Headworx

In the "everything's possible" era we live in, there are indeed very few surprises, particularly when it comes to technology. With abundant AI, self driving cars, gigabit internet available everywhere, we are about to colonize Mars while James Webb keeps sending us postcards of black holes and galaxies formed at the very beginning of time. The lost Malaysian MH370 aircraft - it was 10 years ago - is probably one of those things which have been impossible. The worlds largest twin engine aircraft just disappeared and we have not been able to find it. Now the jaw-dropping surprise is it actually left a trace, which had not been analyzed until last year. The trace is WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter . WSPR is a protocol designed to probe global propagation paths with low power transmissions, designed by Joe Taylor, an American astrophysicist and Nobel Prize laureate in Physics. WSPR would probably stay ultra niche, but in May 2021, Richard Godfrey, an aerospace engine...

Back in February I had a blast experience hiking (tramping they call it) in fairly remote parts of the New Zealand's southern island - the West Coast and Fiordland. Packing about 10-day's worth of food on my back let me enjoy the freedom of being entirely on my own for a long time.  There have been several experiences related to what technologies / technology products do or don't work on such a trip. And interestingly - the off grid context turns the classic pyramid of needs upside down. Paper topographic maps and old school candles trump the technology achievements of the modern era. But still there are some developments worth noting. This was my first hiking trip without a dedicated camera - I only took an iPhone and was super happy with that decision. West coast hikes go through quite challenging terrain - a lot of bush bashing, very steep ascends / descends, jumping on boulders along riverbeds. Carrying as little as possible with you significantly decreases the effort a...

Offline has always been a tricky. But many apps claim to support offline mode and some are even created with the sole purpose to offer offline experience. But the truth is with offline... your mileage may vary... YouTube (premium) usually works except sometimes to start a downloaded clip it wants to check something online. Same with Spotify. Has the download feature but sometimes refuses to play downloaded content. Then there is Pocket. Created with the goal to deliver offline reading. I have been using Pocket (paid) for many years and it is super picky. Some "pocketed" web pages it renders properly but majority it does not. On the surface pocketing web pages for offline reading does not seem like a rocket science. Yes the page must be rendered first, but hey, rendering a page is one of the most executed task on any computing platform. Regardless of how much server code is involved and regardless of how much client-side scripts there are, in the end there is a human-readable ...

One of the most common complaint on WiFi is the range is often not sufficient. You have this door bell / camera by the property gate which does not connect or a thermostat in the basement. WiFi mesh systems help solving some of these problems (while introducing others), but in some situations you simply need more per-hop range. In commercial / industrial environments, such as served by Bluetooth mesh / Bluetooth NLC networks this is rarely an issue (Bluetooth can reach really far if properly configured), home users would clearly benefit from something like long range WiFi. If it existed. And actually it does exist. The standard is called 802.11ah (or HaLow) and is a long range WiFi standard, operating in the sub-GHz frequency band. Lower frequency comes will much lower throughput, but it has the benefit of lower attenuation. In short - it passes through more walls or goes longer distance. As this is a different radio frequency, none of your laptops of smartphones are able to connect to...

So iPhone 15 was meant to solve all charging compatibility problems for good. With the long awaited switch to USB-C the promise of a universal charging standard and a single cable to rule them all finally arrived. Except when it just does not work. I've been a huge fan of USB-C (the connector) and all the related standards - from the legacy 480Mbps data transfer to 5/10Gbps USB 3/3.1 to 20Gpbps (and sometimes even 40Gbps) Thunderbolt. And of course USB Power Delivery (USB-PD), which is independent from the data transfer schemes. Of course, as any new standard, USB-C suffered from bad implementations, the most common mistake has been vendors failing to include 5.1kΩ resistors to properly trigger compliant chargers. But then on my recent vacations trip I was surprised a simple A-to-C cable would not charge the iPhone. The cable seemed to be just fine. Actually it was the cable which came with one of my Logitech accessories (the Bluetooth keyboard) and I picked it to take with me bec...