Posts Tagged ‘circuit’

Adafruit, the DIY electronics website and marketplace, is espousing the popular strategy of “get em’ young” with a new live action short video series broadcast on YouTube. The series, called Circuit Playground, takes an alphabetical approach to teaching kids about the basics of circuits, components and concepts that will come in handy if the tots watching have aspirations of becoming electrical engineers, or just of building their own hobby projects at home.

The inaugural episode covers amperes, the unit of measurement for electric current flowing through a circuit. The co-hosts are Adabot, an adorable robot puppet helping keep the kids entertained, and Adafruit founder Limor Fried, providing easy-to-follow, but not patronizing explanations of the concepts involved. The intro features a number of animated characters representing circuit components, and there’s even a special guest appearance from André-Marie Ampère, after whom the ampere is named, so there’s an element of science history in the mix, too.

At less than 5 minutes, you also won’t have to keep your kids focused too long to take in the message. And if you’re a big kid who might not be all that well versed in the basics of circuits and electronics, you’ll probably learn something, too.

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There’s something I’ve been hoping to encounter over the years of writing about tech and gadgets that never seems to materialize: A hardware switch to disconnect my device from all outside communication. Call me paranoid, but airplane mode just isn’t good enough for me. Such a switch for wireless (or for the camera, or the microphone) seems to me an elementary protection against a number of potential dangers, and I doubt I’m the only one who would appreciate it.

It’s not that I think The Man is secretly tracking my phone at all times, even when I’m in airplane mode. If anything, He and the companies we all pay for data connections are doing so relatively openly! That’s expected now, and circumvented in other ways. It’s just a matter of trust in a number of parties’ honesty and competency.

You trust Apple or Google or whoever makes your phone or laptop to successfully shut off the wireless in your device when you ask it to. And that trust probably isn’t misplaced — failing to do so would have incurred the wrath of the FAA and any number of privacy and security organizations. In the same way, you also trust that when the LED isn’t lit, your camera isn’t active, and likewise the microphone.

But it isn’t much in the way of fantasy to imagine an emergency signal that wakes up a component, just as there are signals and techniques being patented to turn them off. If Apple is considering (and probably engineering) a means to shut down your camera so it can’t take pictures of copyrighted works, aren’t immediate extrapolations from that a legitimate concern?

So why not have a way to totally shut down components of a device? There’s no trust necessary if you yourself can see that the method of providing power to the wireless chip or camera module has been interrupted.

Not everyone cares, of course. But be honest: How many of you with discrete webcams have them pointed anywhere but at you right now? How many of you are always aware of the presence of the unblinking, cyclopean electronic eye above your laptop’s screen? Have you never considered how easy it might be to hijack the microphone or camera for a hacker or, for that matter, someone lawfully observing you using means graciously provided by the creator of the OS? Carrier IQ, anybody? FBI begging software companies for government backdoor privileges?

It’s not paranoia to have a chain lock as well as a deadbolt — redundancy is just a part of good security practices.

When you’re protecting your bank account, or your email, you don’t hesitate to ask for two-factor authentication. One would think that when setting up your daughter’s webcam or phone, you’d be able to take similarly thorough steps. Perhaps even with the pervasion of smartphones and other connected devices in our homes and on our persons, not enough people are aware of the fact that the only lock on their digital devices is one frequently exposed, indeed advertised, to the online world. To have a switch under your thumb that renders your device inaccessible to the physical phenomenon used to operate it is the ultimate protection. That people aren’t clamoring for it is honestly surprising to me.

Unfortunately, I doubt it will happen for a number of reasons. It’s troublesome for the user to have to worry about it, for one thing, and most would ignore it. It also undermines trust in the OS and its security — would you buy a lock from a guy who said “maybe you should get this one too, just in case”? And technically speaking, shutting off and restarting a component constantly (especially in system-on-a-chip architecture) is not trivial. It’s doubtful manufacturers will decide to isolate certain portions just so you can power them on and off at will (again, not a simple process).

Still, I can dream. I’ve always felt the need to exert control over my devices, and I am frustrated at every point along the frontier where my privileges as a user end. I have faith, at least, in people of like mind but more capable, to either provide such security measures as will satisfy those even more suspicious than myself, or to convince me of their superfluity.

[Image: Paul Cross / Flickr]

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Adafruit currently welcomes newbies to diy gadget society, however it still assumes a particular quantity of convenience with coding and soldering. The shop now wishes to accommodate one of the most basic of beginners by starting a youngsters’s internet collection that educates electronics. Circuit Play ground will offer tasks, songs and stories that place a friendly face on engineering, in some methods really directly: numerous of the programs will involve big-eyed characters (and, normally, corresponding toys) like Cappy the Capacitor. Although the series does not start until March, it could possibly be important to a generation of children expanding up immersed in modern technology– and eventually produce a bigger client base for Adafruit in the process.

Declared under: Misc, AltCommentsVia: The VergeSource: Wired

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While Felix Baumgartner landed safely on the ground simply a matter of hours ago, the internet is still resonating with the sound of tweets, status updates and YouTube clicks, all thanks to what was among the most incredible human ventures in current history. The objective was simple, to send a guy up in a balloon higher than previously before, and have him securely leap to the ground. This kind of “easy” is typically anything but– if you simply look past the well-manicured exterior. Which, as luck would certainly have it is precisely what we did.

With the cheers of success still buzzing in his ears, we got some quality time with Art Thompson, the technical project director, and Baumgartner’s earliest collaborator on the Stratos objective. We needed to know a little bit more about what went on behind the scenes, and Thompson was more than delighted to oblige. They’re understandably proud of just what they just attained.

Continue reading Art Thompson, Red Bull Stratos’ technical project director, talks circuit breakers, wind shear and biomedical dataFiled under: Misc, AltArt Thompson, Red Bull Stratos’ technical project director, talks circuit breakers, wind shear and biomedical data initially appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:53:00 EDT