Technology – Page 9 – David Bradley

Cuts improve broadband

Our neighbours have a man in to replace their old garden fence. He’s a friend, I had a chat with him while he was digging the holes for the new fenceposts and mentioned that our broadband and phone cables run along the boundary between the two gardens. He pointed out that he’d already noted their presence.

Unfortunately, a slip of the spade and an errant clematis root led to the severing of our information artery. He was very apologetic and carried out a repair with a couple of coax connector blocks and a phone line coupler. He asked me to check our broadband, phone, and TV before he would embed the new connections in resin to preclude water ingress and prevent corrosion.

Now, here’s where this story gets weirdly interesting. Once the broadband was booted up, I ran a speed test on the connection. Seems we are now getting a 50 megabits per second greater rate than we are paying for. We seem to have jumped from a nominal 150 Mbps to well over 200 Mbps. Now, I don’t know for sure whether our provider was already pushing us speeds of 200+ but, that’s not what our account says, so, that’s nice…

It gets weirder, Mrs Sciencebase received a couple of landline calls, actually from the fence man, and she reported back that the phone seems rather more clear now than it did before.

So, how could that be? How can cutting and repairing a wire improve anything? Surely, the presence of those metal connectors halfway along the cable between the roadside box and our inlet junction would lead to some kind of degradation. I was expecting our connection speed to be a little lower, if anything, not more than 33% faster.

I asked another friend, an engineer, who has worked in the telecoms industry for more decades than he would perhaps care for me to admit on his behalf. He correctly surmised that we had a cable provider rather than upgraded phoneline broadband.

“Your provider uses a broadband protocol called DOCSIS, version 3.0 here, which is nominally 200 Mbps max,” he told me. “This protocol is quite sensitive to signal levels – too strong a signal is just as much of a problem as too weak. If the signal level is wrong, the speed suffers. They’ve obviously adjusted the signal level better at the green box.” So perhaps what was happening was that we had a strong signal that wasn’t working optimally but the cut and reconnection have taken the top off that strength just enough to make it work slightly better.”

Perhaps now that we’re back up and running it is time to add a more reinforced sheath to the cable so that an accidental severance doesn’t happy again, I cannot imagine that we would get a speed boost a second time with another splice.

Science on TikTok

UPDATE: Well, it was worth a try…some of the vids I posted had a few hundred views and a handful of likes, one got 1500+ views and a few dozen likes. But the vast majority of the stuff on there is pointless nonsense and there seems to be little engagement to be frank. Even attempting to find STEM people has not really worked so far. I am going to leave it to brew on the backburner for a while over the Christmas period and come back to it next month.

You may have heard about TikTok, it’s a fairly new video platform (actually, it’s ancient, founded in September 2016!). Rumour has it that’s mostly youngster doing silly stunts and pranking each other and if it’s not that then its craftspeople and builders and decorators showing off their skills in plastering, bricklaying, tree-felling, carving, plastering, and other stuff. There’s been some 15-second activism that hit the headlines recently and seems to be growing…

I registered with the app soon after it launched, but never used it at the time. Well, as I mentioned here a few days ago I was inspired by engineer-inventor Dr Lucy Rogers to take a closer look as I imagined that there could be potential for engaging and perhaps even inspiring some of those youngsters with some sciencey videos.

My early postings are a bit eclectic, some music, some moths, a stylish stile, silly snowy filters, and others bits & bobs. Some seem to have been viewed several hundred times and liked by a few dozen users; others don’t seem to have hit the target at all.

Anyway, as I did with Twitter more than a decade ago, I thought it might be nice to start compiling a list of STEM people active on TikTok and maybe even encourage a few who aren’t but who have content that they share on other social media to take a look. So, I’ve made a start and will add anyone who is in STEM and sharing experiments, demos, and other pertinent stuff, just let me have your handle and I’ll take a look.

@sciencebase
@DrLucyRogers
@RuthAmos
@RobIves
@DavidDobrik
@ChemTeacherPhil
@Rahul
@InstituteofHumanAnatomy
@TheJKGamer1
@SarahMackAttack
@lab_shenanigans
@TheTikTokScientist

Espresso Portobello

UPDATE: Mrs Sciencebase in action with the minipresso

Sciencebase has had various gadgets to review over the years most of them computing peripherals and related technology. Today, a minipresso from Wacaco Ltd arrived special delivery. As the name would suggest it’s a mini/portable espresso maker. Basically, a container with the requisite metal filter and a push-button pump to build up a head of steam to force hot water through the filter loaded with coffee granules into a receptacle.

All looks very easy to use, although I persuaded Mrs Sciencebase to find the instructions online and she followed through with the Youtube demo. Seems like an ideal device for camping where a full-blown expresso machine might be a little over the top, but where you can usually boil water on your camping stove and bring with you your favour coffee granules.

The claim is to a nice 70-millilitre espresso with a decent crema (the syrupy froth so beloved of many espresso drinkers. Camping season is at an end for us for 2019, but this would definitely be required kit in our big camping box for any future trips.

Once I’ve made myself one, I’ll update the blog with a report on the taste test…

Can you hear me, Mother?

Back in the day, Mrs Sciencebase worked for an innovative and aspirational electronics company. One of the developments they were working on at a time long before mobile phones were ubiquitous was how to make phone calls clearer. They wanted to get rid of the squelch and muffled tones that are commonplace. The idea had to be to do this without increasing the signal bandwidth that is needed to transmit the mutterings of caller and receiver.

The problem was never solved and so remains a serious issue particularly for those who have hearing problems. Turning up the volume doesn’t cut it as that simply makes the mid-range muffle mufflier and squeezes the squelch so that it becomes unbearable. A novel solution has been developed by a startup, Audacious, in conjunction with leading hearing specialists, Brian Moore and Michael Stone.

Potential users do a special hearing test, which they call a Sound Check using their current phone and a web browser. Based on their responses, Audacious can then tweak the sound at source before it is compressed for transmission as usual via the phone network. This, they suggest, improves the sound quality for the recipient and gives them a much better experience than they would have with a standard call that isn’t tailored to their hearing profile.

You use your own phone, but switch to their SIM and all the calls you receive via their system are essentially tweaked so they’re clearer for you. You can retake the audio test periodically and the EQ and compression algorithm will update your account so that you continue to get the best out of your phone.

Now, I know for a fact I’ve got some left-right hearing discrepancy and while I’ve still got pretty got top-end for some in their sixth decade, I know that my mid-range hearing leaves a bit to be desired and given that that is the range at which most of the characteristics of speech are heard. I tried the test and when I’d finished, the system played some speech as it would be with an Audacious SIM card and lets you hear how it was before and after. It did seem to make a significant difference to hear the call with the Audacious treatment as opposed to the muffled and squelchy calls I hear on my phone with my current provider.

I’ve tried doing the built-in Samsung EQ sound improvement in advanced sound settings that also involves a simple hearing test on your phone, but that’s not really improved things enough to give me clearer calls. Until audio/video messaging is as accessible as conventional phone call this does sound like the way forward.

You can take the Audacious sound check here and hear the difference for yourself. The assumption is that you have some kind of hearing deficit, which most of us of a certain age, and especially musicians and concertgoers often do, and anyone who has a career in a noisy environment. Find out more on their website or via their Facebook.

Can you hear me, Mother? Can now, son!

Streaming users

Digital goods – whether software, music and video files, images, documents – can all be transferred at almost zero cost between users provided they have the appropriate computer system and network connection. Unfortunately, for several industries that relied on copyright control for their profits. The ease with which digital goods can be shared means that once a copy has been unshackled from any copy protection (if one were available) it can be shared very quickly to as many users as wish to have the digital goods.

In the nineteenth century, the sheet music industry suffered a downturn in profits, as copying of paper documents became feasible and musicians and singers could obtain cheap “pirated” copies of the sheet music they needed to perform the music in the home and elsewhere. The recorded music industry suffered a similar downturn in sales of physical media with the invention of the mp3 file and related digital formats that were rapidly pirated and shared on peer-to-peer networks. A parallel industry, emerged that attempted to regain some of the profits by charging users a monthly fee to stream as much music and video as they liked, cutting out the need to search and obtain the files from the P2P networks illicitly.

Writing in the International Journal of Electronic Business, Teresa Fernandes and JoÃ£o Guerra of the Faculty of Economics, at the University of Porto, Portugal, discuss the drivers and deterrents that push people towards or away from such streaming services. Ultimately, to draw people to a paid streaming service, that service must offer an easier alternative to P2P networks and the free availability of almost all digital content to anyone with an internet connection.

The challenge of music streaming services to attract paying subscribers is increasingly difficult, the team writes. Their findings suggest that improving service quality, product features, or catalogue size will be unlikely to persuade those users happy to use pirated content to opt for a paid service. They suggest that the providers must find a way to offer a balance between free and paid content, perhaps through a freemium setup that is common where paying customers get to stream as much music as they like without advertising breaks and have access to the full catalogue. A free service that is easy to use might persuade some people to abandon the pirated content approach and make their listening legitimate. The team’s study hints at how marketing of a freemium or other such service might be successfully differentiated for different user gender and ethnicity.

Fernandes, T. and Guerra, J. (2019) ‘Drivers and deterrents of music streaming services purchase intention’, Int. J. Electronic Business, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp.21—42.

Big, when I’m on Twitter

I write a lot, it’s been my wont for 30+ years. Everything from astronomy to zoology, with a lot of chemistry, materials science, nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals and much else in between. Then, of course, there are the butterfly and moth photos, the birds, the songs and the tech stuff. As I mentioned recently, I feel like education hoodwinked me into becoming a chemist when my childish self imagined I’d be a marine biologist. My first professional article was about The Great Barrier Reef after Mrs Sciencebase and myself a trip took a trip down under in 1989). I suppose during the last decade or so I’ve tried to reinvent myself as some kind of latterday polymath and not really had a second thought about hiring an aqualung.

Anyway, all that science and stuff…it gets some attention on social media, not as much as it used to, despite my peaking at something like 54,000 followers on Twitter and almost 12,000 page fans on Facebook, but some. Always a surprise then that something entirely off-piste, even for me becomes the most engaged tweet for a while. It was an attempt at a humorous graphical response following a post showing a photo of an adder that resembled the meanderings of the River Thames in London that reminded people of the ident for popular BBC TV soap opera, Eastenders.

Go on, get outta my skin!

With apologies to Eliza Doolittle for the blog title…