Tech Talk

Smartphones have replaced wristwatches as timekeepers for many teenagers and tech-savvy adults. But a new smartwatch aims to win over customers with such features as an extremely low-power processor and the convenience of wireless charging.

Dreams of wearing a smartwatch as a handy computer on the wrist, also known as a watch-phone, have captured the public's imagination going back to the Dick Tracy newspaper comic strip. Such watches hold the promise of making smartphone features conveniently available on the wrist without having to pull mobile devices out of a pocket or bag.

The new "Agent" smartwatch has already raised more than US $300 000 on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter—easily surpassing its $100 000 goal since the project launched on 21 May. Despite its quick success, it by no means has the field to itself. It doesn't even have Kickstarter to itself—the  popular Pebble watch raised $10 million there. Apple and Microsoft are both rumored to be jumping into the smartwatch market as well.

If the Bitcoin convention held this weekend in San Jose, CA proved one thing, it's that the community is surprisingly diverse. Putting aside the appalling gender gap, you simply had no idea who you would bump into. A fashion photographer from Milan. A curious kid from Edmonton, Canada. An Australian anarchist recently transplanted to New York City.

The one person that no one expected to see in all this flurry was the head of a bank or credit union, and you certainly didn't expect to find him trying to make friends. So all in all, Jordan Modell might have been the most peculiar of all the peculiar people I met at the conference. There was, it turns out, an explanation for his crypto-tech-friendly stance.

He had arrived together with Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, to find out whether there was anything they could do to support Bitcoin entrepreneurs during this rather crazy time.

In March, the market value of all bitcoins in circulation reached one billion dollars, attracting new investors, but also closer scrutiny from regulators. Last week, Dwolla shut down an account which funds MT Gox, the most popular online bitcoin exchange, after the Department of Homeland Security served the payment processor with a warrant. (It was hardly the first problem exchanges have seen. Back in 2011, PayPal didn't wait for the regulators to act when it proactively closed the account of Coinpal, an individual who used to accept PayPal for bitcoins. In the early days, this service was one of the best ways for people to get their hands on bitcoins.)

At the conference, Kahle explained that he was there to help. A few years ago, he had convinced his long time friend, Jordan Modell, to start a credit union with him. In 2012, the Internet Archive Federal Credit Union began serving low-income families in New Bruswick, N.J. In some ways, the move came out of left field, and it seems that even Kahle was unsure how this new endeavor would fit into his role as public steward of Internet.

During a presentation on Saturday Kahle said of his credit union, "I think we've now finally discovered why we need one."

As Modell, explained: "Most of the threat to the bitcoin world seems to come from regulators and banks. For lack of clear guidance, we do not know why banks are closing accounts. Banks may have decided that bitcoins for now are not worth the hassle of filings necessary or the associated taint," he says. "If there are no regulatory issues that prevent our doing work with bitcoin firms, then to us the bitcoin wolf looks like a playful puppy."

In the U.S., credit unions are required to verify the identity of the people they do business with (so-called "know-your-customer" laws), especially if they are acting as money service businesses. They're also required to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) to the government. But, Modell argues, this doesn't mean they can't lend a hand.

"We understand the need for SARs," Modell says. "And of course every activity over $10 000 is reported. But, subject to what regulators and council tells us, we do not think this added burden is enough to keep us from helping the bitcoin world."

After talking with people at the conference, Modell says he's identified some of the needs of the community. Assuming they get approval from their lawyers and regulators, Modell says the Internet Archive Federal Credit Union would like to help both the people who are setting up bitcoin exchanges and those who want to do business with them, navigating them through the regulatory landscape by setting up accounts that follow know-your-customer laws.

Modell would also like to work to set up low-cost, overnight transfers between bitcoin exchanges and the bank accounts of their customers. This would be a much cheaper alternative to wire transfers, which can cost more than forty dollars each.

Finally, Modell says the credit union may extend credit lines up to $5000 to individuals that are investing in bitcoin through these exchanges.

His hope is to help the bitcoin players who want to come into compliance do so at a low cost. "Honestly, I'm excited. And I think bitcoins can immediately co-exist now in a fiat-centric world," explained Modell in an email. "I just worry that those wishing to push boundaries too far and too fast might break the system by bringing on a backlash of regulation. Most regulators that I have met on my journey are real people with an understanding and care for the industry. But there is a saying: No regulator ever got called before Congress for saying no. I always want to work with, not try to bulldoze anyone on either side of the equation."

Photo Credit: George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images

If the United States is to produce more engineering grads, universities will need to adopt creative approaches to recruit and retain students in engineering programs.

Here’s one some universities are taking: adopting the ‘redshirt’ strategy common in college athletics and kindergarten. Redshirting means delaying participation to increase readiness. Applied to engineering programs, the idea is to give high school students extra time to prepare for an engineering degree.

Anonymous sources face a huge challenge in leaking sensitive information to journalists without leaving a digital trail for government investigators to follow. The New Yorker aims to make anonymous leaks feel slightly more secure with its new "Strongbox" solution, but the system's security still ultimately depends upon the caution of its users.

The New Yorker's drop box allows sources to upload documents anonymously and provides two-way communication between sources and journalists, according to The Guardian.

Sources are able to upload documents anonymously through the Tor network onto servers that will be kept separate from the New Yorker's main computer system. Leakers are then given a unique code name that allows New Yorker reporters or editors to contact them through messages left on Strongbox.

Earlier this month, Stanford University’s Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) wrapped up a six-month contest for Stanford students, faculty, and alumni. The group awarded US $150,000 in prizes to the best entrepreneurial ventures, the best social ventures, and the best products demonstrated in a design showcase. This year, AWAIR, a medical device company that builds more comfortable breathing apparatuses for intensive care units, won the top prize in the entrepreneurial category; Anjna Patient Education, a nonprofit that developed SMS and voice systems for mobile devices that encourage patients to take better care of their health, took the social category; and ALICE, an AI tool to help construction managers schedule the myriad elements of a project, won the best product design.

The first two categories are judged essentially on their ideas, as pitched to the judges in writing and in oral presentations. But in the final category, product design, the entrants had to build something and demonstrate it at a product showcase held at Stanford this week. I confess, I didn’t get to all 50 booths; I stayed away from things like personalized wedding marketplaces, collapsible clothes hangers, and magnetic hair clips. I instead focused on things with an electrical or computer engineering angle that seemed to either be particularly useful or particularly weird. That still left plenty to look at. My five favorites included a company that uses the heat from a cooking fire to charge a cell phone, one that is using image processing algorithms to take signals from an existing land mine detector (basically just beeps) and turn them into rough sketches of what is under the ground, a company that is making a simple Bluetooth speaker sound much better than it seems like it should for the size and price by taking a room's acoustics into account, an activity tracker that lets pets get into the quantified self game, and a bracelet to let folks reach out and literally touch someone across the ether.

For four blissful years, the exchanges that trade in bitcoin operated within a cloud of legal uncertainty, awaiting the day when the regulatory beast would awaken to its new opponent. Now, that day has come. This week, the Department of Homeland Security took a quick and hard strike at MT Gox, the largest online exchange, serving its payment processor Dwolla with a warrant (later obtained by ars technica) to seize the MT Gox account. Dwolla is one of the preferred ways of getting government currencies in and out of MT Gox and the news caused temporary tremors throughout the Bitcoin community. Trading volume spiked and the exchange rate bobbled down to $106 before climbing back up.

These exchanges are the supply lines for Bitcoin, which has steadily increased in value over the last year. With one supply line down in the U.S., many people will be looking for alternatives. And soon they will find them.

Two brothers, Mark and John Russell are scheduled to unveil a new automated exchange kiosk this weekend at a Bitcoin conference in San Jose, CA. They're calling the machine Robocoin. It will provide a physical place for people to convert their dollars to bitcoins and vice versa.

As has been reported this week, the Kepler planet hunting space telescope, may have to end its mission earlier than hoped, due to the failure of the system that keeps it pointed in the right direction. That system consists of four reaction wheels, which are basically electric motors attached to fly wheels. By speeding up or slowing down, they transfer angular moment to the satellite, rotating it around its center of mass.

Kepler’s mission is find exoplanets by staring, unmoving, at small patches of space and look for periodic dips in the brightness of the stars there. Those dips could mean the presence of planets. But without at least three working reaction wheels—Kepler is down to two—the satellite can’t steer it’s gaze or keep it from gently drifting in the solar wind.

According to David Cooper, CEO of Microsat Systems Canada Inc., in Ottawa, Ont., a provider of reaction wheels for small satellites, there are two main classes of things that can go wrong with reaction wheels—mechanical and electrical. And that means Kepler's pointing system was probably damaged either by the shock of launch or in space by radiation.

I dream a dream of perfect calibration: A single chip embodying the “metrological triangle”—with built-in, reproducible, quantum standards for the volt, ohm, and ampere, completely defined by just two universal constants, Planck’s and the electron charge.

We’re two-thirds of the way there: Thanks to quantum Hall resistance and Josephson voltage measurements, the ohm and volt can be practicably defined within 10 parts per billion. Both, however, depend on empirical measures of current, typically via watt-balance measurements that are accurate to only 100 ppb. (Watt balances, in their turn, depend on the definition of the kilogram, which is still evolving, related initiatives like a Compton-wave definitions of mass.)

That leaves the amp, waiting for a way to produce exquisitely accurate currents.

Single-electron pumps (SEPs—not related to the “Someone Else’s Problem” invisibility field invented by Douglas Adams) produce extremely precise currents, sending electrons leaping one at a time from quantum dot to quantum dot across a series of potential barriers. It’s something like a line of backpackers—each bearing just one electron charge—picking their way across a stream single file by hopping from stepping-stone to stepping-stone.

Researchers use oscillating voltages to drive the current, but there are built-in challenges. Lower frequency pumps—metallic fixed-tunnel barrier systems and normal/superconducting hybrid turnstiles—work in the megahertz range. These can move only a few million electrons per second through the pump, and produce picoampere (pA) currents that are difficult to detect. Semiconductor-based tunable barrier pumps operate at gigahertz frequencies, producing a thousand times as much current—but electrons need some finite time to step from stepping stone to stepping stone. Like the backpackers trying to cross the stream too fast, the jostle and bump and some fall into the stream, disrupting the regular flow of current.

After four successful years in space, the Kepler planet hunting space telescope is in serious trouble. A key component that keeps the spacecraft pointing at the right patch of stars, a reaction wheel, has failed. Kepler went into space with four of these and needs three, but this new failure leaves it with just two. Even so, at least one Kepler expert thinks there may be a way to save the satellite.

The US $600 million telescope hunts for exoplanets in our own galaxy. It uses a 95-megapixel camera to register slight dips in stellar brightness that signal a planet's passage across its host star. So far the mission has found more than 2700 candidate exoplanets, several of them in the habitable zone of their stars. To find these it must continually stare at a patch of sky containing some 4.5 million stars.

It’s this staring that’s in danger with the loss of the reaction wheel. The device is used to gently point the telescope in the right direction, using other patches of stars as a reference. Reaction wheels are electric motors attached to fly wheels. By speeding up or slowing down, they transfer angular moment to the satellite, rotating it around its center of mass. Kepler’s have to be pretty good ones. According to a report at the 2011 IEEE Aerospace Conference, the telescope must be able to stare for more than 15 minutes at a time with a stability of 0.009 arc seconds for each axis of rotation. (By comparison, a comma in an Apollo mission manual left on the moon is about 0.001 arc seconds as seen from Earth.)

Kepler’s first reaction wheel failure was in July 2012. Earlier this month another one started to go wonky, registering signs of friction. I’ll give a more detailed description of how reaction wheels fail and what can be done about it tomorrow, but for now, here’s Stanford University’s News service interviewing Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics about saving Kepler:

Q: How might NASA engineers go about getting Kepler functional again?

A: There are two possible ways to salvage the spacecraft that I’m aware of. One is that they could try turning back on the reaction wheel that they shut off a year ago. It was putting metal on metal, and the friction was interfering with its operation, so you could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work.

The other scheme, and this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability. I haven’t investigated it, but my impression is that it would require sending a lot more operational commands to the spacecraft.

The mission was set to continue through 2016. Kepler’s loss could be a blow to other instruments such as HARPS-N at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary Islands. HARPS-N, which IEEE Spectrum’s Rachel Courtland visited in 2011, is used to confirm the exoplanet status of objects Kepler spies.

PHOTO: NASA

A new version of D-Wave's supposed quantum computers could help NASA hunt for alien worlds or enhance Google's mammoth search engine before the end of the year. The U.S. space agency and Internet search giant have joined a growing list of high-profile customers using the latest D-Wave machine despite lingering skepticism from quantum computing experts.

Photo: D-Wave Systems