Allan

Evolution of Mankind, Small Thoughts on…

A few days ago, I met with friends and our conversation moved around, back and forth, and at one point touched upon genetics. It started with some thoughts about why my little daughter (and many other toddlers) refuse to eat vegetables. They are healthy and “good for you”, so why do children seem universally opposed to eat them? My answer: The environment where humankind evolved was full of green stuff, much of which was absolutely not “good for you”, and possibly deadly poisonous. In such a place, the genes most likely to make it into another generation that would survive long enough to be passed on yet again, would be those instructing the host to be better safe than sorry when it comes to new food (so here’s a perfect excise to all picky eaters that subscribe to the idea of evolution).

Now, given that my supermarket doesn’t sell poisonous broccoli (?), how come that we still don’t want vegetables when we are so young? One reason could be that evolution takes time, especially if there is no strong selection pressure on a given trait. It seems that most parents will work hard to make their offspring eat greens (there is a gene for that too, whose chance of propagating depends on the hosts insistence on making their descendants eat vegetables). In addition, the gene for picky eating might be coupled to a completely unrelated trait that is essential to survival (for an example of this, read about Dmitri Belyaev’s domesticated silver foxes, e.g. in Wikipedia).

Conversation moved on, and at one point, I wondered would happen if the was no selection pressure. Will our convenient life style make us slower, weaker and less intelligent; but more likely to eat vegetables? Perhaps, in the long term, if our genome is left entirely to its own.

Who knows, but I am sure the time isn’t yet. Instead, the selection pressure has changed. Instead of being our ability to withstand dessert sun, chew grains or outwit mammoths; basic fertility may be the new big thing. Fertility may never had been a thing to take for granted (and sadly surviving the birth of healthy children still isn’t in many parts the world), but our current environment isn’t helping: Male fertility is threatened by hormone disrupting chemicals in clothing, plant hormones in grain and who knows what else. And women accumulate environmental poisons in their bodies, especially breasts, from where it is passed on too missed children (read Florence Williams “Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History” for further info). Also, we are having children layer and later, sometimes at an age that is past the life expectancy in the more primitive societies of humankind’s past. So maybe that is where evolution is taking us now: less vulnerability to the chemicals that are all around us and a later menopause.

(lots of) Time will tell…

On the Value of (PC) Customer Care etc.

During the Easter holidays, I visited relatives and like many other IT professionals, I had the opportunity to solve a handful of IT challenges, one of which reminded me why the PC manufacturers are at least partially responsible for their own problems with declining cells.

The story beings with a new PC of a well-known brand, with the usual bloatware installed. That includes a trial version of a well-known antivirus software. When the trial expired, a proper license for the antivirus software was purchased, and it was renewed every year thereafter. And so, everything should be good.

Except it wasn’t. My relative was surprised (at first, then annoyed) by the frequent warnings about missing protection popping up when the computer was turned on, given that the license was paid for. However, as I found out, paying the license using the link provided by the trial version is not enough; you also need to replace the trial version of the software with the full version yourself. My relative had not been aware of this, and so had paid for protection for years, without ever being protected. He took it well, better than me.

It may be argued that as a consumer you must pay attention any warning messages that pop up and that it should have been verified that the purchased product was in fact delivered and working as it was supposed to do. On the other hand, this was an opportunity for the manufacturer to care for the customer, by ensuring that the customer got value added by the extra services provided by the manufacturer; as opposed to a false, expensive sense of safety. Both arguments have merits, but one makes it more likely that the customer returns than the other. In good times, returning customers may not have been a priority, but now?

Among the lessons to be learned here is that good times should never be taken for granted. And the manufacturers are themselves not without responsibility for their misery.

A wholly unrelated challenge I got during the visit was retrieval of photos from a Nokia feature phone, from the time before phones could be connected with USB. I was reminded how a blue tooth data connection works and reminded to appreciate current day cloud backup services and standardization of connections.

The Declining PC Sales, Follow-up

Last year I posted a couple of comments to the ongoing discussion of declining PC sales (in May and September). Since then, sales have remained unchanged low, but then again, the drivers for demand are unchanged too.

I am not surprised that the recent end of support for Windows XP hasn’t changed much. Any private users who didn’t worry before, probably doesn’t worry now either. Time will tell if there will be one big security exploit that will cause a rush.

Vacation on the EDGE

I just returned home from a week’s vacation with wife and child in a cottage in Thy on the Danish west coast. Lovely place, excellent cottage and great to be together with the family.
One thing that set this trip apart from other recent trips is that out on the moor near the sea, the connection to the wide webbed world is through EDGE network. A shake one. So no catching up on all the interesting Web stuff that I keep in Pocket for vacation reading (will Read It much Later now). No deep diving into new apps and no steamed media. Only enough bandwidth for news headlines and a couple of critical mails – everything else being a pain.

And that has been great really. So much less distraction and little things that need checking all the time. Instead full attention on being where I was and with whom; the whole experience so much more intense (in the way that eating a pre-season ice cream in a fishing town is intense).

So maybe next time I travel I should go to faraway places and hotels with no Wi-Fi, celebrating the high roaming costs. Then again, maybe not. But it has been a great vacation on shaky EDGE.

Paying my Lunch

I generally try to do “the right thing” most of the time. That includes enabling the lock screen of my phone and tablet, which is the right thing to do when you sometime leave it on the desk at work while getting coffee or happen to lose it in the train or airport (ahem…).

Using lock screen pattern is cool, but not really secure, so doing the right thing means PIN (my wife also uses the phone once in a while,so face recognition or finger print is not an option). Still, having to enter PIN every single time I use the phone at home is tough. And enabling the screen lock whenever I leave home doesn’t even look probable on paper. The app “Unlock with WiFi” was a perfect solution. It enables the screen lock, unless the phone is connected to my home WiFi (or any other WiFi/Bluetooth network I choose). $5 is cheap convenience.

A few days ago I got the message that Unlock with WiFi would no longer be supported, instead it had been rewritten and the new incarnation available as SkipLock, which could be bought again from the app store. Suddenly the happy customer was a grumpy customer.

Then again, it is a great app – one that adds great value to my devices and a crucial part of keeping them safe, with all the email and other personal information I got stored on various accounts. I want that to be taken good care of. I want someone to take it seriously to provide me with that service. I want to be able to trust that such an app doesn’t snoop my address book or harvest other personal info without my knowledge. Then I’ll rather pay a modest amount to have a professional developer provide a professional solution.

You don’t get a lot for free, and the better the lunch, the more suspicious one should be. Or, as a friend once told me: If a product is free, then YOU are the real product…