Headworx

This is probably nothing new, but a reminder a device may fail at any time. Especially an electronic / software driven device. It may be dropped. Or coffee may be spilled on it.  Or it may just fail with no apparent reason. This is what happened two weeks ago to my Palm Phone . It rebooted. Once. Then after a couple of minutes again. And again. And after about an hour it ended up rebooting itself continuously in a loop. At some point I thought I just might try doing a factory reset on it. But I could not - as it kept rebooting.  Until it finally stopped with the bootloader message as on the attached photo. With factory reset being the only option available. It started working fine after the factory reset. Which may seem like a minor issue. Unless you do not have Internet access. For example the device is used as a navigation device with locally stored maps. And the nearest Internet is several days away. Then you end up with a seemingly working but totally useless piece of an e...

Through ChatGPT , OpenAI has captured the world's attention. By no means, as far as technology is concerned, this is a great development. But I wonder what will be the format of the value OpenAI ultimately delivers. As for the chat itself, apart from being, cute/cool/interesting/fascinating, at this point I would argue the value is negative. It is a language model, able to produce very eloquent sentences. Give it a number of keywords and it will wrap them into paragraphs of elegant text. Hardly distinguishable from text written by a human. Maybe in a way that there are no error in the generated text. While humans make errors. Of course if the goal is to make it indistinguishable from humans, it will be taught to make language errors, to look even more human-like. But as cute as it is, there is really a question who can use it and for what purpose. The Internet is a total jungle today. Full of creatures masquerading as something else and it is really difficult to figure out who is ...

I did not name the gear of the year 2022 this time. But thinking of what devices I have been using most often (except for the obvious essentials like a computer and a phone), these were the Palm Phone and the iPad . iPad does not seem that exciting in 2023, but the truth is I find myself using it increasingly more each day and to complete more things. It still falls short from being a content creation device. It would be difficult to write even a blog like this on the iPad. Of course it shines in content consumption. But recently I realized I keep using it more and more for conceptual creations. iPad (and iOS in general) is very strong in using images (photos / screenshots) across the board. It is much quicker to take a screenshot and crop / save / share it, compared to Android. And it has been a blast after Apple added the subject lifting feature . Subject lifting was great from the start, but the issue was where to put all those lifted subjects. So here comes Freeform - the latest ...

So it seems Tesla has permanently lost the "darling" status. The once super-valuable brand has been damaged. There are many discussions about the company fundamentals. Whether it is a c ar or a software company. And how much of an advantage the gigapress process offers and how relevant the supercharger network is. In my personal view all these discussions, while important, are secondary.  Tesla had never been superior on all fronts. But it had a huge fanbase. Owning a Tesla was considered a smart move. The Tesla crowd felt smart and superior. It is all gone now. Worse - the impact has actually reversed. The status contribution is negative. The brand value has been ruined and it will be super difficult to rebuild it. If possible at all. Information portals like Bloomberg are publishing guides for Tesla alternatives . Parking lots and car dealerships are crowded with used Tesla cars, which people are getting rid of or trading in when buying other brands. This used car situation...

The end of the year always brings an opportunity to make a retrospective. And while 2022 was absolutely great for me, this cannot be universally generalized, as there have been big overhanging shadows, the terrorist Russian invasion on Ukraine being the most overwhelming. Speaking of this war, it will have some positive long term effects though - the growing awareness of dependence on energy and reversing the globalization trends, to support / revitalize local communities. It is just tragic so many innocent people must die. Back to my personal context, I have reached the goal of walking 10 thousand kilometers (over the last three years). This is both big and small, as many do multiple of that. But to put things into perspective: I walked more than I drove my car over that 3 year period. Walking as a daily exercise has become a habit which undoubtedly has good effects. And no, it is not that easy. Motivation fluctuates a lot, but when it falls, discipline takes over. Daily walks were fa...