Public File Sharing

By M.K Lim,

The man behind the project, Adam Bartholl

NEW YORK : Across New York City, a new kind of network is going up. You may see it. USB connections jutting out of walls at locations around the city.

     You can plug into, anybody can, and leave whatever they want and download what they want. The man behind the project, Aram Bartholl, describes the project he calls "Dead Drops".

     "An anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space.

     Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data."

     The allure is unmistakable. Admit, if you saw one of these, wouldn't you want to plug in? As Gizmodo puts it: "I mean, if I saw a USB stick stick out of a random wall, I'd be dying to know what's in there.

     I'd have to plug in. It'd also be interesting to see what people would anonymously share on the public drive, well, until some jackass decides to upload a virus to screw up everybody's computer."

     Bartholl has installed five USB drives in New York, and has plans for other cities, and to encourage others to take up the project in their town.
 

USB Port on the wall

     Here's a more sophisticated version of a similar idea. Cellular networks are centrally administered, enabling service providers and their governments to conduct system-wide monitoring and censorship of mobile communication. 

     This paper presents HUMANETS, a fully decentralized, smartphone-to-smartphone (and hence human-to-human) message passing scheme that permits unmonitored message communication even when all cellular traffic is inspected.

     HUMANET message routing protocols exploit human mobility patterns to significantly increase communication efficiency while limiting the exposure of messages to mobile service providers. 

     Initial results from trace-driven simulation show that 85% of messages reach their intended destinations while using orders of magnitude less network capacity than naïve epidemic flooding techniques.

Death toll in Indonesian tsunami, volcano tops 340

By K.M. LEW

MENTAWAI ISLANDS, Indonesia (AP) - The death toll from a tsunami and a volcano rose to more than 300 Wednesday as more victims of Indonesia's double disasters were found and an official said a warning system installed after a deadly ocean wave in 2004 had broken from a lack of maintenance.

Hundreds were still missing after Monday's tsunami struck the remote Mentawi islands off western Sumatra, where officials were only beginning to chart the scope of the devastation. At least 311 people died as the huge wave, triggered by an undersea earthquake, washed away wooden and bamboo homes, displacing more than 20,000 people.

About 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the east in central Java, the Mount Merapi volcano was mostly quiet but still a threat after Tuesday's eruption that sent searing ash clouds into the air, killing at least 30 people and injuring 17. Among the dead was a revered elder who had refused to leave his ceremonial post as caretaker of the mountain's spirits.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rushed home from a state visit to Vietnam to deal with the catastrophes, which struck within 24 hours along different points of the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a series of fault lines prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity.

The first cargo plane loaded with tents, medicine, food and clothes landed Wednesday in the tsunami-hit area, said disaster official Ade Edward.

Huge swaths of land were underwater and homes were torn apart by the 10-foot (3-meter) wave that hit Pagai Utara island in the Indian Ocean south of Sumatra. One house lay tilted, resting on the edge of its red roof, with tires and slabs of concrete piled up on the surrounding sand.

Hundreds of homes were washed away in about 20 villages, displacing more than 20,000 people, Edward said. Many were seeking shelter in makeshift emergency camps or with family and friends.

Vice President Boediono toured devastated villages on Pagai Utara and met with survivors and local officials, his office said. At one point, he paused solemnly in front of several corpses in body bags.

The charity SurfAid International is getting "grim news" from village contacts, said Andrew Judge, head of the group founded by surfers who have been helping deliver aid. He said he is hearing of "more death, large numbers of deaths in some villages." With the arrival of help, Edward said officials "finally ... have a chance now to look for more than 400 still missing."

Officials prepared for the worst, sending hundreds of body bags, said Mujiharto, head of the Health Ministry's crisis center. The islands lie close to the epicenter of the 7.7-magnitude quake that struck late Monday beneath the ocean floor. The fault line on Sumatra island's coast is the same one that caused the 2004 quake and tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean.

After that monster wave, many countries set up early warning systems in their waters hoping to give people time to flee to higher ground before a tsunami - which can travel hundreds of miles (kilometers) - crashed ashore.

Indonesia's version, completed in 2008 with German aid, has since fallen into such disrepair that it effectively stopped working about a month ago, according to the head of the Meteorology and Geophysic Agency.

The system, which uses buoys to electronically detect sudden changes in water level, worked when it was completed, but by 2009 routine tests of it were showing problems, said the agency chief, who uses the single name Fauzi. By last month, he said, the entire system was broken because of inexperienced operators.

"We do not have the expertise to monitor the buoys to function as intended," he said. As a result, he said, not a single siren sounded after Monday's quake. It was unclear if any sirens could have made a difference, since the islands worst affected were so close to the epicenter that the tsunami would have reached them within minutes.

The group that set up the system, the Germany-Indonesia agency Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS), could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but the questions Fauzi raised highlighted the difficulty for a poor country such as Indonesia in disaster prevention and response.

On the ash-covered slopes of Mount Merapi, authorities continued a search for more victims. Dr. Teguh Dwi Santosa, who works at a local hospital, said the death toll had climbed to 30.

The eruption sent thousands streaming into makeshift emergency shelters, although the ash did not disrupt flights over Indonesia. About 36,000 people have been evacuated, according to the Indonesian Red Cross. Some defied authorities and returned home to check on crops and possessions left behind. More than 11,000 people live on Merapi's fertile slopes.

Tuesday's blast eased pressure that had been building behind a lava dome on the crater. Experts warned that the dome could still collapse, causing an avalanche of the blistering gas and debris trapped beneath it.

"It's a little calmer today," said Surono, the chief of Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation. "But a lot of energy is pent up back there. There's no telling what's next."

The volcano, whose name means "Fire Mountain," has erupted many times in the last 200 years. In 1994, 60 people were killed, while in 1930 more than a dozen villages were incinerated, leaving up to 1,300 dead.

Among the dead from Tuesday's eruption was an 83-year-old man named Maridjan, who was entrusted by a late king from the nearby city of Yogyakarta to watch over the mountain's unpredictable spirits. He had refused to leave his house high on its slopes.

The discovery Wednesday of his ash-covered body, reportedly found in a position of Islamic prayer, kneeling face-down on the floor, rattled residents who for years joined his ceremonies to appease the rumbling giant by throwing rice, clothes and chickens into the crater. Many Indonesians paid tribute to Maridjan on Facebook and Twitter.

"I'm more afraid than ever," said Prapto Wiyono, a 60-year-old farmer from the mountain village of Pangukrejo. "Who's going to tell us what's going on with Merapi?"

Air Guitar Competition 2010

By M.K. Lim

     The Grand Final witnessed snapping strings and fainting groupies as the contestants, one fierier than the other, fought for the ultimate command of the air.

      Last year's World Champion Sylvain “Gunther Love” Quimene (FR) gave once again a stunning performance and took the highest crown back to France.

      His fellow countrywoman Soraya “Eva Gina Runner” Garlenq scored second with her sparkling and tight one-minute show.

     The third place was taken over by retiring Canadian champion Cole “Johnny Utah” Manson.

Air Guitar World Championship Final 2010 results, all the participants!

1. Sylvain “Günther Love” Quimene (FR) 33,9 2. Soraya “Eva Gina Runner” Garlenq (FR) 33,4 3. Cole “Johnny Utah” Manson (CA) 33,1 4. Corentin “AirGus” Fermont (BE) 32,6 5. Chuah “L-Bird” Eng Beng (MY) 32,5 6. Aapo “Little Angus” Rautio (FI) 32,4 6. Kevin “Narvalwaker” Leloux (BE) 32,4 8. Cameron “Tommy Thundah” Bunney (AU) 32,3 9. Toshihiko “SUNANEY” Sunabe (JP) 32,1 10. Peter “Pete Peacemaker” Kuriscák (SK) 31,4 11. Matt "Romeo DanceCheetah" Cornelison (US) 16,0 12. Christian  ”Heart Buckboard” Sweep (DE) 15,8 13. Kirill “Your Daddy” Blumenkrantz (RU) 15,7 13. Karla "Gotika" Mendoza (MX) 15,7 15. Thom "W!ld Th!ng 37" Wilding (UK) 15,5 16. Bedrich"Mr Babinoska" Levi (CZ) 15,4 17. Dirk "Swiss Dirty Airy" Lüdi (CH) 15,2 17. Eero "Oulun oma poika" Ojala (FI) 15,2 19. Rezo  "Baron horse-stealer" Gamrekelidze (UA) 15,1 20. Soren "Big G" Stenbjerg Gregersen (DK) 15,0 21. Deku "Deku Chan" Chan (IE) 14,9 22. Alan "Xirtam" Foster (BR) 14,8 23. Alexander "Devilseducer" Gott (RU) 14,6

     As the Air Guitar tradition has it, after the winner was chosen, all the contestants took the stage once more and encouraged the whole world to play Air Guitar to Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" while the fireworks lighted the sky to celebrate the 15th anniversary.

     The night's host, Air Guitar Guru Dan ”Björn Türoque” enchanted the Oulu Marketplace with his charisma and tuned the festival audience into an airy frequency.

     The chilly Final night gathered a massive audience of approximately 7000-8000 people.

     It was a success as one of the interviwers in our blog was the representative of Malaysia and he won the fifth place.

     Good job and congratulations to Albert Chuah.

Facebook for sale

By M.K. Lim

     There’s a new stocking stuffer for the social gamer on your holiday shopping list: Facebook Credits.

     Already available at Target stores, the social networking site is set to offer the credits which can be used for in-game purchases in games like FarmVille at Walmart and Best Buy too.

     Walmart will offer $5, $10 and $25 versions of the gift cards, while Best Buy will sell them in denominations of $10, $25 and $50.

     A Facebook spokespersonsaid, “As we approach the holiday gift-giving season, we’re happy to expand the availability of Facebook Credits gift cards to Walmart and Best Buy.

     More than 200 games and applications accept Facebook Credits, giving people a fun, convenient and secure way to buy premium items, and making Credits gift cards a unique gift for the holidays.” Cards are also already available at certain retailers in Asia and Australia.

     The soon to be ubiquitous nature of Facebook Credits gift cards speaks to the momentum behind the rapidly growing social games and virtual goods business, which is expected to grow to $6 billion by 2013.

     Gift cards help make that currency available to everyone not just those with credit cards or PayPal accounts and we imagine we’ll continue seeing them hit the “impulse purchase” section of many a chain store.

The Truth About War on Iraq

By Y.C. Lim

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army.

Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period.

For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has defended the unauthorised release of 400,000 classified US military documents on the war in Iraq, saying they revealed the "truth" about the conflict.

The mass of documents from 2004 to 2009 offer a grim snapshot of the conflict, especially of the abuse of Iraqi civilians by Iraqi security forces.

Julian Assange -
Founder of WikiLeaks.org

"This disclosure is about the truth," Assange told a news conference in London Saturday after the whistleblowing website published the logs on the Internet.

"The attack on the truth by war begins long before war starts, and continues long after a war ends," he said, adding that WikiLeaks hoped "to correct some of that attack on the truth".

He claimed the documents revealed around 15,000 more civilian deaths than were previously known about.

The heavily redacted logs appear to show that the US military turned a blind eye to evidence of torture and abuse of Iraqis by the Iraqi authorities.

Assange said the documents showed the war had been "a bloodbath on every corner". Profile of the WikiLeaks founder

Washington and London warned that releasing the documents could endanger the lives of coalition troops and Iraqi civilians, although the rights ministry in Baghdad said the logs "did not contain any surprises".

In an announcement which could further concern the United States, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said the website would soon release a further 15,000 secret files on the war in Afghanistan which had been held back for line-by-line reviewing and redacting.

WikiLeaks enraged Washington by releasing 92,000 documents on the Afghan war in July, and drew criticism from rights groups who said the inclusion of Afghan informants' names put lives at risk. Facts about WikiLeaks

The files published Friday contain graphic accounts of torture, civilian killings and Iran's hand in the Iraq war, documenting years of bloodshed and suffering following the 2003 US-led invasion to oust dictator Saddam Hussein.

In one document, US military personnel describe abuse by Iraqis at a Baghdad facility that was holding 95 detainees in a single room.

It says "many of them bear marks of abuse to include cigarette burns, bruising consistent with beatings and open sores... according to one of the detainees questioned on site, 12 detainees have died of disease in recent weeks."

Other reports describe Iraqis beating prisoners and women being killed at US military checkpoints.

WikiLeaks made the files available several weeks ago to selected newspapers and television channels, including Al-Jazeera, Le Monde, The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian.

British newspaper The Guardian said the leaks showed "US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished."

It said "US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities."

The Iraqi government has said that as many as 85,694 Iraqi civilians and members of the security forces perished in the conflict between January 2004 and October 2008.

US officials have frequently dismissed the Iraqi numbers as too high.

The Guardian said WikiLeaks is thought to have obtained the material from the "same dissident US army intelligence analyst" who is suspected of leaking the material on Afghanistan. WikiLeaks has not revealed its source.

US soldier Bradley Manning, 22, is in US custody facing charges he gave WikiLeaks classified video showing a July 2007 US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed several people.

He is also suspected of possible involvement in the leak of classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

On Iran's role in the Iraq conflict, the latest files show Tehran waging a shadow war with US troops in Iraq and Tehran allegedly using militias to kill and kidnap US soldiers.

The documents describe Iran arming and training Iraqi hit squads to carry out attacks on coalition troops and Iraqi government officials, with the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps suspected of playing a crucial role, The New York Times and The Guardian reported.

Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers told the London news conference that some of the deaths documented in the reports could have involved British forces and could now be the subject of legal action in British courts.

"Some of these deaths will be in circumstances where the UK have a very clear legal responsibility," he said.

The US-based Human Rights Watch called for Iraq to probe mistreatment by its own forces, and said the United States should investigate if it committed wrongdoing by transferring prisoners to Iraqi hands.

A Pentagon spokesman said the documents were "essentially snapshots of events, both tragic and mundane, and do not tell the whole story."

Britain's Ministry of Defence also condemned the unauthorised release, saying it made the job of British and allied troops "more difficult and more dangerous".

Indonesian tsunami kills 108

By K.M. LEW

JAKARTA: At least 108 people have died and more than 500 people are missing on a group of Indonesian islands hit by a tsunami, according to local officials. And the country’s most active volcano Mount Merapi has erupted three times and continued to do so Tuesday night.
      "Our latest data from the crisis centre showed that 108 people have been killed and 502 are still missing," Hendri Dori Satoko, an MP from the Mentawai islands, told MetroTV.
      Most buildings in the coastal village of Betu Monga were destroyed, said Hardimansyah, an official with the regional branch of the Department of Fisheries.
      Hardimansyah, who has only one name, said 80 percent of the houses in the area were damaged and food supplies were low.

     A tourist boat carrying between eight and 10 Australians has been out of radio contact since the quake, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement.

     Elsewhere in the archipelago, a three-month-old baby has died - the first reported fatality from three eruptions by Mount Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano. At least 30 people are reported injured.

     "We heard three explosions around 06:00 pm (1100GMT) spewing volcanic material as high as 1.5 kilometres and sending heat clouds down the slopes," government volcanologist Surono told the AFP news agency.

     The eruption is bigger than the 2006 eruption, which killed two people, he said.
      The authorities put an area of 10 kilometres around the crater of on red alert Monday, ordering 19,000 people to flee. But 15,000 of them ignored the order or returned during Tuesday to work and tend cattle.
      Merapi’s deadliest eruption occurred in 1930 when more than 1,300 people were killed. Heat clouds from another eruption in 1994 killed more than 60 people.

   

The Rise of Graphene

Graphene nanofabric. SEM micrograph of a strongly crumpled graphene sheet. 

Lateral size of the image is 20 microns.

A thin flake of ordinary carbon, just one atom thick, lies behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have shown that carbon in such a flat form has exceptional properties that originate from the remarkable world of quantum physics.

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov

Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new – not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials. It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it. Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again.

Geim and Novoselov extracted the graphene from a piece of graphite such as is found in ordinary pencils. Using regular adhesive tape they managed to obtain a flake of carbon with a thickness of just one atom. This at a time when many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable.

Artistic impression of graphene molecules.

However, with graphene, physicists can now study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties. Graphene makes experiments possible that give new twists to the phenomena in quantum physics. Also a vast variety of practical applications now appear possible including the creation of new materials and the manufacture of innovative electronics. Graphene transistors are predicted to be substantially faster than today’s silicon transistors and result in more efficient computers.

Since it is practically transparent and a good conductor, graphene is suitable for producing transparent touch screens, light panels, and maybe even solar cells.

AFM image of a graphene molecule. The window 

size is 10x10 micron (the graphene film is only 

one atom thick but approx. 100,000 atoms long

 in the two lateral directions)

When mixed into plastics, graphene can turn them into conductors of electricity while making them more heat resistant and mechanically robust. This resilience can be utilised in new super strong materials, which are also thin, elastic and lightweight. In the future, satellites, airplanes, and cars could be manufactured out of the new composite materials.

This year’s Laureates have been working together for a long time now. Konstantin Novoselov, 36, first worked with Andre Geim, 51, as a PhD-student in the Netherlands. He subsequently followed Geim to the United Kingdom. Both of them originally studied and began their careers as physicists in Russia. Now they are both professors at the University of Manchester.

Playfulness is one of their hallmarks, one always learns something in the process and, who knows, you may even hit the jackpot. Like now when they, with graphene, write themselves into the annals of science.

Level crossing Tragedy

By M. K. Lim

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - A train crashed into a crowded bus in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing 40 people and leaving 11 in critical condition, officials said.

     The Interior Ministry said the accident occurred outside the town of Marhanets in the Dnipropetrovsk region after the bus attempted to cross the track, ignoring a siren that indicated an oncoming train.
Rescuers, medics and investigators are working at the scene of the crash.

     "Survivors remember yelling (to the driver) that the sound signal meant he should not proceed," Transport Minister Kostyantyn Efimenko said on television.

     President Viktor Yanukovych declared a national day of morning Wednesday.

     Prime Minister Mykola Azarov ordered his government to pay each family of the dead victims 100,000 hryvna (RM38,252).

     He also instructed transport officials to install automated crossing gates at all the nation's railway crossings to prevent cars, buses and trucks from ignoring the siren.

     Road and railway accidents are common in Ukraine with thousands killed on the road every year, where the roads are in poor condition, vehicles are poorly maintained, and drivers and passengers routinely disregard safety and traffic rules.