Headworx

In today's connected world all there are two roots of trust: A device or a service you want to trust is from a highly valued brand or It is completely open and has been audited by a broad community Trust is extremely difficult to establish. It takes years and must be one of the top priorities for a brand owner. It is also very easy to lose. And yes, you have to trust somebody. If you don't then probably the only option is to verify everything yourself,  which, given how complex things are, is simply impossible. At the same time, most people when buying a product or signing up for a service rarely think in terms of trust. "I bought this cool WiFi - connected light bulb" and you screw it in, not even thinking it may "phone home" and store your WiFi credentials in the open text. Or you grab a utility software application from a website and install it on your computer not even bothering to check the file signature (if provided and can be trusted...). Malware and...

I have started several hobby / learning experiments with HDMI. I never had sufficient practical knowledge of the standard and my curiosity angle has been security / copy protection. I could never imagined an offline system capable of securing digital content. In the end this content must be terminated somewhere (the TV display panel) in an unencrypted form and then could be reassembled again with any encryption removed. Extending this logic, you could  envision a pass-through digital device which emulates the display panel, presenting itself as a secure rendering device to the content source and then relaying the digital stream further out. I started my experiments by finding a flexible platform capable of accepting HDMI input. It turns out the Realtek RTD1295 SoC is the important part. And the Zidoo Z9S TV box is probably the lowest cost implementation offering HDMI In feature: " Unique HDMI IN 2.0 port, and able to achieve PIP and support recording function ". I found one...

It happens. I broke the screen on my phone once. And now I broke it on my iPad. The device was working, but was ugly and deteriorating, as the tiny pieces of glass kept falling off. Initially I tried to have the screen replaced by a local independent phone repair shop, but they failed to secure the replacement part. Ultimately I decided to go with the Apple authorized service. "The screen on iPad is not a serviceable component. The policy is to replace the whole device." I was told. Fair enough. "Do you migrate the data from the old to the new device?". "This is an extra paid service.". I decided not to have the data migrated, as seemingly the iCloud backup (I subscribe to) should do the job. When setting up a new iPad there is an option to set up restoring an iCloud backup. Unfortunately the restore option does not work. I mean it works half way... falling short in the end. It restores the apps and the home screen layout. But for most of the apps it does ...

The problem with electric energy is not that it is scarce or expensive. The problem is it is very difficult to store. Batteries are super expensive and their capacity is low. Also the distribution network capacity is limited. This all means dynamic management of the demand is really the key. At the same time it is extremely surprising how slow the rollout of dynamic demand management has been. Especially considering the [potential] efficiency gains and the fact all technologies needed have been around for many years now. Definitely we need communication standards for that to happen - every water boiler, every washing machine should be able to respond to supply side signals. As a matter of fact, every appliance which can consume its energy "later" (when demand should be decreased) or "now" (when demand should be increased) should be able to understand and respond to the energy provider's indications. Open ADR has made some inroads in some geographies - mostly in...

Following slightly on the topic of the shape of the global economy , I think the pandemic of 2020 was exactly when the world swallowed a blue pill. It clearly seems the reality could have been as bad as the great depression, while we have gone through [the pandemic] entirely victorious and only with minor scratches. The red pill reality does not matter anymore. The blue pill virtual reality is what we should now worry about. A deadly real virus has just a very minor impact (despite being spread globally), while a similarly spread computer virus may ruin economies and crash the world. With our global dependency on just a few critical pieces of the virtual infrastructure, we are extremely fragile. And it is hard to imagine the impact of some of these critical elements falling apart in an instant. And we are completely unprepared for such an event. Take cryptography as an example. Digital certificates in particular. They govern everything we do in the digital world. Communications, financ...