Golf 7 and bluetooth

unkategorisch

Bluetooth is everywhere. In all sorts of flavors and configurations and capabilities. Our Golf 7 is the absolute nadir of the my user experience though. With Apple and Android handys alike connection is super slow to establish and sketchy.

We tried to update the car software. Kind of makes sense: After a couple of years and millions built, sold and driven it might be that ‘new shit came to light’ as the Big Lebowski would have said it.

The latest software took a while to download and install. Did not change anything. We asked Volkswagen (this was early 2019, but bluetooth still is troubling) and they told that everything would be in perfect harmony and there would be no updates.

Not surprisingly VW canned the head of their software division with the rather strange name car.software.org

Not over bluetooth. They have bigger fish to try. But the attitude that the company seems to have towards software is not surprising, given how they handle software updates for mundane but also frequently used things like bluetooth.

gerne GEZ gezahlt

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Patrizia Schlossers “Spannervideos – das heimliche Verbrechen” wurde gerade auf der ARD ausgestrahlt. Ich habe nur die zweite Hälfte gesehen. Mir hat die Sendung sehr gut gefallen. Das Thema geht vielen nicht so einfach und klar von der Hand. Angenehm war die Abwesenheit von Bildanteilen die Frauen darstellen. Leider ist das nicht immer in gut gemeinten Stücken so. Auch hilfreich war die klare Herausarbeitung eine verbesserten juristischen Lösung.

Täter werden gerne in diesem Genre in the Tonne getreten, manchmal dann 5 Schnitte nach halbherzig verpixelten Szenen die eigenartig unmässig lang den Bildschirm füllten. Das war hier nicht der Fall. Die Situation der Opfer klar zu machen gelang ebenso wie die Situation der Täter. Natürlich ohne dabei für Verständnis oder Toleranz auf der Verbrecherseite zu werben. Das geht. Und Frau Schlosser hat klar gezeigt wie.

Für solchen Journalismus zahle ich wirklich gerne Rundfunkgebühr. Die öffentlich rechtlichen Medien weiß man vielleicht erst richtig zu schätzen wenn man 23 Jahre im medienumsatzreichsten Staat der Welt lebte. Vielleicht ist der NDR doch das beste am Norden? Ne. Der Marketing Spruch ist immer noch blöd. b

TSLA

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Today Elon Musks car company was “worth” more worth than Toyota, Volkswagen and Honda combined. Those three together made 67 times more cars than Tesla does. Since stocks are not about cars but about future profits, the people seem to think that with each car 67 more profit can be made if it sports the T emblem on the hood.

THAT is NUTS

SSDs

How much more time people do the people of this planet have each day since they use SSDs and don’t have to wait for hard drives any longer?

On top of that is the improved output since people have less chance getting distracted since the machine can be as fast as they are.

Balls made from rubber bands get much less attention in 2020 than in 2002.

ad with naked woman on reddit

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While many news sites complain about adblock, what ‘outbrain’ peddles seems to go through on reddit and other sites for me. I think it is pretty annoying if images of naked women get used to drive attention and clicks. “Well if you look” might be what some people say. Sadly it is not so easy. Men are wired to look at women. No, that does not excuse any look. Especially when it would have been a person in real life that you would have looked at. You simply don’t unless you are in a relationship with her and she is ok with it. In takes an effort to guide behavior like this. Having to exert that effort while I am reading something is annoying. I don’t care if you make money by tricking people in clicking on stuff like this.

as long as the headline is clickable

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I don’t know the media landscape in New Zealand. “Herald” sounds somehow trustworthy to me. But they seem to peddle in junk info when they headline:

Covid-19 coronavirus: Superspreader – woman infects 71 people in 60 seconds in elevator: CDC study

It actually happened in China, and it seems that the traveler returning from the US infected only one person in said elevator.

Junk info and clickbait has been a problem during pre Covid days. Now it is on a different level though: Good information is our only weapon against this thing. It spreads. Only thing we can do against it is to spread good information faster so that we can change the way we behave. It does not help when 10% of people do a 200% effort. With other things it does. Pretty much how most societies run and work. Only few women and men came up with the great stuff that muggles like you and me benefit from every second. When mitigating a virus you need to change the way a majority of people works. You need to alter what around 1/3 of people do. The rest will fall in line. Peoples behavior is usually very aligned with that of the people around them. No matter how “individual” people feel or claim to be.

(dis)topia

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This and that are the same cut. Very same images. Feels a bit different. Somehow the first one appears as if somebody has scraped away a very very thin layer of happiness that had hastingly been applied over something truly horrifying. It is called the happiest place on earth. I am sure for some it still is. Disney runs deep in peoples minds. Not surprising since it is the iconography signifying ‘you are happy’ from earliest ages onwards.

master and slave, director and perfomer

communication technology

It seems that the general public has discovered code and how people call things in there. Now we no longer can create master and slave processes, and have to call them director and performer instead.

Reflecting on how culture is using words is a worthwhile process.

This however is BS. A process is master, another is a slave. That analogy from ancient history makes perfect sense and the concept clear. If I find somewhere a reference to a performer I am not looking right away for a director. And what about ‘agent’, is that one related?

This change is well intended, but will backfire: If somebody uses classical nomenclature in code, does that now signal secret admiration for white supremacy?

Also: mainstream culture please stay out of our code. Your very absence is the reason why that darn stuff eventually works in the very end. Meetings have never solved anything …

Next stop: stop calling physical connectors male and female.

abonding books

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I stop reading books frequently. Just fall out of love while turning pages. Usually they go on the shelve. Maybe one day … Recently I started to abandon them. Makes more sense to me now: Very rarely have I seen something come around. Cases where the first quarter sucked, but then my life got altered in even the slightest way are far in between. They go into a box now. Which is probably not right either: Why should I clutter the world with bad things? Eventually somebody will find some books. And there they are: The good ones and the bad ones. All alike. But throwing a book in the trash is a weird thing that needs some getting used to.

Covid Act Now

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At great resource is the site Covid Act Now. Looks like Arizona is at capacity with ICU beds. Hopefully Texas can avoid that fate. People were afraid of the winter, and thought that in the summer the epidemic would take a break. The epidemic does not seem to care about what people think. My explanation for the southern most states being so affected right now is that people congregate too close in public rooms that are cooled by AC. Arizona in July is pretty much indoor living like Minnesota is in January. Seeing all those red colored states is sad. There needs to be more green …