vivweb01blog

Editors note: I first compiled this blog in late 2022 in the aftermath of  the ignominious fall of Trussonomics and before the 'advent' of AI. Many of the ideas are still very relevant today, so a revisit with recent developments in mind is probably appropriate.... Introduction This has been a momentous couple of weeks all told, with more than the usual quota of economic and political U-turns, and probably more to come. The ‘new’ regime’s primary task now has to be to restore some sense of stability and prevent the economic meltdown which still beckons…. I’ll take the optimistic viewpoint and assume that the new team (whoever they turn out to be) somehow manage to pull this off over the next few weeks. I sincerely hope my optimism is justified, for all our sakes. Assuming they do, what then do we need to do ‘post-crisis’ in the medium- and long-term to improve our economic and social prospects as a nation, and avoid getting ourselves into a similar mess in the future ? ...

 As I suggested in my blog released in February  , a new upgraded vaccine has emerged in the form of a bivalent Covid19 product developed by Moderna. This has just been approved by MHRA for use in the UK. This is something of a milestone in vaccine development, since it is the first approval anywhere in the world of a vaccine designed specifically to mimic the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants (in this case BA.1). This is not before time – all the current approved vaccines are based on the spike protein of the original Wuhan variant, which was   identified and sequenced by the Chinese way back in early 2020. Many changes have occurred in the structure of the S-Protein since then, making the Omicron variants 'look' quite different to our immune systems, and this has resulted in a considerable reduction in the effectiveness of our vaccines against the virus (although mercifully not so far in their effectiveness against its most serious manifestations). T...

  Have you suffered from problems with older phones, tablets or pcs not working following software and firmware upgrades recently ? Read on for a possible explanation of why it’s happened… It’s been apparent for decades that international 'Big Tech' firms such as Google, Apple and Microsoft have been collaborating with product manufacturers to ensure planned obsolescence for their combined products.  There are good commercial reasons for this – it makes them all more money. The last thing Big Tech want is for people to hold onto their old devices, rather than buying ‘nice’ new ones. The snag from their point of view is that modern tablets, phones and pcs are inherently pretty reliable beasts generally, and if treated carefully, can go on performing well for years or even decades. Consumers who take advantage of this longevity are, of course, anathema to the Big Tech firms and device manufacturers, who want as much product ‘turnover’ as they can get to ensure their profi...

There has been much argument and a marked polarisation of views recently on the question of what to do about that well-loved icon of British pre-history, Stonehenge. The principal issue seems to be the congestion on the nearby A303 (the ‘road to the sun’ as it often prosaically called) and how to relieve it.  Users of this busy single-carriageway arterial cross-country road linking the M3 with the A30 to the East of Exeter regularly endure tailbacks several miles long around Stonehenge during the peak holiday season. The fact that has been allowed to remain a two-lane road in this day and age almost beggars belief, and a relief road scheme is urgently needed. (see Figure 4) A bypass of some description has been under consideration for the last 50 years, but until very recently no progress had been made, due largely to the efforts of the environmental lobby. Several news outlets reported last week that the plans for a road tunnel, originally approved in 2020 then challenged in...

In view of the current reflections on AI and what its consequences are likely to be, I couldn't resist revisiting an early blog I'd written on the subject early last year....  Could it be that AI is already evolving - without us realising it ? Enjoy.... Travelodge and the ‘Escapist’ Robot – Is it cleverer than we think ? An entertaining news story took my eye last week and brightened things up somewhat amidst the anticyclonic gloom of late January in UK…. Apparently a cleaning robot being used by the Travelodge hotel in Cambridge went AWOL, and was later found under a hedge nearby. ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-60084347 ). Having checked my calendar to ensure I hadn’t managed to hibernate without realising it,   thus missing February and March this year and landing on 1st April, I then verified that other news outlets were also reporting the story. After reading a couple of them, I wiped my eyes and started writing… As you can imagine, much mir...

  The expression ‘The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread’ seems to be on everyone's lips in the UK media nowadays, and has even been adopted as the title of a documentary radio series on Radio 4.  Whenever I hear it used to describe yet another ‘wonder-product’, I have to ask myself where on earth it came from…. As it stands, the phrase implies that the process of slicing bread during its manufacture really does represent an improvement over ‘prior art’ (presumably this would have been un -sliced bread). The nearest I’ve come to an explanation for this somewhat inexplicable enthusiasm in the past for sliced bread as a ‘new and revolutionary' product is that housewives* in the 1950s were so fed up with having to slice their loaves themselves that they couldn’t wait for someone else to do it for them. To my mind, slicing bread as part of its manufacturing process has some notable disadvantages – let’s take a look at a few of them: 1)       1)  The slicing ...