Running Hot and Cold

Energy is very much in the news these days.  Despite only a 1.5% increase in the cost of energy on the world markets many of the energy providers in the UK have raised their prices to consumers by an average of 9%.  Understandably many of those consumers are not very happy.  Neither was Parliament, which is why it summoned the heads of the six big energy providers to explain their rationale for raising prices so high.

Only one of the six turned up, perhaps to try and prove they're not running a cartel over here.  Or maybe he just didn't get the email.  All have offered reasons for the unaccounted for 7.5% which includes Government imposed green taxes, although nobody has explained why those taxes hadn't been felt in the price before this hike.  Given the rate that energy prices have risen over the last few years it seems unlikely that the big six have been absorbing these taxes, especially as they seem to trot them out as an excuse every winter anyway.  The other reason provided is based on the wholesale prices they are charged by their suppliers.  Which might seem plausible until you realise that each of the big six are owned by the six suppliers that they each buy from.  They are their own suppliers.

There is a real suspicion that the big six might be skewing the prices by letting their parent companies charge whatever they want and then just passing the extra costs onto the consumer.  There's been a lot of hot air generated over this topic over the last few weeks, which appears to be a bit of a waste given that we are experiencing unseasonably warm weather.  Perhaps it would have been better left until the cold snap.

There is, predictably, a lot of advice on how consumers can reduce their energy bills in their homes from well meaning know-all's who hate to see a drop of energy wasted.  But enough about me.  The single best advice provided, by a Minister no less, was to put another woolly pullover on when the temperature drops.  Given the availability of cheap clothing these days, that's not an unreasonable idea.  In essence it's taking the problem of heating the house away and replacing it with the problem of heating the person.

There is, however, another way of looking at this problem, and it comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a place I had the pleasure of visiting the other week.  Actually the visitors' centre was a little disappointing but at least the tee shirts were inspired.  One stated that what happens in the black hole, stays in the black hole.  Another asserted that if it ain't broke then an engineer will take it apart and fix it.  But apart from commissioning cool tee shirt designs the bright guys and gals at MIT have been tackling the energy problem from the personal perspective.

You see, we aren't actually that good at judging the temperature.  There's obviously some well developed systems that have evolved over the millennia that keeps our core at the correct temperature most of the time, but it seems that it can be a bit flaky generally.  Which is why people can find themselves walking into hypothermia some times, heatstroke others.  One of the observations the researchers from MIT have made is that generally we tend to wear clothes based on our opinion of what the temperature should be.  I've observed this, noting that as soon as October arrives some people start wearing heavy coats and scarves, regardless of the actual temperature outside.  Me, I wear tee shirts until someone observes my arms have turned blue, then I roll the sleeves down.

The MIT researchers have developed a prototype electronic device that somehow interferes with our perception of temperature and sends signals through our nervous system that modifies how we perceive it.  It's early days yet and the prototype looks like an eighties calculator strapped to a wrist, but they think that they can develop a workable device that will allow everybody to tolerate lower temperatures without harming their bodies.  That will allow us all to turn our thermostats down a notch or two.

After that, throw in a woolly pullover and we can defer putting the heating on until mid January.  Then listen to the howls of anguish from the big six as we stubbornly choose not to use their energy.  And if that isn't enough, layer up even further with tee shirts as well, but make sure they're not too cool.

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Samsung Has Its Thinking Cap On

One of the side events I witnessed at the Gadget Show Live recently was a demonstration of a thought controlled roller skateboard, demonstrated by one of the founding fathers of Twitter.  Putting aside any inclinations towards scepticism - the thought control element could have been kidology, it may have been controlled by a remote control out of sight of the thousand or so spectators - it was shown to drive around the small arena, accelerating and decelerating as needed to negotiate the circuit.

It worked reasonably well - it was driven onto the main stage, down a ramp and around the front seats on three sides of the stage, with the driver crouching down and slapping kids on the palm as he swept past.  The concept is that you train the computer - a Windows 8 tablet on this occasion, presumably because the Gadget Show Live was sponsored by Windows 8 although it is understood that a Samsung Android tablet has been used in earlier iterations - using a headset that is sensitive to neuron activity in the brain.

It appears that each driver has to train the computer to recognise the way their brain generates neuron activity. We're all different, apparently, so consequently a pre-programmed device ready for fine tuning is out of the question.  This sounds remarkably similar to the issues and challenges overcome by the teams training rats to push buttons using brainwaves, as mentioned on my blog posting from the 10 March this year 'Leave the Mouse, Get a Rat.'  So, for brainwave controlled activities we're about as effective as rats.  That's reassuring.

Samsung have been working with MIT to develop this technology further  using a headset bristling with EEG measuring electrodes.  Think of a swimming cap with a poor man's dreadlocks and you get the idea.  Hooking up to one of their Galaxy tablets they've had a fair bit of success in selecting and launching apps.  As one commentator states, thought controlled technology will be a boon for those with mobility issues, and persons suffering with illnesses such as Locked In Syndrome may have some relief.  Looking beyond low hanging fruit such as that, it also presents a wealth of opportunities for those of us lucky enough to not be classed as disabled.

Controlling the TV and the DVR by thought control has to be an aim, although the resulting carnage in houses up and down the country needs to be considered as TV channels are changed in the literal blink of an eye.  Adding an extra input dimension to operating your computer has to be an objective, too.  As we demand more from our programs, the need to manipulate needs more than a virtual extra pair of hands.

Part of the tests carried out at MIT is using the thought control to manipulate a music player, getting the human equivalent of the lab rat to select, play and pause classical music tracks.  At present the accuracy of such tests is between 80% and 95%, which isn't perfect - I would expect around 98% accuracy using conventional controls by persons familiar with the software.  However it is probably a lot better than most would expect.  The researchers are very happy with the results and are looking at ways to make the headsets more convenient, such as replacing the current wet electrode requirement with a dry electrode.

It's early days, but if a viable range of controls are developed then maybe the sensors will be fitted subcutaneously, allowing computers and other devices to be controlled just by thought.  Like Google Glass, this technology has the potential to change the game permanently and my guess is the days of clunky rubber headgear are limited.  For this application, anyway. The technology will undoubtedly develop faster as the results improve, and I expect the progress to increase in leaps and bounds as the capability is realised.  And of course it's not just Samsung looking onto this technology, IBM have a research project working on it, so we're looking at some heavyweight research going on.

In my opinion, if any technology is worth thinking about, this is it.

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Fingerprinting Your Route

We've all got fingerprints, and apparently they are all unique.  I say apparently because they are a bit like the common belief that all snowflakes are different - until we catalogue each and every snowflake it is just an assumption based on the observation that they all seem to be different.  Of course, if governments and police agencies have their way then there will be a time that all the fingerprints and all the DNA profiles in the world will be on one database or the other.

What isn't often appreciated is that although each fingerprint is a complex collection of individual whorls and whirls, peaks and troughs, a good analyst only needs a relatively small amount of markers to definitively identify a fingerprint assuming a perfect copy is already on record.  Since the 1930s it has been known that a good analyst needs only twelve such data points, which is a bummer for all those detective stories on the TV where they sigh and shrug about the fingerprints being a partial.  In all probability it is enough if the perp, if that's what law enforcement agencies really call alleged criminals - another assumption up there with fingerprint and snowflake uniqueness, I guess - has allowed his or her fingerprints to be left on a public record somewhere.  What isn't adequately admitted in these police dramas, by the way, is the labour intensive methods still needed to match fingerprints - sure some of the process can be automated but a real person has to sit and do some manual checking still.  And what's all that about, flashing up the photos of all the persons that the fingerprint doesn't belong to?  Why would anyone programme a computer to do that?

Anyway, if you think twelve data points is a trivial amount of data to identify a person uniquely, then you may be a bit surprised that the way you move around your home town can identify you in as little as four data points.  You see, we're all sharing information about ourselves to a number of databases, sometimes in real time.  If you have a cell phone, then it periodically locates your phone.  Use Facebook?  Do you post information about where you are.  Twitter - say no more.

But of course, the phone company knows who you are and if it knows where your phone is then there is a reasonable chance you are there too.  However researchers at MIT have spent an interesting few months looking at what is called 'anonymised' data, data where the identity of the persons associated with the data is suppressed.  They looked at 15 months' worth of anonymised phone data for 1.5 million phone users.  That's a lot of data to wade through - I still get a paper bill for my mobile phone, which I think I use lightly, and the phone, text and data usage information regularly falls across three pages each month. I dread to think what the records for 1.5 million phone users looks like.

By analysing this data they were able to identify mobility traces, as they call them, for the phone subscribers and once this had been done then it only took four data points to identify an individual.  The New York Times did a similar piece in 2006 using anonymised data released by AOL and actually tracked down a specific individual.  This is so Secret State it sounds like a bad plotline in one of those detective stories where they shrug their shoulders at the partial fingerprint, sigh and look wistfully at the flashing images of all the people who couldn't be the perp.

We share our location data because it allows our service providers the opportunity to serve us better, to provide meaningful weather forecasts, local theatre information, lists of local premises willing to charge an arm and a leg for coffee.  But civil libertarians may be a bit alarmed to learn that we're all very trackable and identifiable even when our identity is suppressed.  However all this location information becomes extremely necessary when we want our phone to navigate us to somewhere else, because knowing where we are now is a fundamental starting point for the mapping software.

And finding our way is something we've been obsessed with since our hunter/gatherer beginnings and Google has been helping a bit lately.  So has Apple with their mapping routine, but I think most of us can do without that kind of help.  Anyway, not content with mapping every road and street in the world, always on the day the garbage wagon is due judging by the amount of street view photos with black bin bags outside houses, Google is turning to map indoors.  Apple has responded by buying an indoor mapping company, Wifislam, to try and keep up with Google.

Wifislam uses existing WiFi networks to identify a phone's location to within a couple of metres indoors and also uses its technology to work out where your friends are relative to yourself.  Handy at the end of a pub crawl, I guess.

Neither Google or Apple are working with anonymised data, so it isn't unreasonable that their efforts will result in our locations being identified extremely accurately however, if MIT researchers are correct, it seems that our locations are reasonably predictable anyway.  Perhaps we'll only need three or maybe two anoymised data points to locate us in future?

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