Monthly Archives: December 2017

Net neutrality breach

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We are living in the world, where the rights of a human are valued at highest level. Freedom has always been a very controversial issue and discrimination has been persecuted for ages. Such ideas had impacted the state of our modern life, where everybody is willing to have the equal rights and the people struggle to get it at most. Today, in the time of massive digitalization, such notion does not only come along with the real life, but also is expected to cover the virtual reality, hence, the Internet. Therefore, as the Internet grows and boundaries of it are unimaginable, certain restrictions had to be made in order to control the flow of the data. Nevertheless, the right to access the data is crucial and should stay untouched.

In fact, the notion of net neutrality had been introduced in early 2000th by Tim Wu, as the main principle of the Internet operations through which “Internet service providers treat all data transmitted and accessed on the Internet equally, regardless of its size, type or origin”, says Smithsonian.com. This means that any breach to the net neutrality concept is an issue, where your Internet Service Providers restrict certain content providers from getting the equal access to their data.

According to Fortune.com, in 2015, the USA Federal Communications Commission had signed the regulation upon which “the Internet providers cannot block or slow down your access to any (legal) online content”. For example, the service provider cannot slow down your connection, when you are visiting the competitor website or different business are not allowed to pay the service provider to speed up the transfer of data, when visiting their Internet page.

In fact, the notion of net neutrality, soon, might become the issue of the past. Recently, in USA the question of net neutrality has arose again, as the current chairman of US FCC Ajit Pai is going to review and, in fact, upend the decision of the equal access on December, 14.

The principle of work of the Internet is that it allows to create the content and provides an equal access to it (until the access is limited by the providers, itself). However, if the Internet service providers would have enough rights to control the data flow and Internet traffic, it might create the imbalance. In fact, it would influence the market, where the competition would not be open and not equal. According to Fortune.com, the major content providers (like CBS in USA) might win from such change, as the service providers would be more interested to get the content from the most reliable sources.  Though, the major Internet stores, like Amazon, Ebay might lose, due to slowing down the traffic while visiting their websites, as the additional fee to enter it might be introduced. As a result, the minor content providers – small online stores, minor Internet magazines, would suffer at most due to inability to pay enough to have the faster traffic transmission. This would create a situation, where the rights of various small and local businesses that operate on the Internet would be discriminated, because of their size and low power in the market.

Why it matters to us?

For now, this issue has arisen in USA. However, we have already witnessed various countries restricting the data flow on the Internet and most of them are actively implemented today. In result, this might mean that this subject might come along the European countries, where the net neutrality seems to be valued a lot right now. Therefore, as this issue impacts the businesses, as well, it might also become the first step to the breach of the individuals’ right for freedom of speech, as social media is having one of the largest traffic and data flow on the Internet. Internet Service Providers would hunt for them at most, which would lead to introduction of additional fees, while using the social media to express the voice of individual.

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Smart City in Arizona, big plan of Bill Gates.

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All of us have seen the smart cities of the future, unfortunately only in big US movie productions. A few months ago the richest man on the Earth decided to introduce his plan of building Smart City to real life. One of the Bill Gates investment firms Cascade Investment LLC announced the plan of building Smart City located in Arizona. The company paid about $80 million for 24,800-acre land on which they are planning to build public schools; and office, commercial, and retail space. But that investment won’t look like a typical city. This place will be more smart, autonomous, sustainable and self-efficient than other. What do we understand the name of a smart city? According to encyclopedia “The smart city concept integrates information and communication technology (ICT), and various physical devices connected to the network (the Internet of things or IoT) to optimize the efficiency of city operations and services and connect to citizens”.  The video below is presenting some smart solutions that exist or are planned to be introduced into some cities.

Why did Mr. Gates decide to create the smart city there? Firstly Belmont (the name of the location area) is located 40 miles from Phoenix, so the place is not located on wastelands. Despite the fact of close localization to the big city, the ground price was relatively small, and the area is pretty big, it is very similar to the Paris when it comes to the size. But the price wasn’t the main argument of the Smart City localization. The state of Arizona is also very friendly when it comes to the “smart cities” solution regulations. For example, it has very relaxed Autonomous vehicles policies. Belmont investors hope to use it as a big advantage and they think that should help different tech companies to pilot their technologies and later implement them within the Belmont. Another very positive aspect of Arizona state is the fact of big solar energy production capacity, which will be used to power charging stations for some of these cars — as well as traffic lights, homes, and office spaces. In such case, the city could be self-efficient when it comes to the energy.

Investors are planning to make Belmont really smart and sustainable. The benefits which will be available for future Belmont inhabitants and the companies which will run there are for example The high-speed networks, Autonomous vehicles, high-speed digital networks, Big data centers. New manufactural Technologies and Autonomous Logistic Hubs. Those are only examples of benefits but for sure with the progress of the city building plans investors will announce much more astonishing details about smart technologies and innovative solutions which will be common within it.

Until this moment everything seems to be fine and perfect but there is one regulation that needs to be fulfilled to create a new city. This regulation is connected with the low water level in Arizona. To set the new city investors needs to prove that the city will have a supply of water for 100 years. This issue might be not easy to fix and for sure very expensive. The only option will be transporting the water by pipelines, and then sustainable use of it.

The problem with water in Arizona

The smart City concepts isn’t a new idea but from a few years, we can see that some of the richest cities are trying to implement new solutions to make their cities smarter. Governments are building Tech Hubs within some city districts to speed up the innovation. Private investors are trying to build their own smart cities. Those are the things which we can observe now. In the next 10/20 years a lot might have changed and due to that, it is important to have such investments. Technology will become more and more connected to the way of how we exist every day, so due to that, we need to develop it and observe how will cities of the future look like. How “smart” will be Belmont? In terms of technology, for sure it will be, but we need to remember that smart cities are something more than just autonomous cars, sustainability and a lot of other technologies. Smart Cities are also about Smart Society, Smart Healthcare, E-government etc. Due to that, there will be still more to develop for places like Belmont but such investments are necessary to develop and test those “smart solutions”.

Sources:
http://fortune.com/2017/11/13/bill-gates-arizona-smart-city-cascade-belmont/

http://nordic.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-smart-city-pros-cons-arizona-urban-planners-2017-11

http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/13/technology/future/bill-gates-smart-city-arizona/index.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-smart-city-pros-cons-arizona-urban-planners-2017-11

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

Spectacles, cool Snapchat gadget, but is it worth buying?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Spectacles are a new product from Snapchat, these are special glasses equipped in camera that records 10 second long(or more) videos with sound from our eyes perspective. This product is now widely available to buy through their website, but when they first introduced them, only US based customers could buy them and it was also not so easy. They could be purchased in special Snapbots and people could check their actual location on special website. Now Snapbots were placed also in London and Barcelona, more locations are to be announced.

Spectacles are sold in three different colors, the package includes case that is also a charger and portable powerbank. The glasses are trendy with rounded frames. Once you record videos with them, they are stored in the glasses, then if you connect your Spectacles with Snapchat app via Bluetooth the videos are imported to app’s memories. The battery is said to last for about 100 snaps and the case can recharge your device up to four times. Glasses can work even if your phone battery dies, they save the videos and you can just import them to your phone later.

The device was created especially for Snapchat users, but there is a possibility to import the videos to your camera roll so theoretically you could use them also for other apps or to upload to Youtube, but there is a small catch. Spectacles record circular videos so if you rotate your phone you can see more but the same way it does not make sense to upload such round video anywhere else because it looks weird.

What is great about this glasses is that you can take videos from your own eyes perspective without holding your phone, so you are phone-free and also your hands are free, this way you can save spectacular views and share your experience with others. This is first gadget of this type that is actually trendy, good quality product (with not great quality videos), very user friendly and for such tech innovation also affordable with price tag of 130 US dollars.

For people who use Snapchat often it might be a really cool device to record even better content to their profiles. For sure it is fun to use them, but the big disadvantage is that they are basically for Snapchat users only.

 

So what do you guys think? Would you buy such product or you think it is complete waste of money?

 

 

References:
https://www.spectacles.com/pl/features/

http://www.benchmark.pl/aktualnosci/okulary-snapchat-spectacles-gdzie-je-kupic.html

http://metro.co.uk/2017/09/19/how-to-use-snapchat-glasses-are-they-worth-the-money-6929461/

http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-spectacles-glasses-review-2016-11?IR=T