Dan York

5:03 am

Greetings from basement isolation. The dog has been let out and I’m back here in the dark. Instead of a specific topic, I want to catch up on some updates to past newsletters. So today’s note is a collection of smaller updates of different flavors. I’ll call it a smorgasboard, which of course Wikipedia has more info about than you probably ever cared to know!

Now on to some updates about Humane’s Star Trek communicator pin, LEO satellites, streaming on Twitch, and more…

Humane’s AI Pin – the reality

While I wrote about how Humane’s AI Pin seemed to be getting us closer to the Star Trek (TNG) communicator, the Verge’s Victoria Song pointed out that a wearable device needs to … well… wearable! She noted that so many of the images show the pin being worn on outerwear .. but what happens when you go inside or want to take off that layer? And what are you going to wear it on in warmer climates or in summer weather?

She points out that it weighs about as much as a tennis ball! (Probably the batteries.) And she points out how it will “drag” down a T-shirt or anything like that. She also notes that the current device has no water resistance – and also that we aren’t yet to the point of having social norms around talking to your devices.

(Although I wonder if we are starting to get there… recently I’ve been around people who have quickly talked to their phones or watches to add a reminder or perform some action.)

Meanwhile, over on Business Insider, Jyoti Mann writes about how the AI Pin won’t help you message your friends faster:

• A video shared on X shows it took a user  “6 pinches and 15 hand wiggles” to send a message. 
• It took them 21 seconds to send the suggested text. 

… with the comparison that this could have been done far faster on a smartphone.

Now some of this critique is just natural. You have a hyped-up launch… and then… no one can actually use one yet… so people will pick apart what they can. Part of it also is that we don’t really know how it might – or might not – fit into our daily lives. The use cases being discussed NOW might turn out not to be the common uses. And if it does have use, we’ll develop social norms around the use.

A number of years back if you saw someone walking along the road or a sidewalk seeming to be having a very animated conversation with themselves, we might have thought they had some mental health issues. Today we more often look to see if they have an earbud in and are in the middle of a voice call!

And I completely agree with Victoria Song on the size. It’s going to need to be smaller and lighter before it might take off widely. (Just like VR goggles need to get smaller and lighter like the visor of Geordi La Forge on Star Trek:The Next Generation … hmm… noting a theme here.. )

She makes a really good point about outerwear, too. Of course in the fictional world of ST:TNG, the crew of the Enterprise was pretty much always in the Enterprise where they wore their uniforms, on which the communicator was fixed. Or if they went on a planet they seemingly never needed coats or spacesuits. So outerwear wasn’t an issue.

[Interestingly, I was thinking back to Babylon 5, my personal favorite sci-fi series of the 1990s, and their similar “link” bonded to the back of your hand (by some process that I never understood but hey… fiction!). Being on the hand, it didn’t have the issue of dealing with outerwear (which they did actually use!) or dragging down garments. Again, Victoria Song points out that wearables need to be wearable in many situations.]

It will be curious to see where this all goes. I think it’s great that Humane is exploring a new form factor. I expect we’ll see more commentary in 2024 when people actually start using them.

Sometime, before I leave this world, it would be fun to tap a device like this and call someone. (My initial temptation, of course, would be to say “Beam me up, Scotty!” even though I know that’s from the wrong Star Trek series! )

Use of AI systems with Internet infrastructure?

Do any of you have good pointers to articles or research about various AI technologies being used either improve or disrupt Internet, network, and communications infrastructure?

I’ve seen mention of machine learning (ML) being used to optimize routing. Also seen mention of AI used for improving security (defense) – and improving attacks.

Anyone have good pointers to info about those kind of things? (And other ideas?) I’ve been doing searches, but it’s hard because of massive AI hype. Just curious for some research that I’m doing.

On a completely different topic about AI… if you have been following all of the OpenAI leadership drama over the past few weeks, Molly White (of “Web3 Is Going Just Great” fame) published a newsletter this morning about the difference between “effective altruism” and “effective acceleration” and how, ultimately, both are turning out to be more of the same.

LEO satellite systems and SpaceX launching

If you want to learn more about low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites like SpaceX’s Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, I co-wrote a deep dive into the topic with Geoff Huston of APNIC in the September issue of the Internet Protocol Journal. Starting on page 31, it goes into great technical detail on a number of points. It’s a great companion to the Internet Society’s LEO perspectives document that provides a higher-level view.

Please do share the article with others who you think should know more about LEO systems for Internet access.

I also learned a lot from the “Introduction to 5G” article that was the first half of the IPJ edition.

Back on November 3, I wrote about SpaceX being the only launch provider consistently launching rockets. To that point, since the beginning of November, SpaceX has launched 8 rockets (not including their Starship launch). Of those:

• Five were Starlink launches
• One was a resupply mission to the International Space Station (which is in LEO)
• One was a “Transporter” mission that was a “rideshare” for small satellites. 90 payloads were deployed into LEO, out of which 110+ satellites were expected to be deployed.
• One was a launch of the final two O3b mPower satellites for medium Earth orbit (MEO) that SES needs to be able to provide almost-global Internet connectivity.

Eight production launches in about 3.5 weeks, plus the experimental Starship launch – no one else right now is capable of matching that launch cadence! Truly amazing work from the SpaceX teams. And so we as a society will continue to be so reliant on SpaceX until someone else can reach that kind of pace.

Streaming Wikipedia editing to Twitch

Back during the height of the pandemic when we were all stuck in our homes, I decided I wanted to dive deeper into Wikipedia editing (where I’ve been an editor for 19+ years)… and I also wanted to play with streaming to Twitch. So.. I started livestreaming my Wikipedia editing to Twitch! Every. Single. Day. For well over a year.

I haven’t done that streaming that much lately, but I’ve started getting back into it. If that sounds like something you’d like to see, you are welcome to follow me on Twitch to be notified when I do.

If on the other hand that sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry.. well… I completely understand!

In all seriousness, though, if you ever have questions about Wikipedia in general, please feel free to email or otherwise contact me. It’s a personal passion of mine and I’m always glad to talk about all thing Wikipedia!

WebSummit: How to stop the Internet from unravelling

Finally, if you have 23 minutes, this video of a WebSummit panel includes Andrew Sullivan, President & CEO of the Internet Society (my employer) and Sally Costerton, Interim President and CEO of ICANN, tackling questions around Internet shutdowns, regulating the Internet, fragmentation, and how we need to protect and defend the way that the Internet actually works, versus the simplistic way that some policymakers would like it to work.

P.S. If you like what you hear from Andrew, we’re hiring at the Internet Society and Internet Society Foundation.

Thanks for reading to the end. I welcome any comments and feedback you may have.

Please drop me a note in email – if you are a subscriber, you should just be able to reply back. And if you aren’t a subscriber, just hit this button and you’ll get future messages.

This IS also a WordPress hosted blog, so you can visit the main site and add a comment to this post, like we used to do back in glory days of blogging.

Or if you don’t want to do email, send me a message on one of the various social media services where I’ve posted this. (My preference continues to be Mastodon, but I do go on others from time to time.)

Until the next time,
Dan

Connect

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: This newsletter is a personal project I’ve been doing since 2007 or 2008, several years before I joined the Internet Society in 2011. While I may at times mention information or activities from the Internet Society, all viewpoints are my personal opinion and do not represent any formal positions or views of the Internet Society. This is just me, saying some of the things on my mind.

6:23 am

It is so easy to get so used to how the Internet works*, that sometimes we forget to pause and just think about how amazing this technology can be. We just expect that it will work – and for the most part it does.

I’m had some experiences this week… and plenty of time to think… that reminded me about how magical the Internet can be at times.

* – for those of us privileged enough to have appropriate levels of affordable Internet connectivity. About 1/3 of the world still has NO connectivity, and some % who have connectivity available.. cannot afford it.

Why? Well… because I’ve been doing what so many other people have done – isolating because of testing positive for COVID-19. Yes, indeed, after 1,350 days of being COVID-free (since the time of the WHO pandemic declaration), the day before US Thanksgiving I tested positive. It was not a huge surprise since my wife had been sick on the previous weekend and then tested positive on Sunday.. but we were hoping that I and our 14yo daughter would stay negative. Our daughter still IS negative, and so our focus is on keeping her that way. So my wife is staying in our second-floor bedroom, and I’m down in our basement. Our 14yo is spending most of her time in another room away from us.

We are all fully vaccinated and boosted, including with the latest shot, and so far I’ve had very few symptoms – just a runny nose and occasional sneeze. I’m hoping it stays that way!

But in the meantime.. how do you communicate when you are all isolating from each other? For, you know, things like planning meals or dealing with other household activities?

The answer these days is of course a group chat, or, when it’s a bit more involved… a group video call… using any of the many messaging / communication services.

Being DEEP down the Apple rabbit-hole as a family, we’ve just been firing up Apple FaceTime calls between the three of us, with people answering on their mobile or laptop depending upon what is most convenient.

And it works.

Boom… after we all accept we can be speaking from different parts of our house about whatever we need to discuss.

But have you thought about HOW this video communication actually works?

Back in the early 2000s, I was a product manager at Mitel Networks in Canada and at one point was responsible for the video conferencing products. Later, video was being added into “softphone” products, and I learned an incredible amount from various IETF working groups that worked to make this all work – securely – through a wild number of network configurations.

This stuff is *HARD* to do right!

And while Apple uses a bunch of proprietary technology, some of it is known to be based on open standards – and also there are just certain ways that video communication works. (Side note: that Wikipedia article could use some help – if you know about FaceTime and want to edit it, updates would be welcome!)

Each time one of the three of us launches a FaceTime call, a whole bunch of connections get made:

• A control connection using Apple Push Notifications (APN)
• An identity connection (to also share encryption keys)
• Multiple video streams (I’m assuming… the usual model is to have one sending and one for receiving from each participant)
• One or more audio streams (unless that is in the video)
• Potentially additional supporting data streams
• And all of this is encrypted, which adds additional layers of Transport Layer Security (TLS) and other encryption technologies. (See this page about FaceTime security to dive deeper)

All of that… for every single FaceTime call!

And… they have to do it in a way that navigates the MANY possible ways of connecting, with almost always network address translation (NAT) being involved, and often NAT at an ISP level (i.e. carrier-grade NAT / CGNAT). And connecting from mobile networks, WiFi, other technologies.

And… what makes it wilder is that in the case of the three of us here in the same house doing a group call, we’re doing all that three times!

Although the good news is that the actual video and audio streams should be staying local if we are all on the same WiFi network. If we’re not (I’m a networking geek – we have multiple WiFi networks!), those media streams are going out to Apple’s infrastructure and then coming back into our home network. (Thankfully we have a high speed connection!)

One one level, with so many variations, it’s amazing that this even works!

(But of course Apple has spent thousands and thousands and thousands of staff hours making it work.)

And… all of this complexity is INVISIBLE to the regular user. I just hit the button to call my wife and… ta da… we’re talking from two different floors of our house. I hit another button and our daughter is looped in.

It just works.

Back in the 1960s, Arthur C Clarke articulated three laws, of which the third was:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C Clarke

On one level, I think this kind of video communication does get into the magical area. You push buttons. People appear and you can talk them in real-time with usually no real lag / latency.

It’s magic!

It’s the stuff that was only possible in sci-fi novels or TV shows when I was growing up. It’s amazing.

Except… of course… we (with appropriate connectivity) have gotten SO used to it that it’s lost any “magic” and just become “mundane”.

We don’t even think about it anymore.

We just EXPECT it to work.

And most of the time… it does.

And when it does not, we get very cranky and grumpy very quickly.

We expect to be able to make video calls. We expect to be able to order food and have it arrive at our door 20 or 30 minutes later. We expect to be able to share incredibly large image files with the 37 other people in the group chat we are in. We expect to be able to order something online and have it delivered within a day or two. We expect… We expect…. We expect…

Any “magic” is sadly gone.

Still … amidst the chaos and madness of our regular lives… amidst all the expectations we have now for how things should “just work”…

… I hope we can pause occasionally and just reflect for a moment on how amazing these experiences can be. What we can do… what we can learn… how we can communicate… how we can earn money… what we can create… how we can collaborate… how we can connect with each other…

Jump back 40 years and show these experiences to someone of that time and, yeah, they’d definitely think of them as *magic*!

(And then, yes, after that brief moment of reflection… you can get right back to cursing the application because it tells you your connection in unstable or because there’s a slight lag to one person’s video or whatever…)

Thanks for reading to the end. I welcome any comments and feedback you may have.

Please drop me a note in email – if you are a subscriber, you should just be able to reply back. And if you aren’t a subscriber, just hit this button and you’ll get future messages.

This IS also a WordPress hosted blog, so you can visit the main site and add a comment to this post, like we used to do back in glory days of blogging.

Or if you don’t want to do email, send me a message on one of the various social media services where I’ve posted this. (My preference continues to be Mastodon, but I do go on others from time to time.)

Until the next time,
Dan

Connect

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: This newsletter is a personal project I’ve been doing since 2007 or 2008, several years before I joined the Internet Society in 2011. While I may at times mention information or activities from the Internet Society, all viewpoints are my personal opinion and do not represent any formal positions or views of the Internet Society. This is just me, saying some of the things on my mind.