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DNA FOR YOUR COMPUTER

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Will your next computer be built from your genetic material? Though you shouldn’t start shopping for your DNA based PC yet, organic computers may soon become the dominant means of processing data.

Most of us think of computers as mechanical, and built from silicon chips. They process data in binary form: tiny electrical charges representing ones and zeroes. Many computer scientists, though, believe that we’ve gotten nearly as much out of silicon as we ever will. It gets ever more difficult to shrink circuits further, so we may not be able to improve computers much through conventional methods.

Enter the organic computer. Leonard Adleman first demonstrated a DNA computer in 1994. He used it to encode and solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, a puzzle that had long bedeviled mathematicians: how to plot the most efficient route between 14 hypothetical cities.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) can store massive amounts of information. It encodes data in four different sequences of molecules. We will simply call the four types C, G, A, and T. They process information through bonding between DNA pairs. Their input is single strands; their output is transformed strands.

The programming of such computers is more chemical than electronic or mechanical.

Early organic computers were difficult to work with, and unsuited for most data processing tasks. Since then, biochemists have learned how to encourage different types of organic bonds. Organic computers now can carry much more information. More recently, some computer scientists have found efficient ways to coat DNA strands with gold. From these strands, they can build much smaller circuits than they can with silicon.

With this latest development, a practical all-purpose organic computer may be on the way. We could have organic computers by 2020.

In 1994, Leonard Adleman said, “Like quantum computing, organic computing is very futuristic. Both make the point that computation doesn’t have to take place in a box that sits on our desk.”

 (To get the most from your computer, you need a good internet connection. Talk to us. We can help.)

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THE DAY THE INTERNET DIED

Internet_outage_map_October_2016

Is It Impossible?

The event had long been predicted. Most of us scoffed at the alarms, though, thinking they were merely the paranoid mutterings of conspiracy theorists, or cynical self-promotion by merchants hoping to profit from mass  hysteria.

The internet couldn’t possibly fail. A few websites might be vulnerable to hacking and malware, but the backbone of the internet was decentralized, robust, and thoroughly secure. We could always count on it. The dreaded day of Electronic Apocalypse would never arrive.

The Fateful Day Arrives

On Friday, October 21, 2016, the alarmists were proven right. The first wave of attacks began early in the day: about 7:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. This was in the midst of “rush hour” for internet use in America, with tens of millions casually reading the news, tweeting, and reviewing their Facebook pages. Some of the most heavily trafficked web sites and internet services in the world were knocked offline, including Netflix, Reddit, Etsy, Twitter, Spotify, AirBnB, the New York Times, Sound Cloud, PayPal, and the PlayStation Network. By about 9:00 a.m. EST, the affected services were operating again. They had apparently succeeded in repelling the attacks.

The day was not over, though, and the hackers were not finished. A second wave of attacks began just before noon EST. Yet a third wave began just after 3:00 pm.

The internet outages were especially severe and prolonged on the U.S. East Coast, where most of the affected servers were located. Widespread severe outages also afflicted California, the Desert Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, some Gulf Coast states, and parts of Europe. Asia, Africa, and Latin America saw very few outages.

What Caused the Outages?

Friday’s attacks on the internet were distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults of Dyn, an internet performance management firm that provides Domain Name System (DNS) services. Dyn described the raids as “a very sophisticated and complex attack”.

A DNS service is, in essence, an address book for the internet. Reading the web addresses we see on our browser tabs, the DNS service finds, and connects us with, the corresponding servers so we can receive the content we request.

A DDoS attack overloads a server with fake service requests, consuming its memory and bandwidth, so it has little to none left for legitimate requests. To the web surfer, it appears that requested pages are busy. The hackers prolong the outage with automatic repetition of their requests. Even innocent surfers can aggravate it by refreshing their requests from unresponsive pages.

The source of Friday’s attacks was a botnet (artificial intelligence application) called Mirai. The botnet army took control of, and then launched its attacks from, a host of lightly secured webcams, fitness monitors, location devices, DVRs, routers, and even baby monitors. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a critical point of vulnerability.

Could it Happen Again?

In the wake of Friday’s attack, many web analysts have said that we might see similar attacks disrupting the upcoming election. An Election Day internet failure, though, is unlikely to affect the presidential race much. Control of polling places and balloting is too decentralized. Internet failure could affect down-ballot races, though.

The threat of further internet outages won’t fade away soon. It could persist for months or years, even if the culprits in Friday’s attacks are caught and punished quickly. The source code for the Mirai botnet has been released to the public.

What Can You Do?

First, make sure you have a strongly-encrypted internet service, such as HughesNet. Change your passwords often for all connected devices, including webcams, DVRs, and fitness monitors. Be careful about sharing passwords or electronic devices. Every day, be careful when logging into your computer.

If you’re unsure, ask your internet service provider what it’s doing to thwart similar attacks. If there’s any good news in this episode, it’s that the FCC says providers have it in their power to prevent DDoS failures. They just need a few system upgrades. And now, of course, ISPs are aware of the need for tighter security. Friday’s outages were a loud wake-up call.

With vigilance, we can prevent the next great day of internet failure. It will require effort and close attention, but we can do it.

The enclosed map is by Level 3. It provides equipment and services for internet carriers.

For the best online security, you need a reliable connection. This is where we come in. Talk to us. We can help.

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RICE UNIVERSITY TESTS 1 TB RADIO WiFi

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Guglielmo Marconi would be proud. The pioneer of commercial radio would certainly approve the use of his discovery to transmit the word’s first non-laser wireless data system transmitting at 1 terabit per second (1 TB/S). This is 20,000 times the speed of the fastest current 4G LTE WiFi networks, and about 20 times the speed of the fastest wired business data services. At 1 TB/S, a signal could stream 200,000 HD movies at the same time.

The need for massive increases in data speed is obvious. A study conducted by Cisco Systems a few months ago found that mobile internet traffic grew by 74% globally in 2015, and smart phone use increased by 43%. For the year, video was 55% of all mobile data traffic.

The growing demand for data led the National Science Foundation to spend more than $60 million over the last five years in radio spectrum research. On Tuesday, the NSF gave a substantial grant to Rice University for testing of a pulsed radio data transfer method.

The researchers at Rice University, Edward Knightly and Aydin Babakhani, plan to depart from the carrier-wave modulation techniques that have been standard in radio communication for over a hundred years. Babakhani says that a pulsed wave system is probably the only non-laser WiFi platform that can perform at rates of in the range of 1 TB/S per channel.

Knightly said, “Instead of having signals that bounce off walls and are highly scattered throughout the environment, we (will)… only have line of sight. The benefit is (we)… blast all the bandwidth and all the information directly to a device with laser-sharp focus, and no one else will be able to intercept that signal because any receiver… offline… won’t detect it. So we’re focusing like a laser but we’re using radio. The challenge is to steer that beam to the right place at the right time, and to follow users as they move.”

We don’t know when 1 TB radio WiFi will be available to us. Several technical hurdles remain. If the Rice research team can overcome them quickly, we may see a consumer version within three years. When it does, we’ll report it here.

(For the best in internet service, talk to us. We can help.)

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ROKU RELEASES $30.00 STREAMING STICK

Video without Cable or Satellite Subscriptions

If you’re seeking a way to stream video to your computer, it’s getting easier. And it costs less than ever before.

The market for internet video streaming devices is getting ever more crowded. One manufacturer after another is producing dedicated streaming sticks or boxes to meet the growing demand for video services without conventional cable or satellite subscriptions.

Roku’s New Streaming Devices

Roku, which has long been a leader in the market, has pulled ahead in the  industry’s price war with Monday’s introduction of the Express Player, a new streaming stick that will retail for a mere $29.99. This beats the $35.00 price for Google’s Chromecast Stick and the $40.00 price for the Amazon Fire TV Stick.

The Roku Express works on TV sets with HDMI connections, and handles 1080p HD signals. Another model, the Express+, works on older TV sets without HDMI ports.

Other New Roku Models

Beside the Express models, Roku released three upscale streaming devices on Monday: the Premiere, the Premiere+, and the Ultra. The Premiere handles Ultra HD or 4K streaming at up to 60 frames per second. The Premiere+ features the same capabilities, plus High Dynamic Range (HDR) support. The Ultra has all of the capabilities of the Premiere and the Premiere+, and it decodes Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound. For local media playback, the Ultra also features a USB port. The Premiere will retail for $80.00, the Premiere+ for $100, and the Ultra for $130.00.

So far, Roku is the only manufacturer of dedicated video streaming devices to enroll in Comcast’s Xfinity TV Partner program, an effort to incorporate Comcast’s TV Everywhere app into streaming devices via open HTML5 standards.

All Roku devices will work with any internet service fast enough for video. This includes HughesNet.

Roku dominates the streaming device market, with about a 49% share.

(For timely and reliable information about TV and internet services, talk to us. We can help.)

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BLADE RUNNER: IS THIS YOUR FUTURE?

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In Blade Runner, a 1982 science fiction movie, large corporations control nearly everything. The individual is almost powerless. It’s virtually impossible to hold anyone accountable for anything important, because decision makers are faceless and remote. Bureaucracy pervades every facet of life.

Some people argue that the hellish vision in Blade Runner is our future. Gigantic corporations will consolidate their control over our economic life.

Such predictions may seem to be credible. Certain corporate giants, such as Facebook and Google, threaten to acquire near monopolies in their markets- and in control of information. Microsoft, Apple, General Electric, and Exxon are still among the world’s largest firms. If present trends continue, can you keep your independence? Is a Blade Runner type of dystopia inevitable?

In the past, size was a decisive market advantage. Giant corporations owned infrastructure, industrial machines, and factories. They owned distribution networks. They could produce much more than smaller businesses could. Their expenses were spread over a larger number of units. It was much easier to organize production within one firm than among many. In the Machine Age, massive size made sense.

Is this true today? Will it be true in our future?

It might not be. In the Information Age, the advantage of size is not as great as before. Some of the means of production, previously out of reach for individuals and small businesses, are much more accessible. Anyone with the necessary skills can write a new app. With only a computer and a web connection, he can make and sell his products from home.

Bringing new industrial products to market is no longer the exclusive domain of corporate giants. With about $20,000, you could buy a router, a CNC machine, and a 3D printer, and they’d be almost as accurate as the ones owned by industrial giants. If you can’t afford your own machines, you can rent time on someone else’s. You could even rent a factory instead of building your own. This can be true of large scale production, not just product development. Some computer chip designers have been renting capacity in chip foundries owned by others.

The Blade Runner may not have been prophecy. For every centralizing economic trend, there is a decentralizing trend, so we are not doomed to a miserable future of domination by giant corporations. In the future, we may have greater control over our lives.

We will say more about this in another post.

(To take control of your economic future, you need a reliable internet connection. If you don’t have one, talk to us. We can help.)

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BRAVE NEW (AD-BLOCKING) BROWSER

Do you hate internet ads? Are you fed up with autoplay videos that distract you, slow down your browser, and consume an inordinate share of your data allotment? Brandon Eich says he has a solution for you.

A few years ago, Eich was the CEO of Mozilla. He was hounded out of his job by a Twitter mob over a small donation to a political cause. He has not been idle since then, though, and now he is poised to compete with his old employer.

Eich and his partners have raised $4.5 million in seed money for an ad-blocking browser to be called Brave. Eich says it will begin operating in September.

Unlike other browsers, in which the ad-blocking function is handled by third-party supplements or extensions. Brave has it built in. Brave says that its desktop version will be 40% to 60% faster than the competition, and the version for mobile devices will be two to four times faster than comparable browsers. Both desktop and mobile versions will consume far less data, and will dramatically extend battery life. Brave will feature several privacy and security functions: malware filtering, phishing protection, script blocking, fingerprint shields, and support for data encryption via HTTPS Everywhere.

Earlier this year, Eich said that Brave will insert its own ads, but they will not inhibit performance. The ads will be placed “only in a few standard-size spaces” found by a cloud robot, and will target users “only by a highly re-identifiable cookie”. In other words, targeting will be anonymous. You won’t have to give up your personal information to advertisers, as you would when using most other browsers.

The Brave ad platform has not been universally popular. In April, more than a dozen U.S. news organizations, including the New York Times Company, Dow Jones (owner of the Wall Street Journal), and the Gannett Corporation (owner of USA Today) sent a letter to Eich, claiming that it is “blatantly illegal”. Eich says that Brave has discussed the program with top New York publishers since then, and he believes they will learn to accept it. “If there is a role for ads”, he says, “they have to be fewer and more effective.”

(To get the most out of your browser, you need a reliable internet connection. Talk to us. We can help.)

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LIVING MORE CHEAPLY

Will your cost of living plummet in the next two decades? Peter Diamandis, the founder of the XPRIZE Foundation, says it probably will.

Diamandis says advancing technology will foster massive reduction in the cost of  living. If he is correct, food. fuel, housing, medical care, electricity, transportation, and education will cost a fraction of what they cost now. Internet services, robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and virtual reality will force revolutionary leaps in efficiency. All aspects of commerce: manufacturing, shipping, and personal services- to name a few- will be affected. The next great technological leap will leave no industry untouched.

As a percentage of income, the cost of food has dropped about 45% since 1960. This trend is likely to accelerate. Innovation in genetics and biology will multiply yields for a given plot of land, with far less water. Vertical farming will bring agriculture closer to the consumer’s home. Since 70% of the cost of providing food is in transportation, storage, and handling, vertical farming by itself will force massive price reduction.

Uber and Lyft are disrupting the mass transit industry. This is barely the beginning. Such services will soon be fully autonomous, meaning they won’t need human drivers. This development will lead to rapidly plummeting transportation costs. Much of your expense in car ownership is for insurance, repair, fuel, parking, and traffic tickets. When transport is a service, not something you own, you will be freed from these expenses. Diamandis estimates that this will reduce your cost of travel by five to ten times. In our view, he’s overly optimistic, but your costs certainly will drop sharply.

Fossil fuels are expensive chiefly because of the cost of extracting and shipping them. We soon may be able to do without them. Solar energy is becoming steadily more efficient. Inherently safe nuclear sources, such as thorium reactors, will provide extremely cheap energy, enough for thousands of years. Distributed energy sources, practical only with the newer fuel sources, will reduce our reliance on centralized grids. With fewer and shorter power lines, and with less maintenance expense, the cost of electricity will plummet.

Medical care is a big factor in the cost of living. Robotics, advanced biochemistry, and a faster internet will reduce costs dramatically. Artificial intelligence applications can diagnose patients more accurately than the best doctors can. They will have huge databases of patient history, genomics, and similar cases to draw from. They can analyze massive amounts of data in a few seconds, for only the cost of electricity. The best surgeons will be robots. They will be more accurate than any human surgeon, and they’ll have all the data from millions of previous surgeries. Automation will accelerate drug testing by several orders of magnitude. New drugs will reach the market much faster, and they can be customized for each patient. You are likely to have several diagnostic tools at home. You can diagnose most of your own ailments with sensors worn on your wrist.

Learning is necessary for living well. Education is expensive, though. Teacher salaries, buildings, bus routes, and an army of administrators add to the cost. Outmoded rules and outdated curricula add expense without adding value, so the student wastes time as well as money.

If you were in full control of your education, would that make a difference? How can you take control, though? How do you fit your classes around a busy work schedule? The internet can help. Skillsology, the Khan Academy, Coursera, and other online sources provide instruction and testing at your own pace. They are also far less expensive than standard college courses. Some universities have begun to adapt to the competitive threat. Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, among others, offer thousands of hours of online instruction. Online instruction is in its infancy, though. In the near future, your ‘professors’ are likely to be artificial intelligence apps. They will be the best instructors you’ve ever had. They will know your needs, abilities, weaknesses, desires, and personality almost perfectly. With this knowledge, they will teach exactly what you need, at the rate you can best absorb it, by the methods you respond to best. Automated education will cost almost nothing. The same schooling available to the billionaire’s child will be available to the pauper’s child.

These are only a few of the factors in the cost of living. Others, such as housing and entertainment, also will cost less as technology develops. If we can convince our public officials to leave markets alone so innovation can thrive, we can enjoy much higher standards of living- for much less money.

(To enhance your life, you need a reliable internet connection. To take advantage of the technologies that will reduce your cost of living, you need a reliable internet connection. Talk to us. We can help.)

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Pokemon GO: the Animated Apocalypse?

Signs of impending apocalypse continue to accumulate. The human race becomes ever more decadent. We, in turn, are ever more nervous wondering when The Almighty, His patience exhausted at last, will decide to ring down the curtain on history.

The current Pokemon GO craze isn’t reassuring. Released officially in only a few countries barely a week ago, it has taken much of the world by storm. In some areas, so many players were involved that they overloaded the game servers. Large crowds of players have gathered in cities, and the game has even led to the discovery of a dead body.

In case you haven’t noticed, Pokemon GO is a wildly popular augmented reality game. Players use the GPS functions in their iOS or Android phones to find Pokemon characters, which are overlaid on the ‘real world’ displayed on their screens. By going to the locations displayed, players can ‘catch’ and collect Pokemon characters– 250 different ones. The game further encourages movement in the real world with actual landmarks designated as Pokestops or gyms. A Pokestop is a venues for collecting Pokeballs and other in-game items. A gym is an arena in which rival teams battle.

According to players we know in Austin, there are few Pokestops or gyms either in downtown Austin or on the UT campus. There are many in New Braunfels. We don’t know why.

Some information technology analysts consider Pokemon GO an enormous social good. Unlike other internet or video games, this game encourages people to explore the ‘real world’ outside of their homes. Pokemon Go encourages exercise and face-to-face communication with other people.

There is a fly in the ointment, though. The arenas and treasure caches for the game are not just in major landmarks. Some Pokemon Go sites are memorials, museums, graveyards, hospitals, churches, private homes, and police stations.

One can even catch Pokemon in Auschwitz, the most important Holocaust memorial.

In so recklessly designating Pokestops and gyms, Niantec, the owner of the Pokemon universe, has commandeered public, private, and commercial venues for its own commercial purpose. Homeowners have complained about groups of players gathering outside their homes at all hours of the day and night, and about drivers stopping for several minutes without leaving their cars. Some hospitals have filed criminal complaints against players who entered restricted areas, and a police station in Darwin, Australia was nearly unable to function for hours because it was overrun by players.

So far, Niantec has failed to address these problems. It is leaving affected homeowners, businesses, and public institutions no means for removing their locations from Gym or Pokestop status. Niantec is responding only to reports of augmented sites “that present immediate** physical danger- for example, they are in the middle of a road or on railroad tracks”. (Emphasis is ours.)

The game has obviously gotten out of hand. It is interfering with commerce, religious and communal functions, private family life, even emergency services.

The Almighty has tolerated an awful lot from mankind, but Pokemon GO has to be testing His limits. It certainly is testing the patience of many of us.

(Editor’s note: Some people have taken Pokemon GO to extremes. Still, it demonstrates some of the potential of augmented reality. You may have multiple uses for AR in your home. To get the most out of it, you need a reliable internet connection. Is yours adequate? If it isn’t, talk to us. We can help.)

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QLED TV SETS

Have you heard of QLED TV? If you haven’t, you soon will.

Most TV sets sold in the U.S. are based on LCD technology, which is several decades old.

OLED sets have eclipsed LCD. OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs, on the market for only a few years, offer the best picture most consumers have seen. They are expensive to manufacture, though, so you’d pay a much higher price for one than you would for an LCD TV.

A new TV technology, QLED, will soon be available, and it may be better than OLED. QLED stands for ‘quantum dot light emitting device’. It may match the nearly infinite contrast ratio of OLED displays, but with higher energy efficiency and a wider, more accurate color gamut.

Quantum dots are tiny molecules that emit their own light when illuminated. The size of the quantum dot determines the wavelength- therefore the color- of the light it emits. Larger ones emit light in the red end of the spectrum. Smaller dots emit light near the blue end.

The disadvantage with quantum dots is that they are difficult to control with the precision necessary for TV sets.

Electroluminescent quantum dots are slightly different. Instead of being activated by light, they are activated by electric current. This offers a far higher degree of control. For a dark pixel, simply switch off the current. It’s much more difficult to do this with light-activated pixels, such as the ones in your LCD set. This is the biggest reason OLED displays have surpassed them.

The disadvantage with OLED displays, beside the expense in manufacturing them, is that getting a wide color gamut requires high energy consumption. Electroluminescent quantum dot displays wouldn’t have this limitation.

We’re likely to see QLED TV sets on the market within a few years. Most of the obstacles that delayed release of OLED apply to QLED , too. With the development work for OLED completed, there probably isn’t much holding back the release of QLED TV.

(To get the most out of any TV set, it helps to have a video streaming service. For  this, you’ll need a reliable internet connection. Talk to us. We can help.)

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WAL-MART TELLS CUSTOMERS: ‘CUT THE CABLE!”

Cable and satellite TV system operators are in a tough, viciously competitive business. Not only do they have to keep close tabs on each other, they’re losing subscribers to internet video streaming services that threaten the long-term future of the entire industry.

As if these woes weren’t enough, the nation’s largest retailer has moved in on their turf. Early this month, Wal-Mart inaugurated a promotion for video streaming tools with the slogan: “Cut the Cable”.

Encouraging its customers to ditch the conventional pay TV subscription model, Wal-Mart outlined four steps for doing so– including, of course, buying video streaming players and antennae from Wal-Mart.

On its website, the retailer asks, “What better way to save money on your cable bill than getting rid of it altogether?” Though it doesn’t mention prices of its TV sets or streaming tools on the promotional page– the visitor has to find the product page for that– Wal-Mart hints that the move could bring big savings: “As TV Cable bills grow even larger– families spend an average of $160 per month on cable bundles!- an increasing number of people are opting to cut the cord and slice that monthly bill by up to half. Basically, this means dropping your cable or satellite TV subscription and opting for the ease and flexibility of watching all your favorite shows and movies on streaming services like Netflix and Vudu.”

Wal-Mart owns Vudu, though it did not mention this fact in the ad.

While some video streaming platforms offer live access to broadcast networks and their affiliate stations, most cord-cutters will need over-the-air antennae to receive them. Wal-Mart sells antennae, too.

The “Cut the Cable” promotion will continue until July 31.

In most rural areas, and some suburban areas, cable TV is unavailable anyway. For these areas, satellite TV or streaming services such as Sling TV are the only practical options. If this is the case where you live, we can help you find the TV service that best meets your needs.

Whatever your TV or internet needs, talk to us. We can help.