Headworx

One thing the pandemic proved wrong has been the lockdowns would lead to a collapse of the global economy. Many are scratching their heads trying to figure out what is going on and why both stock markets and consumer confidence are high. Is it just a temporary effect of governments printing money? Or is it more permanent? And if permanent, why have we realized so late? Or perhaps this is only possible now? Time will tell if we are still facing a crisis or not, but one thing the pandemic has proven right is we are extremely efficient. We have the Internet which keeps us connected even when we cannot meet. We have automated and semi-automated manufacturing lines spinning all sorts of magic. We have automated harvesters taking care of crops. Energy is becoming more and more abundant and should be completely free within the next 20-30 years, especially when nuclear fusion is mastered at a commercial scale. The development of the COVID vaccine itself is a huge feat. As first groups are gett

It seems organizing the first level of support is one of the most tricky parts of any business. Big or small. There are conflicting goals for Level 1: withstand the wave of support incidents and pass through as few as possible to higher levels or product / engineering teams, while still keeping the suffering customers happy. Level 1 I typically consider a test for my patience. as almost never they are able to provide any useful solution. They offer suggestions like "remove the batteries" or "keep the reset button pressed for 30 seconds" or "here is the link to the manual". I wonder if this is useful to anyone these days, as resetting devices and searching the internet for answers is probably what people are doing anyway before even trying to contact dedicated product support. Passing Level 1 requires a lot of patience. It is like the Snakes and Ladders game. You try moving up and they want to keep you down. I found they often do not read what you wrote the

There is the common wisdom the private sector is way more efficient when managing investments. This may be true when it comes to low risk projects. But whenever a high risk project is considered, the private sector typically stays as far out as possible. And I do mean very risky projects, or projects which do not have return on investment quantified at all. Examples? Columbus sailing to America. Or Magellan circumventing the globe. It s right the oceans were ruled by Dutch and British merchants, but that was only AFTER sailing routes had been established and it became a regular business to build ships and start trading with far away nations. Landing man on the Moon. Or even the International Space Station. True, there is SpaceX now, but firstly it is an exception and secondly there is a regular business to launch payloads to the orbit. The particle accelerator at CERN. Or the tokamaks. All are state funded. Is nuclear fusion not promising? It is, but the payback horizon is just too far

I'm fond of technology items that work forever . Of course forever is a bold claim and it is probably impossible to design anything to run forever. But today's world is full of single-use crap or e-services brought to the end of life, resulting in gigantic, environment-harming waste. I suppose in this world, anything that runs fine after 10 years since being manufactured qualifies as "almost forever". Look around: how many (technology) things around you are 10+ and still doing fine? How many are 20+? As a hobby I collect vintage transistor radios. The very old ones, like early 1960's Sony still work today. My favorite, which I listen to for several hours a day is the "James Bond's" 2FA-24W . It is probably around 55 years old. And works great, never serviced (on a USB-rechargeable 16340 RCR123 3,7 V cell). Interestingly much newer models such as the ICF-PRO70 (20 years younger) needed a full surgery to replace all electrolytic capacitors with new o