Category: 5. Personal Matters
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The humor that is Alexa 1 / 2
I was watching an old TV show rerun with a character in it called Alexa. My Amazon Echo (trigger word is Alexa) was also listening: TV set: “Alexa, stop doing that!” Echo: “Sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying.” TV set (raised voice): “Alexa, don’t talk to me like that!” Echo: “Sorry, I still…
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I want my computer to be as easy to use as my rice cooker
There is a (by now oldish) saying, attributed to Bjarne Stroustrup: I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone. I used to riff on this with the following variant: For…
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The looming bubble in Lego bricks
In 2014, for a course that teaches students teamwork, I bought 20 sets of basic lego bricks for a bridge building exercise. The cost per set was 20 Euro. This year the number of students in our project courses exceeded what could be done with this basic set of legos and so I looked to…