Bones Eye Tea

Nokia: First Mobile Phone Network On The Moon?

2020-10-22T02:38:00.000-07:00

After winning a contract from NASA in the wake of Project Artemis, could Finnish mobile phone company Nokia be the first one to provide mobile phone coverage on the Moon?

By: Ringo Bones

After winning a contract bid and granted by NASA $14.1-million to build the first ever 4G mobile phone networks on the Moon, it seems that the Finnish mobile phone company Nokia could be the first ever to establish a working 4G mobile phone network on the Moon that would be used by astronauts. In the wake of NASA’s Artemis Project that aims to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024 (and about time, given that the last time NASA sent a men to the Moon was back in 1972). By 2028, NASA hopes to have the beginnings of a working lunar base and, ultimately, a sustainable human presence.

If NASA’s current timetable goes as planned, Nokia says that their Lunar 4G Network will be completed by late 2022, with humans due to arrive shortly after in 2024 as part of NASA’s Project Artemis. Nokia decided to choose to establish a 4G network first because given its long track record has proven reliability and robustness in the previous years, although Nokia says that it already has plans for 5G purpose built for space applications in the near future.

Nokia says the proposed 4G network will provide connectivity for any activity that astronauts need to carry out on the Moon, including using the network for transmitting biometric data, remotely controlling autonomous exploratory lunar rovers, streaming high-definition video in order to allay the concerns of “Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy Theorists”, and enabling voice and video communications. Although how all of this will work with the expected one and a quarter second travel time delay of the radio waves between the Earth and the Moon is yet to be determined given that the 186,000 miles per second speed of the radio waves still have to travel a quarter of a million miles to the Moon and back to Earth again. And let us also hope that the “roaming charges” does not carry an astronomical price tag - as what often happens to a British tourist making a mobile call in Ibiza during the summer vacation season.

Google Pixel 5 Smartphone: Economic Downturn Ready Smartphone?

2020-10-01T03:52:00.000-07:00

Given that Google’s hardware chief said that its new flagship model was designed to be sold during an economic downturn, does the Google Pixel 5 Smartphone qualifies as such?

By: Ringo Bones

At US$699 MSRP, it is not exactly cheap and it will be facing stiff competition from comparable entry-level smartphones made by Samsung and a plethora of Mainland Chinese made ones, but why was the Google Pixel 5 smartphone hyped as a smartphone specifically designed for an economic downturn? Given that it is way cheaper than its predecessor – the US$999 4XL, as a result, the Pixel 5 has given up some of the main features of its predecessor and runs on a slower chip that allows it to be sold at a lower price. However, the Pixel 5 still gets 5G connectivity and some new picture taking related features.

It is a given in our current state of affairs that smartphone designs are usually fixed many months before the products are sold to the general public in order to secure the necessary components and to conduct tests. Google’s senior vice president of devices and services also admitted that the Pixel 5’s features were set way before the COVID 19 pandemic began, however, he said, that a conscious decision was made to offer a 5G-enabled smartphone at an “affordable price”.

Novel features of the Pixel 5 include the capability to allow it to wirelessly charge some accessories on the back. Last year’s “face unlock” sensors have also been discontinued to be replaced instead by a fingerprint sensor used on the Pixel 3. The Pixel 5 uses the Snapdragon 765 G graphics processing chip – a slower version than last year’s Snapdragon 855. One of the reversing cameras is now equipped with a wide-angle lens and also features various video stabilization modes to choose from. In addition, the RAM memory has been increased to 8GB, which allows the phone to move from task to task faster. And what makes the Pixel 5 much better than competing Mainland Chinese smartphones costing half as much that offers similar capabilities is that the Pixel 5 offers premium Android experience with super-fast updates.

Are Russian Cyber-Spies Targeting COVID 19 Vaccine Research Labs?

2020-07-17T01:37:00.000-07:00

Seems unbelievable when I’ve first heard of it but are Russia’s top cyber-spies targeting the world’s leading COVID 19 vaccine research labs?

By: Ringo Bones

Given that to those old enough to remember that the then Soviet Union was at the cutting edge in medical science when it comes to developing performance enhancing drugs at the height of the Cold War, and hence their “almost mythical” athletic performance during the Olympic Games after World War II, that Putin era Russia now has resorted to stealing vital data via cyber espionage when it comes to developing a working COVID 19 vaccine seems “unbelievable”. But, sadly, the world’s leading cyber security services had just found out that the Kremlin’s go-to cyber-spies, a hacker group popularly known as Cozy Bear, was responsible for hacking the computer servers of UK, Canadian and US labs currently working on a working COVID 19 vaccine. It did not specify which organizations had been targeted or whether any information had been stolen. But it said vaccine research had not been hindered by hackers and as usual, Russia has denied any responsibility.

The warning was recently published by an international group of security services like the UK’s NCSC, the Canadian Communication Security Establishment (CSE), the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cyber security Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the US National security Agency. One expert said it was “plausible” that, despite the Kremlin’s denials, Russian spies were involved. Cozy Bear – the named cyber espionage and hacking group – has been implicated in past cyber attacks and has left quite a trail, and there are fairly good links to the Russian state itself. Cozy Bear was first identified as being a significant “threat actor” as far back as 2014, according to the American cyber security firm Crowdstrike. It describes the group as being “aggressive” in its tactics and “nothing if not flexible, changing tool sets frequently. The unit has been previously implicated in hacking the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 US Presidential Election. But given Russia’s reputation of being the cutting edge in medical science since the Soviet era, why did the Kremlin authorize such an operation in order to be the first in developing a working COVID 18 vaccine?

From a geopolitical perspective, a nation state that can first develop a working COVID 19 vaccine could gain an unfair advantage from an economic perspective in being able to end a government enforced lockdown and restarting the economy while keeping its own citizens from getting sick and or dying from COVID 19. It seems that the COVID 19 vaccine spy-game is a high stakes play in terms of statecraft indeed. Let’s just hope that Agent 007 has the sufficient medical degree to tackle such a case successfully.

Does 5G Internet Networks Cause And Help The Spread Of The COVID 19 Virus?

2020-07-09T02:52:00.000-07:00

Given that the belief is straight out off Trump’s climate change denial playbook, does the belief that 5G internet networks causes COVID 19 more dangerous than the pandemic itself?

By: Ringo Bones

The dismissal of the pandemic as a hoax and questioning of scientific experts is straight out of President Trump’s, and other right-wing populist demagogue’s, playbook of climate change denial that got them elected in the first place. The 5G theory about radio waves transmitting or activating the virus, for example, is a reworking of long running conspiracy fears about mind control experiments, subliminal messaging and supposed United States military weapons projects that has since been a staple of Hollywood’s TV and movie industry way before the runaway mid 1990s success of The X-Files. Add to that an utter lack of how science works of most of Trump’s supporters and it is no longer a mystery that the belief that 5G internet networks causes and spreads the COVID 19 virus is very popular in the United States.

The 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories are particularly challenging to debunk by normal educated people with a working grasp of science – never mind tenured government scientists - because they bring together people from very different parts from the political spectrum. On the other hand, they attract the far-right Trump supporters who see them as part of a technological assault by big government and the “rich liberal elite” on the freedom of individuals. On the other, they appeal to the well established “anti-vaxxer community” who are often allied with those distrustful of Big Pharma. Getting COVID 19 from 5G internet networks is probably like someone getting polio from lighting FDR's old flashlight into their face.

Could 5G Interfere With Weather Forecasting Accuracy?

2020-07-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

Despite of the promise of blisteringly fast internet speed and much increased device connectivity, could 5G networks degrade our current weather forecasting ability back to the 1980s?

By: Ringo Bones

During trial runs in recent years, 5G networks – in prototype form - had managed to provide blisteringly fast internet speeds and quantum leaps in connectivity to our devices and hopefully, at data rates not much more expensive that we currently pay. But are there caveats to this increased internet speed and connectivity – as in degrading our current ability to provide accurate weather forecasting?

Since the mid 1990s, the ability of our meteorological satellites and supporting networks to provide accurate weather forecast have increased by leaps and bounds. Currently, we can track the severity of storms as it hits landfall by up to three days in advance. This resulted in countless lives being saved due to people evacuated to safer areas – an ability that just twenty years before, was thought of as just “science fiction”. But could 5G internet networks degrade our ability to provide accurate weather forecasts back to the early 1980s?

The radio frequencies used by 5G networks operate at around 24 GHz – a frequency quite close to the ones used by the sensors and transmitters of weather satellites. The radio frequency used by weather satellites / meteorological satellites takes advantage of how atmospheric water vapor in clouds and suspended ice crystals resonate at 23.8 GHz. Due to its close operating frequency, 5G internet networks could interfere with weather satellites when it comes to forecast accuracy. In recent trials, the degradation in accuracy can make a contemporary meteorological satellite operate as if it is using 1982 era technology in terms of weather forecasting accuracy.

COVID 19 Contact Tracing Apps: More Trouble Than Their Worth?

2020-06-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

Given that most of them are modeled after Apps used by Beijing to track their own political dissidents, are COVID 19 contact tracing apps more trouble than their worth especially when it comes to privacy concerns?

By: Ringo Bones

COVID 19 Contact Tracing Apps have raised concerns to everyone concerned about civil liberties. To anyone old enough to remember those post 9/11 overarching anti-terror laws can attest to this. Add to that most computer literate folks cite that most of them are reminiscent of secret tracking apps used by Beijing to monitor the day-to-day movement of suspected Uyghur political dissidents, it is easy to see why many see that COVID 18 contact tracing apps are really more trouble than their worth and has nothing to do with keeping us from getting COVID 19 but more to do with breaching the most basic of our privacy rights.

According to a study published by the Brookings Institution back in April 27, 2020: Even among true contact events, most will not lead to transmission. Studies suggest that people have on average about a dozen close contacts a day – incidents involving direct touch or one-on-one conversation – yet even in the absence of social distancing measures the average infected person transmits to only 2 or 3 other people throughout the entire course of the disease. Fleeting interactions, such as crossing paths in a grocery store, will substantially more common and substantially less likely to cause transmission. If the apps flag these lower-risk encounters as well, they will cast a wide net when reporting exposure. If they do not, they will miss a substantive fraction of transmission events.

Because most exposures flagged by apps will not lead to infection, many users will be instructed to self-quarantine even though they have not been infected. A person may put up with this once or twice, but after a few false alarms and the ensuring inconvenience of protracted self-isolation, we expect many will start to disregard the warnings, Of course, this is a problem with conventional contact tracing as well, but it can be managed with effective direct communication between the contact tracer and the suspected contact.

Google Restricting Huawei’s Use Of Android: The E-Commerce Side of the Trade War?

2019-05-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

Even though security concerns on Huawei products has been around since 2006, does Google’s latest move now makes Trump’s trade war with China now has a e-commerce front?

By: Ringo Bones

Back around 2006 to 2007, tech-savvy Gen-X’ers’ primary reason for “boycotting” Huawei and ZTE gear was primarily due to the Tibetan Freedom Movement and how Beijing kept incrementally ratcheting their crackdown on Uyghurs since the 1990s. Sadly such concerns were largely forgotten or dipped below the radar of activist social media since a relatively unknown senator from Illinois got elected to The White House. Then and now, no major news correspondent manage to ask Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei about what he thinks about consumers who chose to boycott Huawei products because of Tibetan Freedom Movement and Uyghur crackdown concerns. But recently in February 2019, the Huawei issue surfaced yet again – and in a way bigger manner – after the company faced growing backlash from Western countries, primarily lead by the Trump Administration, over possible risks posed by using Huawei products in next-generation 5G mobile networks.

On May 20, 2019, Google decided to start restricting new designs of Huawei smartphones access to some Google apps. This move comes after the Trump Administration added Huawei to a list of companies that American firms cannot trade with unless they have a “special license”. In a statement, Google said it was “complying with the order and reviewing the implications”. At the moment, Huawei declined to comment.

At the moment, existing Huawei smartphone users will still be able to update apps and push through security fixes, as well as update Google Play services, but when Google launches the next version of Android later this year, it may not be available on Huawei devices. Future Huawei devices may no longer have apps such as YouTube and Google Maps. Even though Huawei has already a so-called Plan B to prepare them from such scenarios brought about by the Trump Administration’s “Trade War”, the company probably must now abandon its plan to overtake Samsung to become the world’s best-selling smartphone brand by 2020.

The Mankosi Village Do It Yourself Internet: A Good Model to Follow For Those Still Trying To Connect to The Internet?

2019-03-29T02:41:00.003-07:00

With only a preliminary help to start up the village’s own mesh network, would Mankosi village, South Africa’s do it yourself internet serves as a good example for those still can’t connect to the internet due to their remote location?

By: Ringo Bones

Even though the project got its start back in 2017, Mankosi village, South Africa’s Do It Yourself – also called Zenseleni – in the local language recently got press notice not only for its ongoing success, but primarily for its lower user fees in comparison to other major telecommunication company owned internet networks in other parts of the African continent. In Mankosi, you can get one full month of internet for less than 2 US dollars – about 1.70 US dollars in fact.

When the villagers of Mankosi first heard about this thing called the internet and how it could help them in touch cheaply while helping them with all manner of information research, the village, with the help of the University of Western Cape built a mesh network that later became known as Zenzeleni – which means do-it-yourself in their local language. The village runs its own mesh networks that are then linked to the internet. Due to the relatively remote location of Mankosi village, a mesh network based internet system is much cheaper to operate than a conventional single mast based network more often used by major telecommunication companies / internet service providers to locate relatively remote areas to the internet. Mankosi’s messed network system was initially ran on off the grid solar photovoltaic power generating systems, although the village got recently connected to the country’s main electrical grid back in 2018 which further reduced their operating costs.

Due to the economies of scale, the network still manages to earn a profit since it was started back in 2017 even at the price that they charge. The Mankosi village network also make money by selling voice-over-internet-protocol vouchers that people can use to talk to each other. This cost about 17-percent of what people normally pay to make calls in South Africa. Zenzeleni instead charge 50-percent of network charges and thus makes a profit. The profit is used to maintain the network and to fund other development projects within the villages. Mankosi’s Zenzeleni network still runs till this day because the University of Western Cape trained several villagers – and they still do – to install and maintain the towers as in-house technicians.

DNA: Music Recording And Playback Format Of The Future?

2019-02-17T14:43:00.001-08:00

With traditional independent record stores now closing and malls no longer selling Red Book Compact Discs, will DNA prove to be the “future-proof” music format of the future?

By: Ringo Bones

With traditional independent music stores – ones that sell vinyl LPs and Redbook 16-bit 44.1 KHz sampled compact discs closing and big malls no longer selling Redbook CDs, it seems that it would only be a matter of time that every Generation-Xers music collection could be consigned to the dustbin of history much sooner than expected. Thankfully, to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the release of their most successful album, UK based electronic music group Massive Attack released their Mezzanine album on DNA back in October 2018.

Massive Attack worked with Andrew Melchior at the technology consultancy 3^rd Space Agency – the man who helped Bjӧrk convert her performance of “Stonemilker” into virtual reality for her 2015 MOMA show. According to Melchior: “The advantage with DNA is that our civilization could crash into dust and rebuild itself using entirely different technology, meaning they couldn’t access our computers or disks, since every human carries DNA, we can expect any future civilization to work out how to play back DNA-stored information. Which means the first thing a future civilization would learn about us might be Mezzanine.”

Using the DNA molecule to store vast amounts of digitally encoded information is more than just a science fiction pipe dream that was first popularly presented in the Superman movie franchise Man of Steel. The idea has first been published back in 1964 to 1965 when a Soviet era physicist named Mikhail Neiman published his work on the subject in the journal Radiotekhnika. But the first successful execution of encoding digital data onto a DNA molecule was back in 2012 when Harvard biologist George Church encoded one of his books onto a DNA molecule.

The electronic musicians Massive Attack worked with scientists at TurboBeads, a commercial spin-off from the Swiss science, engineering and mathematics university ETH Zurich, to adopt a technology pioneered by maverick US biotechnologists Craig Venter when he created a synthetic chromosome of a bacteria species in the laboratory with four “watermarks” written in the DNA. Robert Grass, professor at ETH Zurich’s Functional Materials Laboratory and his colleague Reinhard Heckel used similar chemical techniques to translate Mezzanine’s digital audio stream into genetic code. “We store digital information in a sequence of zeroes and ones, but biology stores genetic information using the four building blocks of DNA,” Grass explains. “We compressed Mezzanine’s digital audio then coded it as DNA molecules by converting the binary 0s and 1s into a quaternary code – with adenine representing 00, cytosine representing 01, guanine representing 10 and thymine representing 11. The resulting DNA resembles natural DNA in every way, although it contains no useful genetic information.”

According to Massive Attack band member Robert del Naja: “The storage potential of DNA is huge.” Indeed, one milligram of the DNA molecule could store the complete text of every book in the US Library of Congress and have room to spare. Del Naja also states: “If you think about DNA versus the ridiculous amounts of server farms that have got to be cooled 24/7 all around the world, this looks like a much better solution going forward. It allows us to archive music for hundreds of thousands of years.” Unfortunately as of late no word yet on the newfangled format’s sound quality.

Beyond Verbal: Also A Novel Medical Diagnostic App?

2019-02-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

Originally an Israeli start-up company that claims to do emotion recognition using vocal intonations, could Beyond Verbal’s vocal analyzing system also serve as an early medical diagnostic tool?

By: Ringo Bones

When Dr. Yoram Levanon founded Beyond Verbal back in 2012, their patented computer algorithm was originally intended to provide emotion recognition by analyzing subtle and not-so-subtle vocal intonations. Beyond Verbal commercializes a patented technology from 18 years of research by physicists and neuropsychologists into the mechanisms of human intonations. The company says that its technology enables machines to understand human emotions by analyzing raw voice intonations as people speak.

This technology is based on research of over 70,000 subjects in more than 30 different languages, which led to the development of the app that extracts people’s moods, attitudes and personality from the intonations of their voice. Together with neuro-psychologist Dr. Lan Lossos, the original idea for Beyond Verbal came when Dr. Levanon began showing interest in how babies – who do not understand a single word – are able to figure out exactly what their caretakers feel toward them. Levanon and Lossos then studied over 60,000 test subjects in at least 26 languages and their success in extracting, decoding and measuring human moods, attitudes and personalities gave birth to what they call Emotional Analytics.

Years later, it was found out that their app can also manage to detect illness through the sound of one’s voice. As of 2019, during various interviews with the press, CEO, founder and Beyond Verbal’s chief scientist Dr. Yoram Levanon states that the latest version of their Beyond Verbal app has the ability to be able to analyze diseases via the human voice with up to 75-percent accuracy in tests via a newly added classifier using vocal biomarkers. The latest version of the Beyond Verbal app has now the ability to detect early signs of Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer and even early signs of autism in children. Does this now make Beyond Verbal a quite effective medical app?

Has Beijing Doing Cyber Espionage on the African Union?

2018-02-11T05:59:00.000-08:00

Even though they had donated the building and the computer equipment, has Beijing been conducting cyber espionage work on the African Union headquarters during the last five years?

By Ringo Bones

The 200-million US dollar headquarters in Addis Ababa – including the computer system - was fully funded and built by China and opened to great fanfare back in 2012. Many in the West see it as a symbol of Beijing’s thrust for influence in Africa and access to the continent’s natural resources. Then an article published back in Friday, January 2, 2018 in the French publication Le Monde quoting anonymous African Union sources – which included IT technicians – reported that data from computers in the Chinese-built building had been transferred nightly to Mainland Chinese servers during the past five years. After the massive hack was discovered a year ago, the building’s IT system including the servers was changes, according to Le Monde. During the sweep for bugs after the discovery, microphones hidden in desks and the walls were also detected and removed, the newspaper reported.

Sadly, despite of the report’s credibility, Chinese and African Union officials that gathered in Addis Ababa for the bloc’s annual summit both denied Le Monde’s report. China’s ambassador to the African Union, Kuang Weilin, recently called the article “ridiculous and preposterous” and said its publication was intended to put pressure on relations between Beijing and the African continent.

When asked about the report, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who assumed the African Union chairmanship this year, said that he did not know anything about it. “But in any case, I don’t think there is anything done here that we would not like people to know,” he told reporters after a meeting of African heads-of-state. “I don’t think spying is the specialty of the Chinese, We have spies all over the place in this world,” Kagame said. “But I will not have worried about being spied on in this building.” Kagame’s only concern, he said, was that the African Union should have built its own headquarters, instead of China. “I would only have wished that in Africa we got our act together earlier on. We should have been able to build our own building.”

Are Filipino Facebook Content Moderators Compromised?

2018-02-04T07:25:00.000-08:00

Rumors are abound online, but are Filipino Facebook content moderators actually bribed to remove content critical to Vladimir Putin, the Beijing Communist Party and Pres. Rodrigo Duterte from Facebook?

By: Ringo Bones

I first heard it back in Friday, February 2, 2018 that a whistleblower had acquired proof that Filipino Facebook content moderators had been receiving bribes from various entities to advance their respective political ends by removing Facebook posts critical of them. Even though someone from the BBC had taken the story seriously but is still awaiting verification on the authenticity of the material – which means it could be a big story two weeks from now. But is there any truth to the story that Filipino Facebook content moderators are taking bribes?

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook started to hire additional personnel in the form of “content moderators” back in 2014 to control the tide of “propaganda posts” by the so-called Islamic State that showcased beheadings of western NGOs, charity workers and journalists caught up in their violent and bloody empire building in the wake of the Syrian civil war. It is not just “gruesome beheadings” that these so-called moderators block from being posted on Facebook. These also include inappropriate posts of pornographic nature – i.e. the so-called “dick pics” and their ilk. But since the so-called Islamic State is now in the wan, many of this so-called “Facebook Content Moderators” have branched out to do other tasks - sadly, they have the power to declare whichever of your posts is “spam” at their own discretion if they are not caught by their superiors.

Filipino Facebook Content Moderators are typically paid around 24,000 pesos a month – around 376 UK pounds (quid) or a little over 500 US dollars – which is twice that the typical salary of a public school teacher here in the Philippines. Rumors started to circulate around the middle of last year after one of the moderators who is actually working for Amnesty International infiltrated the center after it was found out that there are Filipino Facebook content moderators who are paid by the Kremlin with up to 10,000 US dollars if they block video posts on Facebook that are taken by Amnesty International operatives in Syria that show Russian troops and planes loyal to Bashar Al Assad committing war crimes.

American and European non-government organizations and charity groups critical of the current Philippine president who recently compared himself to Adolf Hitler – i.e. Rodrigo Duterte – on his handling of the Philippines’ so-called drug problem got their Facebook pages either blocked or made “unvisitable” in the Philippines. Should there be an ethics committee serving as an oversight on Filipino Facebook Content Moderators?

Could The Ransomware Cyber Attacks Trigger A Malware Apocalypse?

2017-05-18T10:39:00.001-07:00

Given that it was originally revealed as an NSA creation by Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing, could the recent WannaCry Ransomware cyber attacks someday trigger a malware apocalypse?

By: Ringo Bones

The so-called “Zombie Apocalypse” might have been only a product of Hollywood, but the recent Ransomware malware attacks is not only real but painfully tangible for us who have grown dependent to the global internet infrastructure. The WannaCry Ransomware cyber attacks started back in May 12, 2017 and traced to be triggered in the Hong Kong – Singapore time zone in the South-East Asian region and then spread to over 150 countries. The worst-hit countries were reported to be Russia, Ukraine, India and Taiwan. It eventually infected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries but got press notice only after the malware affected Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) and scores of children’s hospitals in the UK.

The WannaCry Ransomware was found to specifically infect systems that have not been updated with the most recent security updates – especially the one issued by Microsoft back in March 14, 2017. The Ransomware malware also managed to scare the pants off of conspiracy theorists after I.T. experts found out that it uses the EternalBlue Exploit developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as revealed by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

It got the moniker “Ransomware” after the NSA-developed malware got into the hands of criminal hackers who extorted money to computer system owners affected by their malware attack. They usually ask for 500 to 600 U.S. dollars worth in bitcoins to restore their computer systems into full working order. Sadly, there are variants of the Ransomware malware that doesn’t have the kill-switch that can be turned off by the criminal hackers after you pay then the required bitcoin funds.

Adblockers: Online Protection Racket?

2016-06-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

Given their “proviso” for a whitelist so that your ads will still be displayed when they’re installed, are adblockers nothing more than a 21st Century online protection racket?

By: Ringo Bones

The “whitelist” proviso of some leading adblockers out there, the most notorious of which is Adblock Plus’ Whitelist that allows “acceptable” ads to show or punch through once the Adblock Plus application is installed in your personal computer or smartphone had many comparing it to an online protection racket after it was leaked that if a company or agency wants to get into Adblock Plus’ “Whitelist”, all they have to do is to pay the company who runs Adblock Plus this amount of money to be included on their so-called “Whitelist”. If this is not a bona fide protection racket, I don’t know what is.

As of late, the online adblocking industry had engendered a so-called online adblocking arms race where some firms already have created and successfully tested easily installable applications that can block the adblockers for those firms who find that Adblocker Plus’ “Whitelist” fee just too rich for their blood.

On of these blockers for adblockers applications is Page Fair which according to the firm aimed to benefit small to medium scale mom and pop online publishers and content providers to circumvent Adblocker Plaus and other adblocker apps from depriving them of their revenue. Given that current adblocker apps are a threat to online free enterprise comparable to Stalin era Marxist-Leninist socialism, why are a growing number of netizens are installing them in the first place?

The adblocker apps’ original raison d’être was to block annoying ads from popping up when a typical netizen is doing online research. Sadly, the latest versions of adblockers – especially those that are bundled with the latest personal computer and smartphone operating systems are no longer provided with an on-off switch. Worse still, unless you are a high level information technology engineer who knows how to check the subroutine and / or source-code of the operating system of the desktop personal computer, smartphone, tablet or other smart device you are currently using, your device doesn’t tell you that there is some form of adblocking application installed in the device you are currently using to surf the web – it only tells you once you’ve visited an internet site with an adblock detector that tells you that you can only proceed further once you’ve turned off your adblock app. Sadder still, the latest adblock apps don’t come with an on-off switch.

Panama Papers Leak: The Largest Data Leak In History?

2016-04-05T03:20:00.000-07:00

Shown to be bigger than 2010 WikiLeaks or the Edward Snowden leak of 2013, is the Panama Papers Leak of the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseka the largest online data leak so far?

By: Ringo Bones

Despite and online publication about it is currently being blocked by Baidu – The People’s Republic of China’s equivalent of Google and the only search engine permitted to function in Mainland China by the Beijing Communist Party – the Panama Papers Leak of the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseka is currently revealed to be the largest online data leak ever. It is larger, in fact, than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010 and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by former U.S. National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden in 2013 – but actually, how big is it?

There are 11.5 million documents and 2.6 terabytes – or about 260 gigabytes – of information drawn from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database. By way of comparison, the 2010 WikiLeaks only consisted of 1.76 gigabytes of data and the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013 is even much smaller in data size despite of the large-scale global political fallout. And because of its size, the Panama Papers Leak could be harder to cyber-censor because proxy sites are probably popping up all over the world-wide-web. The “Great Firewall of China” would be akin to using a sieve to plug a water leak.

The records were first obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Sϋddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ then shared them with a large network of international partners – including the Guardian and the BBC. The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. Twelve national leaders are among the 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens and a significant number of them are incumbent members and immediate families of the Beijing Communist Party. Ever since the news about the Panama Papers Leak went global, Baidu – The People’s Republic of China’s equivalent of Google and the only search engine authorized by the monolithic communist party to operate in Mainland China – had been blocking the story for frat that it may be just a “Western Plot” against the Beijing Communist Party.

A 2-billion US dollar trail leads all the way to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin via the Russian president’s best friend – a cellist named Sergei Roldugin – is at the center of a scheme in which money from the Russian state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putin’s daughter Katerina got married. And despite the legality of the leaked documents, Russia’s official news agency had dismissed the revelations as a “Western plot” against Vladimir Putin.

Among the other national leaders revealed by the Panama Papers Leak to have offshore wealth are Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq Ayad Alawi, president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Alaa Mubarak – son of Egypt’s former president and the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíỗ Gunnlsughsson. And what irked the international community most is on how Mossack Fonseca helped governments that are under imposed economic sanctions by the UN Security Council to still do business with impunity – like North Korea and Russia since the unlawful Donetsk Region annexation by the Putin regime.

Mossack Fonseca is a Panama-based law firm whose services include incorporating companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands. It administers offshore firms for a yearly fee. Other services include wealth management. The firm is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation. Its website boasts of a global network with 600 people working in 42 countries. It has franchises around the world, where separately owned affiliates sign up new customers and have exclusive rights to use its brand. Mossack Fonseca operates in tax havens including Switzerland, Cyprus and British Virgin Islands and in the British crown dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Can WiFi Routers Kill Houseplants?

2016-04-03T03:51:00.000-07:00

Even though the verdict is still out there, can our homes’ and schools’ WiFi routers kill nearby houseplants?

By: Ringo Bones

Even though the facts behind this assumption was taken from a preliminary conclusion in a school science experiment done back in 2013. Back then, a Danish high school pupil named Lea Nielsen conducted a school science experiment to test whether radio-frequency signals from WiFi routers have deleterious effects on biological beings. Choosing to test on plants for their school’s science project, their results have been viewed with extreme skepticism by the global scientific community. Inexplicably, the global scientific community haven’t done their won more rigorous version of the Danish High School pupil’s school science experiment to test whether WiFi routers have deleterious effects on biological beings and published their results for all to see.

This WiFi “controversy“ surfaced again after a recent episode of CSI: Cyber used the preliminary conclusions of the Danish High School WiFi experiment to search for a hidden WiFi router by observing dead or dying houseplants in the vicinity. Given that irrefutable results are still out there, can WiFi routers actually kill houseplants and / or inflict deleterious harm on nearby biological beings?

Using cres plants growing near their school’s WiFi routers that went brown as the basis for their school science experiment, 15-year-old pupils from a school in Denmark decided to run the experiment after noticing that they also had trouble concentrating the morning after sleeping close to their mobile phones. Some scientists suggests that given the radio frequencies emitted by WiFi routers are the same frequencies generated by the magnetron of a microwave oven, it probably affected the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules inside plants and other biological beings in the same way that a microwave oven cooks food or heats a water placed inside the oven in a microwave-safe container.

Farewell Ray Tomlinson

2016-03-07T00:09:00.000-08:00

The internet will be a bit sadder place as e-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson passed away.

By: Ringo Bones

The internet pioneer and e-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson passed away on Saturday, March 5, 2016 at the age of 74 of an apparent heart attack. The US computer programmer came up with the idea of electronic messages that could be sent from one network to another back in 1971. His invention included the ground-breaking use of the “@” symbol in e-mail addresses, which is now standard.

Ray Tomlinson has sent what is now regarded as the first e-mail while working in Boston as an engineer for the research company Bolt, Beranek and Newman. The firm played a big role in developing an early version of the internet, known as Arpanet. However, Tomlinson later said he could not remember what was in that first test message, describing it as “completely forgettable”. His work was recognized by his peers back in 2012, when he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.

45 years after the first ever e-mail was sent, such form of internet communication has become so ubiquitous that it has even become a topic of political contention – i.e. US Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s ongoing e-mail scandal. And despite of the widespread popularity of “newfangled” social media networks that only began during the first decade of the 21^st Century, sending messages and other electronic files via e-mail is still the de rigueur method used by some due to its ease of use in relation to its security in comparison to upstart social media accounts. Will e-mail accounts like those pioneered by Ray Tomlinson as we know it still be around 50 years from now or will it be finally superseded by some much improved version wholly different from what we currently use?

Apple Versus FBI iPhone Fight: Setting A Dangerous Legal Precedent?

2016-03-05T03:36:00.000-08:00

The legal tussle seems like foreshadowing our increasingly “Orwellian Present” but is the current Apple versus FBI iPhone transcend mere legal rigmarole and sets a dangerous legal privacy precedent?

By: Ringo Bones

The ongoing legal fight between the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Apple over a specific iPhone 5C owned and used by one of the Islamic State inspired terrorists involved in the San Bernardino, California massacre that happened back in December 2015 is setting up a dangerous legal precedent to everyone who holds dear their right to privacy and civil liberties. The FBI justifies their right to access the “locked contents” of the particular iPhone 5C citing that it is necessary to keep Americans safe from future attacks but is it really that cut-and-died? Other leading tech companies like Google, Amazon and others have sided with Apple in preserving their customers right to privacy and it also raises another question if the rumors are true that the FBI already has the world’s top “White Hat Hackers” working for them – would asking Apple to provide them with a back-door access to the San Bernardino iPhone 5C proof of laziness in the part of the FBI in performing its day-to-day law enforcement related telecommunications forensic duties?

Currently, the federal government seeks a dramatic extension of a 1977 Supreme Court case of New York Telephone to cover ever-evolving technologies. But lawyers in Apple’s camp argue that it is dangerous to extend that limited endorsement of judicial power over third parties to situations the U.S. Supreme Court never could have envisioned. From a legal perspective, what the FBI currently wants for all intents and purposes sets up a dangerous legal precedent because the federal government’s demand here, at its core, is unbound by any legal limits. It would set a dangerous precedent, in which the federal government could sidestep established legal procedures authorized by thorough, nuanced statutes to obtain users’ data in ways not (yet?) contemplated by lawmakers.

The way the iPhone 5C’s security feature works is that it automatically erases all of the phone’s data contents after 10 invalid password attempts are entered. But are “White Hat Hackers” currently in tenure of the FBI have the requisite skills to sidestep this clever security set-up? After all, there are rumors circulating out there that the tenured coders at Apple who made possible the clever anti-hack safeguard of the iPhone 5C has “allegedly” based their codes on those “500 to 600 US dollar unhackable phones” that were made by Lockheed Martin and Boeing back in 2005 that had been issued on critical VIPs working for the US State Department.

The European Data Relay System: An Improved Space Based Data Superhighway?

2016-02-01T00:43:00.000-08:00

Dubbed by the press as the “space based laser” will the European Data Relay System improve the global monitoring of the Earth’s environment and natural disasters?

By: Ringo Bones

When the “first node” of the European Data Relay System (EDRS) space based lasers – a relay satellite that was launched on a Russian Proton rocket from the famous Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan back in January 30, 2016, many see it as a quantum leap on how it can now improve on how civilian firms acquire images taken from orbital space and its transmission to ground stations. At present, it can take hours to get pictures taken from Earth observation satellites down to ground stations due to the inherent data bandwidth limitations of microwaves currently used to transmit digital photographic data between observation satellites in Earth’s orbit to ground stations even though microwaves and the lasers used in the new EDRS network of satellites both travel at the same 186,000 miles per second / 300,000 kilometers per second velocity.

Initial testing by the European Space Agency’s industrial partner – Airbus Defence and Space – shows it should be possible for the system to put pictures on the desks of people who need them on the ground within 20 minutes of those images being acquired which before the newfangled system used to take several hours of wait time. By way of comparison, the European Data Relay System’s space-based laser or “laser link” provides 90 to 100 times the normal internet speed currently being used in homes of major metropolitan areas around the world. For some applications – such as the monitoring of pollution incidents, illegal fishing or ocean piracy – the time saved could be critical to formulating and achieving an effective response.

“The European Data Relay System (EDRS) could open up a new horizon to what I would call quasi real time Earth observation.” says Magali Vaissiere, the European Space Agency’s director of telecoms. “EDRS has been in development for more than 10 years. Getting satellites to talk to each other via a narrow laser beam is no easy task,” says European Space Agency project manager Michael Witting. With a successful connection, data will move at a rate of up to 1.8 Gb per second.

Mainland China’s World Internet Conference: An Exercise In Online Hypocrisy?

2015-12-20T03:53:00.000-08:00

Though it was touted as Beijing’s promotion of how the World Wide Web should be run, but last week’s Chinese World Internet Conference nothing more than an exercise in online hypocrisy?

By: Ringo Bones

When last week’s Mainland China’s World Internet Conference was reported by the BBC back in December 16, 2015, many around the world see it as the Beijing government’s “world view” on how the global internet community should be run – i.e. the right of each country’s government’s right to impose hard line online censorship. Ever since Xi Jinping became Mainland China’s head-of-state, the country’s internet laws were further tightened by the Beijing government. In Mainland China, spreading supposed “wild rumors” via the internet – especially if it is a pro political opposition themed – carries a mandatory 7 year prison sentence. But despite the Beijing government’s expressing its right for world internet isolationism, was last week’s “Mainland China’s World Internet Conference” nothing more than an exercise in on line hypocrisy.

Despite Mainland China being currently the world’s largest online population given that an estimated 650 million or more Mainland Chinese citizens are now regular internet users. Unfortunately, the “free world’s” top social networks and entertainment and educational sites – like Facebook, You Tube and Google just to name a few – can’t be accessed on Mainland Chinese soil thanks to the “Great Firewall Of China”, which sees to it that the rest of the free world’s internet traffic won’t be accessed on Mainland China. So effective is their “Firewall” that even relatively harmless content – like the trailer of the movie Garfield: A Tale Of two Kitties” that was released to the World Wide Web some years ago got automatically blocked in Mainland China because the Beijing government approved firewall – in the guise of their “Green Dam Youth Escort” - apparently mistaken the color of Garfield’s fur as the vestments of the Dalai Lama and thus flagging the movie trailer as a “rebellious Free Tibet message”.

And even though there might be some merit to the Beijing government’s argument that “all countries should be allowed to make its own rules with regards to internet traffic within its sovereign territory”, what’s politically and philosophically hypocritical – from a Western point of view – on Beijing’s internet governance is that they are actively sponsoring unscrupulous hackers that actively attack and commit digital vandalism and other much worse cyber-attacks to political activists – especially exiled Chinese dissidents now residing in more democratic countries – setting up sites that criticize current human rights violations and other social ills on Mainland China. One that has gained notoriety over the years was the Unit 61398 of the Beijing 50 Cent Cyber Army where a few even have United States Federal Bureau Of Investigation arrest warrants issued against them for performing brazen cyber attacks on official US Government websites. And by the way, the Baidu Driverless Car – the Beijing government approved version of the Google Driverless Car – debuted in the Mainland China World Internet Conference.

Does Christmas Lights Slow Down Your Wi-Fi’s Speed?

2015-11-30T23:23:00.000-08:00

Though there are a number of probable reasons from an electrical and electronic engineers’ perspective, but can Christmas lights actually slow down your home Wi-Fi’s speed?

By: Ringo Bones

At the time of writing, America’s right-leaning Evangelicals has yet to call this latest study as a conspiracy by the telecommunications industry to launch a “war against Christmas”, but a lot of people find it disconcerting that the most de rigueur indicator of the Yuletide Season – Christmas lights or as the Brits call them fairy lights – can actually slow down the speed of your home Wi-Fi. Worse still, quite a number of us now use broadband technology to stay connected with our loved ones through the internet and the Yuletide Season is one of the peak seasons of the year for such activities and a Wi-Fi slowdown is the last thing we need.

In a recent research study results released by watchdog Ofcom, Christmas tree lights / fairy lights can actually slow down your Wi-Fi’s data transfer speed and the results were in conjunction with the new app that they recently released that can check the “health” of your home broadband. The app samples Wi-Fi’s wireless signals to see if the data is flowing uninterrupted from routers to smart-phones and tablets. The app is released alongside research results, which suggests Wi-Fi in six million homes and offices participating in the Ofcom study were not running as fast as it should.

According to the study, what causes the slowdown is the interference caused by the solid state power supplies used in modern electronics that are not transformer isolated from mains which forms the power supplies of most modern LED based Christmas lights / fairy lights that also power the electronics that makes them blink and the “singing chip”. Radio frequency emissions from baby monitors and microwave ovens can also significantly slow down Wi-Fi data transfer speeds said Ofcom in a statement.

Artificial Intelligence Computer Programs: The New Cancer Treatment Paradigm?

2015-10-25T16:24:00.001-07:00

Even though it can’t yet pass the Turing Test, does Berg Health’s artificial intelligence computer programs represent a new paradigm in cancer treatment research and development?

By: Ringo Bones

Even though the working principles of such computer programs were first mentioned in Star Trek: The Next Generation and other science fiction programs back in the late 1980s, it is only relatively recently that an artificial intelligent computer program had actually reduced the time and costs in the research and development of new anti-cancer drugs - which is of upmost importance if the new anti-cancer drug proves to be safer than current chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment schemes. Even though it can’t yet pass the Turing Test, it does show promise of reducing the excessive costs and lengthy development times in introducing new and more effective anti-cancer treatment drugs to the market.

Berg Health – a pharmaceutical start up founded in back in 2008 with Silicon Valley venture capital backing, said that its proprietary artificial intelligent computer program has managed to slash both time and development costs of putting a new more effective anti-cancer drug into the market. It has already managed to develop a new anti-cancer drug that’s expected to go on sale within three years – marking seven years in development compared to the general 14 years using previous methods.

Recent cancer research shows that healthy cells feed on glucose in the body and then die off in a process known as cell death when their usefulness draws to a close. But in some circumstances the mitochondria – the part of the cell that provides its energy – malfunctions and metabolizes lactic acid instead of glucose, turning off the built in cell death function at the same time. The cell can then become cancerous and a tumor grows. Berg Health’s new drug – BPM31510 – will reactivate the mitochondria, restarting the metabolizing of glucose as normal and reinstituting call death so the body can harmlessly pass the problem cell out of the body.

Berg Health’s research and development team used a specialized form of artificial intelligence computer program to compare samples taken from patients with the most aggressive strains of cancer, including pancreatic, bladder and brain, with those from non-cancerous individuals. The technology highlighted disparities between the corresponding biological profiles, selecting those it predicted would respond best to the drug being tested.

“We’re looking at 14-trillion data points in a single tissue sample. We can’t humanly process that”, says Niven Narain, a clinical oncologist and Berg Health co founder. “Because we’re tackling this data-driven approach, we need a supercomputer capability. We use them for mathematics in a big data analytic platform, so it can collate that data into various categories: healthy population for women, for men, disease candidates, etc, and it’s able to take these slices in time and integrate them so that we’re able to see where it’s gone wrong and develop drugs based on that information,” Mr. Narain said.

Berg Health expects to begin phase two trials of the drug in January 2016, meaning it has already been proven to be effective on animal or cell culture tests and is safe to continue testing in humans. Mr. Narain said it usually takes 2.6-billion US dollars and 12 to 14 years to get a new drug to the market, and that the trial metric within four and a half years worth of development indicated the time it takes to create a new drug can be cut by at least 50-percent. This will also translate into less expenditure, he claimed. “I don’t believe we’re going to spend 1.3-billion US dollars to produce our first drug, so the cost is cut by at least 50-percent too” he added. “There’s a bit of trial and error in the old model so a lot of these costs are due to the failure of really expensive clinical trials. We’re able to be more predictive and effective…and that’s going to cut hundreds of millions of dollars off the cost.”

Facebook: More Than Just A Social Media Network?

2015-10-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

Given the company’s plans to acquire a telecommunications satellite to increase its coverage throughout the African continent, does Facebook plans to become more than just a mere social media network?

By: Ringo Bones

Facebook wants to become much more than a social media network – founder Mark Zuckerberg announced this week announced this week that the company is also building a satellite to improve internet access for parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The move is part of Facebook’s initiative with Internet.org to bring free web services to people living in remote regions. A new satellite called Amos-6 will make the web accessible from big chunks of sub-Saharan Africa orbiting over the continent and serving what Zuckerberg characterized as “large parts of west, east and southern Africa.

“Over the last year, Facebook has been exploring ways to use aircraft and satellites to beam internet access down into communities from the sky” Zuckerberg wrote. “To connect people living in remote regions, traditional connectivity infrastructure is often difficult and inefficient, so we need to invent new technologies.” Even though he had visited India before, Mark Zuckerberg’s recent visit to India got better press attention this time around because he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed on how universal internet access could serve as a tool to eliminate extreme poverty. Could a dedicated Facebook telecommunications satellite make such promise a reality?

Will There Be A Great Sino-American Cyber War Truce?

2015-09-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

Even though whatever ongoing cyber war between the United States and Mainland China may seem piecemeal, will there ever be a great Sino-American cyber war truce?

By: Ringo Bones

The recent visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the United States managed to produce a fruitful cooperation with President Barack Obama when it comes to long-term ways of tackling climate change, the two world leaders – more or less – managed to reach a truce when it comes to the ongoing cyber war between the two countries. Even though the ongoing cyber war between the United States and The People’s Republic of china may seem piecemeal in comparison to the cyber war between Estonia and Russia a few years back, the estimated damage on the affected corporate and federal government entities in the United States since the Sino-American cyber war began had been estimated to be in the billions of US dollars. Even though the two world powers have shown enough restraint that has prevented their piecemeal cyber war from blowing up the worldwide web, will there ever be a “great Sino-American cyber war truce”?

Even if the United States manages to mount an effective firewall against the ongoing cyber war, many a private corporate entities in the United States have since became a victim of cyber espionage launched from the Chinese Mainland as far back as before the 9/11 terror attacks. During the launch of the Green Dam Youth Escort internet censorship firewall by the Beijing government, Hollywood had complained that the Green Dam Youth Escort’s color-coded censorship scheme had “censored” or blocked the online promotional ads of Garfield A Tale of Two Kitties promotional trailer from running in Mainland China because the Green Dam Youth Escort cannot differentiate between the color of Garfield’s fur from the vestments of the Dalai Lama.

Even though Unit 61398 – the famed cyber warfare unit of the People’s Liberation Army – have since outsourced its cyber attacks and cyber espionage jobs to the Beijing 50-Cent Cyber Army a few years ago, the damage done by the cyber warfare incidences over the years cannot be easily overlooked. A cyber war truce is needed between the United States and The People’s Republic of China but it won’t come easy for now.

Inmarsat: The Internet Connectivity Company?

2015-09-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

Established back in 1979 as a way to help ships communicate back to their home-bases wherever they are in the world, is Inmarsat now the world’s leading internet connectivity provider?

By: Ringo Bones

When Inmarsat Group CEO Rupert Pearce recently announced their latest satellite launch back in August 29, 2015, anyone knowledgeable with the company started to remember how far the company has come since its days as a satellite communications system provider to ships so that they can communicate with their home-bases wherever they are in the world. But what are currently Inmarsat is setting its sights to providing internet connectivity to parts of the world not yet serviced by the world’s mainstream internet service providers due to their remote locations.

If Inmarsat has its way, airline passengers travelling at 595 miles per hour at 40,000 feet will be guaranteed broadband connectivity which, at present, such privilege is still the preserve of first-class passengers. Plans for affordable versions of such in-flight broadband connectivity service for ordinary airline passengers are already in the works at Inmarsat thanks to the lower costs of launching telecommunications satellites compared to just a decade ago. Currently, Inmarsat’s communication satellites are providing connectivity to the remote parts of Africa not yet serviced by other telecommunication companies.