Category: Technology

EVs, Fire, and the demise of the garage…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Electric cars, Property, Public safety, Technology, Transport

What do you use your garage at home for, that is if you have one? According to the UK’s RAC Foundation, it’s not housing your car! In 2002, 22% of private cars in England were housed overnight in a garage. Most, 50%, were parked outside overnight on your driveway, and the rest were parked on the street. In 2022, the equivalent numbers were 10% and 62%, respectively. It’s pretty clear, therefore, that the relationship between your garage and your car has become much more tenuous over the last 20 years. Rather than a place to house a car, today’s garage has become a general storage space for things like DIY tools and materials, garden equipment, pedal bicycles, and diverse items of unused home paraphernalia. That is, of course, if it hasn’t already been converted into extra living space, a home office, or a home gym or recreation area.

Garages associated with residential property emerged in the early days of motoring. Their popularity grew through the mid-20th century as cars became more affordable. They were high on a home-buyer’s wish-list because, at least until the 1970s, they protected the family car from the weather and rust, and they made it easier to start the engine in cold weather. Since the 1970s, and over the last two decades in particular, garages have become a victim of advances in automotive technology. Today’s cars, for example, are made of corrosion resistant materials and are packed with technology that means difficulty starting in cold weather is rare. They’re also significantly larger than their earlier counterparts due to the introduction of progressive stringent safety regulations. BMWs Mini Cooper, for example, is ~61% larger than the original from the 1960s. Most of today’s popular petrol, diesel, or electric cars, therefore, are simply too big for the garages of the UK’s residential housing stock.

Interestingly, with a future dominated by battery powered EVs, this might actually be a good thing! How so? Well, while EV manufacturers have put lots of effort into ensuring that charging your car in your garage using a properly installed charging point is safe, the fact is that if a fire starts due to battery damage or defective charging then the fire brigade are unlikely to be able to put it out. If this happens in your garage, then you can say good-bye to your car, the garage, and potentially your home. However, the risk of this happening is low, of course, because it seems from the RAC data noted above that few EVs will, in practice, be housed or charged inside a residential garage.

Given that ‘progress’ and battery EVs have made the link between our garage and our car increasingly tenuous, perhaps the time has come to start building all new homes without a garage? Now there’s a meaty thought to grapple with…

To buy a battery-powered EV now…or not…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Electric cars, Technology, Transformation, Transition

The future of that symbol of personal freedom and independence, our car, involves electric propulsion. The push to move us from Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles to battery-powered electric ones (EVs) is well underway. Governments have set targets for the transition, car makers are replacing ICE models with battery powered ones, and there’s a rush to build the ‘gigafactories’ crucial to the EV battery supply chain.

Battery-powered EVs have been on the Badger’s mind recently because the total mileage on his trusty, elderly, diesel SUV has reached the point where it’s inevitable that maintenance and repair costs will soon surpass the vehicle’s inherent value. Sadly, it’s time for a change, so is now the time to change to a battery-powered EV? To help answer this question, the Badger has explored the plethora of information, news, analysis, and opinion relevant to moving to a battery-powered EV at this time. The macro points, summarised below, that he’s taken from this research have influenced the answer to this question.

From a lifecycle perspective, a battery-powered EV is only greener that an ICE counterpart if the electricity used to charge batteries comes from renewables. EVs are expensive to buy, heavy, and minor collisions that damage the battery are expensive to repair. Insurance premiums are higher, and battery fires can be extremely hazardous.  Battery technology continues to advance, and so does fuel cell and synthetic fuel technology. Real-life EV range can vary substantially with seasonal driving conditions and the use of creature comforts (like air conditioning, for example). Journeys in an EV need forward planning to cater for charging which can be a time-consuming chore on long journeys. The national EV charging infrastructure is still developing.

Just like oil, supply of the key materials needed for batteries is not immune to the vagaries of international politics and crises. It’s also inevitable that the UK government will raise taxes on using EVs in order to compensate for the loss of fuel tax revenues on petrol and diesel. Government timescale targets also have a habit of eventually being watered down. However, the biggest influence on answering the question came from an article highlighting the transitional similarities with that of the move from horse and cart to the motor car over a century ago, and an item that reminds us that transitions will follow the ‘S’ curve.

The Badger’s decided that now is not the right time for him to change to a battery powered EV! Taking everything into account, a newer ICE vehicle is the most economical, climate friendly, and sensible option. Does that make the Badger a luddite or climate change denier? No, just clear-eyed and objective. After all, a societal move to battery powered EVs is a huge transformation. Unforeseen circumstances and unexpected downsides will materialise just like they do on all transformation programmes with serious technology at their heart. Waiting is the prudent option…  

‘Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future’

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Ethics & Regulation, Online Safety, social media, Technology

Some days you see something that tugs at your heart strings and makes you sad. One such day recently was when the Badger walked the leafy lanes where he played as a child.  Two vans and three burly men with chain saws were cutting down two magnificent horse-chestnut trees  – trees that the Badger and his childhood friends used to not only play beneath, but also climb to find the best conkers! The trees are still healthy, but they are being felled to make way for a new housing development. The sadness at seeing one of his favourite childhood haunts being dismembered was real.  It was a reminder that change is inevitable, that progress isn’t always for the good, and that the Badger’s childhood was very different to that of most children today.

Since the time the young Badger climbed these conker trees, much of the world has become healthier, better educated, and wealthier. The internet, computing, communication, and social media revolution has changed both social norms and the nature of childhood. As children, the Badger’s generation routinely climbed trees without adult supervision, ropes, or protective equipment, rode bicycles without wearing a helmet, and interacted with every type of creature in nature on an almost daily basis. We took the scrapes, bumps, and bruises that came with this freedom in our stride.  Our freedom was real. We were naturally innovative and imaginative when playing games with playmates, and we problem-solved and learned from each other without thinking about it.   

Childhood today is more cosseted, more organised, more risk averse when it comes to unsupervised outdoor play, and it is shaped and heavily influenced by modern tech and social media. The Badger thinks childhood is actually more dangerous today! Why? Well, whereas there was no online world when the Badger was a child, today it is a major aspect of a child’s life, as an OFCOM report illustrates.  This exposes them to cyberspace threats that simply didn’t exist when the Badger climbed conker trees and the tech world that we know today was science fiction.  Accordingly, the Badger believes the Online Safety Bill , currently in its final stages in the UK Parliament, is a good thing and long overdue.

The values of our country are fundamentally family values, ones which protect children and the vulnerable from those that would do them harm. These were the values when the Badger was a child, and it should still be that way in today’s online world. Our values and our way of life are also determined by us, and not by the huge digital tech corporations that dominate today’s world. John F. Kennedy said, ‘ Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future’. The UK’s Online Safety Bill is thus doing a good thing; it’s protecting the world’s most valuable resource…

The human dimension, not tech, underpins crisis management…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Conflict, Information Technology, Leadership, Risk, Technology

Sixty-one years ago, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of global nuclear war. Much has changed since that time in 1962, but the scope for catastrophic miscalculation in the corridors of power remains as great today as it was then. Why? Because at the heart of any crisis are people with power, strong personalities, egos, opinions, and different motivations. Having had experience managing crises, the Badger’s interest was thus piqued recently when a friend recommended the film Thirteen Days about the Cuban crisis. It’s based on two books, one of which was written by the US Attorney General in 1962 (Robert F Kennedy), and it dramatizes the US political leadership’s perspective of events.

The Badger watched the film and was struck primarily by two things. The first was that the technology in use during the 1962 crisis was ‘medieval’ compared with what we take for granted today. The film conveys well the fact that the Cuban crisis happened long before the internet, social media, personal computers, smart phones, video calls, digital photography, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and satellite constellations. Landline telephones, switchboard operators, teletypes, paper letters, memos and instructions, and non-digital intelligence photographs from U2 planes provided the  White House drumbeat for managing the crisis in 1962. Today’s technology means the drumbeat is different, computers dominate, information flows and communications are faster, and intelligence comes more rapidly from  open sources as well as from military capabilities etc. (Intriguingly, satellites and UAVs have yet to replace U2 spy planes; these are still in use and not scheduled to retire until 2026.)

The second thing was the human dynamics, the interactions  between political and military leaders, the diversity of advice on dealing with the threat, and the enormous potential ramifications of the decisions that rested on the shoulders of those present. Having been involved in crises in the commercial world, these human dynamics struck a particular chord, even allowing for some dramatic licence. Today, this same human dimension will still be happening as world leaders grapple with various crises. It’s worth noting that the US President, Secretary for Defence, Attorney General, and others, were positively youthful (late thirties to mid-forties) at the time of the Cuban crisis. Today those holding such posts are beyond pension age.

Commenting on this potentially ageist observation, the Badger’s wife asserted that in a democratic society it’s voters who have the fundamental, innate, responsibility to elect leaders with the rationality, capability, character, and vigour needed to make good judgements under intense pressure. It’s a point worth remembering perhaps, because although digital technology has come to dominate every facet of life since the Cuban crisis, it can’t provide any insight into what’s going on in the minds of those who have to make the ultimate judgements and decisions that could affect us all. At least not yet…

When your home broadband goes wrong…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Broadband, Online Services, Service, Technology

What conclusions would you draw from the following interaction with a home broadband provider:   

  • Your broadband degrades over 48 hours and becomes unusable. Your checks don’t find any fault and so you call your provider suspecting a fault on the physical line.
  • After 30 mins on the phone waiting, you speak to a person who says their systems show no fault on the line. They suggest waiting 24 hours to see if the situation improves.
  • It doesn’t, and after another 30 minutes on the phone, you speak to a person who says that there is, after all, a fault on the physical line. They arrange a time 3 days hence, the soonest slot available, for an engineer to visit. Progress, but it means being without home broadband for a week before it’s fixed.
  • With no advanced warning of any kind, the engineer simply doesn’t show up. After spending another 30 mins on the phone to the provider, you speak to a person who offers no explanation. They simply rebook the engineer for the earliest available slot a few days later.
  • Again, the engineer fails to show up. You spend another 30 minutes calling the provider, but when you speak to a person, they are sympathetic, arrange another date and time for the engineer’s visit, and insist that it will happen.
  • With no advance warning again, the engineer fails to show up. It’s now 3 weeks since first contacting the provider. You spend more time on the phone before getting to speak to a person who says the engineer couldn’t visit because ‘they only had a partial address for you’. You point out that the provider routinely uses your full address on their bills, and that the engineer could have called the  mobile phone number registered with them to check.
  • The person ignores the point and goes on to say that the fault is not with the physical line, but with the provider’s hub in the home. They say a new hub will be dispatched within 48 hours and that the fault will be resolved by simply unplugging the old one and connecting the new one.
  • You control your annoyance and calmly make a formal complaint.

The Badger concludes that the provider’s customer service is 20th century, their IT support systems are likely woeful and not joined up, that resourcing must be a problem, and that against such a backdrop the introduction of more AI-centred technology is unlikely to improve matters for customers. OFCOM’s recent report on complaints about providers  probably paints a rosier picture than reality when it comes to typical customer experiences. It’s thus perhaps hardly surprising that many, like the Badger, are making the jump to smaller, modern, local fibre broadband providers where both service and value for money is substantially better.

Seven small, fundamental, inventions without which the modern world would not be as it is…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Innovation, Learning, Life, Technology

After doing some repairs to a flight of garden steps in the blazing sun, the Badger settled down in the shade to finish reading a book he’d purchased a few days earlier. The book, a proper hardback from a local bookshop, is Nuts & Bolts, Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (In a Big Way) written by Roma Agrawal. She worked on The Shard in London, and is a structural engineer, author, and broadcaster with a physics degree and an MBE. It’s an excellent book, an easy one to read, and one that makes you realise that a small number of fundamental inventions underpin the world as we know it today. These inventions, the Seven Small Inventions in the title, are the nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string and pump. Without them, our modern world full of complex technology that ranges in scale from the tiny to the huge, would not be what it is.

While chilling out reading the book, the Badger’s nephew arrived to return a laptop he’d borrowed recently after his own broke. He’s in the middle of revising and taking exams that determine whether or not he goes to University in the autumn. With video and music from Glastonbury streaming on his smartphone, the youngster sat down and asked the Badger what the book was about. The Badger playfully answered that it was about the fundamental inventions, namely the nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string and pump, without which the Glastonbury music festival and his smartphone wouldn’t exist! The disbelief on the youngster’s face was palpable, and a light-hearted discussion on the Badger’s assertion ensued.

The Badger took the initiative and mentioned that without the fundamental invention of a nail none of the festival’s structures would exist, without the magnet there’s no electric guitars or sound systems, and without the invention of a lens there would be no pictures to stream. At first his nephew was unpersuaded, but a glimmer of enlightenment soon emerged as he started to think more deeply. ‘So’, he said, ‘you’re really saying that the internet, social media, and the smartphone are not fundamental inventions because they could not have been produced without the prior engineering invention of the nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string and pump?’ The Badger nodded, and said that it’s worth remembering that integrated circuits, first invented in the 1950s and now at the heart of today’s computerised world, could not have been produced without the prior existence of the Seven Small Inventions highlighted in Roma Agrawal’s book.

The youngster, a budding biological scientist, grinned. He said he now appreciated that what we see as routine in our complex tech-dominated modern world is derived from simple, fundamental, and often not very obvious engineering inventions. The Badger sensed that he may have awoken an inner latent engineer in his nephew, and that’s no bad thing…

This item contains nothing generated by Bing Chat…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Automation, Business, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Life, Risk, Technology

The Badger’s been experimenting for some time with Bing Chat, an integration of the GPT model developed by OpenAI with Microsoft’s search engine. It’s been both fun and thought-provoking. The capability is impressive, which is why there’s been massive interest in the technology in the 6 months since the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Many of the Badger’s interactions have made him chuckle, roll his eyes in annoyance, or better appreciate its use for good or evil, but every interaction has, in truth, reinforced why Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, calls on US lawmakers to regulate AI. This capability  has enormous scope to develop further. It’s already engaging the public and changing the way things are done, and it will continue to do so in the future. The Badger, like many, sees many pros and cons, but the primary outcome of his experimentation has been to crystalize the realisation that he must deal with how this impacts his content-producing activities like the writing of the blog you are reading now.

AI is destined to affect the activities and jobs of white-collar workers across a wide variety of industries (see here and here, for example). Indeed, the Badger can think of many functions and jobs that could be impacted by AI-centred automation in the IT industry alone. With perpetual improvement to make the profits stakeholders expect at the core of any business’s survivability, it’s inevitable that AI will speed up the drive for organisations to do more with less people, especially as employing people is expensive. Working in IT or tech industries doesn’t provide immunity from this impact, as BT’s recent announcement highlights. BT is cutting more than 10,000 jobs due to new technology and AI over the next 6 years. For employees in any organisation, therefore, this isn’t a time to stick your head in the sand; it’s a time to scan the horizon, think about how your livelihood might be impacted, and assess your options for countering the threat. All is not completely bleak, however, because AI seems unlikely to replace jobs requiring human skills such as creativity, judgement, physical dexterity and emotional intelligence. If these dominate your job, then the immediate threat is limited.

Experimenting with Bing Chat brings much of the media debate and commentary on AI to life. It’s made the Badger think seriously about intellectual property, ethics, and things like the transparency of content origination in a world where services like Bing Chat cannot be ignored. The Badger believes people deserve to know if any of the content they read online has been generated using a service like Bing Chat or Google Bard. Well, if you’ve read this far, then you can be confident that what you’ve read has been created entirely by a human being. It contains nothing generated by Bing Chat or any other similar capability.

Science and technology change lives for the better…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Life, Science & Engineering, Technology

In a phone call with the Badger last week, his cousin spoke proudly about their career in oceanographic science and engineering, and of how grateful they were for the science and technology advances of recent decades. His cousin specialised in producing and operating submersibles, and he expressed a little regret that his children had no interest in science and engineering because it was too difficult. We laughed, reminisced about science and technological advances during our lifetime, and jovially agreed that these advances underpinned everything that is good in the world. The conversation subsequently played on the Badger’s mind as he watched the coronation of King Charles III, the first coronation for 70 years, over the weekend.

Life was very different in 1953 when the last coronation took place. Rock and roll was in its infancy, music was listened to on radios or gramophones playing 78rpm discs, and only 10% of UK households had telephones. Central heating was a rarity and coal was the dominant fuel for heating homes. The rationing of petrol and sugar following World War II had just been lifted, the first commercial jet airliner service was barely a year old, and the USA announced it had a thermonuclear weapon. The only way of looking inside the human body was by X-rays, the first vaccine for polio became available, and Crick and Watson announced they had discovered the structure of DNA. In 1953 there was virtually no vandalism, swearing in public was an offence, men gave up their seats for women on buses and trains, and there was only 53 Kilobytes of high-speed random-access memory on the whole planet!

Roll forward 70 years to King Charles’ coronation and life is different due to the dramatic science and technology advances of the intervening decades. As the Badger watched the coronation events, his cousin’s words about being grateful for these advances echoed in his head, ostensibly for two reasons. The first was that advanced science and technology quietly underpinned everything associated with the coronation. The second was that his cousin sadly passed away the day before the event.

The Badger’s cousin was diagnosed with prostate cancer 14 years ago and given only months to live, but he took the opportunity to engage with a scientific research programme using experimental treatments which gave him many more years with his family, the satisfaction of knowing he was helping others, and validation of his belief that science and technology was a force for good. He felt that a good STEM education not only meant that the world was your oyster, but also that it enabled the ability to create things that change lives for the better. He wanted our younger generation to share his belief and overcome any fear that science and technology is too difficult. He was inspirational and will be sadly missed.

The Uk cellular national emergency alert test…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Public safety, Risk, Security, Technology, Telecommunications

The Badger was untangling a tape strangling a vintage cassette player when last weekend’s first cellular UK national emergency alert test happened. When the alert sounded on his smartphone, it made him jump because he thought he’d broken something in the cassette player! Within a second or so, however, the Badger realised it was the alert test.

The merits or otherwise of the new emergency alert system has had extensive coverage in UK media and on social media, but the Badger thinks it’s a useful public safety facility, if used wisely, given the dynamics and tensions of today’s world. The Badger learned during his IT career that for systems like this to be truly successful, the discipline, processes, and motives of the people controlling its use are as important as the system’s capabilities, engineering, and robustness. Will those in charge use it wisely? Time will tell, but if there’s a false alarm event like that in Hawaii in 2018 then public distrust of systems and those who control them will reach levels that are off the scale!

The alert test was also a reminder that communication networks are the unseen plumbing of today’s digital world. As the Badger cogitated on this point, his landline phone warbled. He automatically picked up the handset without looking at the caller display showing a UK landline number that’s not in his address book. ‘Hello, are you the homeowner and responsible for the computer at your address?’, an Indian lady asked. Scam, the Badger thought before answering with ‘Who are you, who do you work for, and how did you get this number?’ The lady just repeated her question, and the Badger terminated the call. The phone immediately rang again, this time the caller display showed a UK mobile phone number that isn’t in his address book. It was the same lady who cheekily asked, ‘Why did you put the phone down?’ The Badger answered, ‘This call is being recorded’, and the lady terminated the call. Checking the two caller numbers using Who Called Me confirmed that the calls were not from a reputable telemarketing source.

So, here’s the thing. Public suspicion and distrust of emails, social media content, and telephone calls continues to grow. We are relentlessly bombarded with spurious contact and content, and so it’s unsurprising that many are rather dubious about a cellular National Emergency Alert System. Other countries already have similar systems, and the Badger feels the new system is ‘technology for good’ and has a role in the UK public safety landscape. If the first real National Alert to his smartphone, however, is to warn of a nuclear attack, then the Badger’s realistic enough to know that by the time he’s read the message and decided whether its real or the result of hacking by bad actors, it’ll be too late…

Computers, systems, satellites and…potholes!

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Processes and Practices, Public Institutions, Satellites, Technology

A couple of weeks ago, the Badger’s saw OneWeb’s announcement that it was to launch the 36 satellites completing their first-generation Low Earth Orbit constellation on the 26th March 2023. Earlier this week the launch from a Space Centre in India took place successfully and the Badger mentally cheered all the engineers and computing professionals involved. This achievement has computers and  ‘systems’ at its heart, and this fact coloured the Badger’s thoughts as he left home to walk to the local shops. By the time he returned, however, positivity about computers and ‘systems’ relating to satellites had been replaced by gloom about ‘systems’ for fixing potholes on roads!

The route to the shops means navigating a T junction between a busy side road and a main thoroughfare. The approach to the junction is heavily potholed for about 30 metres. The surface, which has many of the different types of crater set out in the RAC’s Pothole Guide, is a danger to pedestrians, cyclists, motor cyclists, and car drivers alike. It’s been this way for a very long time, making it a wonderful  example of the pothole blight  infecting UK roads. Reports to the County Council have led to monthly visits by a repair crew who only patch a small number of holes every time.  

As the Badger walked by, a repair crew was patching a few holes again, and a lady was demanding to know why some holes were being patched but others, equally dangerous, were not. The workmen told her that ‘the central computer’ produces their worksheet and that they only fix, and get paid for, what’s on it. ‘Don’t blame us, blame the computer’, the workmen asserted bluntly. The Badger walked quickly by, thinking that the ‘system’ – the overall combination of process, people, IT, contracting, finance, quality, and compliance – was the problem, not the ‘the computer’.  

On returning from the shops, the repair crew and the lady had gone. A few potholes had been patched, but after three visits by a repair crew in the first three months of this year the road remains a danger to road users and pedestrians, especially at night. On reaching home, the Badger cogitated over a coffee and concluded two things. The first was that if motor vehicles are required to have annual MOT roadworthy tests, then road surfaces should also be required to have some kind of regular safety certification. The second was that for a country that has a computer and ‘systems’ pedigree that can put and operate satellites in space, it’s ‘systems’ for the repair of potholes on its roads are shameful. Although computers get conveniently blamed for many things in today’s world, it’s worth remembering that ‘systems’, which are much more than just computers, are more often the culprit.