Nokia: First Mobile Phone Network On The Moon?

After winning a contract from NASA in the wake of Project Artemis, could Finnish mobile phone company Nokia be the first one to provide mobile phone coverage on the Moon?

By: Ringo Bones

After winning a contract bid and granted by NASA $14.1-million to build the first ever 4G mobile phone networks on the Moon, it seems that the Finnish mobile phone company Nokia could be the first ever to establish a working 4G mobile phone network on the Moon that would be used by astronauts. In the wake of NASA’s Artemis Project that aims to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024 (and about time, given that the last time NASA sent a men to the Moon was back in 1972). By 2028, NASA hopes to have the beginnings of a working lunar base and, ultimately, a sustainable human presence.

If NASA’s current timetable goes as planned, Nokia says that their Lunar 4G Network will be completed by late 2022, with humans due to arrive shortly after in 2024 as part of NASA’s Project Artemis. Nokia decided to choose to establish a 4G network first because given its long track record has proven reliability and robustness in the previous years, although Nokia says that it already has plans for 5G purpose built for space applications in the near future.

Nokia says the proposed 4G network will provide connectivity for any activity that astronauts need to carry out on the Moon, including using the network for transmitting biometric data, remotely controlling autonomous exploratory lunar rovers, streaming high-definition video in order to allay the concerns of “Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy Theorists”, and enabling voice and video communications. Although how all of this will work with the expected one and a quarter second travel time delay of the radio waves between the Earth and the Moon is yet to be determined given that the 186,000 miles per second speed of the radio waves still have to travel a quarter of a million miles to the Moon and back to Earth again. And let us also hope that the “roaming charges” does not carry an astronomical price tag - as what often happens to a British tourist making a mobile call in Ibiza during the summer vacation season. 

Google Pixel 5 Smartphone: Economic Downturn Ready Smartphone?

Given that Google’s hardware chief said that its new flagship model was designed to be sold during an economic downturn, does the Google Pixel  5 Smartphone qualifies as such?

By: Ringo Bones

At US$699 MSRP, it is not exactly cheap and it will be facing stiff competition from comparable entry-level  smartphones made by Samsung and a plethora of Mainland Chinese made ones, but why was the Google Pixel 5 smartphone hyped as a smartphone specifically designed for an economic downturn? Given that it is way cheaper than its predecessor – the US$999 4XL, as a result, the Pixel  5 has given up some of the main features of its predecessor and runs on a slower chip that allows it to be sold at a lower price. However, the Pixel 5 still gets 5G connectivity and some new picture taking related features.

It is a given in our current state of affairs that smartphone designs are usually fixed many months before the products are sold to the general public in order to secure the necessary components and to conduct tests. Google’s senior vice president of devices and services also admitted that the Pixel  5’s features were set way before the COVID 19 pandemic began, however, he said, that a conscious decision was made to offer a 5G-enabled smartphone at an “affordable price”.

Novel features of the Pixel 5 include the capability to allow it to wirelessly charge some accessories on the back. Last year’s “face unlock” sensors have also been discontinued to be replaced instead by a fingerprint sensor used on the Pixel  3. The Pixel  5 uses the Snapdragon 765 G graphics processing chip – a slower version than last year’s Snapdragon 855. One of the reversing cameras is now equipped with a wide-angle lens and also features various video stabilization modes to choose from. In addition, the RAM memory has been increased to 8GB, which allows the phone to move from task to task faster. And what makes the Pixel 5 much better than competing Mainland Chinese smartphones costing half as much that offers similar capabilities is that the Pixel 5 offers premium Android experience with super-fast updates.

Are Russian Cyber-Spies Targeting COVID 19 Vaccine Research Labs?

Seems unbelievable when I’ve first heard of it but are Russia’s top cyber-spies targeting the world’s leading COVID 19 vaccine research labs?

By: Ringo Bones

Given that to those old enough to remember that the then Soviet Union was at the cutting edge in medical science when it comes to developing performance enhancing drugs at the height of the Cold War, and hence their “almost mythical” athletic performance during the Olympic Games after World War II, that Putin era Russia now has resorted to stealing vital data via cyber espionage when it comes to developing a working COVID 19 vaccine seems “unbelievable”. But, sadly, the world’s leading cyber security services had just found out that the Kremlin’s go-to cyber-spies, a hacker group popularly known as Cozy Bear, was responsible for hacking the computer servers of UK, Canadian and US labs currently working on a working COVID 19 vaccine. It did not specify which organizations had been targeted or whether any information had been stolen. But it said vaccine research had not been hindered by hackers and as usual, Russia has denied any responsibility.

The warning was recently published by an international group of security services like the UK’s NCSC, the Canadian Communication Security Establishment (CSE), the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cyber security Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the US National security Agency. One expert said it was “plausible” that, despite the Kremlin’s denials, Russian spies were involved. Cozy Bear – the named cyber espionage and hacking group – has been implicated in past cyber attacks and has left quite a trail, and there are fairly good links to the Russian state itself. Cozy Bear was first identified as being a significant “threat actor” as far back as 2014, according to the American cyber security firm Crowdstrike. It describes the group as being “aggressive” in its tactics and “nothing if not flexible, changing tool sets frequently. The unit has been previously implicated in hacking the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 US Presidential Election. But given Russia’s reputation of being the cutting edge in medical science since the Soviet era, why did the Kremlin authorize such an operation in order to be the first in developing a working COVID 18 vaccine?

From a geopolitical perspective, a nation state that can first develop a working COVID 19 vaccine could gain an unfair advantage from an economic perspective in being able to end a government enforced lockdown and restarting the economy while keeping its own citizens from getting sick and or dying from COVID 19. It seems that the COVID 19 vaccine spy-game is a high stakes play in terms of statecraft indeed. Let’s just hope that Agent 007 has the sufficient medical degree to tackle such a case successfully.

Does 5G Internet Networks Cause And Help The Spread Of The COVID 19 Virus?

Given that the belief is straight out off Trump’s climate change denial playbook, does the belief that 5G internet networks causes COVID 19 more dangerous than the pandemic itself?

By: Ringo Bones

The dismissal of the pandemic as a hoax and questioning of scientific experts is straight out of President Trump’s, and other right-wing populist demagogue’s, playbook of climate change denial that got them elected in the first place. The 5G theory about radio waves transmitting or activating the virus, for example, is a reworking of long running conspiracy fears about mind control experiments, subliminal messaging and supposed United States military weapons projects that has since been a staple of Hollywood’s TV and movie industry way before the runaway mid 1990s success of The X-Files. Add to that an utter lack of how science works of most of Trump’s supporters and it is no longer a mystery that the belief that 5G internet networks causes and spreads the COVID 19 virus is very popular in the United States.

The 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories are particularly challenging to debunk by normal educated people with a working grasp of science – never mind tenured government scientists - because they bring together people from very different parts from the political spectrum. On the other hand, they attract the far-right Trump supporters who see them as part of a technological assault by big government and the “rich liberal elite” on the freedom of individuals. On the other, they appeal to the well established “anti-vaxxer community” who are often allied with those distrustful of Big Pharma. Getting COVID 19 from 5G internet networks is probably like someone getting polio from lighting FDR's old flashlight into their face.

Could 5G Interfere With Weather Forecasting Accuracy?

Despite of the promise of blisteringly fast internet speed and much increased device connectivity, could 5G networks degrade our current weather forecasting ability back to the 1980s?

By: Ringo Bones

During trial runs in recent years, 5G networks – in prototype form - had managed to provide blisteringly fast internet speeds and quantum leaps in connectivity to our devices and hopefully, at data rates not much more expensive that we currently pay. But are there caveats to this increased internet speed and connectivity – as in degrading our current ability to provide accurate weather forecasting?

Since the mid 1990s, the ability of our meteorological satellites and supporting networks to provide accurate weather forecast have increased by leaps and bounds. Currently, we can track the severity of storms as it hits landfall by up to three days in advance. This resulted in countless lives being saved due to people evacuated to safer areas – an ability that just twenty years before, was thought of as just “science fiction”. But could 5G internet networks degrade our ability to provide accurate weather forecasts back to the early 1980s?

The radio frequencies used by 5G networks operate at around 24 GHz – a frequency quite close to the ones used by the sensors and transmitters of weather satellites. The radio frequency used by weather satellites / meteorological satellites takes advantage of how atmospheric water vapor in clouds and suspended ice crystals resonate at 23.8 GHz. Due to its close operating frequency, 5G internet networks could interfere with weather satellites when it comes to forecast accuracy. In recent trials, the degradation in accuracy can make a contemporary meteorological satellite operate as if it is using 1982 era technology in terms of weather forecasting accuracy.

COVID 19 Contact Tracing Apps: More Trouble Than Their Worth?

Given that most of them are modeled after Apps used by Beijing to track their own political dissidents, are COVID 19 contact tracing apps more trouble than their worth especially when it comes to privacy concerns?

By: Ringo Bones

COVID 19 Contact Tracing Apps have raised concerns to everyone concerned about civil liberties. To anyone old enough to remember those post 9/11 overarching anti-terror laws can attest to this. Add to that most computer literate folks cite that most of them are reminiscent of secret tracking apps used by Beijing to monitor the day-to-day movement of suspected Uyghur political dissidents, it is easy to see why many see that COVID 18 contact tracing apps are really more trouble than their worth and has nothing to do with keeping us from getting COVID 19 but more to do with breaching the most basic of our privacy rights.

 According to a study published by the Brookings Institution back in April 27, 2020: Even among true contact events, most will not lead to transmission. Studies suggest that people have on average about a dozen close contacts a day – incidents involving direct touch or one-on-one conversation – yet even in the absence of social distancing measures the average infected person transmits to only 2 or 3 other people throughout the entire course of the disease. Fleeting interactions, such as crossing paths in a grocery store, will substantially more common and substantially less likely to cause transmission. If the apps flag these lower-risk encounters as well, they will cast a wide net when reporting exposure. If they do not, they will miss a substantive fraction of transmission events.

Because most exposures flagged by apps will not lead to infection, many users will be instructed to self-quarantine even though they have not been infected. A person may put up with this once or twice, but after a few false alarms and the ensuring inconvenience of protracted self-isolation, we expect many will start to disregard the warnings, Of course, this is a problem with conventional contact tracing as well, but it can be managed with effective direct communication between the contact tracer and the suspected contact.

Google Restricting Huawei’s Use Of Android: The E-Commerce Side of the Trade War?

Even though security concerns on Huawei products has been around since 2006, does Google’s latest move now makes Trump’s trade war with China now has a e-commerce front?

By: Ringo Bones

Back around 2006 to 2007, tech-savvy Gen-X’ers’ primary reason for “boycotting” Huawei and ZTE gear was primarily due to the Tibetan Freedom Movement and how Beijing kept incrementally ratcheting their crackdown on Uyghurs since the 1990s. Sadly such concerns were largely forgotten or dipped below the radar of activist social media since a relatively unknown senator from Illinois got elected to The White House. Then and now, no major news correspondent manage to ask Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei about what he thinks about consumers who chose to boycott Huawei products because of Tibetan Freedom Movement and Uyghur crackdown concerns. But recently in February 2019, the Huawei issue surfaced yet again – and in a way bigger manner – after the company faced growing backlash from Western countries, primarily lead by the Trump Administration, over possible risks posed by using Huawei products in next-generation 5G mobile networks.

On May 20, 2019, Google decided to start restricting new designs of Huawei smartphones access to some Google apps. This move comes after the Trump Administration added Huawei to a list of companies that American firms cannot trade with unless they have a “special license”. In a statement, Google said it was “complying with the order and reviewing the implications”. At the moment, Huawei declined to comment.

At the moment, existing Huawei smartphone users will still be able to update apps and push through security fixes, as well as update Google Play services, but when Google launches the next version of Android later this year, it may not be available on Huawei devices. Future Huawei devices may no longer have apps such as YouTube and Google Maps. Even though Huawei has already a so-called Plan B to prepare them from such scenarios brought about by the Trump Administration’s “Trade War”, the company probably must now abandon its plan to overtake Samsung to become the world’s best-selling smartphone brand by 2020.