Which is more important to you, health or privacy?

In the light of the “new normal” brought about with the COVID-19 virus, there are some technically possible, but ethically questionable ideas on how to track and prevent the virus. I am talking about the utilization of the blue tooth chip in your cell phone to track other people, or rather other cell phones that you have come within a given radius.  

The technology has existed for a long time and many of us use it daily. Bluetooth is a short-distance, high-frequency radio transmitter and receiver pair in a majority of cell phones, radios, computer, televisions and vehicles manufactured in the last 10 years. The technology was introduced by Ericsson in 2001 in their T36 phone. The technology allows devices to communicate with each other across distances of 33-feet or less. The crazy part is that the latency of the Bluetooth signal, which is the time it takes the signal to make a round trip between two devices, can very accurately determine the distance between the devices.

Both Apple and Google are working together to engineer a supposedly anonymous method of using this signal to determine when two devices come in close proximity to each other. Currently they are engineering around a distance of six feet to match the World Health Organization’s social distancing recommendations. The plan is to send tracking information back to Google and Apple in a centralized, cloud-based database. Google is likely to host the data for both parties. A COVID-19 patient would use their device to scan a QR-code supplied by their doctor. This device then becomes a trigger mechanism and notifies every device that has been within six feet of it that the owner may have come in contact with the virus and should be tested.

I believe it is a technologically feasible use case for Bluetooth and a great way to notify people of supposed contact with the virus, but what about the privacy aspects? There are claims that they will use randomized Bluetooth IDs that change hourly on every device participating the program. These random IDs will be stored in a central database, but never cross-referenced to the previous ID. Each device will keep a list of every ID it has broadcast for a period of 14-days based on the incubation period of the disease. If a device owner is infected, the list of all its IDs are cross-referenced in the database to notify devices holding the IDs that were contacted. The big problem is the extremely large size of the data transfer required to keep the privacy.  

Another major problem is, as I have mentioned in previous articles on internet safety, once something is on the internet, it is there forever. This includes the private random IDs and every other random ID they have contacted. If you believe for a minute that data processing giant Google does not have a market plan for this data, you are fooled. They claim they will keep the information completely private and only authorized health care organizations would be able to access the tracking data. I take issue with them gathering the data in the first place. Even knowing how many devices I come in contact within a given two-week period is a big enough invasion of privacy to give me concern.

I also worry that if Google and Apple are able to create this level of tracking, they are not the only ones capable of creating such a system. Your private life is no longer private if you carry a cell phone. They will be able to track where you are, when you got there and who is there with you. So my question to you is, how much privacy are you willing to give up for protection from an illness. I know the question is going to be asked of us all soon. You can read full details about the plans and technology on The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216484/google-apple-coronavirus-contract-tracing-bluetooth-location-tracking-data-app.

Drones using sonar for sight

One of the most interesting innovations in robotics in the last year was the development of a sonar system for robots that utilized a simple system of a single speaker and two microphones to mimic the sonar of bats. These “Robats” were developed at Tel Aviv University in Israel early last year.

You might ask what the advantage is of using sonar for robotics when we already have excellent computer vision techniques and LiDaR. There are two main factors to take into consideration. The first is that LiDaR units are both heavy and expensive, though we can achieve a more detailed model of the environment with LiDaR at around a resolution of one centimeter. Measurements are accurate to one centimeter versus the five-centimeter resolution of sonar. These are both problems for developing flight worthy drones.

A typical LiDaR unit bounces a laser beam off of materials in the environment several times a seconds resulting in a lot of data to process in order to map the environment. The sonar unit developed in Tel Aviv sends three pulses every 30 seconds and processes the data to result in an accurate map for navigation with much less data.  

A typical LiDaR unit costs around $150 dollars for a low-end unit that has a resolution similar to the Sonar used in the Robat. The students at Tel Aviv replaced this unit with $15 in parts, showing an overall cost reduction of 90 percent. They also reduced the weight of the mapping unit substantially, from around five pounds to around five ounces.  

Just last month they modified the system from using a single speaker and two microphones to using two speakers and four microphones to allow for 3-D mapping from a flying drone, versus the walking Robat introduced in January 2019.  

I took great interest in this project as I have a lot of junk electronic components lying around and wondered if it would be possible to reproduce their results with simple electronics found around the house. I discovered that not only is it possible, but it is basically how they started the project.  

If you would like to learn how to do something like this, you can follow a project on instructibles.com to build a spinning SODAR (blend between Sonar and LiDaR) to keep from being confused with a real Radar or Sonar system. I plan on building one as soon as I can gather all the components. You can find the project at https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-360-Degree-SODAR-Device/.

I foresee a lot of people tinkering around with robotics as we are ordered to stay at home. I recommend picking up an ardunio kit that comes with a fairly large number of electronic components and taking some time to learn how to build your own robot. Who knows? You might make the next big robotics discovery in your own home. 

Supercomputing and COVID-19

You might think that computers and the COVID-19 virus have very little to do with one another. However, there are several things that have happened in the computing industry as a result of COVID-19. The first was the massive increase in working from home, which caused an unexpected spike in the amount of video streaming traffic on the internet. The second was in the supercomputing industry.

The largest supercomputers in the world, usually used by government agencies for defense and energy research, have been repurposed for medical research. The Summit Supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab had a primary purpose of designing next generation batteries, nuclear power reactors and nuclear weapons systems; it has been completed retooled in the last weeks to search for drug treatments.

How exactly does a supercomputer search for drugs that can help fight viral infections? It is a very interesting science. Every virus has a unique chemical shape, as does every drug. Through a history of clinical trials and laboratory testing, scientists now know how to determine if drugs will help to treat viruses by looking at how the “shapes” of the chemical in the drug and virus fit together. It’s like trying to put together a trillion-piece puzzle. 

As it turns out, drugs that fit tight to the surface of the virus close the virus off from the body and cause it to die from lack of interaction. They also block the virus from causing symptoms in the carrier. Since we have a very large database of the chemical compounds in every manufactured drug and have the chemical profile of the virus, it is just a matter of finding the compounds that will be effective in sealing off the virus.

To find these compounds requires a very deep search through millions of drugs that can be combined in more than several trillion possible combinations to react with the virus in different ways. These computational reactions require an extreme amount of computing power, and most molecular biologists do not have access to the necessary computing power to simulate models of this size. They normally run these models over the course of several months to come up with a weighted list of possible treatments. They then have to manually test these compounds in a lab before coming to a useful conclusion. The process of drug matching and design for each new disease is normally a year or more.

Summit is not the only supercomputer being used to research drug treatments for COVID-19. In fact, if the virus is under control before November, I expect there will be a large number of research papers presented at the conference based around COVID-19 research. The US has opened 30 supercomputers, or at least portions of them, to global researchers for use in finding a treatment for COVID-19. Europe, Russia, China and Japan are all doing the same.

If you want to know more about supercomputing and drug research, just hit Google and you will find countless articles on supercomputers by IBM, HPE, Hitachi, Dell, Atos and Penguin Computing, to name a few, being utilized for drug research. If only the power of quantum computing were ready for real computational chemistry and biology research, we might have a cure already.

Stay safe and use the time away from friends and work to learn something new. I highly recommend picking up a programming language. Python is fairly easy to learn and there are a lot of free tutorials for all ages. 

Livestreaming for churches

By Scott Hamilton

Last week I wrote about the impact of COVID-19 on Internet service providers. I had promised an article this week regarding the impact on local churches and their need for live streaming their services. Many of your churches may already be using Facebook live to keep in touch. That seems to be the easiest way for people to gain access to video content. It is also quite simple for the churches to use. However, if you want a more professional look for your online service, I have some recommended tools. 

The first software I would recommend is called Open Broadcast Software, or OBS, for short. This is a piece of software that allows you to connect to any IP-based web camera including the one integrated into most cell phones. This will allow you to use multiple camera angles as well as stream content direct from your computer to give your service a more personal feel. The best part about OBS is it is open source software, meaning that it is free. You can safely download it for yourself for MacOS, Windows or Linux at https://obsproject.com.

I downloaded OBS last week and began to play online myself. I discovered it is as simple to use as PowerPoint. You simply set up your cameras, screen capture and audio devices, then drag and drop  any of the devices from the list to a display window. You can display one at a time or overlay them with each other. It is a drag and drop, “what you see is what you get” interface for video broadcast. You can stream videos to Facebook Live, YouTube, Twitter or any number of free, online streaming services. 

The second thing I would recommend is a high-quality HDMI capture card. This will allow you to use a secondary computer to display lyrics during worship, Bible verses during teaching, or any other text or image content, just like you use on your current projector in the sanctuary. This greatly simplifies the process of overlaying visual content with live video streams of the speaker or the worship team. 

The third recommendation is the proper cable for connecting your soundboard directly to the computer. This will create higher quality sound than relying on the microphone on your cell phone, camera or computer. It is probably best to feed the sound signal from a separate channel on your existing soundboard; this way you can adjust the audio levels for high quality broadcast. Otherwise you may pick up background noise, echoes and other acoustical problems arising from the shape, size and acoustical properties of your sanctuary. 

Lastly, I would recommend one of the top sites for both supporting and streaming Christian content for churches. Life Church, at http://www.lifechurch.tv, offers free websites and streaming services for churches regardless of denomination; they also offer technical support via e-mail or chat to help you get things going. Head on over and check them out.

I would like to thank all the area churches for the efforts they have put forward to continue the positive message of Christ during the crisis of COVID-19. I especially applaud the churches in the area with very little technical expertise. They have made the effort to learn technology in order to continue reaching their community. In conclusion, I am willing to help if you are stuck with a technological question. Feel free to email me at 3kforme@gmail.com. Enjoy your week and stay safe.