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Google Testing Project Loon: Concerns Are Without Factual Basis (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a filing submitted to the FCC, Google has stated that while concerns for health and environmental risks posed by Project Loon testing were 'genuinely held,' 'there is no factual basis for them.' Google's filing attempts to address a wide range of complaints, from environmental concerns related to increased exposure to RF and microwave radiation, to concerns for loss of control and crashes of the balloons themselves. First, it states that its proposed testing poses no health or environmental risks, and is all well within the standards of experimentation that the FCC regularly approves. It also pledges to avoid interference with any other users of the proposed bandwidth, by collocating transmitters on shared platforms and sharing information kept current daily by an FCC-approved third party database manager.
I have no idea what Project Loon is. One line to explain it in the summary would have been nice.
John
Building housing over a graveyard is also not going to cause a ghost problem or piss off anyones ancestor. But it still bugs people severely to the point of extreme behaviour and disruption of their lives. Having someone beam WiFi at uou and not let you make them stop is going to provoke strong reactions meanigful to the provoked.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Any RF engineers on here.
Google's letter says that they will be using E Band(2GHz-3GHz) and will be staying below EIRP 41dBW. This seems REALLY high to me. 71dBm(12kW) if my math is right?
Meanwhile WiFi operates at 2.4GHZ with a legal max EIRP 36dBm(4watts). If Google's statement and my math are correct, how how is this legal and how can WiFi have ANY chance with a 12kW airborne transmitter?
Just because I'm exposed to natural sources of radio activity does not mean I want more of it in my diet. Same with non-ionizing radiation. My neighbors are my neighbors. Google is not my neighbor. their WiFi is for their profit. Not so with my neighbors. Unlike my neighbors, The google engineer telling me it's safe is not living in my neighborhood being irradiated by it.
If you browse through the FCC database and read the objections to date, what you'll find is mainly a bunch of "OMG! Electromagnetic radiation will poison us! Stop Project Loon!" It's the tinfoil hat crowd, the ones who think that WiFi and cell phones are giving us brain cancer. Some of their letters are good for a laugh, but they're not a serious threat to Loon.
The serious objections will come later, from telcos who find their wireless rate models undercut by Google, or by petty despots who absolutely, positively do not want Google giving cheap Internet access to their subjects.
Project Loon's main thrust has always seemed to be broadband in areas without real infrastrucure. While I'm sure they might like to test some stuff in the US, realistically they would likely be better off with a big rollout in Africa from a PR perspective which would also give them plenty of data for when/if they decided for a US or Europe rollout.
FYI, there are biophysical effects to cell radiation. Well documented, published research from prestigious institutions has shown that under exposure to cell phone frequencies that bacterial and mammalian cells produce a lot of lipids. Why this happens is not known. One of the speculations is DNA is being activated by the radiation. At first this seems impossible to believe since the wavelengths of the radiation are orders of magnitude larger than the size of DNA. But models have shown that it does not take a lot of energy to cause Diploid DNA to separate into two strands. What happens if resonance occur and small "bubble" openings between the strands ripple along the chain. Thus very tiny amounts of radiation can affect the DNA. Where these opening occur depend on where a resonance condition can occur. Thus it is possible to imagine selective activation of parts of the DNA in the presence of cell phone radiation. Controls have shown the effect is not due to heating and a number of other possible laboratory artifacts in setting up the tests. Since there is no way yet to observe the predicted DNA response and the models are idealized it's not known if that happens in real cells or if that effect is any way connected to the observed lipid production. None the less what you can say is:
1) it's not crazy to say Cell phone radiation can selectively excite DNA
2) Cells do repspond inthe presence of cell radiation
Thus while there is as far as I know zero evidence of direct damage to a multi-cellular human, the fact that it can act on individual cells is cause for further study.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
http://www.odditycentral.com/wtf/italian-village-plagued-by-mysterious-fires-has-been-puzzling-scientists-for-years.html
There are lots of stories about people experiencing weird power surges that electric company technicians can't solve. Some tie this to poltergeist activity. Some people think the Hutchinson effect is related. Others just chalk it up to Nikola Tesla's time-travel experiments blowing up the taiga.
Personally I blame shoddy script-writing for this reality. Seriously, how many times can humanity avoid extinction by the skin of it's teeth before people realize that they're living in a work of fiction. Poorly written by the lowest form of hack.
Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Mammalian Stem Cells Reprogramming in Response to Terahertz Radiation
http://journals.plos.org/ploso...
We report that extended exposure to broad-spectrum terahertz radiation results in specific changes in cellular functions that are closely related to DNA-directed gene transcription. Our gene chip survey of gene expression shows that whereas 89% of the protein coding genes in mouse stem cells do not respond to the applied terahertz radiation, certain genes are activated, while other are repressed. RT-PCR experiments with selected gene probes corresponding to transcripts in the three groups of genes detail the gene specific effect. The response was not only gene specific but also irradiation conditions dependent. Our findings suggest that the applied terahertz irradiation accelerates cell differentiation toward adipose phenotype by activating the transcription factor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARG). Finally, our molecular dynamics computer simulations indicate that the local breathing dynamics of the PPARG promoter DNA coincides with the gene specific response to the THz radiation. We propose that THz radiation is a potential tool for cellular reprogramming.
University of Alberta Edmonton
Intense THz pulses cause H2AX phosphorylation and activate DNA damage response in human skin tissue
http://tinyurl.com/jsx5q7x
Recent emergence and growing use of terahertz (THz) radiation for medical imaging and public security screening raise questions on reasonable levels of exposure and health consequences of this form of electromagnetic radiation. In particular, picosecond-duration THz pulses have shown promise for novel diagnostic imaging techniques. However, the effects of THz pulses on human cells and tissues thus far remain largely unknown. We report on the investigation of the biological effects of pulsed THz radiation on artificial human skin tissues. We observe that exposure to intense THz pulses for ten minutes leads to a significant induction of H2AX phosphorylation, indicating that THz pulse irradiation may cause DNA damage in exposed skin tissue. At the same time, we find a THz-pulse- induced increase in the levels of several proteins responsible for cell-cycle regulation and tumor suppression, suggesting that DNA damage repair mechanisms are quickly activated. Furthermore, we find that the cellular response to pulsed THz radiation is significantly different from that induced by exposure to UVA (400 nm).
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Only post citing useful facts in this debate.
So that would be most of the USA in about 30 years then at the current trend of infrastructure decay. Nor next year if the isps get their way with the definition of broadband ;-)
SIGH.
More proof of how far slashdot has declined.
Everybody knows it's shiny side down, so the chicks don't see the shiny side
Hell, you're probably using aluminum, to boot.
I know, I know, IHBTIHLHAND...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Project Loon... is that what they're calling Congress these days?
That's great but Google are using gigahertz frequencies, not terahertz frequencies. There is a three order of magnitude difference. This roughly the same as the difference between visible light and extreme UV/X-rays and there is clearly a huge difference in how these two types of radiation interact with the body.
If you browse through the FCC database and read the objections to date, what you'll find is mainly a bunch of "OMG! Electromagnetic radiation will poison us! Stop Project Loon!"
If you are going to name the project 'loon' why would you be surprised that the responses you get are loony?
First, this is THz radiation - almost infrared. At high field values (0.3W/cm^2!) with prolonged exposure times. There are many articles that describe effects at lower levels, but so far they all have problems with quality and/or reproducibility.
What next? "Exposure to intense infrared radiation causes changes in cell structure?"
Google has stated that while concerns for health and environmental risks posed by Project Loon testing were 'genuinely held,' 'there is no factual basis for them.'
While Google's belief that provably invalid health and environmental concerns aren't important in a political matter might be genuinely held, there is no factual basis for that belief.
Generally, prototyping near your research facility is a lot more cost effective (and therefore produces more results) than traveling to distant regions with poor infrastructure and changeable political support.
In order for stable 2-way radio communications, they would have to launch dozens of what would have to be considered expendable balloon and radio packages every day from hundreds of locations, weather permitting.
Free balloons are notoriously hard to control (directionally) and I seriously doubt they would consistently get the endurance they want/need.
Project Loon is what happens at large companies when you want to retain very senior people who can no longer be bothered to do the real, actual work. You come up with a bullshit project for them and let them spend years of their life to build it only to cancel it in the end.
FCC claims on RF are debatable and Google has the right to debunk or can provide acceptable solutions.
FAA safety claims are not debatable. A Loon out of control or a crashing loon is a crash and will do some damage...somewhere. Just that the damage maybe insignificant, though a large object like that has plenty of unacceptable crash scenarios.
The point is everyone discounted terrahertz for the same reason. wavelengths too big. turns out it's not. and as for there being high power well a large fraction of the cells respond in minutes of treatement. this is suited for lab studied to see if there is in effect in a hurry. It's well known that dose response is not linear. Sometimes that means that a lower dose has no effect at all. Sometimes it means a high dose is saturating the effect and a lower dose would still have an effect. . In the wild you are doing this over decades of exposure on far more cells. Until people can explain terra hertz it may be prudent to remember this when making fun of foil hats.
In other news PetaHertz and ExaHertz pulses pass through the body and give you cancer even in relatively small doses.
I can quote information completely irrelevant to the subject at hand as well.
I'll be nervous about those studies when we decide to enable that dreaded 301 GHz radio on the ballons or my cell-phone. You do uderstand the difference between KHz, MHz, GHz and THz, where the frequency of electromagnetic radiation becomes too high to be measured digitally via electronic counters, so must be measured by proxy using the properties of wavelength and energy (from the WP page on Terahertz radiation).
While I enjoyed the distraction, please cite a study that applies to this argument because I genuinely want to see non-nutter evidence of cell/wireless damage to human cells.
The implementation of this project is a thoughtless affront to conservation of Helium when a cheaper and far more plentiful alternative is readily available, i.e. Hydrogen. Wikipedia states that they will simply vent the helium into the atmosphere after each balloon's 100 day end of life estimate - it's completely diffused and irrecoverable.
...) If there were a fire incident while in service at that altitude, the hydrogen and combustible balloon material would be exhausted long before it posed a danger to anything on the ground.
Hydrogen is superior for this application - for example, weather balloons often use hydrogen due to cost, with side benefits being lower density and lower diffusion rates across the membrane; flammability is not a major concern.
(Wikipedia: The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 18 km (11 mi)
I'm guessing the only thing preventing its usage here are the bad optics of hydrogeh, e.g. Hindenburg, which forever stigmatized hydrogen when there's any need to get the public on board with something, even when it's used in an innocuous component of the project (balloons to hold TX/RX nodes), i.e. these are like weather balloons, which again use hydrogen and pose no public threat.
Somewhat ironically, you can use Google to discover why there is a shortage of helium, and the many irreplaceable usages of it, including MRIs, superconducting magnets, industrial and medical CO2 lasers, and interestingly as well the manufacturing of semiconductors - something I'd imagine a Silicon Valley tech giant might be interested in preserving if nothing else.
Learn how the BLM manages reserve stock that is dangerously depleted, and how it's the main source of all commercial acquisitions of the element since WWII.
Note that you can't recover helium from the atmosphere once it's diffused out of a balloon, the atmosphere simply doesn't retain it and it disperses into space. The only known earthly means of producing helium is via incredibly slow nuclear decay that occurs in some natural gas wells over time frames that make millennia seem like minutes.
Wikipedia:
When taken out of service, the balloon is guided to an easily reached location, and the helium is vented into the atmosphere. The balloons typically have a maximum life of about 100 days, although Google claims that its tweaked design can enable them to stay aloft for closer to 200 days.[24]
Click Bait!!
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
"the secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code and said it looked all good to them" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015
My code went thru verification by Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes' hpHosts
hpHosts Site Admin Mr. Steven Burn quoted:
"I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code, and yes, it is safe."
FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...
(On my latest 9.0++ code engine above & from past versions -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )
A competent coder & BEST security researcher I know of FROM THE BEST ANTIMALWARE THERE IS http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
NOT a secretary!
I don't give away work to be stolen OR misused like GOOGLE CHROME http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
---
"won't demonstrate security of his product be exposing the source" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015
Bullshit: 62 reputable sources + /. users say different:
Safe by 57 antivirus programs in 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
+
the 32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
&
Per VirScan (installer too)-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
APK
P.S.=> Eat your words, scumbag:
Tell us about AD + DNS too while you're @ it & how you said I said not to run DNS when I use it myself & said to NOT use external to network DNS with AD http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
OR
About how my program NEEDS admin privelege to update too (& it doesn't http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )
LOL... fool - 'eat your words' on ALL those accounts chump!
... apk
"the secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code and said it looked all good to them" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015
My code went thru verification by Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes' hpHosts
hpHosts Site Admin Mr. Steven Burn quoted:
"I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code, and yes, it is safe."
FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...
(On my latest 9.0++ code engine above & from past versions -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )
A competent coder & BEST security researcher I know of FROM THE BEST ANTIMALWARE THERE IS http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
NOT a secretary!
I don't give away work to be stolen OR misused like GOOGLE CHROME http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
---
"won't demonstrate security of his product be exposing the source" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015
Bullshit: 62 reputable sources + /. users say different:
Safe by 57 antivirus programs in 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
+
the 32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
&
Per VirScan (installer too)-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
APK
P.S.=> Eat your words, scumbag:
Tell us about AD + DNS too while you're @ it & how you said I said not to run DNS when I use it myself & said to NOT use external to network DNS with AD http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
OR
About how my program NEEDS admin privelege to update too (& it doesn't http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )
LOL... fool - 'eat your words' on ALL those accounts chump!
... apk
"you are stealing other people's work in your code" - by Coren22 (1625475)
I don't steal (you project YOU do). I write my own code (you don't) & use public data to protect + speed up users.
---
"You have yet to submit to a code review from anyone but your friend. No, I don't trust that" - by Coren22 (1625475)
A seasoned security pro & competent coder reviewed my work as safe & IT'S WHAT HE DOES (unlike you). He can't "play friends": It's his site & reputation.
---
"You are terrified someone will steal your software if you publish the source code." - by Coren22 (1625475)
I don't give source away W/ GOOD REASON (Google's mistake w/ CHROME) -> http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
---
"You have yet to address the issue of name resolution performance of anything not found in your hosts file. This is a serious issue when the hosts file is so large" - by Coren22 (1625475)
Placing users' FAVORITE SITES where they spend 95++% of their time online @ TOP of hosts files cached in LOCAL RAM gets them to sites FASTER & MORE RELIABLY than a more-than-potentially REDIRECT POISONED DNS SERVER (99.999% of ISP DNS aren't patched vs. the kaminsky flaw, or DNS amp attacks).
---
"DNS outperforms your hosts file solution several fold" - by Coren22 (1625475)
No it doesn't (see above) - & DNS outperforms hosts in GOING DOWN (does a lot) OR poisoning users via redirect poisonings (DNS amp attacks = another).
---
"so why not just run your own DNS server? Oh, resources eh?" - by Coren22 (1625475)
More resource consumption + moving parts complexity + POWER USE doesn't = a GOOD solution vs. hosts by using redirect poisoning/DNS amp attack exploitable DNS w/ only a few systems @ home.
---
"But you have no problem running 100k copies of the hosts file in a domain" - by Coren22 (1625475)
It works easily migrated by central admins via scripts or chronjobs/scheduled tasks w/ less moving parts complexity, room for exploit & breakdown, OR power usage.
APK
P.S.=> You FAIL menial... apk
"you are stealing other people's work in your code" - by Coren22 (1625475)
I don't steal (you project YOU do). I write my own code (you don't) & use public data to protect + speed up users.
---
"You have yet to submit to a code review from anyone but your friend. No, I don't trust that" - by Coren22 (1625475)
A seasoned security pro & competent coder reviewed my work as safe & IT'S WHAT HE DOES (unlike you). He can't "play friends": It's his site & reputation.
---
"You are terrified someone will steal your software if you publish the source code." - by Coren22 (1625475)
I don't give source away W/ GOOD REASON (Google's mistake w/ CHROME) -> http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
---
"You have yet to address the issue of name resolution performance of anything not found in your hosts file. This is a serious issue when the hosts file is so large" - by Coren22 (1625475)
Placing users' FAVORITE SITES where they spend 95++% of their time online @ TOP of hosts files cached in LOCAL RAM gets them to sites FASTER & MORE RELIABLY than a more-than-potentially REDIRECT POISONED DNS SERVER (99.999% of ISP DNS aren't patched vs. the kaminsky flaw, or DNS amp attacks).
---
"DNS outperforms your hosts file solution several fold" - by Coren22 (1625475)
No it doesn't (see above) - & DNS outperforms hosts in GOING DOWN (does a lot) OR poisoning users via redirect poisonings (DNS amp attacks = another).
---
"so why not just run your own DNS server? Oh, resources eh?" - by Coren22 (1625475)
More resource consumption + moving parts complexity + POWER USE doesn't = a GOOD solution vs. hosts by using redirect poisoning/DNS amp attack exploitable DNS w/ only a few systems @ home.
---
"But you have no problem running 100k copies of the hosts file in a domain" - by Coren22 (1625475)
It works easily migrated by central admins via scripts or chronjobs/scheduled tasks w/ less moving parts complexity, room for exploit & breakdown, OR power usage.
APK
P.S.=> You FAIL menial... apk