Tag: Geek Stuff

The Proper Method of Producing Renewable Energy

There are numerous heated debates regarding which method of energy production from renewable sources is the best one. The debate usually involved hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and solar panels. What many people in this debate don’t see is that none of them are the best solution, the best solution is not to rely on any single source of energy. While people debate over the best method of renewable energy production some smart individuals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) actually thought about the problem correctly:

Researchers at MIT have taken a significant step toward battery-free monitoring systems — which could ultimately be used in biomedical devices, environmental sensors in remote locations and gauges in hard-to-reach spots, among other applications.

Previous work from the lab of MIT professor Anantha Chandrakasan has focused on the development of computer and wireless-communication chips that can operate at extremely low power levels, and on a variety of devices that can harness power from natural light, heat and vibrations in the environment. The latest development, carried out with doctoral student Saurav Bandyopadhyay, is a chip that could harness all three of these ambient power sources at once, optimizing power delivery.

Relying on any single source is tempting fate by creating a single point of failure whereas using multiple sources grants a great deal of redundancy. Why rely on just solar panels or just wind turbines when you can use both? After all, solar panels only work when there’s enough sunlight while wind turbines only work when there’s enough wind. Hydroelectric dams work continuously (unless there is a major drought) but the locations where they can be built are very limited.

Let’s learn a lesson from the guys at MIT and stop thinking about a single best solution (this goes for things besides renewable energy production by the way).

The FCC Just Became Obsolete

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates the use of electromagnetic spectrum in the United States. One of the reasons there are so few cell phone service providers in this country is because one must first get a license for spectrum use from the FCC who sell off blocks in auctions, auctions that now end up in the billions of dollars. With spectrum costs so high it’s not surprising that new players don’t enter the market. The FCC claims this regulation is necessary because the alternative would be constant interference as wireless providers used spectrum that another company was using. While this argument isn’t true for various reasons it’s also now technologically irrelevant:

American and Israeli researchers have used twisted, vortex beams to transmit data at 2.5 terabits per second. As far as we can discern, this is the fastest wireless network ever created — by some margin. This technique is likely to be used in the next few years to vastly increase the throughput of both wireless and fiber-optic networks.

These twisted signals use orbital angular momentum (OAM) to cram much more data into a single stream. In current state-of-the-art transmission protocols (WiFi, LTE, COFDM), we only modulate the spin angular momentum (SAM) of radio waves, not the OAM. If you picture the Earth, SAM is our planet spinning on its axis, while OAM is our movement around the Sun. Basically, the breakthrough here is that researchers have created a wireless network protocol that uses both OAM and SAM.

[…]

According to Thide, OAM should allow us to twist together an “infinite number” of conventional transmission protocols without using any more spectrum. In theory, we should be able to take 10 (or 100 or 1000 or…) WiFi or LTE signals and twist them into a single beam, increasing throughput by 10 (or 100 or 1000 or…) times.

Humans have a propensity to find more efficient methods of utilizing scarce resources. That is why regulations that attempt to ration scarce resources are entirely unnecessary and even, in the case of subsidized resources, encourage consumption as current rates using current technology. This story is another demonstration of humans overcoming a limitation without needing to resort to legislative control.

Human ingenuity: 1, government control: 0.

Alan Turing’s 100th Birthday

Alan Turing, who was basically the father of computer science, would have been 100 years-old today.

For those who don’t know the name Alan Turing he was British mathematician who developed methods of breaking German cryptography during World War II. After helping the Allies win the war Turing turned to developing one of the first stored program computers. What did this genius receive? Chemical castration because he was a homosexual. Even though he helped defeat Nazi German his government could look past the fact that he preferred other men in his bed than women. Eventually he was pushed to suicide due to the way he was treated.

His story is one of amazing accomplishments and sad tragedy. Without him it’s quite possible that you wouldn’t be reading this blog right now for no computer would exist.

Objectivist-C

As most of you probably know I write software. Consequentially I’m always looking for new languages to learn and I think Objectivist-C may be something worth putting time and effort into. Some unique features in Objectivist-C are:

In Objectivist-C, there are not only properties, but also property rights. Consequently, all properties are @private; there is no @public property.

In Objectivist-C, each program is free to acquire as many resources as it can, without interference from the operating system.

Unfortunately I hear the specification is extremely long.

Kindle Touch 5.1.0 Firmware Released

Yes, I’m still madly in love with my Kindle. While I never actually got around to typing up a review of the Kindle Touch I can say it’s a great device with only a handful of caveats. One of the features that was removed from the Kindle Touch that was present in all previous models was landscape mode. Honestly, I never used it so I didn’t miss it but Amazon has finally added the feature back into the Kindle Touch in the new 5.1.0 firmware update:

  • Language Support: Customize your Kindle Touch with the language you prefer: English (US and UK), German, French, Spanish, Italian, or Brazilian Portuguese.
  • Landscape Mode: Switch between portrait and landscape orientation in books and PDFs to read maps, graphs, and tables more easily.
  • Instant Translations: Tap any word or highlight a section to instantly translate into other languages, including Spanish, Japanese, and more. Translations by Bing Translator.
  • Kindle Format 8: Formatting and layout improvements make Kindle books look even better.
  • Wi-Fi Enhancements: Connect your Kindle Touch to Wi-Fi with WPS and select WPA2 Enterprise networks.
  • Read-to-Me With Text-to-Speech: Have your Kindle Touch read English-language content out loud to you, now including summaries of newspaper and magazine articles when available from the publisher.
  • More Sharing Options: Tell others what you’re reading on Facebook or Twitter from anywhere within a book — just tap to share a link along with your comments.
  • Onscreen Keyboard Suggestions: Search and shop faster with automatic word suggestions as you type.

Landscape mode is accessibly in the menu, although I wish they would have placed it on the bottom menu bar that appears when you tap the menu button for consistency. Beyond the above mentioned changes the home screen has been updated a bit. The font used to display boots and collections appears to have changed a bit and the top now had three new combo boxes; one for filtering content that appears on the home screen, one for selecting how content on the home screen is sorted, and one for quickly jumping to a desired page on your home screen. Overall the home screen update is minor but welcomed.

The predictive text is a nice touch as well but I don’t type very often on my Kindle Touch so it’s really just a minor update for me. I will also have to play with the supposed WPA2 enterprise update just to fulfill my curiosity. Beyond those updates I doubt I’ll utilize any of the other new features, I mostly use my Kindle to read books and that’s really it.

The State Can’t do Anything Well

Who do you think produces the buggiest computer code? Some would say Microsoft, others would say Apple but the winner of this prestigious award actually goes to the state:

Humans aren’t generally very good at writing secure code. But it seems they’re even worse at it when they’re an employee of a government bureaucracy or hired as unaccountable federal contractors.

In a talk at the Black Hat Europe security conference in Amsterdam later this week, security researcher and chief technology officer of bug-hunting firm Veracode Chris Wysopal plans to give a talk breaking down the company’s analysis of 9,910 software applications over the second half of 2010 and 2011, automatically scanning them for errors that a hacker can be use to compromise a website or a user’s PC. And one result of that analysis is that government software developers are allowing significantly more hackable security flaws to find their way into their code than their private industry counterparts.

According to Veracode’s analysis across industry and government, fully eight out of ten apps failed to fully live up to the company’s security criteria. But breaking down the results between U.S. government and private sector software, the government programs, 80% of which were built for federal agencies rather than state or local, came out worse. Measuring its collection of apps against the standards of the Open Web Application Security Project or OWASP, Veracode found that only 16% of government web applications were secure, compared with 24% of finance industry software and 28% of commercial software. And using criteria of the security-focused education group SANS to gauge offline applications, the study found that 18% of government apps passed, compared with 28% of finance industry apps and 34% of commercial software.

Anybody will tell you that proper computer security is hard, but apparently it’s even harder when you’re an employee of a huge unaccountable entity that likes to throw money like it’s confetti at a wedding. It’s a good thing the state hasn’t claimed a monopoly on writing software yet, we’d beg for a return of Windows ME.

The New Apple iPad

Apple announced a new iPad. So what do I think? I’m glad you asked. Overall nothing surprising was announced but the new iPad does look like a suitable evolution of the iPad 2. The retina display is a welcomed addition as is LTE. Of course LTE isn’t available anywhere near me so it’s merely a nice idea (yes the world does revolve around me and therefore LTE is a meaningless feature until I have it).

Will I get one? I’m not sure yet. There are times that I find a tablet with a data plan appealing but then I stop and wonder if I would ever use such a device with any frequency.

Apple also released iOS 5.1, which supposedly fixes some battery life issues, I’ll let you know if I see a difference after running it for a couple of days (my hopes aren’t high since Apple has released several “fixes” that accomplished nothing).

Nothing is Sacred Anymore

My childhood consisted of more SimCity and SimCity 2000 than I care to admit so I was excited when a new SimCity game was announced. That hope has now been entirely dashed:

“We’re talking about a SimCity where the resources are finite,” Bradshaw said, “where you’re going to be struggling with some of the decisions that people are faced with today, where technology and advances can ultimately have global impact.”

To emphasize that point, publisher EA had An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim speak at the announcement event. Aside from the scientific and political barriers to slowing and reversing global climate change trends, Guggenheim said, there is also a psychological barrier that leads people to disconnect from awareness of the problem and continue to simply live their life as they did before they knew about it.

So politics is being injected into my beloved series. Is nothing sacred anymore? Can’t I just load up a game and play it without some political bullshit message being force fed down my throat? Isn’t the constant propaganda we’re exposed to through the public school system, television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet enough? No? Find, fuck you guys then, I won’t both with your shitty little propaganda title.

I wonder how far the global warming message will go? Will I be able to build concentration camps and send Sims there when they refuse to pull the party line? Can I start wars with my neighboring cities under false pretenses to acquire more resources? Is one of the goals of being mayor of you city to incite a workers revolution and overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish Marx’s utopia? If you’re going to shot propaganda in my face you might as well go the full monty and turn it into Collectivist’s SimCity.

Seriously, I just want to build a fucking city and, perhaps, call down Godzilla to smash a portion of it when things start getting a little slow. How can anybody fuck up a formula that is so easy to get right?

You Can’t Trust Anybody Anymore

Remember Lulz Security? They were the hacker group that was traveling around the Internet and breaking into site for shits and giggles? While they were in full swing I mentioned that they, along with Anonymous, were good testers of Internet anonymity:

I often talk about the importance of anonymity and groups like Lulz Security and Anonymous make great testers of the ability to remain anonymous on the Internet. People likely to be prosecuted by law enforcement would do well to watch the actions of these groups and determine how they are able to avoid law enforcement. If the tactics used by these groups allows them to avoid those who are seeking them out then the same tactics can be used by political dissidents in oppressive countries. Those wishing to release dirt on private or government entities would also be well served by such information.

It appears as though some work is still needed in the field of Internet anonymity:

Law enforcement agents on two continents swooped in on top members of the infamous computer hacking group LulzSec early this morning, and acting largely on evidence gathered by the organization’s brazen leader — who sources say has been secretly working for the government for months — arrested three and charged two more with conspiracy.

Law enforcement was finally able to close in on several members of Lulz Security by gleaming information from the group’s leader, who provided evidence in, what I’m guessing was, exchange for either a reduced sentence or no sentence at all:

The offshoot of the loose network of hackers, Anonymous, believed to have caused billions of dollars in damage to governments, international banks and corporations, was allegedly led by a shadowy figure FoxNews.com has identified as Hector Xavier Monsegur. Working under the Internet alias “Sabu,” the unemployed, 28-year-old father of two allegedly commanded a loosely organized, international team of perhaps thousands of hackers from his nerve center in a public housing project on New York’s Lower East Side. After the FBI unmasked Monsegur last June, he became a cooperating witness, sources told FoxNews.com.

Obviously Monsegur failed to anonymize himself property as did his cohorts. This failure could have been through bragging about his capers, having his machine compromised, or by failing to properly anonymize his traffic during the attacks. His cohorts failed to keep themselves anonymous from Monsegur. If you’re going to be committing illegal acts it is best that you divulge no information about yourself to you coconspirators as such information could lead to your arrest if any other member is arrested.

Apple Announces OS X 10.8

I haven’t been posting much technology news as of later. Mostly this is because there hasn’t been much worth writing about and this really isn’t an exception. Apple quietly revealed the next version of OS X, named Mountain Lion.

With the exception of and iOS-esque notification center, nothing announced about 10.8 really grabs my attention. I guess that’s a good thing since my Mac Pro (1,1 model) won’t be officially supported anymore.