Posts - Page 1

  • Why EVs Are Polarizing

    Feb 3rd, 2024 - Category: Change

    We have all noticed how electric vehicles (EVs) have rapidly moved from a niche market to the forefront of global transportation discussions. Unfortunately this transition isn’t just a technological evolution; it’s deeply intertwined with political dynamics. I recently came across this video from the popular “State of Charge” YouTube channel and the bottom line seems to be that “social acceptance cuts both ways.

  • Leadership Matters

    Jan 17th, 2023 - Category: Change

    A company simply called Arm might be the smallest, least known company with the largest influence on microprocessors ever. It began with humble beginnings 35 years ago creating a CPU for their own computer. Since then it has ridden out storm after storm in the turbulent semiconductor industry to eventually compete with Intel and be at the core of some of the most popular devices in history. The entire story is told in an incredibly interesting and detailed three part article in ArsTechnica (1, 2, 3). Part 1 starts with a very readable primer on CPUs focusing on Arm’s breakthrough idea of RISC - Reduced Instruction Set Computing (as opposed to Intel’s CISC - Complex Instruction Set Computing). Part 2 details their rise to fame in the exploding mobile device market of the early 2000s. And Part 3 brings the story to modern times explaining breakthroughs such as the fact that the processor in the original iPod, based on Arm’s designs, eventually led to modern CPUs that have surpassed the power of Intel’s best offerings while using only a fraction of the electricity. Now almost all of Apple’s desktops, laptops, phones, and tablets are using this same underlying technology for their microprocessors and it all started with Arm.

  • NFTs, Ethereum, Etc... and Lots of Cats

    Mar 29th, 2021 - Category: Change

    As you all know, I enjoy keeping up with technological innovation, but I also love art, and luckily I’ve learned a little bit about Bitcoin (see my articles “A Tiny Bit of Bitcoin” and “Mining Bitcoin with a Pencil and Paper”). This is fortunate because earlier this month I came across The Verge article “NFTs, explained” that contained a large number of unfamiliar concepts and I remember thinking, “These are my areas of interest and expertise, how could I have missed this?!”

  • It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

    Oct 30th, 2020 - Category: Change

    This famous quote should be familiar to anyone who played early computer games. It comes from one of the most famous classics from the 1980s, Zork. While Wikipedia has a good description of its history, I found this article from MentalFloss captured the spirit of the game much better. It’s hard to believe that a game without any graphics could have had such a major impact, but it did. So much so that I remember my first moments playing it on a mainframe in an office building in downtown Los Angeles. I had been hired by a friend’s parent to help with a data entry job and before we started she said, “I’ve got a quick errand to do, you might find this game interesting” and with those words she introduced my friend and me to the incredible world of Zork.

  • Microsoft Flight Simulator Through the Decades

    Sep 27th, 2020 - Category: Change

    The most recent version of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator was just released and highlights how much computing has evolved over the decades. Interestingly, Microsoft didn’t develop the first version, but licensed it from Bruce Artwick’s company, SubLogic, in the 1980s. The whole fascinating history can be found here and here, but to give you a visual idea of its beginnings, here is a screenshot from the very first version:

  • Greatness: A Blessing or a Curse?

    Jun 22nd, 2020 - Category: Change

    Some people seem to be clearly destined to change the world even in the face of difficult circumstances. Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci were both geniuses who changed the world during the Great Plague. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple before coming back to create the world changing iPhone. Albert Einstein changed the world before, during, and after two devastating world wars. Others are driven by personal or societal reasons: Linus Torvalds who created Linux “just as a hobby, nothing big or professional” (90%+ of the Internet runs on Linux), Elon Musk who obviously can’t help but invent (PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, etc.), and J.K Rowling whose idea for Harry Potter “came fully formed” into her mind during a long train ride.

  • Are You Earning a Living or Living an Earning?

    May 27th, 2020 - Category: Change

    I love to work. My first paying job was in high school typing detailed football statistics on a manual typewriter. After 40+ hours of work, I was surprised to get my first check for $73, icing on the cake. This was an all-boys, Carmelite high school that was a decade behind in technology yet they jumped ahead and purchased one of the first IBM PCs. Then they created a computer lab which I worked in for free for the rest of my years there, including summers. Fast forward a decade and I was managing a whole team of sales and support engineers, all of us working from home offices. There was never a question of “monitoring productivity,” we all loved what we were doing, helping customers solve difficult technical problems with advanced measurement systems. Another decade later and now I have my own business and when I’m not working on client projects, I’m volunteering at the local Maker Space fixing 3D printers and teaching basic electronics; or supporting our local First Robotics Competition Team; or studying how X, Y, or Z works. Yes, I enjoy non-work activities as well: nice evenings with my wife sharing a good bottle of wine, a video game now and then, tennis, and working in the garden or around the house. All this means that being “in quarantine” has not radically altered our day to day life or resulted in boredom.

  • Understanding the 'Artificial' in Artificial Intelligence

    Dec 15th, 2019 - Category: Change

    Several months ago I wrote an article “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad AI?” that explored the fear of AI that was popular then. AI News Already the tides have shifted and the most recent headlines are “12 Everyday Applications of AI,” “AI Is This Year’s Hottest Job,” and “Job Recruiters Are Using AI in Hiring.” Doom and gloom is being replaced by “Wow, how cool, I can find every photo of Uncle Bob in my library of 32,385 photos!” Part of this is due to improved reporting on how AI actually works, its strengths, and its weaknesses.

  • Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad AI?

    Jun 7th, 2019 - Category: Change

    Many of us have encountered people with a general fear of Artificial Intelligence. It typically starts with “This AI stuff scares me. What will keep it from evolving itself and taking over?” There are many responses, but they never seem to allay the concerns. The conversation always seems to end with, “But eventually AI will become so advanced…”

  • Somebody Has Given the Internet a Health Checkup

    May 8th, 2019 - Category: Change

    How does one even begin to explore a massive, open-ended question like this? With headline news articles everyday exposing another data breach, privacy violation, or online security issue, hasn’t the Internet become intrinsically unhealthy? Yet everyday we also interact effortlessly with our family and friends, automatically pay our bills, enjoy television and video, and satisfy our curiosity in a myriad of ways.