A secret network of 20 roadside listening stations across the UK has confirmed that criminals are attempting to jam GPS signals on a regular basis, a conference at the National Physical Laboratory, in London, will hear later today. Set up by the government’s Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and run by Chronos Technology of the Forest of Dean, UK, the Sentinel network has sensed an average of ten jamming incidents per month since September 2011. “Our jamming sensors use very small GPS receivers like those in cellphones. They are installed at locations where our partner companies have experienced unexplained outages to their professional GPS equipment,” says Chronos managing director Charles Curry. “The jammers sweep a signal through the GPS band around 1.5 gigahertz and we log the impact that has on the local GPS signal.” One victim of these GPS outages was Britain’s national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey.

One Per Cent: GPS jamming: a clear and present reality

A future in which national borders are rerouted through the careful recalibration of the cartographer’s GPS signals.

Article also covers potential “GPS vigilantes”, placing jammers around towns which want to keep large satnav-guided trucks away, and the necessity for GPS signal for cell towers and banking systems…

(via new-aesthetic)

Thalmic Labs MYO (very cool)

Date: April 28, 2013 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

futuretechreport:

Behind the Scenes at Thalmic Labs – Creator of the Wearable Gesture Control Device “Myo”

The Myo is one of the most anticipated gesture control wearable devices expected to be released to early adopters later this year (my order is already in!).

Based in my hometown of Waterloo, Canada – this video gives a great behind the scenes look at the team, the Thalmic Labs office and some great shots of Myo in action and also provides some more information on the product and their development process which hasn’t been previously released before.

Myo uses the electrical activity from your muscles as your move your hand to detect what you are doing with your fingers as well as the motion of your hand. These gestures control connected devices via bluetooth.

The Myo stretchable cuff has been designed to be one-size fits all (they even considered making sure that arm hair doesn’t get in the way).

The team has confirmed that their developer program in the next few months giving out exclusive access to early versions of the software of the devices.

Thalmic Labs believes that the Myo device could revolutionalize the way we interact with technology – and I agree.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Consider some of the things that have bound our nation together:

Universal postal service at a flat rate, whether you live in Santa Monica or Sitka, Alaska. Interstate highways, built with taxpayer funds and free of tolls. Regulated phone and electric service, with lifeline rates for the economically disadvantaged.

These were all based on a social contract honoring the notion that essential infrastructure should be available to all — indeed, that those normally left by the side of the economic road might be most in need.

But you can kiss that notion goodbye, because today’s model of building public infrastructure is to let private companies do it.

Americans are becoming more dependent on privately operated toll roads to get where we’re going, and on private delivery services like FedEx and UPS to carry our parcels. But the greatest shift has occurred in the sector that is most crucial in the information age: communications and data networks.

That brings us to Google — as happens sooner or later with any discussion touching on digital technology. The Mountain View, Calif., behemoth has branched into the Internet service business by introducing a fiber-optic data network for homeowners in Kansas City, Mo., and its neighboring namesake in Kansas.

The service, which is expected to be fully functional by the end of this year, is upending the traditional business and regulatory model for phone, video and data communications. But Google managed to exempt itself from the regulations that typically force cable companies to wire all neighborhoods, rich, poor and in between, for the Internet. The result threatens to leave underprivileged neighborhoods in the digital dust.

Ceding such a crucial service to a private company with minimal regulation is something that happened with virtually no public discussion about its implications for society. […]

It was obvious from the start that the removal of regulatory obstacles would count heavily in the race. The victors promised sedulous cooperation, including a team to provide “on-the-spot” exceptions where rules and regulations threatened delays. The two Kansas Cities even bowed to the demand they “obtain Google’s approval for all public statements” about the project.

Notably, they didn’t insist that Google guarantee service to their most disadvantaged communities. The reason is obvious: They didn’t have any real choice about the terms; it was fiber on Google’s terms, or no fiber at all.

LA Times – When public infrastructure goes private, via Andrew B. (via new-aesthetic)

Joi Ito’s Principles:

Date: March 11, 2013 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

brucesterling:

Joi Ito of MIT Media Lab:

Ito: There are nine or so principles to work in a world like this:

1. Resilience instead of strength, which means you want to yield and allow failure and you bounce back instead of trying to resist failure.

2. You pull instead of push. That means you pull the resources from the network as you need them, as opposed to centrally stocking them and controlling them.

3. You want to take risk instead of focusing on safety.

4. You want to focus on the system instead of objects.

5. You want to have good compasses not maps.

6. You want to work on practice instead of theory. Because sometimes you don’t why it works, but what is important is that it is working, not that you have some theory around it.

7. It disobedience instead of compliance. You don’t get a Nobel Prize for doing what you are told. Too much of school is about obedience, we should really be celebrating disobedience.

8. It’s the crowd instead of experts.

9. It’s a focus on learning instead of education.

We’re still working on it, but that is where our thinking is headed.