Sci-Tech

In the world of computing there a few flavors of reality. Can you tell your VR from your AR? Let’s look at some of the most popular realities available today.

In December it was announced that a chess player with four hours of training beat the world’s world champion chess-playing program. The player was AlphaZero, an AI (artificial intelligence) program operated by Google.

 A UFO or Unidentified Flying Object is any real or apparent flying object which cannot be identified by the observer and which remains unidentified after investigation.  They are also known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).

It should come as no surprise that iBrattleboro is a supporter of Net Neutrality. It’s essential for a vibrant, free, all-access internet.

A couple nights ago I was shutting down my computer when, in the process of quitting Firefox, a mysterious screen opened before my eyes with what appeared to be a galaxy of circles and triangles, interconnecting and sprouting new satellites as I watched. Closer inspection revealed it to be a graphic visualization of sites I had recently visited with all the third party sites they had notified in clusters around them. It was a moment out of War Games. Had I been hacked, I wondered?  But no, it turned out to be Lightbeam, a browser add-on that allows you to see in real time how your information is being shared on the Internet by the sites you visit, and with whom. I vaguely remember installing it a while back but I never got around to using it, hence my initial surprise when it seemingly opened itself in my browser.  But once I saw what it revealed, I was riveted.

Brattleboro is about to change from dual stream to single stream recycling on July 3. The Town of Brattleboro sent out a postcard with a reminder of this date, and a reminder that another big change is coming: plastics 1-7 will now be collected.

Time for an occasional robot roundup, where we look at advances in robotics.

First let me say sorry for the dramatic title, but seriously,  DO IT NOW!  If you are unfamiliar with what two factor authentication is, it is a way for you to add another security layer for your important logins besides just a password. Many websites and services that contain potentially valuable data will have the ability to use two factor authentication, but it is usually disabled by default.

It’s caused by a virus, and the virus is spread by word of mouth!

Seriously, there is such a thing as wind turbine syndrome, but it’s not caused by the turbines themselves.

It’s caused by negative feelings toward turbines harbored by individuals.

In medical terms, this is called a “nocebo”.

These negative feelings, in turn, are mostly created by anti-wind evangelists who travel the state spreading their gospel of misinformation.

Working in the IT field I often see a common occurrence with businesses and consumers alike. Everyone hears about large companies being hacked or their neighbors computer catching a virus, but often times people do not put as much priority on their computers security as they should. We all hope that it never happens to us, and many people think they are too small to be a target for hackers. The truth is, smaller targets are often easier to attack so instead of spending months trying to penetrate a large corporation or financial institution, hackers will spend far less time attacking many small businesses at once.

     I need some advice.  VTel has sent around a holiday offer.  One level of their service, the lowest, is 2GB of data per month for $10.  They say that is equal to about 10 hours of internet usage after which download speed keeps diminishing.  They didn’t want to tell me how much it diminishes.  They’re answer was, ‘well, that’s when people usually upgrade.”  My Fairpoint deal is $15/month, at a slow speed (750 kb/sec), but I can spend 100 hours a month on the net and notice nothing in terms of speed diminishing.  In fact it seems that I can spend 24 hours a day on the net, or streaming, and the speed seems the same on the last day of the month as it was on the first.

In a quest for profit and automation, big tech companies are making mistakes that matter to people using their services. Some are small and annoying; others are more significant.

Some examples:

Turn on the Weather Channel in Brattleboro and you’ll be welcomed to Putney. Yes, Putney. The Weather Channel made a switch a year or so ago and decided that the big city in our region, right up there with Albany and Burlington, is Putney.

LinkedIn makes sure to tell everyone that employees in Brattleboro work in the Springfield area. Springfield, MA, that is. So helpful!

I saw this , and perhaps, challenigng old conceptions of peak -oil.

There are many ways to be snookered, manipulated, tricked and even bullied into becoming a victim on the internet, as well as through regular mail, phone, etc. People tricking others into doing things against their better interests is not a new phenomenon, but the ways that can happen has changed in recent times. It helps us all to have us all be more aware, more informed, and more skeptical of seemingly innocent inquiries.

Time for another random robot round-up, in which we take another snapshot of the progress of our future friends and overlords.

Each of the following is a specific robot in development, but that’s not the best way to think about these things. It’s better to think of each of these studies as part of a greater whole. That is, anything one of them can do now, all can potentially be capable of in the future. Keep that in mind as you read about monkey-controlled robot armies, flaming ping pong balls, and soft micro robots.