Regardless of the business you work for, networking is a key skill for success. But in the contemporary environment we live in, creating and distributing business cards doesn't really make sense.

An alternative that is more environmentally friendly is a new electronic card called the Linq card that digitally sends your contact information to someone else's phone. 

The Linq business card looks exactly like a standard business card, but it has a significant difference: it can instantly share your contact information with others by tapping it on a smartphone.

The card makes use of a near-field communication (NFC) chip, the same technology that powers regular activities like using your smartphone to make in-store purchases, to enable the tap-sharing feature. Most devices have NFC reading capabilities, but if the person you want to share with doesn't have NFC, you can still easily share your information by having them scan the QR code on the back of the card.

The Linq profile is displayed once the person taps the card or scans the QR code. When you first activate your card, the Linq app prompts you to create your unique profile. The best feature is how customizable it is—from the design of your bio page to the social media platforms and links that are displayed, right down to the reference profile picture and even an included video.

If you meet regularly with new businesses and individuals, they offer an option for you to save the contact information on those with whom you share your information. The recipient has the option to add your contact information automatically to their default messaging app when it is scanned.

The traditional white card is the least expensive option in terms of price, coming in at $12 on Linq’s website; prices rise as you choose different color options, finishes and additional custom features.
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Regardless of age, these cards make wonderful stocking stuffers or presents for everyone who works.

New chips are being released by Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud computing division to power the most advanced computing, supporting tasks like gene sequencing and weather forecasting.

The largest provider of cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced recently that it will allow users to rent processing capacity that uses a new generation of its Graviton chips. The product, according to Peter DeSantis, senior vice president and manager of most of AWS' technical teams, is a platform for expanding access to high-performance computing.

The newest chip is Amazon's most recent push to produce more of the hardware for its large data centers that power AWS. Making its own chips, according to Amazon, will provide clients access to more powerful computers at a lower cost than they could by renting time on processors made by companies like Intel Corp., Nvidia Corp., or Advanced Micro Devices Inc. These businesses, which are also some of AWS's biggest suppliers, are now in direct competition with it because of the new chips. According to DeSantis, the chipmakers are still "excellent partners," and AWS intends to keep providing high-performance computing services based on their chips.

To kick-start its in-house chip designs, which initially were concentrated on basic computing activities like serving as the foundation for websites, AWS bought chipmaker Annapurna Labs in 2015. The high-performance computing initiative, which was unveiled at the opening of the AWS re:Invent trade conference, aims to show that Amazon's proprietary technology can compete head-to-head with chips from leading manufacturers.

The Inferentia chip, which is made to make deductions from enormous volumes of data, has undergone an update, according to AWS Chief Executive Officer Adam Selipsky, who made the announcement the second day of the re:Invent conference. According to Amazon, Inferentia2 handles larger data sets than its predecessor, making it possible to perform tasks like software-generated graphics or speech recognition and interpretation.

Among the most sophisticated systems powered by cutting-edge semiconductors are computers that forecast weather patterns and simulate the aerodynamics of race cars. Usually, enterprises, government agencies, and academic institutions have created pricey computer systems in their own data centers using components from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD.

According to DeSantis, the Graviton3E, the most recent model in AWS's line of Graviton processors, will be twice as capable as earlier models in one category of calculations used by high-performance computers. When combined with other AWS technology, the new offering will be 20% better than the previous one. Amazon didn't say when services based on the new chip would be available.
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“The reason that high-performance computing isn’t big is it’s hard,” DeSantis said. “It’s hard to get capacity, it’s hard to get time on that supercomputer. What we’re excited about is bringing the capabilities of high-performance computing to more workloads.”

The speed record for data transmission using only one light source and an optical chip has been shattered. 1.84 petabits per second (Pbit/s), or nearly twice the volume of all internet traffic per second, was the blazing rate at which engineers transported data. The team published their findings in the journal Nature Photonics.

It's difficult to emphasize how quickly 1.84 Pbit/s actually is. If you're lucky, you might get a 1-gigabit or 10-gigabit connection at home, but 1 petabit is equal to one million gigabits. Your average home internet connection receives a few hundred megabits per second. The new chip is 20 times quicker than the forthcoming ESnet6 update to the scientific network used by organizations like NASA.

The fact that this new speed record was achieved with only one light source and one optical device is even more amazing. Infrared laser light is split into hundreds of various frequencies, or colors, by a device known as a frequency comb. Data can then be encoded into the light by modulating the amplitude, phase and polarization of each of these frequencies, before recombining them into one beam and transmitting it through optical fiber.

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Chalmers University of Technology researchers used the system in experiments to transport data at 1.84 Pbit/s, encoded in 223 wavelength channels, down an optical fiber with 37 distinct cores that was just under 5 miles long. This system could manage the whole bandwidth of the internet, which is predicted to be just around 1 Pbit/s, at once and still have capacity for expansion.

Historically, the first big test was in mid-2020 when a similar photonic chip managed a transmission of 44 terabits per sec (Tbit/s). That record was broken this past May at a speed of 1.02 Pbit/s.

According to the team behind the new microprocessor, though, smashing records is far from over. Using a computer model, the researchers predict the device will eventually be able to transmit data at eye-watering speeds of up to 100 Pbit/s.
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“The reason for this is that our solution is scalable—both in terms of creating many frequencies and in terms of splitting the frequency comb into many spatial copies and then optically amplifying them, and using them as parallel sources with which we can transmit data,” said Professor Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, lead author of the study. “Although the comb copies must be amplified, we do not lose the qualities of the comb, which we utilize for spectrally efficient data transmission.”

When you travel, unless you are proficient in the native language, you are at a disadvantage. In this newsletter, we have covered five different translation devices starting back with Issue 2-50 in 2016. So I was a little skeptical of another tech device that is the international traveler’s best friend. But the Indiegogo-funded NEWYES Scan Reader Pen 3 has so many other uses that I couldn’t ignore it.

The device supports 9 UI languages, 55 OCR languages, 112 text translation languages, and 112 voice translation languages. You can scan written material, record your voice or someone else’s voice and translate that voice into any of a 112 languages. If you use the OCR scan, you can either read the text in another language or hear it pronounced orally. This means that not just translators can benefit from the device. Second-language learners can use it to get professional pronunciations of difficult words and use it to help with memorizing coursework. While scanning text, it recognizes up to 3,000 characters per minute and has a 0.3-second translation speed with up to 98% accuracy.

Individuals with dyslexia can use the device to read materials to them so they hear the material. When your child is eager to read independently but always comes across new words, the Scan Reader Pen 3 can help with both the pronunciation and the definition of the word.

The device also has a built-in dictionary. You can even save audio to listen to or view a translation later. Transfer your audio files directly to your Mac or PC via a USB port. It also supports Bluetooth, so you could connect your earbuds and listen in private.
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The company produced a YouTube video showing how the device works. The NEWYES Scan Reader Pen 3 is available for $159 from Amazon.

The White House reported recently that the President had implemented a new framework to safeguard the privacy of personal data transferred between the United States and Europe.

Since a European court invalidated an earlier version in 2020, the new framework significantly closes a gap in data protections on both sides of the Atlantic. The court determined that the U.S. had an excessive amount of power to monitor European data transferred under the previous arrangement.

The court case, known as Schrems II, “created enormous uncertainty about the ability of companies to transfer personal data from the European Union to the United States in a manner consistent with EU law,” then-Deputy Assistant Commerce Secretary James Sullivan wrote in a public letter shortly after the decision. The result increased business complexity by requiring U.S. corporations to use several "EU-approved data transmission protocols" on an as-needed basis, according to Sullivan.

The so-called Privacy Shield 2.0 seeks to address European concerns about possible surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies. In March, after the U.S. and EU agreed in principle to the new framework, the White House said in a fact sheet that the United States is “committed to implement new safeguards to ensure that signals intelligence activities are necessary and proportionate in the pursuit of defined national security objectives.”

With the new system, EU citizens will have access to a Data Protection Review Court (DPRC) that is independent of the U.S. government and composed of members from other countries. According to the March fact sheet, the committee "would have complete authority to adjudicate allegations and direct remedial steps as needed."

The civil liberties protection officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will also carry out an initial inquiry of complaints before a matter reaches the DPRC. Its judgments are final and enforceable, subject to review by the impartial body.

The executive order instructs the American intelligence community to change its policies and practices to conform to the framework's new privacy protections. It gives the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board instructions to go over these revisions and undertake an annual evaluation of the intelligence community's compliance with binding redress rulings.
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“The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework includes robust commitment to strengthen the privacy and civil liberties safeguards for signals intelligence, which will ensure the privacy of EU personal data,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters Thursday.

For years, each cellphone included a tiny smart card called a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) that contained the “identity” of that device so that it could connect to a specific cellular network.

Data on SIM cards includes user identification, location, and phone number, network authorization information, personal security keys, contact lists, and saved text messages.

When Apple introduced the new iPhone 14, they repeated something they had done years before. They removed a piece of hardware from the phone. First, it was the earphone jack and now it was the removable SIM card and tray. Just like the earphone jack, Apple is touting this change as a boon for consumers. Now, all iPhone 14s sold in the US will use eSIM technology.

"I think it's transformational," Ahmed Khattak, founder and CEO of US Mobile, a mobile virtual network operator that offers service on Verizon and T-Mobile's respective networks. "I think the fact that it even happened ... I'm shaking my head ... because it really democratizes connectivity." 

A type of programmable SIM card known as an eSIM (embedded-SIM) consists of software put onto a chip permanently installed in a device, as opposed to an integrated circuit on a releasable universal integrated circuit card, which is commonly constructed of PVC.
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Once an eSIM carrier profile has been installed, it operates the same as a physical SIM, complete with a unique integrated circuit card identifier (ICCID) and network authentication key generated by the carrier.
So, why is this change so important? For users, there are three advantages to eSIMs over physical SIM cards:
     •  It’s more secure, because no one can remove it from the phone and use it to intercept phone calls or text messages. (This isn’t the most common form of SIM card hijacking, but it is still possible for someone with physical access to the phone.)
     •  Switching carriers is easier, because you don’t have to wait for a SIM card to arrive or pick one up at a store.
    •  Adding extra lines is easier, because you no longer need a phone with dual SIM card trays. (On the iPhone, Apple supports up to two phone numbers and eight data lines with eSIM.)

An eSIM also benefits phone manufacturers and wireless carriers.
    • By getting rid of the SIM tray, Apple will gain more valuable interior space it can use to install more technology.
     • For carriers, it's a money-saver because they no longer must spend between $10-$20 per physical SIM card.

Like almost every change, there are going to be some growing pains. Not all US carriers are eSIM compatible. Some alternative providers that lease capacity from the major carriers–known as Mobile Virtual Network Operators, or MVNOs, in industry jargon–don’t support eSIM today, which means you can’t use an iPhone 14 on their networks. Some notable examples include Ting, Walmart Mobile, US Mobile, Net10, and Tello.

Conversely, there are small carriers like Mint Mobile, US Mobile and Boost Mobile in the US who have been preparing for this change for some time.
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"Mint has always believed in digital technologies that enhance and ease wireless services," Aron North, Mint Mobile's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. "Mint has been supporting [the] eSIM for almost two years because we knew, even back then, this innovation would allow users to switch faster and easier."

According to the head of the European Space Agency (ESA), Europe is exploring the development of space-based solar power to boost its energy independence and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

"It will be up to Europe, ESA and its Member States to push the envelope of technology to solve one of the most pressing problems for people on Earth of this generation," said Josef Aschbacher, director general of the space agency, an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states.

In the past, the space agency hired British and German consultancy companies to do studies on the costs and advantages of creating space-based solar power. To give European policymakers technical and programmatic knowledge, the ESA published the studies this past August.

Aschbacher will propose his Solaris Program to the ESA Council in November. Aschbacher has been trying to increase support for solar energy from space in Europe as a route to energy de-carbonization. This council determines the budget and priorities for ESA. The construction of the solar power system would start in 2025, according to Aschbacher's proposals.

The Positives. Space-based solar energy is simple to understand conceptually. Solar energy is captured by satellites orbiting high above the Earth's atmosphere. The satellites would then transform that energy into current and transmit it back to Earth via microwaves, where it is captured by photovoltaic cells or antennas and transformed into electricity for homes or businesses. There is no night or cloud cover to impede collection, and the solar incidence is significantly higher than in northern latitudes of the European continent, which are the main advantages of collecting solar energy from space as opposed to the ground.

The program proposes enormous installations in geostationary orbit that could supply between 25% and 30% of the yearly electricity demand for Europe, which is now estimated to be over 3,000 TWh. These technologies would be expensive to develop and implement, costing hundreds of billions of euros.

Why will it cost so much? Because it would take a constellation of many enormous satellites situated 36,000 kilometers from Earth to enable space-based solar power. Each of these satellites would be 10 or more times heavier than the 450 metric ton International Space Station, which took over a decade to build in low Earth orbit. The final launch of these satellites' components would need hundreds or, more likely, thousands of heavy lift rocket missions.

"Using projected near-term space lift capability, such as SpaceX’s Starship, and current launch constraints, delivering one satellite into orbit would take between 4 and 6 years," Frazer-Nash, the British Firm involved in the study states. "Providing the number of satellites to satisfy the maximum contribution… to the energy mix in 2050 would require a 200-fold increase over current space-lift capacity."

The Negatives. Although the idea of solar energy generated in space is intriguing, it is not without its detractors. Elon Musk, who one might expect supporting a system that is in space and produces solar energy, is one of the biggest opponents.

"It's the stupidest thing ever," he said, several years ago. "If anyone should like space solar power, it should be me. I've got a rocket company, and a solar company. I should be really on it. But it's super obviously not going to work. It has to be better than having solar panels on Earth. With a solar panel in orbit, you get twice the solar energy, but you've got to do a double conversion: Photon to electron to photon, back to electron. What's your conversion efficiency? All in, you're going to have a real hard time even getting to 50%. So just put that solar cell on Earth."

He is not alone either. Physicist Casey Handmer identified four cost drivers in an online analysis that will render space-based solar power unaffordable: transmission losses, heat losses, logistics expenses, and a space technology penalty. According to Handmer, the cost of space-based solar energy is at least "three orders of magnitude" more than energy sources on Earth.

"I can relax assumptions all day," Handmer wrote. "I can grant 100 percent transmission efficiency, $10/kg orbital launch costs, complete development and procurement cost parity, and a crippling land shortage on Earth. Even then, space-based solar power still won’t be able to compete. I can grant a post-scarcity fully automated luxury communist space economy with self-replicating robots processing asteroids into solar panels, and even then, people will still prefer solar panels on their roof."

Perhaps the conflict in Ukraine and the dearth of Russian natural gas will spur this project along. A major space agency trying out a technique that has been considered science fantasy for literally decades would be good. But there are many obstacles to overcome and a lengthy time frame.
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The Earth will probably get its energy from space in the future. But will that happen in the next century or even later? Without a doubt, the most comprehensive and ambitious project the European Space Agency has ever done would be space-based solar power. It would undoubtedly be the Apollo program of the twenty-first century. Only much bigger.

Each week, I select one article from the current issue of my newsletter Technology This Week, and post it to this blog. Today, I received a note from a representative from the VPN company Private Internet Access (PIA).
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In his note to me, he said he’d read my article on passkeys and thought it was interesting. He continued, “Everyone online is at an ever-increasing risk of being targeted by hackers these days, which is why covering these issues is really important.”

“At PIA, we’ve also done our part to raise awareness, even producing an in-depth, four-part series on hacking that was well received. We added a helpful glossary, important infographics, and expanded statistics, plus a few safety tips for preventing cyberattacks.”

“Perhaps you would consider fitting in a link to our series in your page? We hope this will help keep more of your readers safe and well-informed – and much less vulnerable to hackers.”
So, if you want to get some well-thought-out information on hacking and Internet security, consider reading their four-part series.

On September 1, the USB Promoter Group announced USB4 V2.0, a specification that will double the current max speed of USB-C from 40Gbps to 80Gbps. This spec will work with existing USB-C passive cables and new 80Gbps USB-C “active cables”.

USB4 will be backwards compatible with USB4 Version 1.0, USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and Thunderbolt 3. It will also align with the latest versions of DisplayPort and PCIe.

Most home users might be perplexed as to why they've never heard of USB 4, the standard that USB 4.0 version 2.0 seeks to replace. The widely used USB 3.2 standard was intended to be doubled in performance by the August 2019 announcement of USB 4. The minimum throughput requirement for USB 4 devices is 20 Gbit/s, which is the same as the maximum throughput that USB 3.2 offers, even though the standard does permit up to 40 Gbit/s.

Although there are USB 4 cables and goods like docking stations and external hard drives available, most items still use USB 3.2 or even older standards.
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It will be up to phone, laptop, PC and USB cable manufacturers to implement the technology. It's another win for USB-C, which Europe has decided to standardize on for all phones and gadgets.

How many people do you know who use the same password for everything and it isn’t even something hard to guess, like a birthday, anniversary, address or just “password” or “123456”? There are a lot and even with today’s excellent password managers, users have to be proactive to be sure they have rock solid passwords, change them regularly and protect them by not using them more than once.

Standards. A group of technology giants, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, have banded together to form the FIDO Alliance. This is an open industry association with a focused mission: authentication standards to help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords. FIDO promotes the development of, use of, and compliance with standards for authentication and device attestation. 

Apple is the first of the major players in FIDO to bring out their standards compliant solution to removing passwords from online security. The new technology is called Passkeys and will debut this fall on all of Apple’s operating systems: macOS Ventura, iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and Apple TV.

How do Passkeys Work? Passkeys are unique digital keys that are easy to use, more secure, never stored on a web server, and stay on your device. Hackers can’t steal Passkeys in a data breach or trick users into sharing them. Passkeys use Touch ID or Face ID for biometric verification, and iCloud Keychain to sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV with end-to-end encryption.

When you create an online account on a website, you will use a Passkey instead of a password. “To create a Passkey, just use Touch ID or Face ID to authenticate, and you’re done,” said Darin Adler, Apple’s P of internet technologies.

When you go to log in to that website again, Passkeys allow you to prove who you are by using your biometrics rather than typing in a pass phrase (or having your password manager enter it for you). When signing in to a website on a Mac, a prompt will appear on your iPhone or iPad to verify your identity. Apple says its Passkeys will sync across your devices using iCloud’s Keychain, and the Passkeys are stored on your devices rather than on servers. (Using iCloud Keychain should also solve the problem of losing or breaking your linked devices.) Under the hood, Apple’s Passkeys are based on the Web Authentication API (Within) and are end-to-end encrypted so nobody can read them, including Apple. The system for creating Passkeys uses public-private key authentication to prove you are who you say you are.

A password-less system would be a significant step forward for most people’s online security. As well as eliminating guessable passwords, removing passwords reduces the likelihood of successful phishing attacks. And passwords can’t be stolen in data breaches if they don't exist in the first place. (Some apps and websites already allow people to log in using their fingerprints or using face recognition, but these usually require you to first create an account with a password.)
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When all the tech companies have rolled out their version of passkeys, it should be possible for the system to work across different devices—in theory, you could use your iPhone to log in to a Windows laptop, or an Android tablet to log in to a website in Microsoft’s Edge Browser. “All of FIDO’s specs have been developed collaboratively, with inputs from hundreds of companies,” says Andrew Shikiar, the executive director of the FIDO Alliance. Shikiar confirms Apple is the first company to roll out passkey-style technology and says this shows “how tangible this approach will soon be for consumers worldwide.”