Headworx

Europe - in general - does a good job in taming the entrepreneurial gallop to satisfy consumers' desires. I remember the times when every mobile phone had a replaceable battery. It was practical to the extent that the battery could be removed as a last problem solving resort. But then came the iPhone and in the race for ever thinner and cooler looking devices the battery eventually got sealed inside a case which cannot be opened (even by most service shops, including the official Apple). To have the battery replaced the entire device must be sent to the factory. Apple actually has mastered the replacement program and basically you can have a device swapped for another one with a new battery. And yes, the new device you get is a different device. Which means all the hassles of migrating data . Wouldn't it be great if we could just swap the old battery with a new one? So the EU has come now with a set of new regulations mandating replaceable batteries in all kinds of electronic ...

I wrote on noise pollution before: https://headworx.slupik.com/2021/07/noise-pollution.html . The situation has not gone materially better since then. In particular, as travel has resumed after COVID, I've noticed North America is generally more noisy compared to Europe. Remember touching down a couple of weeks ago in Washington DC and despite very mild outside temperature (it was mis-May), the bus to the rental car center had rumbling air conditioning running at full power. Truck and bus engines in America also seem to be noisier. Wonder if the EU is just voluntarily more sensitive to the noise problem or are there any stricter regulations behind? And do we really prefer super-stabilized cold temperatures over a  quiet environment? Not to mention all these AC units are responsible for very significant energy consumption nationwide . Another annoying source of noise are the little combustion engines in lawn mowers and similar gardening equipment. Surprisingly they are also res...

It seems the security aspects of wireless networking finally start becoming important to the market. I have had multiple discussions with multiple customers about that recently.  And honestly - it has been very bad almost everywhere. Everywhere except the official Bluetooth mesh, where the security architecture is at another level. There is a good overview published by Bluetooth SIG back in 2017, and for those who are willing to dive deeper, there are the specifications - both adopted and the upcoming drafts. But without diving into the details, there is one fundamental question any customer concerned about the security of a wireless system should ask: show me the blueprint, show me how you have architected that and how it works. Vendors can claim anything, but the claims practically cannot be verified. So if they claim their security is good, they should not have any issue providing openly the architecture of their system. Any excuse to do that should be a warning, or even a red...

All the attention of the tech world is now on AI. In the meantime Web3 has bitten the dust. Clearly all that great distributed / decentralized internet concepts based on blockchain did not deliver. At least I am not aware of any widespread product / service based on blockchain. The idea was great. But somehow the technology was flawed or not feasible to implement. Or not providing enough value to the markets, except for speculations and illicit transactions .  The nature of our times is we tend to create problems which did not exist to solve them with new inventions. Sounds almost like a race to the bottom. AI too, so far, other than the excitement and fear has not yet proven clearly positive. People say it would revolutionize jobs. Maybe. My first thought was the first profession to be replaced by AI would be lawyers. But it turned out lawyers are smart and they have been among the first using AI tools. And drowned in this AI swamp . Kids started using AI to write homework, teac...