Subtle wording choices in justice In the UK it’s Jury Service. In the US it’s Jury Duty. In the UK it’s the Police Service. In the US it’s the Police Force. Words carry meaning. An EV – an easy choice? We just traded in our petrol / gas car for an electric car. What it feels like we did is actually this: We traded in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the Jetsons. There is a learning curve, not only to…
This site uses the Holocene calendar which was proposed in 1993 CE as a way to better visualize our context within humanity’s story. In fact, in that last sentence, the year should have read 11993 HE. Jesus of Nazareth was born around 10000 HE, and everything earlier than that is no longer recorded in the “BC” or “BCE” format which has weird negative numbers. Simply, every year on this site, at least from now on, will attempt to use the…
People are, rightly, concerned about how generative AI might affect their jobs, careers, and incomes in the future. Progress has never been successfully stymied in the interests of protecting people’s now-outdated jobs. We don’t send people down into mines with pick-axes, and we don’t hand weave the clothes that most of us own. We, as society, have to ask hard questions about what the meaning of life is, and whether economies are the right tool to keep people busy when…
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’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…
This post and the last are weirdly timed. Last week, I wrote about how Google make terrible business decisions that harm their long-term success. I said, interestingly, that since around 2011, Google has failed to make any new business models work. And this week, the US Department of Justice trial against Google started in earnest. The Verge has a great podcast episode about it, describing some of the arguments that are being made on each side. Although their description of…
Google is one of the wealthiest, companies in the world. I don’t want to imply, in the rest of this article, that Google is ‘unsuccessful’, but there are some things that I think are worth saying and which, from an outsider’s perspective, make no sense at all. The Google of old The original Google had a compelling product: the best search engine ever designed. The search engine has been improved over the years and, ultimately, that is still its core…