Month: June 2018

Companies have tried building modular smartphones, and have met varying degrees of success — the LG G5 and its “friends” utterly flopped while Motorola continues to push its various Mods. Companies also have tried to build smartphones with eye-popping 3D displays, and they’ve been abject failures. Remember Amazon’s Fire Phone? No one has tried to squeeze both of those gimmicks into a single smartphone except for RED, a company that has only ever made cinema-grade digital cameras. A healthy dose of skepticism about all this isn’t just helpful — it’s required. Fortunately, Jannard isn’t phased by the skepticism. He speaks with the surety of a man with little to lose.

That’s because he doesn’t seem stressed about what will happen when the Hydrogen launches on AT&T and Verizon this August. That’s not because he’s sure it’ll be a massive commercial success, either. It’s because he built the phone of his dreams.

“This is the phone I wanted,” he told me. “If we don’t sell one, I have the world’s most expensive phone but I’m completely happy and satisfied with that.” To underscore his point, he puts things a little more bluntly later in our conversation.

“I’ve got the coolest fucking phone in the world in my pocket,” he said. “And I paid for it.”

This is perhaps the biggest signal from Microsoft that it’s committed to moving away from siloing off its work and becoming more open overall. We’ve seen as the company has become a software developer on onetime rival platforms Android and iOS, rather than carrying the dim torch for Windows Mobile. That, and Redmond has put a ton of effort into fostering open-code and open-source initiatives. Buying GitHub is the logical conclusion point of that.

Current Microsoft VP Nat Friedman will take on the role of GitHub CEO. Microsoft expects this purchase to pay out dividends for GitHub, in so much that Redmond predicts that this could boost enterprise adoption of the platform. The purchase price will be paid out in stock, and is expected to be finalized by year’s end. There’s a shareholder’s call at 10am Eastern if you’d like to hear more.

Here’s a quick primer for those who missed the news the first time around. In a nutshell, Origin Wireless’ Time Reversal Machine algorithm relies on the analysis of WiFi multipath signals, as in the unwanted “noise” bounced off the walls. A designated router sends out a probing signal, then another router copies this received signal plus its multipaths and sends it all back but in a backward sequence — hence “time reversal.” All of this is happening 30 times per second — a slight drop from the original 50Hz speed.

Even if you’re not quite following this explanation, all you really need to know is that the software is constantly monitoring for changes between the original signals and the returned signals. This can then generate a signature to reflect the type of environmental changes in the space at any instance.

The algorithm has already been trained with machine learning to recognize specific changes. In this demo, I once again got to experience motion and breathing detection using purely WiFi signals, except that Origin Wireless is now using three ASUS Lyra routers instead of its own prototype boxes. No cameras were needed (the live-video feeds on the monitor were just for display purposes), and I also didn’t need to put on a wearable device.

Most importantly, these don’t require a direct line of sight between the routers and the subjects, as is the case with WiFi itself. By combining both motion and breathing detection, this mesh network is able to moonlight as a sleep-quality monitor, which can be handy for looking after elderly folks.

Even the motion detection alone can be used for home surveillance, and by using more than two routers in the same network, the system is able to give you a rough estimation of where the motion occurred.

What’s new this time is the fall-detection demo. Normally, the challenge with fall detection without the use of cameras or wearables is the fact that when someone falls, it all happens in a split second. But since Origin Wireless’ solution is scanning for changes 30 times per second, this isn’t a problem. Again, with machine learning, the algorithm already knows what kind of signature to expect when someone falls.

With the exception of one false reading after I vacated the space, the fall detection worked well for me in both the bedroom and bathroom. That said, this demo was performed with Origin Wireless’ own engineering routers, so there’s still some work to be done before the feature can be integrated.

The first such data center has been installed using submarine technology on the seafloor near Scotland’s Orkney Islands, and is already processing workloads via 12 racks of 864 servers. The system requires just under a quarter of a megawatt of power when operating at full capacity, which comes from renewable energy generated onshore. The shipping container-sized set-up also includes cooling technology, but much of the usual logistics and costs surrounding this have been eliminated thanks to the ocean’s naturally low temperatures at depth.

The team will spend the next 12 months monitoring the performance of the data center, keeping tabs on everything from power consumption and internal humidity, to sound and temperature levels – although it’s been designed to operate for at least five years without maintenance. It’ll also keep a close eye on environmental impacts.

The project is born of an increasing demand for cloud computing infrastructure near heavily-populated areas. While putting data centers in the sea might seem counterintuitive, more than half of the world’s population lives within 120 miles of the coast – an area rich with renewable energy potential – so positioning them here means a faster, smoother online experience for local communities. So if all goes to plan, Project Natick could mark the beginning of a completely new way of managing internet connectivity.