Jason's Industry Insights, Issue #23

Author

Jason Presement
June 13, 2024

Issue #23 - June 14, 2024

Welcome to Issue #23, and it's still free!

Headlines of the week:

☎️ Starlink Finally Gets a Customer Service Phone Number, But Only for One Country

👎🏻 AI Tools Are Secretly Training on Real Images of Children

☠️ Fake beauty queens charm judges at the Miss AI pageant

Also,

Learn About - Ultra Ethernet

And much more!

Remember to repost, share, like, and comment (good and bad).

Enjoy Issue #23!

Broadband and Things..

Sixty North Unity, Northwestel and Bell Canada announce transformative partnership to advance economic reconciliation

Sixty North Unity, a consortium of Indigenous communities, plans to acquire Northwestel from Bell Canada, making it the largest Indigenous-owned telecom company globally. This partnership aims to enhance digital connectivity across Northern Canada, providing long-term economic benefits and improving infrastructure. Significant investments will include doubling internet speeds and expanding high-speed internet access in remote areas. The transaction, valued up to C$1 billion, marks a significant step towards Indigenous self-determination and economic reconciliation.

Telehouse launches three Toronto data centres to help facilitate internet traffic flow

Telehouse, a global leader in colocation data center services, has opened three new data centres in Toronto to enhance internet traffic flow and support the digital infrastructure needs of Canadian businesses. These facilities will offer high-performance computing capabilities and robust connectivity options, promoting digital transformation and innovation across various industries in Canada.

Canada’s Need for Advanced Public Safety Networks

The necessity for advanced public safety communication networks in Canada has become evident due to frequent emergencies. Ericsson is collaborating with Canadian stakeholders to enhance public safety solutions, focusing on developing a robust Public Safety Broadband Network (PSBN). Such a network would improve real-time data sharing, voice communication, and overall connectivity, especially in remote areas. A resilient PSBN will ensure that first responders can always connect and collaborate effectively, addressing Canada's unique geographic and climatic challenges.

A Field Guide to 5G Standards in Satcom/Telecom Integration

The integration of 5G standards within satellite communications is advancing significantly, spearheaded by the global consortium 3GPP. This integration allows for seamless interaction between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks, enhancing capabilities like high-altitude platforms, drones, and LEO/GEO satellites. Release 17 of the 3GPP standards marks a critical milestone by providing the first technical specifications for direct-to-device 5G over satellite, positioning satellites as vital components of the global 5G ecosystem.

You can read the full guide here. It's a very good primer.

Learn About..

The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) is a collaborative organization focused on developing an Ethernet-based communication stack architecture specifically designed to support the low-latency, high-bandwidth and high-performance demands of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. Founded in July 2023, UEC aims to create an open, scalable, and cost-effective solution that leverages the ubiquity and flexibility of Ethernet to handle a wide variety of workloads efficiently.

The UEC targets a complete communications stack that solves technical problems across multiple protocol layers, providing easy-to-configure and manage functionality. It's designed to support large-scale networking required for AI and HPC applications, including multipath and out-of-order packet transport features.

The focus is on developing specifications, APIs, and source code to improve efficiency and performance at scale for AI and HPC workloads. It emphasizes the importance of interoperability through plug-in testing and compliance testing to ensure its openness and interoperability.

Founded by prominent companies including AMD, Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, Eviden, HPE, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft, they have experienced rapid growth, adding 45 new members since November 2023, bringing the total number of industry experts engaged in its eight working groups to 715.e

The architecture is based on several differentiated tenants;

Scalability and Interoperability: The consortium's emphasis on interoperability ensures that its solutions can be seamlessly integrated into existing Ethernet-based IP networks, which are already widely used in large clusters and hyperscale deployments for AI training. This broad, multi-vendor ecosystem of interoperable Ethernet switches, NICs, cables, transceivers, optics, management tools, and software provides significant advantages.

Optimized Communication Stack: Ultra Ethernet aims to minimize communication stack changes while maintaining and promoting Ethernet interoperability. This is achieved by developing specifications, API interfaces, and source code to define protocols, electrical and optical signalling characteristics, link-level and end-to-end network transport protocols, and management mechanisms.

Modernizing Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA): The UEC is pushing to replace the legacy RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) protocol with Ultra Ethernet Transport, an open protocol specification designed to run over IP and Ethernet. This modernization enhances the performance and efficiency of RDMA operations over Ethernet.

Addressing Tail Latency: The specification addresses critical networking requirements, including minimizing "tail latency" in AI model training. This is crucial as the initiation of the next training phase depends on the completion of the communication phase across all GPUs, and the last message to arrive gates the progress of all GPUs.

Multi-Highway Networking: The UEC is working to enable systems with multiple network highways that can be used simultaneously, ensuring that the whole system does not slow down due to a problem in one highway

By promoting industry standards and interoperability, Ultra Ethernet aims to reduce the total cost of ownership for networking solutions. This is achieved by fostering collaboration among industry leaders and ensuring the developed solutions are cost-effective and widely adaptable.

Additionally, the focus on developing a next-generation Ethernet solution stack ensures that it can support the evolving demands of AI and HPC workloads, including generative AI and large-scale simulations. This future-proofing is critical for maintaining the performance and efficiency of these workloads as they continue to grow in complexity and scale

Version 1.0 of the UEC specifications is slated for public release in Q3 2024, with ongoing work on the specifications described in a detailed blog on the UEC website

Tidbits..

Elon Musk reconsiders phone project after Apple Intelligence OpenAI integration

When Elon Musk attended the New York Times DealBook Summit last November, he casually mentioned that if there is an essential need to make a phone, then he would be developing a phone. Considering Musk’s recent posts on X following Apple’s WWDC 2024 event, it would appear that the CEO is now pondering the idea of a smartphone project more seriously. 

Read the full story

My Take: How will I charge it in northern Ontario?

A purpose-built Windows backdoor appears to be the new flavor of the month for giving attackers entry into targeted systems; after initial access, they pivot to ransomware delivery and system compromise in a wave of recent attacks.

Dubbed WarmCookie by researchers at Elastic Security Labs, the backdoor has been distributed widely in a spate of phishing emails starting in late April by a campaign called REF6127. It uses recruitment and potential jobs as lures, the researchers revealed in a blog post today

Read the full article

My Take: Cookies should only be associated with good things.

Space

What's in space this week?

Starlink, the satellite internet service by SpaceX, has introduced a customer service phone number, but it is currently available only to customers in Indonesia. This marks the first time Starlink users have access to direct phone support, a significant step towards improving customer service. However, customers in other countries, including the U.S., still need to rely on filing support tickets through the Starlink app or website.

My Take: Number one complaint from people is Starlink's support, or lack thereof. I'm surprised the Canadian-funded Starlink projects haven't outlined a requirement for something not in the realm of "better than nothing"

The Increasing Importance of Accurate and Timely Space Weather Forecasts

Accurate and timely space weather forecasts are becoming increasingly crucial as our reliance on satellite technology grows. Space weather events, such as solar flares and geomagnetic storms, can significantly impact satellite operations, GPS systems, and power grids. Improved forecasting capabilities help mitigate these risks by providing early warnings and enabling better preparedness, ensuring the resilience of critical infrastructure and communication networks in an era of heightened space activity.

Kepler Validates SDA-Compatible Optical Technology For Space Data Relay Constellation 

🇨🇦 Kepler Communications has successfully validated optical inter-satellite links (OISLs) between two data relay satellites equipped with SDA-compatible Tesat SCOT80 optical terminals. This marks a significant step for Kepler's space data relay constellation, The Kepler Network, which aims to provide modern Internet capabilities in space. The network is expected to offer continuous connectivity with low latency and high throughput, enhancing real-time data access for government and commercial missions by 2025.

AI

AI Tools Are Secretly Training on Real Images of Children

Over 170 images and personal details of children from Brazil have been repurposed by an open-source dataset without their knowledge or consent, and used to train AI, claims a new report from Human Rights Watch released Monday.

The images have been scraped from content posted as recently as 2023 and as far back as the mid-1990s, according to the report, long before any internet user might anticipate that their content might be used to train AI. Human Rights Watch claims that personal details and photos of these children were gathered by data repository Common Crawl and then URLs that linked to them were included in LAION-5B, a dataset that helps to train data for AI startups.

Read the full disturbing story

This AI-powered “black box” could make surgery safer

A new smart monitoring system could help doctors avoid mistakes—but it’s also alarming some surgeons and leading to sabotage.

Teodor Grantcharov has developed an AI-powered "black box" for operating rooms, similar to those in aviation, to improve surgical safety by recording and analyzing OR activities. Despite privacy and legal concerns, this technology anonymizes participants and aims to enhance performance and reduce errors. It's being adopted by multiple institutions, although it faces challenges with data management and acceptance by OR staff.

Fake beauty queens charm judges at the Miss AI pageant

Models created using generative artificial intelligence (AI) are competing in the inaugural “Miss AI” pageant this month.

The contestants have no physical, real-world presence. They exist only on social media, primarily Instagram, in the form of photorealistic images of extremely beautiful young women — all of it created using a combination of off-the-shelf and proprietary AI technology.

Read the full story

My Take: Are the judges real, or is that all AI, too? Seems this could all just happen without anyone being involved, or caring, for that matter.

Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics show off first project: an open source robot that does chores

Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics have unveiled their first collaboration: an open-source robot designed to perform household chores. This innovative project leverages Hugging Face's AI capabilities and Pollen Robotics' hardware expertise to create a versatile, user-friendly robot. The open-source nature of the project allows developers to contribute to and customize the robot, potentially accelerating advancements in domestic robotics and AI integration.

Infographic of the Week

Podcast Recommendation

Have you ever wondered why you can easily recall a childhood birthday party from decades ago but forget where you put your keys when you came home last night? On this episode, we’re joined by Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters author Charan Ranganath to unravel the mysteries of human memory, revealing that our memories are not literal recordings of the past but are instead facsimiles constructed in the moment. Here, Charan explores the crucial roles of emotion and attention in memory formation and shares fascinating insights into how our brains encode and retrieve information.

From the unreliability of eyewitness testimonies to the effects of repetitive experiences on our perception of time, Charan dives deep into the complexities of memory. He also offers practical advice for improving everyday recall, such as creating memory cues and diversifying experiences to keep the mind sharp. Join us as we explore the captivating world of memory science and discover the truth behind how we remember, forget, and sometimes even create false memories. Listen, learn, and enjoy!

Link to the podcast

Movie/Streaming Recommendation

The Blue Angels - Prime

The Blue Angels" is a thrilling documentary that takes you on an adrenaline-fueled ride with the elite Navy and Marine Corps pilots. Director Paul Crowder masterfully captures the intense training and heart-stopping aerial stunts of these daredevils.

The film's IMAX footage is breathtaking, making you feel like you're right there in the cockpit. While it may not delve as deeply into the pilots' personal lives, the flying sequences are undeniably the main attraction. Watching it on the biggest screen possible is highly recommended.

The Blue Angels were established in 1946, while the Canadian Snowbirds were formed in 1971. Both teams have their unique styles, with the Blue Angels known for their high-speed, high-G performances and the Snowbirds focusing on intricate formation flying.

Both are awe-inspiring in their own ways, but if you're looking for a more fast-paced, in-your-face experience, the Blue Angels might be the way to go. If you prefer a more polished, choreographed show, the Snowbirds are the way to go.

Until Next Time

Comments here are my own and do not represent the opinions, views or thoughts of any person, company or organization that I may be associated with.

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