Tech in last 7 Days - Week Ending Friday, April 24, 2020
This is a weekly column of curated tech news, highlighting interesting and/or valuable tech developments from the past 7 days, which are impacting our society directly or indirectly. It also gives some vague sense of the trajectory that the technology as a whole is taking. The aim is to share the information concisely, in an easy to understand manner, with not more than 5-10 min read time
1- DID YOU NOTICE MAJOR WEBSITES LIKE GOOGLE, FACEBOOK ETC. SPUTTER IN YOUR AREA EARLIER THIS MONTH?
Apparently the culprit was one of the routing protocols. It’s called BGP (Border Gateway Protocol). BGP is used to route internet traffic. Internet Service Providers (ISPs), big organizations etc. use this protocol to find an optimum path to the destination (website server such as facebook, your email server etc.).
So what happened was that the people who were experiencing issues while browsing facebook etc., traffic through their ISPs took an unexpected detour. Basically the traffic got rerouted onto incorrect exit.
Cloudflare launched Is BGP Safe Yet tool, to help you check if your ISP and/or routing equipment manufacturers are using secure implementation of BGP. Secure BGP can help minimize these kind of accidents or real traffic hijacking attempts by cryptographically validating these internet routes.
People checking ISPs through this tool need not to panic though, as these problems are rare. You will notice that major players like Google, Microsoft have yet to implement this feature. Also, threats like viruses, internet spam, malware etc. are much more prevalent and bigger than BGP hijacking. Nevertheless, a secure BGP implementation should be in the pipeline and be adopted widely.
Cloudflare provides cloud solutions to major companies and is a key player in internet’s security, performance and reliability.
2- NEW BRANDING MORE VALUE FOR OFFICE 365
Microsoft is adding more value to its Microsoft 365 subscription by extending its offerings beyond premium office apps and the new branding is reflective of that. With Microsoft 365, you receive additional benefits including Microsoft Editor, Money in Excel and premium creative content in Office, plus more to come. Existing office 365 subscribers won’t need to take any action as the transition will be automatic.
3- 6GHZ UNLICENSED WIRELESS SPECTRUM & A BOOST FOR YOUR HOME WI-FI
You might already know that Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) supported devices (routers, smartphones etc.) have been out for well over a year now. Simply put Wi-Fi 6 enabled devices give you more throughput, especially in a dense deployment scenario. Think of 10 devices in your home using internet instead of just 4.
So, what is Wi-Fi 6E? E stands for Extended. If the devices are Wi-Fi 6E enabled, that means they are able to support the Wi-Fi 6 standard over 6GHz frequencies as well. Wi-Fi 6 devices operate only on 2.4 GHz and 5GHz.
FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which operates in USA, has opened 1200MHz of unlicensed spectrum in the 6GHz frequency range for the Wi-Fi devices. This means expanded capacity, less interference, more space and hence faster speeds. This is huge.
To be able to use this spectrum, you will need Wi-Fi 6E enabled router and the client devices such as your smartphone, laptop etc. These devices are expected to hit the market beginning of next year. If you are not in USA, you will still have to wait for your country’s governing body to approve the new spectrum before you can enjoy home Wi-Fi 6GHz spectrum.
4. FOLDING@HOME NOW FASTER THAN TOP 500 SUPERCOMPUTERS COMBINED
Folding@home is a distributed computer simulation project. The idea is that you donate your computing power, when your computer is sitting idle, by downloading an app. This collective power is used to run complex simulations, which help understand proteins’ moving parts, including COVID-19 virus proteins.
During the outbreak more and more people donated their computing power and accidentally helped create the world’s biggest supercomputer. Folding@home network reached an astounding 2.4 exaFLOPs of processing power on April 13. Compare that to IBM’s SUMMIT, whose processing power is 148.6 petaflops (0.1486 exaflops).
5- GOOGLE’S REMOTE ACCESS SOLUTION FOR WFH DURING COVID-19
Google last week introduced BeyondCorp Remote Access solution. It is an alternative to a traditional remote access VPN solution, which according to Google can be a headache both from a remote user (having to install VPN client and then connect) and organization’s perspective.
This is something that might work for organizations, which did not have the VPN capability to begin with or were outsourcing their VPN setup. If you have your applications, which are not available on the internet, you will need to have site-to-site VPN established anyway with Google Cloud to make it work.
6- UBER’S EXPANSION INTO GROCERY & PACKAGE DELIVERY
Uber introduced 2 new services available in select cities:
Uber Direct: Use this service for grocery and other convenience stores item delivery
Uber Connect: This same-day delivery service is for sending packages to friends and family. This is a no-contact solution during COVID-19 outbreak.
7- APPLE IPHONE MAIL APP SECURITY VULNERABILITY
You are vulnerable to this security exploit until Apple releases 13.4.5, which is currently being tested. How you are affected? Successful exploitation of this vulnerability would allow the attacker to leak, modify, and delete emails. Additional kernel vulnerability would provide full device access. If you are concerned and want to mitigate this vulnerability, avoid using the Apple Email app, until 13.4.5 is released.
8-MAKING 5G MORE EFFICIENT USING AI AND GPUS
5G is a complex interface, more complex than 4G, and pose so many challenges. There is a lot of work going on how AI, GPUs and ML, can be used to efficiently deliver 5G services. NVIDIA is working with leading companies and top research institutions and this technology is evolving quickly. For example, by leveraging ray-tracing features of NVIDIA Turing GPUs, researchers were able to realize a new method for directing 5G mmWave beams.
In another case a 5G scheduling (allocation of resources) problem was resolved in under 100μs using a GPU. 100μs timeframe is not achievable using traditional computing.
9- SMARTPHONE APPS & MEASURING BLOOD OXYGEN LEVELS
There are technical limitations, which smartphone app technology currently does not overcome to accurately give blood oxygen levels.
Apps do not use both red and infrared wavelengths
Smartphone apps rely on reflection of the wavelengths, rather than actual wavelength reading as in oximeter
Fitbit and Garmin take reading from blood flow at wrist. Oximeters read from fingertip, where blood flow is close to the surface, unlike wrists, hence more accurate.
Bottomline is use pulse oximeters if you can, which can be hard to find during COVID-19 pandemic.
10- AVOIDING COVID-19 SCAMS
This screenshot from Google, captures everything. No need to say anything more.
