YTechnology

Apple Watch 4 and Pebble 2 Duo While reaching behind my computer, I banged my Apple Watch 4. The crystal was unfazed, but the watch itself, which I bought in 2019, was feeling large, heavy, and tired. The battery barely holds a charge for a day. I could buy a new Apple Watch, but I was looking for something smaller, lighter, and  simpler .   The first incarnation of the Pebble Watch was introduced in 2013 and discontinued in 2016. Pictured above is the just released, second incarnation called the Pebble 2 Duo . which I pre-ordered for $149 and now sits on my wrist.  From the price alone, it's clear the Pebble is not a replacement for the iWatch. The iWatch has a touch screen, more sensors, and a password lock to protect the data it measures and stores. More durable, you can take the iWatch to the beach for a salt water swim, whereas the Pebble risks corrosion and seal breaches (it has real buttons) if exposed for extended periods. The Pebble, however, can wade into the A...

From Clicky To Quiet: Blue, Brown, Wisteria, Red My Nuphy Air75 mechanical keyboard seems to drop keys occasionally. I ordered it with blue switches, the clickiest available, and also the ones that require the most operating force. This could explain (some of) the dropped keys. Apple keyboards, with scissor switches, have short travel distances and don’t require much force. With muscle memory ingrained, my fingers just glide over the keys with speed and accuracy. But mechanical keyboards provide better, even addictive, tactile feedback. They also offer auditory feedback which, on a subconscious level, helps with focus. Operating forces from the   Nuphy website : Blue operating force: 65±15gf end force: 70±5gf Brown operating force: 55±15gf end force: 60±5gf Wisteria operating force: 55±15gf end force: 50±5gf Red operating force: 50±15gf end force: 60±5gf All switches have the same total travel distance of 3.2+0.2mm Wisteria sits alongside Brown, between Blue and Red. Wisteria’s end...

With apologies to Shakespeare, the correct quote is "What's past is prologue," which eloquently states that events and actions of today shape and foreshadow the world of tomorrow. Prolog is an AI language of the past, and I had a little fun with it in the 1980s. I have long forgotten the language syntax, but do remember the program I wrote to answer a juvenile question: "If God's power is infinite, can he create a boulder he cannot move?" On the screen appeared the answer I expected: "Undefined." I shrugged, and was just a little disappointed the computer didn't crash or blow up, not realizing then, that "undefined" was a very good, if not the best possible answer. Enter the prompt today in the Duck.ai / ChatGPT-4o, I was amused by its answer: A second attempt produced a few paragraphs describing the nature of omnipotence and the logical paradoxes it can bring. The essay could have been written by a high school senior. In contrast, th...

My old Logitech K750 keyboard has been with me for more than 12 years and is poised for a second life with a Raspberry Pi. What powered the keyboard all this time were the solar panels above the row of function keys. The collected energy, whether from daylight or lamplight, was stored in a Maxell ML2023 rechargeable button battery seen below: ML2023 Rechargeable Battery So far, I’ve only had to replace the battery twice, but Logitech (intentionally) did not make it easy, as I needed a spudger tool to gently pry the battery tray open. Do not use the similarly sized CR2023 battery, as it is not rechargeable and would pose a fire hazard. Being solar powered, it follows that the keyboard would be wireless. Connection to a computer is over a 2.4GHz USB dongle, which Logitech calls a Unifying Receiver. Living up to the name, this receiver also let me connect an old Logitech M335 mouse. While there were many Logitech models listed in the Raspberry Pi’s keyboard settings, there wasn’t one fo...

Back in 2005, I wrote " Yam Technology? ", a light hearted article pondering my company name.  Today, the "technology" part of the name has proliferated, and I am sometimes mistaken for someone or something else.

By now, most of you are familiar with the story of CrowdStrike and the resulting worldwide outages. The initial, and angry, responses were along the lines of "Where are the devs? Where was QA?" As it turned out, the actual patch, or software code, was fine. The problem was in the config file  that governs the behavior of the patch.  Being flawed, it triggered the Microsoft Windows' blue screen of death. In a variation of "Who Watches The Watchers," the config file was indeed tested, but CrowdStrike's testing system was unknowingly broken.  The config file passed when it shouldn't have. Nothing is perfect all the time, but what would have mitigated the fallout would have been a gradual or staggered rollout of the config file instead of the apparent "big-bang" release to all machines at once. The staggered rollout is an old and reliable technique. I can think of 2 reasons why it might have been forgotten or abandoned: inexperience or over-confide...