Verizon offers taste of 5G as it expands network trials

We’re slowly inching toward a super-connected 5G world.

Verizon said Wednesday it plans to offer “5G” service to some customers in 11 US markets by mid-2017, boasting that this rollout will be the largest proving ground yet for the next-generation wireless technology.

Certain “pilot” customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta; Bernardsville, New Jersey; Brockton, Massachusetts; Dallas; Denver; Houston; Miami; Sacramento; Seattle and Washington, DC, will get access to the technology, which promises to be 10 to 100 times faster than our speediest existing cellular connections.

Verizon’s trials mark the latest development in 5G, a technology that promises to change our society by giving us super-fast, ubiquitous coverage and connecting everything from your car to you refrigerator. Verizon is one of many companies trumpeting its work in 5G. Because it’s still early days, though, some of the developments can be categorized more as hype than as tangible benefits to the average consumer.

Wednesday’s announcement, for instance, has its share of caveats. Verizon’s 5G trial in the 11 markets isn’t a truly mobile one. Instead, it’s a substitute connection for your home or office broadband. With this service, you can scrap your DSL or cable box and the physical wires running into your home or building.

“The 5G systems we are deploying will soon provide wireless broadband service to homes, enabling customers to experience cost-competitive gigabit speeds that were previously only deliverable via fiber,” said Woojune Kim, vice president of the Samsung team in charge of 5G and a partner for the Verizon deployment.

Also, good luck getting access to this test. Verizon said it will offer a network that will cover several thousand homes and businesses, but it’s unclear how one gets chosen to be a pilot customer. The company will choose customers based on their proximity to the newly built sites.

Finally, the technology Verizon is employing isn’t true 5G. The standards for the tech haven’t been agreed upon by the international community yet. The company is hoping that by pushing forward with a working deployment, it can influence how real 5G will look in the future.

“5G technology innovation is rapidly evolving,” said Adam Koeppe, vice president of network planning at Verizon.

Verizon isn’t the only company racing toward 5G. AT&T already has a test running for 5G as a broadband replacement in an Intel office in Austin, Texas, and has tested its DirecTV Now video service over 5G in that city as well. The company also plans to start more fixed and mobile wireless trials in the second half of the year.

T-Mobile and Sprint, meanwhile, have started talking more about setting the foundation for 5G. The technology promises to be one of the hot topics at next week’s Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.

This article originally appeared at: https://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-offers-taste-of-5g-as-it-expands-network-trials/.

AMD’s new Ryzen processor is a huge leap forward and a true competitor to Intel

AMD just officially unveiled its Ryzen desktop processor family, a chip that it says can compete with Intel’s chips at long last. AMD’s last generation of desktop chips was disappointing, and has been largely relegated to low-end computers. But Ryzen manages a 52 percent boost in instructions per cycle (IPC) over last time, which puts it on a level playing field with the best Intel has to offer.

The Ryzen family will come in multiple flavors, but the high-end Ryzen 7 is shipping first. The chip has eight cores and 16 threads, and starts at $329. At the top end is the 3.6GHz (4.0GHz turbo), $499 Ryzen 7 1800X, which compares well with Intel’s $1,050 i7-6900K. According to AMD’s benchmarks, the 1800X ties the 6900K on singlethreaded benchmarks, and beats Intel on multithreaded performance.

AMD uses a few hundred more megahertz to get there, which means AMD isn’t doing quite as much as Intel Broadwell per hertz. But it’s the end result that matters, and AMD is claiming to match or beat Intel across the spectrum with better prices — the dream scenario, basically.

The new processors are available for preorder now, and will ship on March 2nd. AMD is promising to have plenty of inventory and a ton of motherboard options at launch. It’s a lot of promises, AMD! Hopefully Ryzen can deliver, and we can get a real fight in the desktop market, which will be wonderful for anybody not named “Intel.”

This article originally appeared at: http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/2/22/14698284/amd-ryzen-7-desktop-processor-intel-competitor.

Judge: No, feds can’t nab all Apple devices and try everyone’s fingerprints

A federal magistrate judge in Chicago recently denied the government’s attempt to force people in a particular building to depress their fingerprints in an attempt to open any seized Apple devices as part of a child pornography investigation.

This prosecution, nearly all of which remains sealed, is one of a small but growing number of criminal cases that pit modern smartphone encryption against both the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and also the Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. According to the judge’s opinion, quoting from a still-sealed government filing, “forced fingerprinting” is part of a broader government strategy, likely to combat the prevalence of encrypted devices.

Last year, federal investigators sought a similar permission to force residents of two houses in Southern California to fingerprint-unlock a seized phone in a case that also remains sealed. In those cases, and likely in the Illinois case as well, the prosecutors’ legal analysis states that there is no Fifth Amendment implication at play. Under the Constitution, defendants cannot be compelled to provide self-incriminating testimony (“what you know”). However, traditionally, giving a fingerprint (“what you are”) for the purposes of identification or matching to an unknown fingerprint found at a crime scene has been allowed. It wasn’t until relatively recently, however, that fingerprints could be used to unlock a smartphone.

In a 14-page opinion and order, which was published on February 16 but only began to circulate amongst privacy lawyers and legal scholars on Twitter on Wednesday, Judge M. David Weisman wrote that while investigators did have probable cause to search a particular home, “these limitations do impact the ability of the government to seek the extraordinary authority related to compelling individuals to provide their fingerprints to unlock an Apple electronic device.”

However, unlike the California warrant applications, this case doesn’t involve one particular seized device to check to see if anyone’s fingerprint unlocks it. Rather, authorities seem to be using the particular fact that most modern Apple iPhones and iPads can be unlocked and decrypted if Touch ID is enabled. While some Android devices also have a similar fingerprint scanning function, the warrant application (which remains sealed) apparently only sought out Apple devices. (Under both operating systems, the fingerprint unlock stops working after your phone has been unlocked for 48 hours.)

As the judge, who is both a former federal prosecutor and a former FBI special agent, wrote:

The request is made without any specific facts as to who is involved in the criminal conduct linked to the subject premises, or specific facts as to what particular Apple-branded encrypted device is being employed (if any).

First, the Court finds that the warrant does not establish sufficient probable cause to compel any person who happens to be at the subject premises at the time of the search to give his fingerprint to unlock an unspecified Apple electronic device.

This Court agrees that the context in which fingerprints are taken, and not the fingerprints themselves, can raise concerns under the Fourth Amendment. In the instant case, the government is seeking the authority to seize any individual at the subject premises and force the application of their fingerprints as directed by government agents. Based on the facts presented in the application, the Court does not believe such Fourth Amendment intrusions are justified based on the facts articulated.

Neither the Department of Justice nor the FBI immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment. Prosecutors could seek to appeal the opinion to a more senior judge.

Gov’t may be shooting itself in the foot with novel legal theory

This article originally appeared at: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/judge-no-feds-cant-nab-all-apple-devices-and-try-everyones-fingerprints/.

World’s First Photonic Neural Network Uses Light for Superfast Computing

Researchers in the field of neural networks have taken the realm of advanced computing another step further. It appears that scientists are now able to unveil the first photonic neural network capable of using light to conduct superfast computing.  

Neural networks herald the modern age of computing. Researchers are now using them to create machines capable of a huge range of skills that we thought only humans possess — object and face recognition, natural language processing, and machine translation, to name a few. 

Now the focus of researchers is to push the boundaries of AI and its capabilities. They slowly want to create circuits that operate like neurons. These are called neuromorphic chips. However, the question is, how do we make them faster? 

Alexander Tait and his team at Princeton University in New Jersey may have the answer, as they have just created the world’s first neuromorphic chip. This allows it to compute at “ultrafast speeds.” 

This is thanks to optical computing. Photons are seen to have significantly more bandwidth than electrons, meaning they can process data quicker. However, despite these advantages, making these possible will cost a lot of money. This also halted some research in the field like analog signal processing, which demands speed only photonic chips can provide.

Tait’s new neural network concept are opening up new opportunities in the field. He said photonic neural networks that utilize silicon photonic platforms can “access new regimes of ultrafast information processing.” Potential points of interest include radio, control and even scientific computing. 

According to MIT Technology Review, the core challenge is to make an optical device where each node has the same characteristics as a neuron. The nodes will take the form of tiny circular “waveguides” that are carved into a silicon substrate. This allows light to travel around and modulate the output of a laser working at a threshold. 

At its core, this means each node in the system is especially sensitive to light. They only work with a specific wavelength, also known as wave division multiplexing. An important question is how this mimics neural behavior, which Tait and his colleagues show equivalency to a device known as a continuous-time recurrent neural network.

He said the results suggest that CTRNNs could be applied to larger silicon photonic neural networks. This holds vast potential in the field because their results say the effective hardware acceleration factor of their neural network is estimated to be 1,960x in the task. 

Should research continue, optical computing may be brought to the mainstream populace for the first time. This still depends on how fast the first generation of electronic neuromorphic chips performs. 

This article originally appeared at: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/32390/20161121/worlds-first-photonic-neural-network-uses-light-superfast-computing.htm.

Feed your entire neighborhood with this new garden idea from Ikea

Why it matters to you

As urban gardening becomes more and more important, projects like the Growroom from Ikea’s Space10 will become increasingly salient.

Come for a salad, stay for the opportunity to provide meals for others. That appears to be the new mantra from Ikea and Space10, described as “a future-living lab on a mission to design a better and more sustainable way of living” from the Swedish furniture giant. Meet the latest project to come out of the Ikea Lab — it’s called The Growroom, and it’s described as “a spherical garden [that] empowers people to grow their own food much more locally in a beautiful and sustainable way.”

Last week, Space10 made The Growroom’s plans available for free, which means that if you want to create a DIY garden capable of feeding an entire neighborhood, you can just download the 17-step plan. Really, all you need is some plywood, rubber hammers, metal screws, seeds, and a green thumb.

The Growroom is meant to be used as a neighborhood garden, Space10 explains in a Medium post, noting that the 2.8 x 2.5-meter enclosure has but a small spatial footprint, allowing gardeners to grow their crops vertically. “It is designed to support our everyday sense of well being in the cities by creating a small oasis or”pause’-architecture in our high-paced societal scenery, and enables people to connect with nature as we smell and taste the abundance of herbs and plants,” Space10 wrote. “The pavilion, built as a sphere, can stand freely in any context and points in a direction of expanding contemporary and shared architecture.”

If you’re used to Ikea products coming in boxes with rather difficult picture-based instructions, you’re in for a surprise if you opt to try out this new garden. When you download the necessary files for the structure, you’ll be given instructions to create the correctly sized plywood pieces, making use of a local fab lab workshop to do the cutting for you. Then, you’ll be able to put the pieces together using Space10’s free online instructions.

“From Taipei to Helsinki and from Rio de Janeiro to San Francisco, the original version of The Growroom sparked interest and people requested to either buy or exhibit The Growroom,” Space10 said. “That is why we now release The Growroom as open-source design and encourage people to build their own locally as a way to bring new opportunities to life.”

This article originally appeared at: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/ikea-space10-growroom/.

David Attenborough will narrate a new series of Blue Planet this year

Following the success of Planet Earth II, the BBC has announced its latest nature-doc extravaganza: a sequel to the award-winning series The Blue Planet. As the name suggests, the show will focus on the variety of wildlife found in the Earth’s seas and oceans. Blue Planet II will air in the UK later this year (hitting US screens some time after presumably), and will feature the narrating talents of naturalist icon David Attenborough.

“I am truly thrilled to be joining this new exploration of the underwater worlds which cover most of our planet, yet are still its least known,” Attenborough, who turns 91 this May, told BBC News. James Honeyborne, executive producer for the series added: “The oceans are the most exciting place to be right now, because new scientific discoveries have given us a new perspective of life beneath the waves.”

The Blue Planet II crew have been working on the seven-part series for the past four years, and utilize a number of new camera technologies to get their footage. These include suction cameras attached to the backs of whale sharks and orcas, probe cams for recording miniature marine life, and “tow cams” that are trailed behind filming craft to capture dolphins and predatory fish head-on.

Some of the animals being featured in the new series include water-spitting snub fin dolphins, the tool-using tusk fish, and a hairy-chested crab that goes by the nickname “The Hoff.” 

This article originally appeared at: http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/20/14667422/blue-planet-2-bbc-david-attenborough.