Posts

The dirty little secret of global egg production

Post published:May 9, 2022
Post author:philip

Eggs are an indispensable part of the global food market. Not just for that omelette you had for breakfast, eggs have many roles in baking, cosmetics, and in the production of medicines and vaccines. Somewhere north of 1.5 trillion eggs are produced each year. There are many varieties of chickens out there, but the eggs you buy in the store come from very specific breeds. What's most important to understand is the separation between broiler and layer breeds. Broilers are chickens raised to be sold for their meat. They grow quickly with less feed, and have more meat on them than layers. Layers are smaller chickens that are bred to produce large numbers of eggs. They do not grow as quickly and don't have a lot of meat on them, but they do produce more eggs with less feed. Note that in both cases, the breeds are geared towards the highest efficiency for their purpose. Newborn chicks (Wikimedia) Only about half a percent of all eggs produced worldwide go towards producing new layer chickens. That's about 8 billion eggs per year. The dirty little secret that farmers don't want to talk about, is that less than half of those eggs…

Woodworking to take up COVID-19 time

Post published:August 12, 2020
Post author:philip

It's been an interesting few months. Lots of time at home. In trying to fill my time, I started working on several woodworking projects. Built a shoe rack for myself, a bookshelf/dollhouse for my kids, and most recently I went out of my comfort zone to build something I had no experience building, using materials I had never used before. https://www.instagram.com/p/CAkmN2MgFmq/ My wife sent me a picture from Pinterest of a bunk bed that divided a bedroom in two. It was designed for two girls that shared a room. One girl entered from one side into the bottom bunk, and the other girl entered the top from the other side. Each bunk had a wall that blocked access/view of the other girls' side. That particular bed was connected to the ceiling and was able to float the top bed without any legs on one side (one side was held up by the wall, the other by the ceiling). I didn't think that would work with our ceiling, so I set out to design something similar, but without connecting to the ceiling. 3D model of bunk bed that splits the room in half I'd love to say I came up with…

Right to repair is important, but we should be designing for repair instead

Post published:February 3, 2020
Post author:philip

We live in a world today that more and more items we buy are either intended to be disposable, or we are culturally influenced to make them disposable. In years past it was much more common to get your shoes repaired instead of buying new ones. When was the last time you went to a cobbler? I suspect many people wouldn't even know where to find one. Readers of a certain age are probably looking up the definition of cobbler (hint: not the pie). We buy electronics that work for a couple of years and then get tossed, sometimes ending up in African e-waste dumps, where at the risk to their health locals strip the electronics of precious metals, and burn insulated wires to get to the copper inside, released toxic fumes. Just think how many charging cables you've thrown out because they were worn out or just simply stopped working. Burning sheathed cables to recover copper at the Agbogbloshie e-waste landfill near the center of Accra, Ghana's capital city (Wikimedia Commons) Just this week the European Parliament voted to have the EU Commission establish a single charger standard (i.e. not Apple's Lightning) for all mobile devices. One argument they…

The Internet never forgets

Post published:January 30, 2020
Post author:philip

Recently Facebook released a tool called Off-Facebook Activity, which allows you to review and remove data collected by Facebook from other sites. Facebook of course uses this information to help tailor personalized advertising. That's the most generous explanation of the purpose of this data. Facebook has of course been criticized in the past for its use of user data, and it lax controls over that data. The Cambridge Analytica scandal being the most famous example. Facebook has had ways for you to look at the data from its own site, which it rightly calls your information (facebook.com/your_information/). You can download your data, although there doesn't seem to be a way to delete things like your search history. Oddly enough there is a category called Search History, although it doesn't really show you your search history as much as all of your activity (which pages you liked, which posts you commented on, etc.): Google has for some years allowed users to manage their browsing data and other related private information (through the My Activity tool), including the deletion of your entire history. Not the most user-friendly tool, there are many different things you would need to turn off to get Google…

Sharing is caring

Post published:May 10, 2019
Post author:philip

I've written a bit about the sharing economy before, such as Uber meets Pretty Woman and Transportation technology and the unknown. Yesterday I was walking in Bnei Brak, a city near Tel Aviv that is partly an ultra-Orthodox enclave but also has large industrial sections. I was in the more industrial area when walking past a bright yellow bicycle locked to a barrier. A bright yellow Ofo bicycle locked to a curb barrier As I passed by I noticed the bicycle belonged to one of the large bicycle-sharing companies, Ofo. My first thought was that it was odd to see a normal lock on a shared bicycle. I thought maybe someone had used the bike and then padlocked it so they would be sure to be able to ride it again when they needed. As I looked closer I noticed that it was missing the electronic lock and the QR code on the back that would allow a user to unlock it using an app. No QR Code above the 'Scan to go' text My assumption at this point was that Ofo must had exited the Israeli market and sold off their bikes without the electronics. Sure enough a quick…

Transportation technology and the unknown

Post published:June 12, 2018
Post author:philip

Vertex Ventures Automotive Map 2.0

"When I was a kid" is the beginning of many a discussion on how things were better in past generations. Obviously, obviously, it was better to play outside than to watch television. The effects of technology on people, such as how using social media affects our brains is a common discussion point today. Are we living in a bubble or echo chamber? These are all interesting perspectives on the effect of new technology on our brains, but there's a more physically visible effect of technology on our lives, and perhaps it illustrates similar effects. One of the biggest categories of tech companies getting funded these days is transportation. Uber's $72 billion valuation may grab the headlines, but other companies like Lyft, Didi, Grab, Ola, Gett, and Go-Jek are all valued over a billion dollars and targeting the ride-hailing/taxi space. As an aside I wrote of the tendency of companies to compare themselves to Uber back when Uber was only an $18 billion company in Uber meets Pretty Woman. For anyone who lives in an area underserved by public transportation and/or taxi service, these ride hailing services have made many people's lives easier. One can argue if the lives of the…

Senior monitoring – security flipped on its head

Post published:May 30, 2017
Post author:philip

Essence Care@Home

Let's say you want to set up a security system for your home. In days past that would mean hiring a security company that would install sensors around your house, connected to a keypad, and linked via a phone line (usually a dedicated line you would need to add) to a monitoring company. Those sensors would probably have required wired connections to a central hub installed in a closet somewhere, or in a drop ceiling, requiring lots of installation work, cutting holes in walls, and cleaning up the mess afterwards with spackle and paint. Once installed, this system would only work if you paid the company that installed it a monthly fee. DIY Security Systems In recent years a new category of security systems have emerged, so-called DIY security systems. These systems are designed to be installed by the homeowner, and in general do not require ripping up walls to install them. Some systems allow you to monitor your house yourself, and some include monitoring for a fee, similar to the older systems. One good example of this type of system is SimpliSafe, which sends you a kit including various sensors to install yourself, and then provides a traditional monitoring…

Why product design is like writing a recipe

Post published:March 27, 2017
Post author:philip

While reading a cookbook recently I realized the goal of the cookbook author is not entirely different than a product designer. In both roles, the designer and author, there is a need to anticipate the needs and knowledge of the user, and design around those needs within the constraints of their knowledge. There is also a parallel here between the engineer and the professional chef. Both have much more knowledge than the end user, and rarely understand how their user will be using the product they are creating. If you've ever read a cookbook actually written by a professional chef (as opposed to a professional cookbook author), you've probably not understood many of the terms or known what many of the ingredients were. If you did understand everything, then either you're either an experienced chef, or the book was likely co-written with a writer who specializes in cookbooks. User-Focused Design It's not that different with engineers working on a product to be sold to consumers. If you're a computer programmer selling a product to a computer programmer, maybe you can get away with designing it. If you're a computer programmer selling to a consumer, you probably need someone to guide…

The world of Mac software development

Post published:January 24, 2017
Post author:philip

The Mac App Store today

I was recently sent an offer to beta test a new service. The service is interesting - it is a subscription service for applications on the Mac operating system. Let me digress for a moment. Selling applications on the Mac, or any desktop operating system, has become more difficult in recent years. In the case of the Mac, this is partly Apple's fault. The App Store Apple introduced the App Store for the iPhone back in 2008, and it completely turned the traditional software business on its head. Many companies made a lot of money from the App Store, and others went out of business. It messed with existing business models, and the reverberations in the software industry are still being felt. My own company, Command Speech, was founded shortly before the launch of the App Store, and it had severe effects on our business. The App Store today One of the big effects of the App Store was the race to the bottom. Traditionally, software companies had to spend money to market their applications – through magazines, newspapers, and online. There were also distribution costs. In the old days you had to pay for the media it was distributed…

Three delayed keyboards (or four future keyboards)

Post published:March 2, 2016
Post author:philip

Anyone who has been involved with crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, and particularly those who have backed hardware products, know all about product delays. I've written before about how crowdfunding sites are invigorating the hardware startup market, allowing hardware products to reach the market that would never have done so in the past. The flip side is of course that not all the hardware products that receive crowdfunding do in fact reach the market. Many crowdfunded products have famously failed, such as the Eyez by ZionEyez HD video recording glasses whose principles seemed to simply disappear off the face of the planet without delivering any products (and it's unclear if they ever worked on their product at all). That case was covered by Forbes and Network World, although it only raises about $350,000. More recently Kickstarter has made it harder for pie-in-the-sky hardware ideas to make it onto the site. One interesting case was the Skarp Laser Razor, which raised over $4 Million on Kickstarter before the site suspended their campaign. The company quickly switched to IndieGoGo and raised over $450,000. Whether Kickstarter was right and the project ultimately fails remains to be seen. A product doesn't need to be crowdfunded to be…

Who watches the watchmen? Apple vs. The FBI

Post published:February 23, 2016
Post author:philip

The confrontation between the FBI and Apple over decrypting an Apple iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino terrorists, who murdered fourteen and injured twenty two more on December 2, 2015, is a very interesting story. At first blush the story seems quite simple. The FBI clearly wants to know what is on Farook's phone, as it could potentially tell them if the terrorists had accomplices, as well as if they were in touch with other potential terrorists before the attack. Everyone involved (other than perhaps their accomplices if they exist) wants the FBI to get the information on the phone. In fact, Apple assisted the FBI in getting all the information backed up to iCloud, and offered advice on how to retrieve the data from the locked iPhone. That advice was simply to plug in the phone in the presence of a known WiFi network, which might have triggered an automatic backup to iCloud of the more recent data. This would not have been affective if Farook had disabled backups, but otherwise would have sent a backup to iCloud that Apple would have been able to provide the FBI. The reason this method didn't…

A keyboard with swappable switches

Post published:December 23, 2015
Post author:philip

It started out with a post to Reddit that linked to a series of photos on Imgur of a new keyboard the user had ordered from the Chinese e-commerce site Taobao. Taobao, for those who don't know, is a Chinese-language-only e-commerce site run by Alibaba Group that caters to residents of China and nearby countries where people speak Chinese. Many sellers on the site, even if you could navigate the site in Chinese, won't ship outside of China. To meet demand, a whole crop of sites have sprung up just to help foreigners order products from Taobao. These 'Taobao agents' will order the product for you, receive the product in China, and then re-ship it to you wherever you are in the world. Of course, that service comes with a price, and in many cases that eliminates any cost savings you might get from ordering from Taobao. Occassionally, however, there are products on Taobao that are not available elsewhere. In this case, the user (redditsavedmyagain) ordered a keyboard that was in fact quite unique. The keyboard is called the Team Wolf Zhuque+. I had never heard of it and before that post on Reddit most other people had never heard of it either.…

E-mail security stinks, and that makes hackers (and the NSA) happy

Post published:December 18, 2015
Post author:philip

The Better Mousetrap Making the perfect e-mail client seems like the build-a-better-mousetrap challenge of our day. Every year or so it seems there's another amazing e-mail client released by a startup, that says it has 'reimagined' or 'reinvented' e-mail and how to use it. Some examples include Sparrow (launched in 2011, bought by Google and discontinued in 2012) and Mailbox (launched in 2013 and bought a month later by Dropbox, and announcement of its imminent retirement just this month). This is kind of ironic considering the move away from e-mail to other messaging services, particularly real-time services, such as Slack and Whatsapp. Recently, perhaps due in part to the imminent shut down of Mailbox, another e-mail app called Polymail has been receiving a lot of hype. It is already the fourth most up-voted product on Product Hunt, and it hasn't even launched yet. Seeing the latest e-mail-mousetrap launch reminds me about one of the inherent security problems all of these applications encourage. A Question of Protocol All of these apps rely primarily on the IMAP e-mail protocol (short for Internet Message Access Protocol). That makes a lot of sense as it keeps most of the e-mail management on the server, and allows app developers…

Another font evolves in the digital realm

Post published:September 9, 2015
Post author:philip

Advertisement for Centaur typeface from 1948

Recently, I've been reading about T.E. Lawrence (also known as John Hume Ross, T.E. Shaw, and thanks to Hollywood – Lawrence of Arabia). In my research I came across a story about how Lawrence came to write a translation of Homer's The Odyssey. Most people aren't aware that Lawrence was trained as a historian and archaeologist, not a military strategist. Leading up to WWI, it was his knowledge of the region from his work as an archeologist that convinced the British army to arrange an archeological survey of the Negev desert as a ruse for actually mapping the region for the military. That experience led him to join British Intelligence in Cairo, where he eventually would be sent to help organize the Arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire that made him famous (some would say infamous). While Lawrence's exploits during WWI made him famous, his life after WWI isn't very well known. Shunning the spotlight, he actually managed to re-enter the military under false names – first the Royal Air Force (RAF), then the Royal Tank Corps, then back to the RAF. It was while working as a clerk in the RAF that he was contacted by a friend who had met the famous…

Hand-wiring a keyboard

Post published:August 24, 2015
Post author:philip

As part of an effort to teach myself hardware design, I've wanted to hand-build a keyboard. I ordered a top and bottom plate from Ortholinear Keyboards a couple of months ago (their 60% Atomic Semi-Standard design), but didn't have the switches I needed to put it together. Recently I received a set of Gateron switches through a group buy, and started work on the keyboard. One of the reasons I chose the Atomic kit was frankly that it was one of the least expensive options available to get started. The kit includes the top plate (a steel plate with holes cut to place the key switches), and a bottom plate that has matching screw holes to the top plate. A bag of screws and brass spacers allows one to attach the two plates. It is a very simple design. There is no circuit board to attach the switches to like most other keyboard kits. The Atomic needs to be hand-wired. That appealed to me as well, because I felt hand-wiring the keyboard internals would give me a much better understanding of its inner workings. To start one simply pushes the switches into the holes in the top plate. The switches are…

End of content

No more pages to load

Older Posts