Author: Romano McBride
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Bait-And-Switch Loopholes
Bait-and-switch refers to the illegal practice of advertising a product or service, tempting customers to invest resources (time or money) based on the advertisement, and then changing the product once the customer has already invested, presumably to squeeze more money out of the transaction. The problem that many products that rely on software to function,…
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Why can’t calls on iOS just be muted?
So many zoom calls Simultaneous speaking Why no speaker mute? Tiffany McBride
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We need to find a way to reduce tire emissions already!
Electric cars with standard tires trade a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions for an increase in fine particulate matter. We need a solution.
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Why do people sell their data for digital, but not physical products and services?
Thought experiment: What if you go to a bakery and buy a bread roll for $2.99 and the baker says “you can have it for free if you give me all your family photos and the rights to analyze them using robots and sell your data.”
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Pixel-Perfect Graphics for Embedded Systems
This is an ode to pixel-perfect graphics and an explanation as to how, even with advancing technology, they are still important. Great graphic design for embedded systems don’t only look great on the designer’s display device, but take the characteristics of the target display and environment into account.
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Why Apple’s ARM Transition is Going to Work
Today it happened. Apple did announce that they are, in fact, transitioning to custom-built ARM processors for Macs. Although they didn’t explicitly say “ARM” during the keynote today, I’m assuming their new CPUs will be based on the ARM architecture as the devkit they announced today is running their A12 ARM processor and it seems…
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How PBR and Photogrammetry are changing real-time asset workflows.
Historically, when working on technical art direction for a video game, every game was different. The 2D/3D art pipeline was defined by the visual style of the game, hardware capabilities and the render pipeline, which was often built specifically for a particular game. But if the style you need is photo-realistic, why bother creating assets…
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The “Licensing” Loophole
A lot of products you buy come with a “software licensing agreement,” typically stating something like… “The software that is part of this product is licensed to you, not sold.” and further, something along the lines of… “We reserve the right to modify this licensing agreement at any time with or without notice.” What’s the…
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Is DRM jeopardizing our cultural heritage?
Thanks to restoration, reproduction and conservation technologies, we have hundreds and in some cases thousands of years worth of cultural assets available. Old books, sheet music or stage plays can be enjoyed by consumers or used by researchers to learn more about a bygone era. We can even look at cave paintings from tens of…
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The drag coefficient is not a meaningful metric for car efficiency
Aerodynamic drag is only one factor in a long equation about the absolute driving resistance of a vehicle and overall efficiency depends on a lot of other factors. But even just considering aerodynamic drag, the way we compare cars doesn’t make sense at all.
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iOS Needs User Accounts
Apple just added mouse/trackpad support to iOS and launched a line of keyboards for and trackpads for the iPad. The iPad is being marketed as a portable computer that you can replace your… well… computer with. But unfortunately, it’s not. Not without user accounts.
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Why Hardware Raytracing is Awesome
Raytracing is a great technlogy to render photo-realistic lighting, reflections and even refractions and caustics. But with ever-increasing rendering resolutions, we’ve never really been able to do any great-looking full-scene raytracing in real-time and a capacity that is ready for consumer video games and other applications. The next Generation of Video game consoles, Playstation 5 and XBOX…
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Game Console Graphics Stagnation
How ever-increasing resolutions are eating our flops and why we need better pipelines.
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Tesla’s Supercharger Fair Use Policy locks out company cars?
Tesla promotes the company usage of their vehicles and Supercharging network on their Marketing website, but prohibits the use of Superchargers for commercial purposes in the fine print.
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Business Trend of the Decade: Crowdsourcing Social Responsibilities
Conducting a business involves certain social responsibility, often mandated by laws and regulations. But what if you could reap the profits from the business model without the inconvenience of having to comply with those regulatory, legal and ethical nuisances that slow down your expansion?
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The Erosion of Console Game Quality
With the reduction of quality standards in favor of faster and cheaper submissions, the quality of game console ecosystems has been slowly eroding.
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Car Emissions Regulations Don’t Make Sense
Let me ask this provocative question: Why is it legal to drive a 30 year old diesel but when your 3year old, much cleaner car doesn’t pass the smog check, you’re not allowed to drive it?
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CarPlay and cellular infrastructure
CarPlay is a great concept, increasing the lifespan of vehicles by potentially running their infotainment apps through connected smartphones with ever evolving software. It’s been around for a while now and it’s installed in millions of vehicles from different manufacturers. But it’s still a gimmicky feature, because a major point has been left out in the…
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Users will reset their devices!
With software in consumer electronics it can be reasonable assumed that stuff will crash.
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Electric Car Charging Network Fragmentation
While I appreciate the development of charging infrastructure for electric cars, the development of proprietary networks is unsettling.