I intend to examine the prospects of ultrasonics for wireless, local area communication. In other words, I will try to decide whether or not it might be feasable to create a system for objects in the same room to communicate with one another by sharing information through ultrasonic sound. To do this, I will work through issues such as the spectrum, transducers, beam width, transmission distance, bandwidth, and noise.
This work builds on the work done by Vadim Gerasimov, in the Things That Talk project, that transmits data by sound in the audible range. His site is a good starting point to visit before working through this information.
Android tops 81 percent of smartphone market share in Q3
Now that we know what smartphone market share looked like in the third quarter when broken down by manufacturer, it’s time to compare performance by platform. As you’d imagine, the world is still Android’s oyster. Strategy Analytics estimates that the OS has crossed the symbolic 80 percent mark, reaching 81.3 percent of smartphone shipments by the end of September. Not that Google was the only company doing well — Nokia’s strong US sales helped Windows Phone grow to 4.1 percent of the market, or nearly double what it had a year ago. Whether or not these trends continue is another matter. Although Android likely isn’t in danger given the launches of phones like the Galaxy Note 3, there are also new iPhones and Lumias on the scene; there may be one or two surprise upsets when the fourth quarter is over.
via Android tops 81 percent of smartphone market share in Q3.
How a grad student trying to build the first botnet brought the Internet to its knees
On November 3, 1988, 25 years ago this Sunday, people woke up to find the Internet had changed forever. The night before, someone had released a malevolent computer program on the fledgling computer network. By morning, thousands of computers had become clogged with numerous copies of a computer “worm,” a program that spread from computer to computer much like a biological infection.
via How a grad student trying to build the first botnet brought the Internet to its knees.
Robert Morris’ father worked for the NSA at the time.
From: Robert Morris (cryptographer)
There is a description of Morris in Clifford Stoll‘s book The Cuckoo’s Egg. Many readers of Stoll’s book remember Morris for giving Stoll a challenging mathematical puzzle (originally due to John H. Conway) in the course of their discussions on computer security: What is the next number in the sequence 1 11 21 1211 111221? (known as the look-and-say sequence). Stoll chose not to include the answer to this puzzle in The Cuckoo’s Egg, to the frustration of many readers.[8]
Comcast is donating heavily to defeat the mayor who is bringing gigabit fiber to Seattle
McGinn’s major opponent, state Sen. Ed Murray (D-Seattle), has committed to honoring the city’s existing contracts for a 14-neighborhood pilot project, but has shown limited enthusiasm about McGinn’s plans to expand the network in the future. So the election could determine whether Seattle residents have new options for high-speed broadband service, or will have to make do with the slower services already offered by incumbents like Comcast.
via Comcast is donating heavily to defeat the mayor who is bringing gigabit fiber to Seattle.
The Status of Moore’s Law: It’s Complicated
Kahng says chipmakers may face a more immediate struggle with wiring in just a few years as they attempt to push chip density down past the 10-nm generation. Each copper wire requires a sheath containing barrier material to prevent the metal from leaching into surrounding material, as well as insulation to prevent it from interacting with neighboring wires. To perform effectively, this sheath must be fairly thick. This thickness limits how closely wires can be pushed together and forces the copper wires to shrink instead, dramatically driving up the resistance and delays and drastically lowering performance. Although researchers are exploring alternative materials, it’s unclear, Kahng says, whether they will be ready in time to keep up with Moore’s Law’s steady pace.
via The Status of Moore’s Law: It’s Complicated – IEEE Spectrum.
HealthCare.gov deferred final security check, could leak personal data
HealthCare.gov sends data to analytics providers such as Google’s DoubleClick and Pingdom. As Simo reviewed the Web requests being made as part of his movement through the HealthCare.gov site, he found requests sent to these two providers that included his visit to the password reset page—and all of the user data that was generated by the page. That runs counter to the privacy policy on HealthCare.gov, which states that no personally identifiable information will be collected by site analytics tools. This is the same sort of behavior that the Federal Trade Commission has fined social networks such as Facebook and MySpace for in the past.
via HealthCare.gov deferred final security check, could leak personal data | Ars Technica.
In response to NSA revelations, the internet’s engineers set out to PRISM-proof the net
Yet one major caveat remains. While the IETF might be able to secure the pipes through which users’ data travel, users must also be able to trust the parties where their data is stored: software, hardware and services such as Cisco, Gmail and Facebook. These parties can hand over user data directly to government agencies.
Facebook Considers Vast Increase in Data Collection
The social network may start collecting data on minute user interactions with its content, such as how long a user’s cursor hovers over a certain part of its website, or whether a user’s newsfeed is visible at a given moment on the screen of his or her mobile phone, Facebook analytics chief Ken Rudin said Tuesday during an interview.
via Facebook Considers Vast Increase in Data Collection – Digits – WSJ.
As the head of analytics, Mr. Rudin is preparing the company’s infrastructure for a massive increase in the volume of its data.
Open-Sourced H.264 Removes Barriers to WebRTC
The industry has been divided on the choice of a common video codec for some time, namely because the industry standard–H.264–requires royalty payments to MPEG LA. Today, I am pleased to announce Cisco is making a bold move to take concerns about these payments off the table.
We plan to open-source our H.264 codec, and to provide it as a binary module that can be downloaded for free from the Internet. Cisco will not pass on our MPEG LA licensing costs for this module, and based on the current licensing environment, this will effectively make H.264 free for use in WebRTC.
Goodbye Sticky. Hello Ara.
The design for Project Ara consists of what we call an endoskeleton endo and modules. The endo is the structural frame that holds all the modules in place. A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter–or something not yet thought of!