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Show of 04-10-2021

Tech Talk April 10, 2021

Email and Forum Questions

  • Email from Bob in Maryland: Dear Doc, Jim, and the ghost in the machine, Mr. BigVoice. I am sure Doc has been following this Mars Drone news, since he is a Drone fanatic of sorts. Anyway, just a reminder that we are coming up on the planned date for the first flight. All the best, your faithful listener, Bob in Maryland
  • Tech Talk Responds: I am excited about this Martian drone helicopter. It has been cleared for takeoff on Sunday, April 11th. Ingenuity will fly above Jezero Crater Sunday on a 40-second flight. That is roughly four times longer than the Wright brothers’ first flight on Earth over 117 years ago. The drone contains a small piece of the Wright brothers’ plane.
  • The flight plan has the helicopter hovering just 9 feet above the surface, collecting black-and-white data of landmarks beneath it along with a high-definition horizon video and engineering data.
  • The Martian atmosphere is just 1% as dense as that of Earth, so the helicopter must provide more lift than it would need to fly on Earth. The blades must rotate at 2,500 rpm to get this much lift. The blade at thick at the base and thin at the end to counter the effect of centrifugal force.
  • The helicopter must also fly autonomously, since controllers on Earth are parked too far away to joystick it around the crater.
  • It needs to keep recharging from the sun and survive nightly surface temperatures of minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius).
  • Email from Ronnie in St. Louis, MO: Dear Tech Talk. I heard that hackers have stolen Facebook passwords. How can I find out whether my account was included in this data breach? If it is what should I do? Ronnie in St. Louis, MO
  • Tech Talk Responds: This was one of the largest successful hacks in the history of the Internet. Although it’s just now beginning to dominate the news, this hack actually took place back in 2019. The reason it has popped up to the surface again after all this time is because the actual amount of data that was stolen has turned out to be a lot more than previously thought. 530 million people have been compromised.
  • First, have you ever added your telephone number to your profile on Facebook? If not, then your data was NOT included in the breach because user phone numbers were used as the starting point for hacking the other info. If your phone number IS on your Facebook profile (or if it ever HAS BEEN in the past), simply type it into the box on this page and click the Check button. Be sure to include the number 1 at the beginning to indicate that you have a U.S. based phone number.
  • Link: https://www.thenewseachday.com/facebook-phone-numbers-us
  • If it says it is included then you have some work to do
    • Log into your Facebook account and change your Facebook password.
    • Enable Two-Factor Authentication on your Facebook account if you haven’t done so already.
    • Keep a close watch on your bank account(s) and credit reports to make sure your stolen info has not been used to steal your identity.
  • Email from John in Chesapeake: Dear Doc and Jim. I have a three-year-old laptop that has a broken screen. I checked and it would cost more to have the screen replaced than the laptop is really worth. I plan to just junk it, but I have many files on there that I would really like to get off it first. Do you think I will be able to save my files, and if so, how do I do it? John in Chesapeake, VA
  • Tech Talk Responds: You should indeed be able to save the files from your damaged laptop. Here are a few options for you to consider:
    • Even though the screen is unusable, the laptop itself might still boot up just fine. If so, you can simply run the machine with the external monitor long enough to copy the files from the hard drive onto an external USB hard drive.
    • You can remove the hard drive and connect it to another PC via an inexpensive external USB hard drive adapter.
  • If you do end up going with the first option and then recycling the laptop after you have retrieved the files from it, be sure to either the hard drive from the laptop before disposing of the machine. That will prevent someone from being able to steal your data from it.
  • Email from Peter in Fairfax, VA: Dear Tech Talk. I recently upgraded my computer by adding an 1 TB SSD to make it run faster. I cloned the contents of the existing 500GB hard disk onto it. I then wiped the hard drive and installed the SSD in the computer, leaving the now-blank hard drive in place to store my data files on. Everything works perfectly but something has me baffled. When I look in the BIOS, it says the hard drive is set as the boot drive. How is this machine booting into Windows when the boot drive is blank? Peter in Fairfax, VA
  • Tech Talk Responds: That was a great investment. You will love the speed improvement. Your PC isn’t booting from the hard drive at all. It is actually booting from the SSD now. When you said the hard drive is set as the boot drive, what you’re really referring to is the boot sequence or boot order, not the actual boot drive. The order in which the installed drives are listed in the BIOS doesn’t always indicate which drive will be “the boot drive” the next time the PC is powered on.
  • The boot sequence simply tells the system which drive to check first when it comes time to look for a bootable operating system. In your case the bootable operating system is Windows.
  • At boot time the system will check the first drive listed in the boot sequence to see if it contains an operating system it can boot from. If it does find that it contains an operating system it will go ahead and boot the machine into whatever that operating system happens to be. If the drive that is listed first doesn’t contain an operating system, the machine will check to see if there’s an operating system installed on the next drive in the list. And so on.
  • As soon the system finds a drive with a bootable operating system, the machine is booted into the operating system contained on that drive. If none of the installed drives contain an operating system then the machine will display an error letting you it was unable to find an operating system to boot into.
  • Email from Alice in Alexandria: I have a computer with Windows 10 on it. It used to be that when I tried to delete a file a message would pop up asking if I really wanted to delete it, but not anymore. Now the file is just deleted immediately with no chance to change my mind. I really need those confirmation messages because I’ve caught myself trying to delete the wrong file several times in the past. Can you tell me how to get Windows to start asking me to confirm file deletions again? Alice in Alexandria, VA
  • Tech Talk Responds: I like those confirmation messages too, Francine. It is very easy to get those file deletion confirmation messages back.
    • Right-click on the Recycle Bin icon, then select Properties from the drop-down menu.
    • Check the box beside Display delete confirmation dialog.
    • Make sure the option “Don’t move files to the Recycle Bin…” isn’t selected. If it is that means your deleted files won’t be stored in the Recycle Bin and you won’t be able to restore them later if you ever change your mind.
    • Click OK.
  • From now on, you should be asked to confirm your file deletion.
  • Mary Ann in Fairfax: Dear Tech Talk. I have an iPhone. However, my son on buy Android phones. I love to FaceTime with my friends, but an unable to use FaceTime with him. What options to I have. Mary Ann in Fairfax, VA
  • Tech Talk Responds: Fortunately, you have many options, including:
    • Facebook Messenger (Known to have privacy issues. Very convenient)
    • WhatsApp (I use this for my internal connections. Owned by Facebook)
    • Skype (the old standby. Now owned by Microsoft)
    • Google Duo (Google’s answer to FaceTime. Can be installed on iPhone)
    • Zoom (Great for groups. Free versions limited to 40 minute sessions)


 

Profiles in IT: Katalin Karikó

  • Katalin Karikó is a Hungarian biochemist who specializes in RNA. Her research has focused on mRNA for protein therapies, the basis for two COVID vaccines.
  • Karikó was January 17, 1955, and grew up in Kisújszállás, Hungary where she attended Móricz Zsigmond Református Gimnázium. Her father was a butcher.
  • After earning her Ph.D. at the University of Szeged, Karikó continued her research and postdoctoral studies at the Biological Research Centre of Hungary. After graduation, she continued her research synthesizing RNA as a post-doc.
  • RNA (ribonucleic acid) principal role is to act as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA for controlling the synthesis of proteins.
  • In 1985, her position was eliminated and she accepted a post-doc invitation from Temple University in Philadelphia to continue her research on RNA.
  • She left communist Hungary with her engineer husband and two-year-old daughter.
  • At the time, Hungarians were prohibited from taking their money to a new country. When Karikó sold her car for $1,200, she hid the cash in her daughter’s teddy bear.
  • At Temple, Karikó participated in a clinical trial in which patients with AIDS, hematological diseases, and chronic fatigue were treated with double stranded RNA (dsRNA). At the time, this was considered groundbreaking research.
  • Four years later, she left Temple because of a dispute with her boss, who attempted to have her deported.
  • In 1989, she joined the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine, and it was there that she and her colleagues first saw that messenger RNA (mRNA) worked.
  • mRNA molecules are single-stranded strands of genetic code formed of nucleosides which instruct the human cells to produce certain proteins.
  • The idea was that if you synthesize mRNA code in a lab you could instruct the body to better fight a wide range of diseases.
  • She wanted to use mRNA to treat cystic fibrosis and strokes, but lacked the funds to develop the ideas.
  • However, for years there was a stumbling block. mRNA caused an inflammatory reaction when injected because it activated the body’s immune system.
  • In 1990, while a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Karikó submitted her first grant application in which she proposed to establish mRNA-based gene therapy.
  • She applied for grants and talked with venture capitalists in New York City. No one was interested. She was alone in her belief that mRNA could work.
  • She was on track to become full professor, but grant rejections led the University to cut her salary and reduce her rank in 1995.
  • The former department chair pushed her out of her lab, where she made some of her main discoveries. He told her she could go have a small office near the animal house for her lab. She asked the next chair to reinstate her to her former position and was told she was not faculty material. Despite the humiliation, she stayed on.
  • In 1997, she met Drew Weissman, professor of immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. They continued her research on mRNA together.
  • He and Karikó met over their department’s copy machine, where they realized their shared interests and started working together.
  • It was not until 2004 that Prof Karikó and her colleague Drew Weissman found that, by using a slightly altered nucleoside in the mRNA string, the potentially fatal problem could be overcome. They had found the last piece of the puzzle.
  • In a series of articles beginning in 2005, Karikó and Weissman described how specific nucleoside modifications in mRNA led to a reduced immune response.
  • The next year, Karikó and Weissman set up a company to develop mRNA drugs, led by Karikó as chief executive. But they never got as far as clinical trials.
  • In 2013, they received patents for the use of several modified nucleosides to reduce the antiviral immune response to mRNA.
  • Despite the university’s original attitude toward Karikó’s research, it held the rights to all patents relating to her research. Without compensating her, the university sold the exclusive license of their patent to a third party, CellScript.
  • At the same time, Rossi, a Canadian stem cell biologist who had read their groundbreaking 2005 paper, found strong financial backers and in 2010 founded Moderna in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • Flagship Pioneering, the venture capital company backing Moderna, contacted her to license the patent. But she did not own the patents.
  • In 2013, Karikó realized she would not get a chance to apply her experience with mRNA at the University of Pennsylvania, so took a role as senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals. She also had a job offer from Moderna
  • Karikó contributed to BioNTech’s effort to create immune cells that produce vaccine antigens. Her research revealed that the antiviral response from mRNA gave their cancer vaccines an extra boost in defense against tumors.
  • In 2020, Karikó’s and Weissman’s technology was used within a vaccine for COVID-19 that was produced jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech.
  • Karikó hopes mRNA will become a universal platform for the development of vaccines targeting other infectious diseases as well as new therapeutics and products for protein replacement, immunotherapy and personalized cancer vaccines.
  • The British ethologist Richard Dawkins, as well as Derrick Rossi, who helped found Moderna, have called for these two to receive a Nobel Prize.

Observations from the Bunker

  • Katalin Karikó : Grit and resilience
  • Grit is the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals.
  • People are born with various levels of grit, but she believes it is a trait that develops through experience. One key to improving it is by shifting one’s mindset from a fixed to a growth orientation.
  • Grit is about sustained, consistent effort toward a goal even when we struggle, falter, or temporarily fail.
  • Resilience is our ability to bounce back after we have struggled, faltered, or failed. It is being able to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, take a moment or two to collect ourselves, and then get back to the business of pursuing our goal.
  • Some people are more resilient than others. Like grit, it is a characteristic a person can develop. It requires optimism. Kaitlin never doubted her ultimate success.
  • Grit is the engine that moves us toward our goal. Resilience is the oil that keeps the engine moving.

Warning of the Week: Hackers Are Selling Home Security Videos Online

  • Chinese hackers have been stealing private footage from security cameras and selling it online.
  • The videos are sold through social media and that they have prices according to how exciting the footage is. Video clips involving “you know what” are the most expensive at $8 each, while simpler more everyday-like videos are $3.
  • The hackers are also selling real-time viewing through the use of camera IDs and passwords. These cost just $11 for 10 households, while 10 hotels plus 10 households will cost you $23) and 20 hotels plus 20 households can go up to $39.
  • One hacker who steals the videos and then sells them to other agents who then sell them to private individuals said he had up to 8000 videos just in February.
  • He also added that he had dozens of people traveling around the country to install cameras.
  • The practice is of course illegal, but catching the hackers is much harder than finding them online. It would require catching them in the act of installing the secret cameras.
  • I would not trust the security of any webcam and would place its location carefully. The serve a security purpose, but should not be too invasive. There are many websites that list the links to unsecured webcams. I am not giving them here.

Could Soon Release More CO2 than Czechia

  • The study estimates that the mining process could soon generate 130.50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually in China alone.
  • China hosts more than 75% of cryptocurrency mining operations worldwide.
  • The study by researchers from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences predicted that the annual energy consumption of the Bitcoin blockchain in China will peak in 2024.
  • From that point on, bitcoin will require approximately 297 terawatt-hours of energy and will be responsible for around 130.50 million tons of carbon emissions per year.
  • The smugglers were carrying Nvidia CMP 30HX’s, which are specifically designed for cryptocurrency mining.
  • This problem should not exist. We need to change the algorithm.

AI Makes Remarkable Progress on Protein Folding Problem

  • Google-owned DeepMind has developed a new way to “unfold” disease-causing proteins.
  • Damaged and folded proteins cause dozens of diseases that affect millions of people.
  • The AI identifies proteins at about two-thirds the human success rate in a fraction of the time.
  • Diseases caused by folded proteins in the body are will known; cancer, Alzheimer’s, and COVID-19.
  • A Google model powered by artificial intelligence could map these folded proteins in more detail than ever before, allowing scientists to “unfold” proteins and better explore possible treatments.
  • There are 200 million known proteins at present but only a fraction have actually been unfolded to fully understand what they do and how they work.
  • Even those that have been successfully understood often rely on expensive and time-intensive techniques, with scientists spending years unfolding each structure and relying on equipment that can cost many millions of dollars.
  • Think about buying a croissant and then trying to unfold the layers until you have one flat piece of pastry.
  • The key is speed, because the AI is far faster than human scientists doing the same work and, so far, has reached two-thirds of their accuracy in just a matter of days.
  • This computational work represents an advance on the protein-folding problem that has occurred decades before many people in the field would have predicted.