AI and the average Joe

They said AI would conquer the market.


AI would “free the hands” of employers and achieve such automation that workers would no longer be needed, resulting in unbelievable profit margins.


That’s what they were saying when OpenAI released the first global version of ChatGPT three years ago.
The dream for all this still exists — and of course, when we say “employers,” we’re not talking about small or medium-sized companies.
We’re talking about the elite of the Western economy: the banking system, the automotive industry, services, education, and other sectors like defense.

The Future of Mobile Applications: PWAs

Today, I received an email from Google stating: “2 of your apps are affected by Google Play’s target API level requirements. We’ve detected that 2 of your apps are targeting an old version of Android.” Yes, I have created some mobile apps, and this email means that if your app was built for an older Android version, you must update it to support the latest one, or it will be removed from the Google Play Store.

So, where is the problem, you might wonder? Well, I don’t even know where the app files are located on my hard drive. Let alone to open and search what to change, into the code, so it can support the latest API, etc. As a mobile developer, this is a common headache if you publish apps on app stores (Apple or Google).

Stop paying for subscriptions

Do you remember the time when the internet was a free place? Information was there, and you just needed to use AltaVista or Yahoo to find it. There was Limewire, DC++ or Napster. There were free MP3s floating around the internet. There was MySpace!

The programmes that we were using on the PC were “free” or almost free. At least there was no monthly subscription. Pay once, use it forever.

But when MySpace disappeared and YouTube appeared, that’s when things started changing. Companies started charging for extra things and extra services. For example, Microsoft Excel was (and still is) a program that you can buy once. But fewer people buy it nowadays as a separate software. Most people use it as part of the Office suite that comes with Microsoft 365. AutoCAD, a very well-known CAD software, started the software-as-a-service charging model, without offering much of a service. What you would buy once and use forever, now became a quite expensive monthly subscription. And worth mentioning, “Photoshop” – the pioneering software for photo editing, the one and only go-to program that photographers use to edit their photos – went from a one-off program to a monthly subscription software. Music became the same way. Movies too.

DIY Weekend: resurrecting a dead JBL Go Bluetooth speaker

I had this JBL Go speaker laying around and haven’t touched it since I don’t know when.

I generally like JBL as the sound quality is amazing and the price is way lower than some super high end brands (like BOSE).

The only problem with this Bluetooth speaker, and generally with the Bluetooth speakers is that the battery is not easily accessible. This means that when the battery is worn off, then you must replace the whole speaker and buy a new one.

Digitalisation of the construction industry

We are living in the digital age. Everything nowadays is an app and the phones we have in our pockets are multiple times faster than the processor used to get the man to the moon. And yet, thousands of small/medium businesses haven’t jumped on the digital boat. Especially in the construction sector, pen and paper is still the king, even though COVID-19 gave a boost towards digital practices.

There are several benefits into going digital but also there are some factors that for companies, especially small, are acting as blockers to the adoption. The negative factors include: the cost, effort and the changes needed. It is also worth mentioning that there is a shortage of skilled people that are equipped with the right digital capabilities to use new technologies.

On the other hand, the benefits are countless. Just to mention a few:

Things are changing. Constantly

It has been 40 years since the first major breakthrough in construction software. It was 1982 and AutoCAD was first released. 1982 marks the beginning of construction innovation and automation.

In the last 40 years lots of things changed.

AutoCAD was only the beginning. Since then, we have seen the rise of the BIM software, structural calculation packages for complex construction calculations, estimating and project tracking packages and many more. And of course, the one and only Microsoft Excel that changed everything in the way we manage data. By the way, the first Excel version released in 1985.

Even though it’s been 40 years of constant innovation, there are some sectors in the building industry that things haven’t changed much. Fieldwork has not experienced the same level of technological transformation as office-based tasks. The physical nature of the task, as well as the delayed acceptance of technology on construction sites, might explain part of the industry’s resistance to change.

Take as an example scaffolding. In the office the workflow has changed. There are numerous software packages that can do structural calculation, can design scaffolds or manage a whole project, but on the field, the work pretty much remains the same (excluding some tools that are now working with batteries for example).

You have been scammed

You receive an email. It is from someone that you have exchanged some emails with, someone you know or someone that someone you know knows. It is an offer for a new project to check and price. You think “nice”! You press on the link, you go to a page that says “Microsoft OneDrive” or “Office 365”. It says, “to download the files please sign in”. You put your Office 365/Outlook password and you press download. You download something but you get a message, “Password Incorrect”. You try 2-3 times and then you give up. Or something is downloaded, you try to open it, and it says: “corrupted file”.

You contact the sender (if it happens to know them) and ask what file they have sent. They reply: “I haven’t sent any file. What email are you talking about?”. You explain but then you start realising…

Mobile apps that you should be using

There are several apps on my mobile phone that I use. But on the below list there are 10 apps that I cannot thing that I could use a smartphone without them.

MacBook Pro 13” 2015: the best used laptop you can get in 2023.

I recently had the chance to get my first MacBook. So far, I only had iPhones and iPads but never a Mac. I also have an amazing iPod colour, the one with the touch wheel. It still works! Anyway, until one month ago I had never seen how macOS works and why there is all this hype about Mac computers. I was also searching for a Mac in order to be able to create the mobile app of the project that we are preparing. So, by luck I was given a MacBook Pro 2015 with 13” Retina screen.

Don’t use VLOOKUP

VLOOKUP is probably one of the mostly used Excel functions. It is used when the user needs to find things in a table or a range by row. For example, look up a price of an automotive part by the part number, or find an employee name based on their employee ID.

Its usage is quite simple: =VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, column_index_number, [range_lookup]).