The banker: “With all this money you and your children will be secure forever. You will not have to worry about a thing.” The old lady: “Sounds like a curse to me!” The quote is from Pachinko, the acclaimed (and highly recommended) TV series from Apple. A small piece of…

‘Retrocomputing’ sounds old. That’s exactly what it is: About systems and software from yesteryear and long before that. And since things change extremely fast in the tech-business, ‘retro’ must mean obsolete — with a scent of museum. But wait. Not everything changes all that fast. Some things hardly change at…

Customer service used to be just that — service: A helpful voice at the other end of a swift phone call. That’s long gone. Helpful became dreadful. For the last 10–20 years, customer service has become something to avoid at almost all cost. Because life’s too short — for the…

Can a typo ruin a business — or the world? The answer is less obvious (and much more scary) than you think. The news drowned almost completely among stories from Ukraine, California, Australia and the far east. After all it wasn’t life threatening in itself. But it could have been…

“Work on Things That Matter” is a quote from a keynote speech by Tim O’Reilly some 15 years ago. It stuck. So simple, direct and obvious, yet so easily forgotten. What if we make this our motto every day? If your first reaction is ‘that’s what I do’, you can…

Your medical records need protection. Not from spies, hackers and nosy neighbors but from bureaucrats, politicians and all kinds of ‘data protection agencies’. They don’t care about you. They care about themselves. They have ‘bullshit jobs’ to protect — and may kill you in the process. You’ve heard, read or…

If you’re following the cybersecurity buzz and — at least occasionally — take the time to think for a minute, it’s hard to avoid getting the feeling that everything is broken. And it is. But the show must go on. Here’s how it works. It’s not unique to the security…

Think about it: Solar panels on every roof must be good, right? Our own almost personal power plants. We’re saving the planet, changing our own lives and saving money — at least in the long run. It sounds too good to be true. And it is. Solar is an important…