On the heels of a devastating election, where not only did the electoral college elect Donald Trump, but he also earned the popular vote, I am inclined to write about anything else! And as I sit here, sipping my coffee before work, I am thinking about my smart home. From May 2010 until October 2022, I was an Android user, exclusively. During that time I owned phones from HTC, Samsung, Google Nexus, Motorola, OnePlus, and Google Pixel (I made a…
Despite my last post, Joyce Craig is now the best candidate for Governor of New Hampshire. Joyce Craig understands the priorities of New Hampshire-ites, including the ones around limiting access to healthcare, the housing crisis, cannabis, and public transit. Kelly Ayote, the Republican candidate, would retain the current law that restricts doctors from providing medically necessary treatment for pregnant women, believes in an imaginary crisis at the northern border with Canada, and wishes to plunge public services, including Medicare, Medicaid,…
Edit September 11th, 2024: The Primary is over. See my endorsement of Joyce Craig. On Tuesday September 10th 2024, New Hampshire goes to the polls for the primary elections. In the governor race for the Republicans are two extremists who would harm individual freedoms for women, LGBTQ+ people, children in need of education (so, all of them), and other minorities not yet identified by them. Both support the former president who has admitted to abusing very young women, has been…
This is an oversimplified explanation of how heat pumps work. First, what is a heat pump? A heat pump literally pumps heat from one place to another. You may open your fridge and witness that it’s colder inside than out, but in terms of physics, it’s actually lacking heat. The way that happens, is that the heat inside is pumped outside. When your older fridge hums or makes a motor noise, that’s the motor in the compressor making your room…
Apple’s iPhones are more than powerful enough to play Xbox GamePass with ease, not least because all that’s really required is a good internet connection. What many people don’t know, is that Xbox, Switch, old Stadia, and PlayStation controllers all work on iPhone. You can connect them with a USB-C cable, or a USB-C to lightning cable (if your phone is older than the iPhone 15), or you can link them using bluetooth. The following bullet points show you how…
Microsoft recently announced its Copilot+ PCs and, at the same time, announced new ARM-based Surface computers. Intel and AMD were pointedly part of the presentation, but the talk about ARM processors, the battery-life improvements, comparisons with Apple’s M processors, and, importantly, the capability to run Intel-based applications (also known as x86) in a competent emulator leave a massive unanswered question hanging. If Microsoft can achieve this transfer from Intel-based processors to ARM based processors, what market is left for Intel?…
I’ve written before about how I recently became an Apple devotee. I was previously an Android-and-Windows all the way kind of person. In my pension, I own shares in Microsoft because I believe their system is ‘better’ in some intangible way – selling software and letting others innovate in the hardware space. Apple is a different proposition, and one that should attract games and gamers, if the iPhone and consoles were a guide. Games are missing, leading me to wonder where…
I recently was involved in a conversation which criticized the way something was done. I didn’t start the conversation, but when I enthusiastically joined in, I was asked, directly, why I had sought US citizenship if I don’t think the US is great. And, if I am honest, that hurt. Nowhere is perfect. I could write a list about every country or community that I know much about, of things that that community gets wrong, in my opinion. And sometimes,…
I’ve said before that Siri understands me better than Google Assistant. Google Assistant will often say it doesn’t understand the name of devices in my house, or will add “pingle” to the shopping list, whatever that is. When I got my iPhone 15 with an action button, I made Bing listen for a question when I pressed it. This works well for me because, like Siri, Bing understands me better than Google Assistant. But, more important than that, it can…
The new Action Button on iPhone 15 replaces the hard mute switch which has existed since the original iPhone as a way to mute calls. It comes set by default to behave like the old mute switch, but it’s easy to re-program it to do almost anything. But when I went to use the Shortcuts app to make the button open Bing to complete a voice search, I struggled at first with how to make it do something within the…