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Show of 1-22-2022

Email and Forum Questions

  • Email from Bob in Maryland: Dear Doc and Andrew. Today’s show on Web 3.0 was absolutely EXCELLENT. You probably know that, but in case no one else says it, I will mention that. Here is a link to an article about this series of tweets, and I attach a document with my own cut and paste job on the same series of tweets. The article is titled: What It is Like Inside Big Tech Now: Utterly Surreal To Watch The Deterioration. A big tech employee took to twitter to speak out on what is currently going on inside of Big Tech. According to the employee, Big Tech has fully gone insanely radically leftwing. He details a demoralized industry with no more real innovation. What do you think, Doc? All the best, your faithful listener, Bob in Maryland
  • Tech Talk Responds: You are right. Big tech has gone left wing. What we need is for everyone to become a critical thinker. Listen to the other side and try to understand their position. With a new perspective, compromise and understanding will be possible. If we simply argue without listening, we will never find common ground.
  • Email from Alex in Baltimore: Dear Tech Talk. I have been hearing about the impact of 5G cellular phones in aircraft safety. Some carriers have cancelled flights because of the 5G deployment by ATT and Verizon. What are the facts? Will 5G really affect flight safety? Alex in Baltimore
  • Tech Talk Responds: The launch of new 5G cellphone service in the United States has sparked a fight between telecommunication companies and the aviation industry, with airlines claiming the high-speed wireless service could interfere with aircraft technologies and could cause “catastrophic” disruptions.
  • 5G uses the C band of frequencies (3.7 to 4.2GHz), which is close to the frequency band used by airlines. Airlines worry that leakage from the C-bands will interfere with flight operations. The dispute forced Verizon and AT&T to limit 5G service around some airport.
  • The Federal Aviation Administration has said 5G networks could disrupt aircraft operations. The FCC sold the spectrum for $81B and did not consult with the FAA.
  • The main concern is that cellular towers and antennas near airports could interfere with radio altimeters, which are electronic devices in aircraft that help pilots gauge their altitude above the terrain. This equipment is particularly important when planes land in poor weather or when helicopters operate at low altitudes.
  • Verizon and AT&T have said their equipment can be safely deployed without interfering with aircraft operations, but in a letter sent Monday to U.S. transportation and economic officials, the CEOs of major airlines said the 5G rollout could ground flights and strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas.
  • 5G has already been successfully introduce in 40 countries. In some cases, 5G transmitter power was restricted near airports and antennas pointed away from flight paths. The US carriers have not made such concessions. Neither side appears to be talking and attempting to reach a compromise.
  • Concerns about wireless interference in aviation are hardly new. In-flight cellphone use was once banned in the U.S. and many other countries over fears that cell signals could clash with onboard avionics and other navigation systems.
  • To reduce the possibility of interference, Verizon and AT&T agreed to maintain buffer zones around at least 50 airports, including major hubs like New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and the Los Angeles International Airport. The carriers also agreed to limit deploying 5G service around certain airport runways. I hope that we will see some compromise in the near term so that 5G can be fully deployed (with some adjustment around flight paths).
  • Email from Karen in Virginia Beach: Dear Tech Talk. What are your thoughts on having someone build a custom computer for me vs. buying a name brand computer at a computer store? My cousin Erich is a computer geek and he says he can build me a PC that’s better than one I can buy at a computer store for the same amount of money. Do you think I should let him? Karen in Virginia Beach, VA
  • Tech Talk Responds: My son built several computers and thoroughly enjoyed it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying a custom built computer from a friend, but there are a few things to consider before making your decision
    • Since Erich will be purchasing individual parts and assembling them into a working computer, he will be the one who will have to handle any warranty repairs.
    • If the hard drive or SSD goes out for instance, he’ll have to deal with the company he bought the drive from and hope they’ll replace it under warranty.
    • The motherboard however could well come from a different company, requiring a different point of contact for any warranty work that might be needed. Ditto for the RAM, power supply and other components.
    • That means either you or Kevin will need to keep up with all the receipts and warranty information for the various parts in case something fails while it’s still under warranty.
    • If Kevin is capable of building a PC from scratch, he is probably also capable of helping you resolve any issues that might arise in the future.
  • Buying a name brand PC simplifies things a great deal because regardless of which component breaks, you’ll only have to deal with one company and one receipt.

Profiles in IT: David Lee Chaum

  • David Lee Chaum is an American computer scientist and cryptographer, best known as the inventor of digital cash, a precursor to Bitcoin.
  • Chaum was born in 1955 to a Jewish family in Los Angeles.
  • In 1982, he received a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
  • In 1982, he founded the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), which currently organizes academic conferences in cryptography research.
  • Subsequently, he taught at the New York University Graduate School of Business Administration and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
  • Chaum’s 1982 Berkeley dissertation proposed every element of the blockchain found in Bitcoin except proof of work.
  • The proposed vault system lays out a plan for achieving consensus state between nodes, chaining the history of consensus in blocks, and immutably time stamping the chained data. The paper also lays out the specific code to implement such a protocol.
  • His vaults were encrypted servers, which participated in constant exchanges. Each of these vaults would sign, record, and broadcast every transaction on the network.
  • Various roles would be assigned to vault participants in order to create a framework for checks and balances, ranging from watchers to czars, who were publically authorized.
  • The consensus algorithm would also involve a majority vote of nodes based on the signed messages observed in various exchanges.
  • Chaum is credited as the inventor of secure digital cash for his 1983 paper, which also introduced the cryptographic primitive of a blind signature.
  • Chaum’s proposal allowed users to obtain digital currency from a bank and spend it in a manner that is untraceable by the bank or any other party.
  • In 1988, he extended this idea (with Amos Fiat and Moni Naor) to allow offline transactions that enable detection of double spending.
  • In 1990, he founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in Amsterdam to commercialize the ideas in his research.
  • The first electronic payment was sent in 1994. In 1999, Chaum left the company.
  • In the same 1982 paper that proposed digital cash, Chaum introduced blind signatures.
  • This form of digital signature blinds the content of a message before it is signed, so that the signer cannot determine the content. The resulting blind signature can be publicly verified against the original, unblinded message in the manner of a regular digital signature.
  • In 1981, Chaum proposed the idea of an anonymous communication network in a paper.
  • His proposal, called mix networks, allows a group of senders to submit an encryption of a message and its recipient to a server. Once the server has a batch of messages, it will reorder and obfuscate the messages so that only this server knows which message came from which sender.
  • The batch is then forwarded to another server who does the same process. Eventually, the messages reach the final server where they are fully decrypted and delivered to the recipient.
  • A mechanism to allow return messages is also proposed. Mix networks are the basis of some remailers and are the conceptual ancestor to modern anonymous web browsing tools like Tor (based on onion routing). Chaum has advocated that every router be made, effectively, a Tor node.
  • In 1981, Chaum has made numerous contributions to secure voting systems, including the first proposal of a system that is end-to-end verifiable.
  • In this system, the individual ballots of voters were kept private which anyone could verify that the tally was counted correctly. This, and other early cryptographic voting systems, assumed that voters could reliably compute values with their personal computers.
  • In 1991, Chaum introduced SureVote which allowed voters to cast a ballot from an untrustworthy voting system, proposing a process now called “code voting” and used in remote voting systems like Remotegrity and DEMOS.
  • In 1994, Chaum introduced the first in-person voting system in which voters cast ballots electronically at a polling station and cryptographically verify that the DRE (direct-recording electronic) voting machine did not modify their vote (or even learn what it was).
  • In 2011, Chaum proposed Random Sample Elections. This electoral system allows a verifiably random selection of voters, who can maintain their anonymity, to cast votes on behalf the entire electorate.
  • In the following years, Chaum proposed (often with others) a series of cryptographically verifiable voting systems. The city of Takoma Park, Maryland used his system for its November, 2009 election. This was the first time a public sector election was run using any cryptographically verifiable voting system.
  • If Satoshi is the father of Bitcoin, David Chaum is most definitely its grandfather.

Observations from the Faculty Lounge

  • Cypherpunk and drive for privacy.
  • Two events motivated David Chaum.
    • NSA attempted takeover of encryption in 1982.
    • Edward Snowden’s revelation of data collection by the state in 2013. Big tech is complicit and cannot be trusted.
  • One event motivated Satoshi Nakamoto to create bitcoin
    • The banking crisis of 2008. Printing money to cover a spending deficit is not sustainable.
  • These events could be viewed as the inspiration behind the cypherpunk generation (digital hippies)
  • The state has too much power. The cypherpunk movement seeks to take back the power back through digital sovereignty (privacy ensured through encryption).
  • Game on. The blockchain is ground central in this battle for Web3 and privacy.

The Best Programming Languages to Learn in 2022

  • A report released on Tuesday by CodingNomads looks at the “best” programming languages for 2022.
  • If you’re excited by the data and logic side of coding, you may wish to learn Python, Java, C, C++ or C#.
  • If you like visual design and user interfaces, TypeScript might be up your alley.
  • If you’re looking to develop mobile apps, you’d want to check out Java for Android, and Swift or Objective-C for Apple’s iOS.
  • Looking at the greatest number of job postings on LinkedIn across the U.S. and Europe, CodingNomads awarded the top spot to Python.
  • In second place was Java, followed by JavaScript, C++, C#, C, TypeScript, PHP, Perl and Ruby.
    • Python — As a general purpose, server-side language, Python is used for a variety of tasks from simple scripting to advanced web applications and artificial intelligence. For developers interested in data science or machine learning as well as overall software development and web development, Python is the best language to learn, according to CodingNomads.
    • Java — A respected and time-tested language, Java is widely used by organizations around the world. Java is the main language behind Android, which owns an 85% share of the mobile market. It’s also the most popular language for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Java is considered harder to learn than Python but easier than C or C++, according to CodingNomads.
    • JavaScript — Used on more than 97% of the world’s websites, JavaScript allows you to set up dynamic and interactive content, animated graphics and other complex features on the web. It’s also the most popular language among contributors on GitHub. Unlike the other languages covered in the report, JavaScript is primarily a client-side language in that it executes within a web browser.

NASA finishes deploying the James Webb Space Telescope

  • NASA is one large step closer to putting the James Webb Space Telescope into service.
  • The agency has successfully deployed the JWST’s signature gold-coated primary mirror, completing all major deployments for the instrument.
  • The mission crew still has to align the telescope’s optics by moving the primary mirror’s segments (a months-long process), but it’s a strong sign the $10 billion device is in good shape.
  • The JWST also required a third course correction burn as it heads toward the L2 Lagrange point over 930,000 miles from Earth. It has now arrived at L2.
  • L2 is shorthand for the second Lagrange Point. There are five “Lagrange Points” – areas where gravity from the sun and Earth balance the orbital motion of a satellite.
  • Putting a spacecraft at any of these points allows it to stay in a fixed position relative to the Earth and sun with a minimal amount of energy needed for course correction.
  • First images from the telescope will not be available until the summer, and it could take much longer before those images translate to meaningful discoveries.
  • Even so, the deployment is an achievement. JWST represents the first time NASA has unpacked a complex observatory in space — it shows projects like this are viable, even if they are unlikely to be commonplace in the near future.