Author Archives: filipgrudzewski

“Passengers please remain calm. We are just going to crash”

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Who’d knew that rescuing passengers from catastrophy-dangered plane could be so easy? Maybe this solution isn’t the most simple one from the technological point of view but from the logical point of view it is – if plane os going to crach the easiest way to rescue passengers is to.. remove the cabin and make it come back to the ground on parachutes. Is that a future of commercial flying?

Well it depends. You must be aware that this is not an idea that came from Boeing or Airbus but from the independent Ukrainian aviation engeineer (Vladimir Tatarenko) so despite it is great (in my opinion) it would be really hard to implement it into future plane constructions. Large corporations like to buy various solutions but rather to prevent competition for using it.

plane5

Here’s how he sees people evacuating (Picture: Vladimir Tatarenko)

Howewer this solution is not without it defects:

  • well first of all – would it really work? It looks good, amost perfect solution but this kind of technology would need to be tested really hard – I mean without wings and engines at all passengers would die for sure;
  • what will happen with detached part (with the wings and engines). Would it fly wherever and crash in random place? Imagine it in the city!
  • what will happen with pilots? Are they staying to control detached part or go to be safe with passengers in the cabin?
  • from the movie we can see landing on the flat ground and water, but what would happen in the mountines? Would it crash or expose passengers for dangerous situations?
  • probably it would be impossible to adjust already existing planes to this kind of standard – it will force to produce new planes which increase environmental pollution;
  • this kind of sulution for sure will increase the cost of production of planes which will increase plane tickets cost, etc.;

As you can see brilliant ideas are not always the easiest ones to implement. We must think if already existing solutions are enough reliable or if we need to modernize this part of public transportation.

P.S.: That is my last 5th post. Hope you didn’t get bored. Thanks for reading.

Smaller is back in the game!

Reading Time: 4 minutes

small_is_good

Average-Smartphone-Screen-Size, phonearena

Source: phonearena.com

For a long time we observe the trend of increasing of the size of the phone. Personally I find it strange – from 4-5 years I have the same phone – iPhone 4S – with a 3.5 inch screen which (as Steve Jobs) I consider as the perfect size. Apparently the rest of the world thinks otherwise. On the one hand I understand it – the larger screen has a lot of advantages:

  • a much better browsing of websites;
  • watching movies or photos is much more convenient;
  • games on larger screens seem to be more realistic and controlling them by the touch screen does not cover it in most by our fingers;
  • they are easier to use for people with low vision after setting a larger font – even my mother recently bought a Lumia 640 XL with almost 6-inch(!) screen “because now she sees better “;
asians

It looks funny, isn’t it?

On the other hand I think that phones so large are crazy. In recent years several times I have been in China where the trend seems to be even bigger. Perhaps due to the small size of the Chinese people but when they were talking on their phablets they looked as if each one of them held a tablet! I hate to think how uncomfortable it is and the fact that it just looks silly (everyone – not only Asians). Of course some of them can cope by using headphones but it is not always a possibility.

I-phone-bend-mainAnother important issue is the discomfort of carrying them – phones with a 5-6 inch screens barely fit in the pockets of jackets not to mention the pants. And even if someone succeeded this is not always the safest way to keep a smartphone (remember how bendgate started?).

This screen size also affects negatively on the performance of smartphone components. Today batteries in most mobilephones do not stand up all day (and for a long time it did not change) and they have even more difficult task to do in phones with such large screens. The same applies to the processor’s performance – the bigger screen and resolution the harder it has to work and this may slow its efficiency (eg. in smaller number of displayed frames-per-second in movies or games). Manufacturers are trying to solve this problem by packing inside their devices newer and more modern processors but not everyone is able to afford change their smartphone every 3-6 months.bateriea7_cpu

Unfortunately in recent times this trend completely pushed out of the market mobile phones with screens smaller than 4.5 inches which has the top specification. Fortunately there is hope. Recently Sony introduced several variants of the upcoming Xperia Z6. The standard models are about to have a screen size of 5.2 inches (Z6) and 4.6-inch (Z6 Compact). Of course there will still be larger variants – Z6 Plus with 5.8 and Z6 Ultra with 6.4-inch screens. But guess which model attracted the most attention? Yes – you got it – 4-inch variant Z6 Mini! Of course it will not be smaller version of the Z6 (like Z6 Compact) because the announcement shows that it will have a slightly inferior processor but as I mentioned – a smaller screen does not need quite as strong components. Most importantly – such a model would has literally only one competitor. Any idea which one?

iphone-6c-metal

New iPhone 6C?

It’s … Apple. From leaks we know that the company from Cupertino unexpectedly wants to introduce a new 6C model in February and its screen would has exactly 4 inches. I do not know about you but if its specification, design and colors would be attractive with great pain in my heart I’ll start to think about replacing the good old 4S.

Ankieta

Source: komorkomania.pl

In modern times the size of mobile phones clearly prevailed over common sense when by the definition they were meant to be mobile and convenient to use devices. As for me my old 4S is the example of quality, design, size and ease of use perfection. Nevertheless after so much time its components and speed of working are weaker and while I thought about buying the latest iPhone 6S I would give Apple much more if they gave me its components packed in old clothes of 4S. Well growing screen sizes in smartphones seems to be inevitable but survey made in the article on komorkomania.pl gives me hope (on the side).

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To photograph or not to photograph? – that is the question.

Reading Time: 2 minutes
bez nazwy

My own photo of Natalia Figas and Stephanie Iskra made by iPhone 4S and “filtered” by Instagram .

Have you noticed that for some time there is a fashion to create photographic blogs? I don’t know how’s your friends, but a lot of mine made funpages with a „photography” add to their name. To be honest there’s no wonder – nowadays everyone has a camera in pocket and usually it’s pretty good. Of course quality is very important but some smartphones has additional features to improve it and do not stand out quite as much from professional equipment (such as optical image stabilization which significantly affects the quality of mobile photography). In addition nowadays this kind of photography is much more able to replace the one made by professional equipment. All this thanks to software algorithms and increasing the possibilities of hardware – proved in a test of Phone Arena portal which proved that the users often liked more photos made by smartphones than those made by SLR.

burberry fashion iphone filming

Smartphone technology used by Burberry to film their fashion movies.

The same trend can be observed in the fashion industry, which in the vast majority relies on photography and film. Lately many marketing campaigns was filmed or photographed just using a smartphone (for example Diesel and the Burberry).

There is no wonder. Modern devices are able to take pictures with the quality of 20 -something megapixels and shoot films in 4K resolution. The case looks even more interesting from the point of view of an ordinary user because there are millions of applications for improving, changing or transform a photo so that everyone can take pictures of a quality sufficient to brag among friends.

dowód

Id photography. Pic taken from linked article.

This use of technology brings us clear advantages. I do not know about you but I really do not like to make photos to documents. Not only that photographer always chooses the worst of it but also they cost very much comparing to the end result. It turns out that if we use your cleverness and your hardware we can save yourself the embarrassment of showing documents with bad photos to our friends but also money because that shooting is much cheaper!

A condom or antivirus? – i.e. the future of sex and not only.

Reading Time: 4 minutes
rura

Robo-pole-dancing

The world full of robots seems to be really tempting. To be honest when I was a child I loved animated sitcom The Jetsons about the family which lived in futuristic utopia where everything was robotized – even their maid! Next example – Fururama – series about shameless, cigarette-smoker and alcohol drinker robot – Bender – that becomes a best friend of a pizza delivery boy in 31st century. But it’s all about cartoons so far. Let’s get to the more subtle examples. Remember the movie Artificial Intelligence: AI in which Haley Joel Osment was playing a robo-child that was replacing seriously ill real one? THAT WAS SCARY. At least for me the thought that we can freeze our sick children and then replace it by the robot-one was unbeliveble – even if its the most realistic one. But then I started to think that I might be an exception.

swr2-c05e398b1f285d543f3d12c63ae,989,0,0,0

Anatomy of a sex-bot

Nowadays we are surrounded by high-tech equipment. Our smartphones are so smart that they can predict where are we going, what we would like to do on Sunday’s evening and when we should stand after a proper amount of time spent on sitting by the desk. Also producers are not sleeping. They want technology to be as closer to the user as it’s possible. Robots are humanized, software becomes more and more intelligent so why wouldn’t they combine it together to create something next level? There are robotic soccer matches and in a few years there would be a robo olympic games. We are heading into the times of developing very advanced technology and getting so familiar with it that actually sex with robots won’t sound so wierd at all.

Guess which industry contributes most significantly to the developing of technology? Yup, you’re right – the porn industry. It started with popularizing Blue-ray standard and automatic subtittle generation (e.g.: like on youtube). Now boobs are in 3D, VR-sex is avalible where you can change partners, places or even your gender and last but not least – robots. Porn industry gave us more than we think and robo-sex is the future.

gigolo-joe-and-gigolo-jane-in-spielbergs-a-i-artificial-intelligence

Vision of future prostitures in “AI: Artificial Intelligence”

Coming back to AI movie – remember the character played by Jude Law? – that sexy-robo-man-prostitute which was just like human? Of course it was a Hollywood fiction but we are now closer to this vision than you think. The most human-look alike robots were created for being a.. sex toys. They’re called fembots and their creator is called modern-Gepetto (by the name of Pinocchio creator). It is said that by the 2020 sexbots will be common and by the 2050 they will be using AI and be able to make humans loving them (doesn’t it remind you the movie Her? – I don’t like the whole vision and Scarlet Johansson in general, but if intelligent computer systems had her voice…).

You think that’s crazy? People already confuse reality with its virtual substitute so it’s getting more and more real. But think about the moral aspects of this. Well first of all would it be still cheating? I guess new definition must be set. Human relations or relationships? Would anyone be still interested into looking for their „other half”? What for when you can marry your intelligent sex-bot that satisfies all your desires?

robotLove

Is that how future romance/relationship will look like?

The thing is that sex-bot to be fully functional must have AI to work – to analyze what its user wants, how to please him, when to start/stop or raise the tempo. This sphere of humans is really delicate and must be „serviced” very gently – this is why they need AI. But (also basing on the movie fiction) it may have a pretty bad consequences. I don’t want to bring Terminator saga or Matrix one example of human extermination attempt cause they are slightly too drastic but think about movie Chappie. Some guy created a robot with mentality of a child which started to learn/grow among humans and in a very short period of time it became a criminal (of course by a series of unfortunate accidents but still..). It might be too hard to control. But should we control them? I mean we, as human beings, know that there are social rules and laws that we need to obey but as concious creatures we can ignore that and do what we want. Of course it results in possibility to be improsined but we have a choice. Should robots with AI have the same option? Also in Chappie there was another problem – should we treat once launched intelligent machines as a human beings or as a technical equipment like a vacuum cleaner for example? I think THIS is a real problem of a research about AI. We need to think about the problem of responsability of creating such beings because soonly cutting off the power may be treated as murder and in my opinion this is something that humans are not ready yet to handle.

Tagged , , , , , ,

Apple pickpocket

Reading Time: 3 minutes

apple more dollarsEvery year Apple “generously” give us a new version of its phone. Lately, even doubling impressions, since there are two iPhones and even more colours. Some say that changes are good from the point of view of the user. But I have the impression that Apple behaves like a wolf in sheep’s skin. In the old days iPhone was setting the standards – not always had the best components but innovative features combined with (no doubts) the best design in the market and unmatched clarity iOS formed product practically unbeatable. Until now. In my opinion Apple shot itself into its foot. After the death of visionary Steve Jobs from the main innovator in the mobile market dropped to a miserable copyist of Asian copmetitors solutions which has not worked well. The famous “bend gate“, smaller batteries and skyrocketing prices in Poland discourages more customers. Of course queue for new iDevices is not declining but it remain some disgust. But the thing I was most upset was that suddenly “normal” iPhone (without Plus) has become secondary product. It is no longer the best product on the market in favor of greater Plus model. Why? Of course it’s about money. If you want to buy the iPhone which „lasts” whole day on a single battery charge you have to purchase Plus with a larger battery (obviously it’s more expensive). The same is about the camera – only in iP6Plus there is optical photo stabilization (more expensive). Not to mention the added functionality of the system in Plus (some features similar to the iPad’s software). Of course company explains lack of those by size of the casing or screen in iP6 but really „basic version” of this phone could easily handle all these functionalities. In addition there’s new swindle called “ChipGate” – the latest S versions processors comes from two companies – Samsung and TSMC. On paper the specification of this first looks little bit better (first of all why there are any differences?) but in practice during tests it turned out that it consumes much more energy for the same activities and was getting hotter. Moreover the calculations showed that there are more better processors (in percent of all) installed in… Plus versions (which are of course more expensive!). The cherry on top is that in practice customers in store can’t choose which processor will have because there’s no possibility to turn it on before buying (only in refurbished versions). Last but not least is that Apple continues to treat Poland as a third world country. In theory in Poland Apple’s market share ranks at around 2,14% but it still does not explain why Siri – which is one of the basic functionalities since the iPhone 4S and one of the main tools in using iWatch – is still not Polonized. Not only that iDevices premieres in Poland are delayed, we need to pay more for them comparing to other countries and in addition we can’t use all the features of the iOS. This way Apple simply pulls out lots of money from client’s pockets by not ensuring access to all its solutions and forcing customers wanting to have the best possible equipment to purchase more expensive variants. The icing on the cake is basic capacity of 16GB. To what extent is this enough – a few hundred pictures, songs and few apps? Of course you can buy a bigger capacity versions that are… more expensive. The conclusion is one – the company that once was famous for its innovation and unmatched facilities for not small amount of money has become a company that has increased the capacity of the screens in their devices (unthinkable at the Jobs times) and the efficiency of extracting even more money from their customers pockets.

Tagged , , , , ,