Category: Technology

The Beginning of the End for Pharmaceutical Monopolies

My love of 3D printer technology expands far beyond the firearms field. Being able to build complex things in the comfort of our own homes stands to upset the balance of power in many markets. One of the most valuable aspects of 3D printers is their ability to put an end to many monopolistic practices. If you’re able to download designs for an item and print it in your own home then patents become irrelevant, which is why this story about 3D printers capable of making drugs interests me:

He shows me the printer, a nondescript version of the £1,200 3D printer used in the Fab@Home project, which aims to bring self-fabrication to the masses. After a bit of trial and error, Cronin’s team discovered that it could use a bathroom sealant as a material to print reaction chambers of precisely specified dimensions, connected with tubes of different lengths and diameters. After the bespoke miniature lab had set hard, the printer could then inject the system reactants, or “chemical inks”, to create sequenced reactions.

The “inks” would be simple reagents, from which more complex molecules are formed. “If I was being facetious I would say that to find your inks you would go to the periodic table: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and so on,” Cronin says, “but obviously you can’t handle all those substances very well, so it would have to be a bit more complex than that. If you were looking to make a sugar, for example, you would start with your set of base sugars and mix them together. When we make complex molecules in the traditional way with test tubes and flasks, we start with a smaller number of simpler molecules.” As he points out, nearly all drugs are made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, as well as readily available agents such as vegetable oils and paraffin. “With a printer it should be possible that with a relatively small number of inks you can make any organic molecule,” he says.

The real beauty of Cronin’s prototype system, however, is that it allows the printer not only to control the sequences and exact calibration of inks, but also to shape, from a tested blueprint, the environment in which those reactions take place. The scale and architecture of the miniature printed “lab” could be pre-programmed into software and downloaded for use with a standard set of inks. In this way, not only the combinations of reactants but also the ratios and speed at which they combine could be ingrained into the system, simply by changing the size of reaction chambers and their relation with one another; Cronin calls this “reactionware” or, because it depends on a conceptualised sequence of flow and reorientation in a 3D space, “Rubik’s Cube chemistry”.

Large pharmaceutical companies enjoy an advantage in the medical field. They can patent chemical compounds and effectively enjoy a monopoly on producing that compound for two decades. During that two decade period the consequences of monopolies afflict everybody who wants or needs that drug. Namely the pharmaceutical company enjoys the ability to jack the price up to whatever it desires since no competition is allowed to enter the market until the patent expires. 3D printers capable of producing drugs could overcome this issue. Suddenly people capable of reverse engineering the drug (say, by looking up the patent and going from there) could post blueprints online for all to download.

Another potential for these printers is the ability to drastically lower the cost of developing new drugs. Individuals with the proper background could develop new drugs on their person computers and perform tests by printing the new drugs. The overall costs would likely drop considerably, which would almost certainly cause a major leap in innovation.

3D Printing with Metal

In the pursuit of manufacturing everything with 3D printers, a material limitation has continuously been encountered. Unless you’re willing to purchase a very expensive machines. Research is beginning to take off in this area though, which means more affordable 3D printers capable of working with metals are on the horizon. One organization that is beginning to look into 3D printing with metals is the European Space Agency (ESA):

The European Space Agency has unveiled plans to “take 3D printing into the metal age” by building parts for jets, spacecraft and fusion projects.

The Amaze project brings together 28 institutions to develop new metal components which are lighter, stronger and cheaper than conventional parts.

What’s interesting about the ESA’s pursuit is that it intends to manufacture parts capable of surviving high stress environments such as jet engines. One of the limitations of 3D printing with metal currently is the fact that printed metal parts tend to be weaker than mental parts created through other manufacturing techniques. If the ESA can create printed metal parts that are nearly as strong as metal parts created through other means we could be on the verge of something wonderful.

Obviously my interest is partially focused on firearms technology. I would love to live in a world where any state law against firearm ownership could be bypassed by the press of a button on a 3D printer. We’re at the early stages of such a world but the material limitations of current consumer 3D printers is providing some difficulties. Once that limitation is overcome we can print reliable firearms without the state having any knowledge.

Teletherapy

One of the hot topics in the gun control community is prohibiting people who suffer from mental illnesses from obtaining firearms. Setting aside the fact that such a prohibition is impossible we are still left with the fact that such a prohibition would further discourage people suffering from mental illnesses from seeking help. Mental illness has a major stigma here in the United States. People often perceive others who suffer from a mental illness as weak. There is also a common misconception that mental illnesses are permanent. I’m sure most gun control advocates who are pushing to prohibit people who have a history of mental illness from owning firearms are banking on the latter misconception. In the United States a person who sought treatment for a mental illness would likely become prohibited from owning firearms for life because the general attitude in this country is that mental illnesses can’t be helped.

This leads me to an interesting start up that is focusing on providing teletherapy:

Is the digital age sending the old therapist’s couch the way of the reference librarian, the CD, and the travel agent? Could be: several recent studies have found that therapy via the Internet is just as effective as face-to-face treatment. In 2012, a Veterans Affairs study found that teletherapy reduced patients’ psychiatric hospital admissions by about 25 percent, which means it could produce cost savings as well.

What I find more interesting about the prospects of teletherapy is the potential for anonymity. It would be easy to setup a system where the doctor didn’t know the actual name or face of the person they were treating. While the intimate nature of a patient-therapist relationship would almost guarantee that the therapist could find out the identify of their patient the potential to remain anonymous may be enough to encourage those needing help to seek it. Having an anonymous way of seeking help for a mental illness would render America’s two primary misconceptions irrelevant, which would be a step forward in my opinion.

Drone Delivery Service

I spend a lot of time complaining about the use of military drones. Like any technology, unmanned aerial vehicles can be used for good or evil. The United States government uses them to bomb brown children in sandy regions, which is downright evil. But a company in Australia is planning to use drones for something amazing:

Sick of relying on slow trucks and traditional delivery systems to get his company Zookal’s textbooks to people, Ahmed Haider decided on a fresh approach. Now, his Sydney, Australia-based company will deliver the textbooks via drones.

Today, Zookal, a textbook rental startup, is announcing that by using unmanned aerial vehicles to ferry textbooks to renters, it will cut delivery times from two to three days down to a matter of minutes, while shaving shipping costs down to a tenth of their normal prices.

Being able to make local deliveries with antonymous drones could decrease the time it takes to get packages, allow packages to be delivered on the customer’s schedule, and reduce the costs associated with delivering packages. As it currently stands you have to wait for the delivery truck to get to your home. If you have to sign for a package you have to be at your home when the delivery truck arrives, which is probably the biggest hassle when getting expensive items delivered. The delivery truck also consumes gas, a commodity that seems destined to continue rising in price. Battery powered drones could reduce energy costs if the battery was recharged by something akin to solar panels.

I hope this concept works out. Having packages delivered from local hubs straight to my door on my schedule would certainly improve my life (yes, I live in a first world country so my life is notable improved by seemingly trivial things).

The Future of Killbots

For those of you who thought I was joking about killbots I have bad news: I wasn’t joking about killbots. The state has been looking into killbots for some time and its search is starting to become serious:

A robot, equipped with an M240 machine gun, moves through the darkness until it stops under a stand of trees 100 yards from its squad of U.S. troops. The robot uses thermal imaging to detect enemy combatants hiding up ahead and aims its gun at them.

With a single command from its human controller, who is with the squad 100 yards back, the robot opens fire and takes out the enemy, saving the troops from a potentially deadly attack.

Eventually our government will decided that having humans withing 100 yards of the killbots is a liability and will attempt to move them back. Terrestrial drones require more immediate decision making than their aerial brethren so having pilots in Colorado won’t work. That means controllers will have to be near the battlefield and, eventually, the enemies of America will learn to strike those areas instead of fighting our terrestrial drones. After that happens our government will decide that having soldiers on the battlefield is dangerous regardless of proximity. When that decision has been made the terrestrial drones will be made autonomous and we’ll finally have fully automated warfare. Best of all, any innocent people who are killed by our autonomous killing machines can be written off as a software glitch.

The future is both amazing and frightening at the same time.

Raspberry Pi Bitcoin Miner

As those of you reading know, I’m a big fan of Bitcoin and a big fan of the Raspberry Pi. It was only a matter of time until I decided to follow in the footsteps of many and setup a Raspberry Pi Bitcoin miner. In an unrelated Amazon search I noticed that the ASCIMiner Block Erupters had come down in price (they sell for $29.98 on Amazon’s main page but cheaper units can be had from other Amazon vendors) so I decided to order a couple.

Mind you, nobody is going to get rich off of a Block Erupter. My desire was to experiment with them. I’ve often wondered how much a somewhat decent miner could be built for. Combining cheap Block Erupters with cheap Raspberry Pis seemed like an excellent want to build an affordable miner (with the acknowledgement that the setup was unlikely to pay for itself). I followed the setup guide on Adafruit and was mining Bitcoin in minutes. What follows are some issues I ran into.

First, my Raspberry Pi wasn’t able to provide reliable power to both modules. This wasn’t unexpected. While the Pi could run one Erupter without any issue the second one would periodically die from loss of power. The mining application I used, cgminer, continuously notified me of hardware errors. Fortunataly, I have a second Raspberry Pi that runs my Tor relay so I unplugged the second Erupter from the first Pi, plugged it into the second Pi, and got it up and running without any trouble. The obvious solution to this problem is to purchase a powered USB hub.

Second, Block Erupters run hot. I learned this lesson when I went to unplug my second Erupter from my first Pi. If you’ve been running an Erupter make sure you give it time to cool down before touching it (or be impatient, like me, and grab some gloves). You will also want to invest in a small fan to keep your Erupters cool. This USB powered fan has been recommended by several people and costs all of $8.00.

Third, as I feel this needs to be pointed out, setting up a mining rig isn’t the most efficient way to acquire Bitcoin. Sites like Coinbase are better sources. The amount of Bitcoin you can mine with an Erupter isn’t going to pay for the hardware for quite some time (even before calculating in the cost of electricity, fans, powered hubs, etc.). I’m perusing this project for fun and to fulfill my curiosity. When I need to acquire Bitcoin in usable quantities I tend to buy from sellers.

FBI Having Troubles Seizing Dread Pirate Roberts’ Bitcoin Stash

This story demonstrates one of the features I most like about Bitcoin:

In order to transfer Bitcoins out of a “wallet”, the name for the digital file which contains the encrypted information necessary to spend the currency, users need to know that wallet’s password or “private key”.

According to Forbes’ Kashmir Hill, that hurdle is causing the FBI difficulty.

“The FBI has not been able to get to Ulbricht’s personal Bitcoin yet,” wrote Hill. An FBI spokesperson said to Hill that the “$80m worth” that Ulbricht had “was held separately and is encrypted”. At current exchange rates, that represents slightly more than 5% of all bitcoins in circulation.

It looks like Bitcoin is pretty secure against state seizure. Mind you, that doesn’t do Mr. Ulbricht much good as he’s currently being held in a cage. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) inability to take Ulbricht’s supposed $80 million worth of Bitcoin is good news for other people facing state theft.

Think about countries such as Greece and Spain that are seizing personal fortunes and freezing assets in bank accounts. If you want to conceal your personal wealth from the state money grabbers converting it to Bitcoin seems like a pretty good option. Here in the United States things are worse. Your wealth can be stolen under civil forfeiture laws if a police officer simply suspects that wealth is tied to a drug-related crime. Under civil forfeiture laws the burden of proving any wealth isn’t tied to a drug crime is on the accused. Bitcoin may be an effective defense against civil forfeiture laws and a dying state’s last ditch attempt to raise money by stealing directly from the bank accounts of citizens.

Admittedly, Bitcoin fluctuations can be pretty wild. But everything has its risks. You risk losing wealth if Bitcoin’s exchange rate drops but you risk losing wealth if you keep cash on hand or in a bank account. I recommend divesting wealth. While divestment doesn’t protect all of your wealth it stands a good chance of losing everything if the one protection strategy you’ve chosen fails.

Tor Stands Pretty Secure Against NSA Attack

We all know that the National Security Agency (NSA) hates Tor. Tor stands for everything the NSA is against, such as anonymity and information security. It comes as no surprise to find out that the spy agency has been attacking the Tor network:

The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.

It’s pretty funny when one government agency is focused on destroying something originally created by another government agency (Tor was originally funded by the United States Naval Research Laboratory). Fortunately the NSA has met with very little success:

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled ‘Tor Stinks’, states: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.” It continues: “With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users,” and says the agency has had “no success de-anonymizing a user in response” to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor “the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity”.

There has been a lot of speculation about Tor’s security. Even now people are arguing over whether or not the Tor Stinks presentation is still accurate. It is possible that the NSA has developed a way to successfully remove a Tor user’s anonymity since the presentation was leaked. So far we’ve seen no evidence of this though. The two primary stores involving Tor, the take down of Freedom Hosting and the apparent arrest of Dread Pirate Roberts, were both accomplished using old fashioned investigative work. This leads me to believe the the Tor Stinks presentation is still accurate and that the NSA hasn’t found a reliable way to attack a Tor user’s anonymity.

Once again, we can speculate about the powers of the NSA. The problem is we can’t work off of speculations. I agree with Bruce Schneier who said we should “trust the math.” Unless we have evidence to the contrary we can only assume that Tor works. With that said, it’s never good to rely entirely on a single tool. Tor is great but you should also take other precautions to protect your anonymity online (for example, Tor doesn’t do you a lot of good if somebody has already managed to install a trojan onto your computer).

Fingerprint Folly

It was only a matter of time before somebody found a way to crack the fingerprint reader on the iPhone 5S. Coming in as the first group to publicly announce a bypass is the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), which has a habit of breaking security systems:

The biometrics hacking team of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has successfully bypassed the biometric security of Apple’s TouchID using easy everyday means. A fingerprint of the phone user, photographed from a glass surface, was enough to create a fake finger that could unlock an iPhone 5s secured with TouchID. This demonstrates – again – that fingerprint biometrics is unsuitable as access control method and should be avoided.

[…]

“In reality, Apple’s sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake”, said the hacker with the nickname Starbug, who performed the critical experiments that led to the successful circumvention of the fingerprint locking. “As we have said now for more than years, fingerprints should not be used to secure anything. You leave them everywhere, and it is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints.”

I’ve never been a fan of biometrics. While it’s true that using features unique to a person can be used to uniquely identify that person it’s also true that, as Frank Reiger of the CCC pointed out, one cannot change their biometrics:

“We hope that this finally puts to rest the illusions people have about fingerprint biometrics. It is plain stupid to use something that you can´t change and that you leave everywhere every day as a security token”, said Frank Rieger, spokesperson of the CCC.

If you can’t change your authorization token and somebody compromises that token things aren’t going to end well. Fingerprints are especially bad tokens because they can be lifted from many of the surfaces we touch. An authorization token isn’t very secure when you go around telling everybody about it.

With that said, if Apple’s fingerprint reader is convenient enough that people actually use it it will have served its purpose. While an unchangeable security token that you leave everywhere you touch isn’t great it’s better than no authorization control whatsoever.

The iPhone 5S Fingerprint Reader

Yesterday Apple announced their new iPhones. The iPhone 5c was, in my opinion, wasn’t at all newsworthy. Apple’s new flagship phone, the iPhone 5s, wouldn’t be newsworthy except for its fingerprint reader:

Apple’s brand-new iPhone 5s isn’t dramatically different from last year’s model, but it has at least one major addition: a “Touch ID” sensor. Us human beings are calling it a fingerprint sensor, and it’s built into the phone’s main Home button below the screen. Apple’s Phil Schiller says, “It reads your fingerprint at an entirely new level” — it’s 170 microns in thickness with 500 ppi resolution. According to Cupertino, it “scans sub-epidermal skin layers,” and can read 360 degrees. As expected, the sensor is actually part of the Home button, making it less of a button and more of a…well, sensor. Using Touch ID, users can authorize purchases in iTunes, the App Store, or in iBooks by simply using their thumbprint (starting in iOS 7, of course). Pretty neat / scary!

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about this. It’s certainly a neat piece of technology and I don’t want to decry Apple for trying something new in the smartphone field. Today you can lock your phone with a four-digit passcode or a full password. If I were betting money I would bet that a majority of users use neither option. Of the people who put a passcode on their phone a vast majority likely opt for the four-digit option. Phones are devices that are accessed frequently. Having to enter a long password every time you want to check your Twitter feed get annoying quickly. Therefore few people are willing to use a complex password to security their phones. That leaves most people not enabling any security and those who enable security most likely opt for a relatively insecure four-digit passcode.

Apple has been fairly good about including security features that are relatively easily to use and this fingerprint reader looks to be another one. Time will tell if the sensor is easily fooled by other fingerprints but if it convinces more people to put some kind of security on their phone I’m happy. If the technology is properly implemented it could easily be more secure than the four-digit passcode (admittedly not a high barrier to climb over).

Then there’s the other side of the coin. My first thought after seeing the announcement of a fingerprint reader was that the police are going to love it. As it currently stands, a police officer wanting immediate access to your phone must obtain a search warrant and gain your cooperation, have a mechanism of exploiting a security hole in the phone on site, or bring force into things either as a threat or as physical harm. With the inclusion of a fingerprint reader a police officer need only force your finger onto the sensor to unlock it. That seems to be far less hassle than the other three mentioned options.

In light of Edward Snowden’s leaks there is also the concern that your fingerprint will be send off to the National Security Agency (NSA). While Apple promised that your fingerprint data will only be stored locally there is no way to verify that fact. Furthermore, if Apple was compelled with a national security letter to include a mechanism to allow the NSA to obtain fingerprint data they wouldn’t be legally allowed to tell us. That thought should scare everybody.

Finally, on a more practical side, biometrics have a fatal flaw: the technology is based on sensor data obtained from your body as a point in time. What happens if you cut your finger? Will the sensor detect your altered fingerprint as somebody else? What happens if your finger is cut off? Our bodies can change over time and those changes are often difficult, if not impossible, for biometric technology to detect.

As with most security technology there are ups and downs to this fingerprint reader. If it convinces more people to enable security on their phones then I will be content. However, one must realize that there are real downsides to using your fingerprint as a security token.