Kozminski Techblog

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Apple did not disappoint, at least with their online event production quality. If you are interested in cinematography, hosting online events, media production or anything else connected to that, I highly recommend rewatching the event yourself, because the production quality is actually insane and it is just a joy to watch.

But let’s move to actual news and products announced during the event. The event started off with the quickest announcement. It was quick, because there wasn’t much to be said, really. Apple has announced a new iPhone 12 colour – Purple. I actually have to give it to them that its a really nice purple, and they have matched the aluminium sides to the body colour pretty well. It obviously is a mid-cycle refresh (but I think its even a stretch to call it that), to remind the consumers about their latest iPhone and encourage them to buy it. It is also a rumour that it is a tribute to Steve Jobs himself, as we are approaching a decade since he has passed away in 2011, and purple was supposedly his favourite colour.

The next, and I think the most exciting thing that was announced during the event is called AirTag. It is a small device that should help you find personal belongings if you loose them, and of course if they had an AirTag attached. I think it is an extremely clever move from Apple, as there is no-one that can compete with them on the “tiles” market now. No-one on the market has the network of devices that could help you find your missing item. According to Apple that number is approaching one billion. AirTags utilise FindMy network, for an approximate location, and their U1 chip for precise location. The later feature can be used by iPhone 11 and 12 users. If you don’t have the latest and greatest iPhones you can ping your AirTag to make it play a sound to help you precisely localise it yourself.

Of course AirTags are customisable – you can engrave text or choose one from 31 emojis. In addition to that Apple would love to sell you their “loops” with which you can attach them to your priced items. If you decide to buy them from Apple I’d settle for the ones ranging from 29 to 39 USD instead of the ones from Hermes ranging from a whopping 299 to 449 USD. I think the price of these is ok as one AirTag costs 29 USD and a four pack of them is priced at 99 USD.

Another announcement that Apple made and which was actually quite expected was the new iMac. It is impressively thin at just 11mm. It features a 24 inch 4.5k Retina screen, and of course their latest and own M1 chip. In addition to that iMac finally features a FullHD 1080p camera better mic and speaker systems. It still comes with an audio jack but it had to be moved to the side because of how thin the iMac is. Another important feature that comes to iMac is TouchID. It comes on the new iMac keyboard and allows users to use it instead of typing their passwords every time, but also to quickly switch between users. The new iMac comes in 7 new and very controversial colours. I don’t like how they look but the cool thing is they closely resemble the colours form the old rainbow Apple logo.

The last think, which actually was the first during the event, is their environmental impact. Apple claims that today they are 100% carbon neutral for their global corporate operation, with their offices, shops and data centres running on 100% renewable energy. They also pledge to be 100% carbon neutral by 2030 across their entire end-to-end footprint. This means Apple plans to have net zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. It’s really cool to see the company taking ecology and privacy so seriously.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdBYVNuky1M&t=2879s

https://www.apple.com/pl/newsroom/2021/04/imac-features-all-new-design-in-vibrant-colors-m1-chip-and-45k-retina-display/

https://www.apple.com/pl/newsroom/2021/04/apple-unveils-new-ipad-pro-with-m1-chip-and-stunning-liquid-retina-xdr-display/

https://www.apple.com/pl/newsroom/2021/04/apple-introduces-iphone-12-and-iphone-12-mini-in-a-stunning-new-purple/

https://www.apple.com/pl/newsroom/2021/04/apple-introduces-airtag/

Reading Time: 3 minutesYou probably have seen Back to the future II as a kid. Marty McFly, the real character, wore self-lacing sneakers designed by legendary designer Tinker Hatfiled. Since then you have probably dreamed once about having self-lacing shoes yourself. You also might know that since the film premiered, Nike has released the Nike Mags twice in 2011 and 2016. You could buy them on a official e-bay auction, supporting charity. Both releases were very limited so first of all they were hard to get, and then the resale value is now from 9 to 54 thousand dollars.

Since the two releases of Nike Mags, Nike has released shoes called Nike HyperAdapt 1.0. They were first released in 2016 in one colour-way and in two more colorways in 2018. These shoes are still available for 3000 PLN on official Nike store but only some sizes are left, and other retailers sell them for 10,000 PLN. So this model isn’t really available for most people.

But now Nike announced they are making their third self-lacing shoes. They are called Nike Adapt BB where BB stands for basketball. The official world release is on the 17th of February and the price is 350 USD. They will be available in Nike stores, on their site and app called SNEAKRS. You are not paying for the sneakers only. Nike created a special app to work with theses shoes. In the app you can tighten and loosen every shoe individually, save your profile, so that your shoes always lace themselves to perfectly fit your feet. There are also physical buttons on the shoes to adjust the fit. You can also change the colour of light built into the shoes and monitor your battery status. Not only that, but the shoes come with wireless charging pad, to charge your shoes. According to Nike the built in batteries last for up to 14 days. I think that’s more than enough as you’d probably take them off everyday and charge them on the pad over night. The shoes won’t come in the whole size range when released, and the app will be updated to for example be able to set different profiles for warmup, the actual game and pause. Reportedly in the future they will adapt the tightness to your pulse making the players performance better by increasing the blood flow.

These shoes were minutely tested, but as they are professional basketball shoes the real test begins on the court. Two professional athletes already played in them during their game. One of them was Jayson Tatum Playing for Boston Celtics. He played 31 minutes on the court, scoring 16 points for his team. Celtics won the game playing in their home turf against Toronto Raptors.

I personally am excited for these shoes and even might try to get them for myself. I think they are a milestone in self-lacing shoes and they are a cool,  good looking piece of tech. I am curious if self-lacing shoes are a one time trend or a standard in the future. What do you think and are you any excited for the release?

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_Mag

https://news.nike.com/news/nike-adapt-bb

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/15/18167388/nike-self-lacing-shoes-adapt-bb-smart-bluetooth-app-features-battery-life-price-release-date

Photo Sources:

theverge.com

news.nike.com

Tweets by nikebasketball

https://www.freshnessmag.com/2018/06/01/nike-hyperadapt-1-0-restock/

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/scitech/technology/400677/self-lacing-nike-mag-sneakers-from-back-to-the-future-confirmed-for-2015/story/

Reading Time: 3 minutesSo a year ago, after five years of development, researchers from Arizona State University and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have successfully killed cancer in mice by starving it to death. How have they achieved it? They have constructed nanobots out of unfolded DNA, an enzyme called thrombin, which is responsible for clotting blood and tumor targeting DNA. How it works? The blood-clotting enzyme is trapped inside folded DNA and it flows through the blood stream until the tumor targeting DNA detects cancer cells and triggered by it, unfolds itself releasing the enzyme. Because the cancer isn’t able to feed itself through clotted bloodstream it dies off. No other tissues were affected and degraded by this treatment and the nanorobots degrade themselves from the body within 24 hours after attacking tumor cells. In 3 out of 8 mixes the tumor has completely regressed and the median survival time of cancer injected mice more than doubled from 20 to 45 days. The method was also used to treat mice lung cancer and visible results of tumor shrinkage appeared after just two weeks. These results are very promising and I hope it can be used on humans in recent future, as an additional, or full cancer treatment.

Another example of nanorobots being useful in medicine are cell-sized robots created by MIT researchers. They have probably constructed world smallest robots so far. These are so small, thus so light, that they are able to stay suspended infinitely in air or liquid. These nanorobots need no external power. They are literally mini circuit boards that can gather and save information. They can be deployed and then recovered, for the information to be later analysed. There are a lot of potential use cases for this kind of nanorobots. They could be injected and then retrieved into humans in search of chemicals characteristic for certain diseases, or inflammations, or other diagnostics in other systems in nature such as oceans, rivers, air, or hydraulic systems.

Researchers at University of California in San Diego have developed tiny nanorobots that can clean blood out of toxins and bacteria that produces them. They are build out of tiny, gold nanowires coated in a hybrid of platelet and red blood cell membranes. This allows the nanorobots to perform two tasks at once. Red blood cells are responsible for absorbing toxins and bacteria, while platelets are responsible for binding pathogens. The body made out of gold nanowire makes it possible for the robots to be powerless, as they can be moved, transported by using ultrasound. Because of that they can be moved relatively quickly to the desired area. These nanorobots are about 25 times smaller that the average width of human hair. After just 5 minutes, of these nanorobots working, tested blood samples had 3 times less bacteria and toxins in them. This shows how effective they are, and imagine how much work they could do if we had a ton of them not just few manually constructed samples.

An important thing to keep in mind is that all of the above are just proofs of concept. These technologies exist only in labs and don’t have real life applications yet, thus impact of human lives. I think that these are just like early computers. A good idea but not so many use cases, but with huge potential for an amazing development. Just imagine what people could achieve with little controllable nanorobots. Microoperations from the inside, unclothing vessels, or maybe micro improvements of our bodies, that give extreme results?

What do you think about the topic?

Here are two articles I recommend if you are interested in the topic:

Nanobots in 2018: Three recent advances shaping the future of research

Nanorobots: Where We Are Today and Why Their Future Has Amazing Potential

Sources:

https://www.ft.com/content/57c9f432-de6d-11e7-a0d4-0944c5f49e46

http://news.mit.edu/2018/cell-sized-robots-sense-their-environment-0723

https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/cell_like_nanorobots_clear_bacteria_and_toxins_from_blood

https://biodesign.asu.edu/news/cancer-fighting-nanorobots-programmed-seek-and-destroy-tumors

and a video that inspired me to write this article (I highly recommend this channel):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading Time: 4 minutesRecently our friend Jakub has posted a blog post about a promising EV company called Rivian. Back in September Volkswagen announced that they want to produce 100,000 electric cars per year by 2020. They want to have produced 1,000,000 electric cars by 2025 and want them to be both affordable and able to travel long distances. The whole Volkswagen AG, so Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, SEAT, Skoda, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini and of course Volkswagen itself,  is planning to spend 50 billion US dollars on EV’s by 2023.

Now Daimler, mainly known as Mercedes-Benz, smart and trucks manufacturer, wants to spend almost 23 billion dollars on lithium-ion batteries alone. The whole group is planning to release 130 fully electric and hybrid models of cars, vans, trucks and busses by 2022. They also plan to spend 1.2$ billion on electric charging company, preparing the environment for a new wave of electric vehicles.

BMW has recently spent over 200 million dollars on development of new i4 model alone and they want to have 12 fully electric models and 13 hybrid models available by 2025.

It is very obvious that car manufacturers see a future in electric vehicles, as they invest their money and time into developing new models and making many promises about the number of models available in the future. In China in November car sales have dropped by 14%, but EV’s sales have risen by 68% in comparison to the same time last year.

Tesla, the best known fully electric cars manufacturer, is doing better and better. In the 3rd quarter of this year, it’s model 3 is the 19th best selling car model in the USA. They have delivered a little over 56,000 cars in this period. It is safe to say that Tesla has left its niche at this point. Additionally they were the 4th biggest luxury car manufacturer in the 3rd quarter of 2018 in USA. Average Tesla was sold for almost 68,000 $. Thats 12 thousand dollars more Mercedes, that is usually the first manufacturer that comes to your mind, when it comes to luxury cars. There are 400,000 people who have paid to reserve the rights to buy model 3. Teslas success is remarkable. They had 0.5% of the market share a year ago, and now they have over 2.1 %.

Electric Vehicles market has a huge potential. As we can see people are willing to spend money on electric vehicles. European manufacturers are still recovering after the diesel-gate and electric vehicles seem like a perfect opportunity to gain in the eyes of customers and it seems like a perfect investment. They also bring a new design language to cars and that is probably more appealing to most people.

Everything is pointing towards electric cars expansion. Manufacturers and customers are putting more and more money into them, market for them is growing, batteries are cheaper than ever to manufacture, their capacity is getting bigger, their life is longer and EV’s are more reliable.  I think we are going to see more of them on the roads. I think this is very exciting for everyone, because cities are going to be quieter, hopefully cleaner and many people will be able to experience something completely new. I also wonder if there are going to be any regulations made in the future, when the electric cars will get really popular, because their engines offer almost instant delivery of torque and power, that translates to very quick accelerations. I myself think that most of the speed limits are non-sense ( at least on the roads I am usually driving on ), but there are people that think otherwise. We still don’t know if that is going to change our safety on roads, but we have to keep in minds that EV’s usually come with advanced road safety systems, or even autopilots, so they are literally stuffed with sensors and on board computers.

The future is just really exciting and I am awaiting the further development.

Soures:

Daimler is buying nearly $23 billion of battery cells to power its electric vehicle offensive

Forbes: Electric Cars = The Future, Gasmobile Killers

https://qz.com/1492452/car-sales-in-china-are-slowing-but-sales-of-electric-vehicles-evs-continue-to-grow/

https://www.wired.com/story/booming-model-3-sales-moving-tesla-beyond-niche/\

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i4

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/28/18116978/audi-e-tron-gt-concept-porsche-electric-car-sedan-590-horsepower

https://www.mercedes-benz.ca/en/eq-electric-cars

 

Reading Time: 3 minutes

So far not many people have actually tested 5G network, but this will soon change. Verizon and AT&T are teaming up with Qualcomm, in order to present the newest cellular network technology. The rumours are that the network is going able to reach internet speeds over 1Gb/s, some say even up to 20Gb/s (while Poland averages at 27.57 Mb/s, that means 5G will be 31 times faster in the worst scenario). There are other benefits of 5G finally coming live. People predict unlimited cloud storage will become a standard, and so will on demand processing power. This might also revive smartbooks, which were laptops with built in cellular network. Additionally 5G is going to provide better (smaller) latency and most importantly for average internet users, some of the 4G (LTE) traffic will move over to 5G, which will allow LTE speeds to be faster. Industry specialists say, that 5G for video streaming will be what 4G was for music streaming. The technology is expected to be widely available in 2020.

Although 5G network has been deployed in many places all over the world (famously in Gliwice), these were small and medium city releases, and not many devices can use this network. So far there is one smartphone available, and it’s exclusive to Verizon (US carrier). Although many android phones which are expected to launch in the first quarter of 2019, are also expected to come with 5G technology “on board”. In the second quarter most of the phones are expected to have this technology as a standard. There are rumours that Apple isn’t going to launch 5G compatible device until 2020, but that nothing weird as they did the same thing with 3G (the original iPhone) and 4G (iPhone 4s) network releases.

5G technology seems very promising but it faces some challenges. First of all new network launches never match the expectations, so don’t bee too hyped when you first will be able to use this technology. Secondly the technology used actually limits the network. 5G radios aren’t compatible with 4G radios, so there is need for completely new infrastructure to be build.  Additionally the technology utilises milimeter radio waves. The main problems are that they are very bad at penetrating obstacles, such as walls, windows, your car roof and additionally they can be weakened by bad weather and they cover areas much smaller than 4G can. So to set up a 5G network, cellular providers need to buy radios and a ton of amplifiers, in order to maintain signal over a larger area.

5G is very promising, but also futuristic. It probably will allow for driverless cars seamless communication, and already allows for better smart home services. Bigger and faster data transfers can only be a good thing and also 5G network can allegedly handle four times the capacity of 4G network, so internet traffic shouldn’t be an issue in the future.

For me personally LTE is working very good, but I can’t complain about the development and can’t wait for what it will bring to our world.

Are you excited for 5G network, or 4G is just fine for you?

Netography:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18119818/verizon-5g-network-demo-att-qualcomm-summit-snapdragon-hawaii

https://www.techradar.com/news/what-is-5g-everything-you-need-to-know

https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/5G

Pictures:

5G logo – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G

network speeds – http://saudigazette.com.sa/article/535659/SAUDI-ARABIA/Al-Khobar-becomes-first-city-in-MENA-to-get-5G-network

Motorola Moto Z3 – https://blog.motorola.com/2018/08/02/motorola-connects-you-to-5g-first/

5G network – https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5g

Reading Time: 3 minutesCurrent planes have a lot of problems. Fuel efficiency and how loud they are, being the main ones. How can one solve both problems at the same time? No moving parts is the answer and that’s exactly what MIT researchers have just done.

The plane their build weighs about 2,5 kg and has a wingspan of about 5 meters. The first sustained flight was achieved after 9 years since the first research. It has zero moving parts and somehow manages to maintain a stable flight. It has flown 60 meters (full length of a school gym they tested the prototype in) multiple times.  The plane is built of wings, main body with batteries in it, power supply that converts batteries’ output into high voltage, and thin and thick wires parallel to the wings and beneath them. It looks like this:

And this is how it looks mid-flight:

How does the propulsion work? The plane uses very high voltage (40,000 volts) to generate ions out of the air. Electromagnetic field is created by the flow of electrons inside the wires. This field moves ions from positive to negative electrode. Moving ions push air molecules in the same direction they are travelling and make thrust, that propels the plane. It is called ionic wind. Here is some visualisation:

 

A researcher at Oxford Thermofluids Institute says “Although it is still a long way off from commercial gas turbine propulsion … electroaerodynamic propulsion has the potential to be a game-changer for short-range, small-payload drone flights”. The researchers of the project aren’t convinced this technology can be used in commercial aviation, but say that it can be used in modern planes to reduce fuel usage by reducing the drag created by the air travelling along the aircraft and make planes quieter. They also said that they want to optimise current prototype. It is a big and one of the fist steps in this area of aviation, and surely not the last one. If the technology can be optimised in order to produce more thrust with less voltage, it has a real potential to replace jet engines.

The project has two downsides that are rarely mentioned. The first one is that it leaves an ozone trail. It is a gas made out of three molecules of oxygen. You probably know its smell, because it is present during and after lightning storms. Ozone is good in the higher levels of our atmosphere (stops UV light), but near the ground level it can harm whole respiratory system, causing premature death or asthma. The other downside is its efficiency. It is very, very insefficient compared to all means of transportation used today.

I also highly recommend watching a video made by Nature you can find below.

Fun fact: The main researcher, Steven Barrett, was inspired by television series “Star Trek”. He said:“This made me think, in the long-term future, planes shouldn’t have propellers and turbines,” Barrett says. “They should be more like the shuttles in ‘Star Trek,’ that have just a blue glow and silently glide.”

What do you think?

Sources:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612451/an-electric-plane-with-no-moving-parts-has-made-its-first-flight/

http://news.mit.edu/2018/first-ionic-wind-plane-no-moving-parts-1121

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone

also the video linked above