to mostly solve that issue for music. Video remains highly problematic. I wonder how many years of consumers' market pressure it ...