CONNECTIVITY

Smarter = safer?

The promise of smart grids is decentralization: By pulling from a variety of dispersed power sources—versus the highly centralized model utilities rely on today—the tech could theoretically lead to fewer outages and mitigate the severity of outages that do happen. 

And beyond bolstering grid resilience with respect to outages, experts told us the tech can help shrink the scale and impact of potential cyberattacks. The trade-off is that hackers could have easier access to (typically) less-secure local networks, possibly leading to smaller but more frequent attacks with more smart-grid projects deployed. 

• But spreading the risk could be worthwhile in part because it reduces the monetary incentive for attacks—holding an individual household’s network ransom is less lucrative than, say, leveraging an entire region’s infrastructure. 

“It’s impossible to secure any industrial control system, because they’re so complex there will always be a bug that could be exploited,” Yury Dvorkin, assistant professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering told Emerging Tech Brew. “With a decentralized system, if you hack into, for example, a residential household, you will only be able to control this household...if you launch an attack, your impact is going to be marginal.”

Refresher course: Smart grids use a combination of AI and sensors to link, distribute, and conserve energy from a combination of legacy power sources—like coal plants—and renewable sources, like hydroelectric dams, solar farms, and even, eventually, individual vehicles or homes with surplus power. 

• Utilities have implemented opt-in smart-grid tech in cities like New York and Los Angeles, and Congress is likely to allocate up to $3 billion more toward smart city projects via the bipartisan infrastructure bill. 

Andres Carvallo, CEO and cofounder of smart grids and smart cities consulting firm CMG Consulting, thinks decentralization offers a clear advantage with respect to cybersecurity. Carvallo was one of the pioneers of Austin’s smart-grid project, which kicked off in 2003 as one of the first wide-scale applications of smart-grid technology in the world. It now serves more than 500,000 residential and commercial meters. 

“It’s...sort of like how the internet is not built exactly the same way at every location… If you shut down a piece of the internet, you don’t shut down the whole internet,” Carvallo said. “Depending on how people invest in building pieces of the smart grid...you’ll have a lot of resiliency and a lot of backup and a lot of back roads. If the highway road is closed, you can take the back roads.”

Click here to read the full piece.—JM

SPONSORED BY VANGUARD

All About Value

When you think about choosing funds to fit your portfolio, what comes to mind? We have a hunch phrases like “smart investing” and “strong long-term potential” come to mind. 

And when talking about such things, you pretty much have to talk about Active Bond Funds. They can help you add value to your portfolio by giving you the opportunity for outperformance. Put simply: These Active Fixed Income products can potentially be real overachievers. 

Getting actively excited? Well, there’s more: Actively managed fixed income products can help you in the here and now—and the long term—as part of a balanced portfolio.

So now that you’re no doubt thinking about getting active with Active Bond Funds, consider what’s critical to making them successful. Vanguard is owned by its investors. So what matters to you is what matters most to them. The result? Smart risk taking, the opportunity for outperformance, and a focus on lowering investment costs so you can keep more of your money.

Get more info on Active Fixed Income here.

CONNECTIVITY

Beaming broadband

When you think of inventive ways to close the global broadband-access gap, you might think of satellites, à la SpaceX’s Starlink or Amazon’s Project Kuiper.

But Alphabet’s X Moonshot Factory is trying something different: laser beams.

Excuse me? Alphabet named the initiative “Project Taara,” and it comes from the ashes of Project Loon, the company’s scrapped attempt to deliver broadband via stratospheric balloons and, you guessed it, lasers. 

• Taara has been deployed to connect Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, which has ~1.7 million residents, and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has ~17 million.
• This is the commercial debut of the tech and follows a series of pilots in Kenya. The plan from here is to expand into other challenging places for connectivity in Africa, including “over rivers, across national parks, or in post-conflict zones.”

Brazzaville and Kinshasa are only about three miles away from each other as the crow flies, but they’re separated by the Congo River, the second-longest in Africa at 2,715 miles long and the deepest in the world. To connect both cities via traditional methods, fiber cable would need to travel almost 250 miles to reach a point where it can cross the river.

To get around that...Taara uses wireless optical communications (WOC) sensors to beam light to one another, establishing high-speed (20 Gbps) connections between the cities. The sensors, which work like underground fiber cables, but...above ground…, need a clear line of sight between one another, so they’re typically placed on top of roofs and towers. 

• A single link between two sensors can extend up to 12 miles and can travel over bodies of water, rugged terrain, and long distances.

Alphabet says the project isn’t 100% reliable just yet—foggy and rainy weather affects the quality of connection, for instance. But, over 20 days, the connection was 99.9% available and delivered over 700 TB of data across the Congo. 

“Taara’s technology adds a unique solution that is more affordable than laying fiber or beaming connectivity from satellites for specific use cases, such as plugging stubborn connectivity gaps like the one that exists between Brazzaville and Kinshasa,” Baris Erkmen, director of engineering for Taara, told Emerging Tech Brew. “Expanding connectivity to those who need it is about finding the best technology for each unique circumstance.”—JM

SPONSORED BY WORKHUMAN

Tomorrow is World Gratitude Day, a timely opportunity to give your employees their deserved props—beyond an ordinary thumbs-up emoji. We’re all human, and at Workhuman, they get that. Workhuman’s employee recognition solution, Social Recognition, helps foster employee appreciation—something that strengthens teams, reduces turnovers, and drives business forward. Yep, a little “Thank you” goes a long way. Learn more about Workhuman here.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: An FTC report found that Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft made 616 “unreported acquisitions” at or above $1 million between 2010 and 2019, allowing the agency to “assess whether any loopholes are allowing competitively significant deals to fly under the radar.”

Quote: “Basic safety issues have to be addressed before they’re then expanding it to other city streets and other areas.—NTSB head Jennifer Homendy, re: Tesla’s beleaguered “Full Self-Driving Feature”

Read: Illinois is one of the only states that restricts corporate collection and use of biometric data, like the facial data gathered through facial recognition systems.

Use your thumbs: Manage your digital assets (like bitcoin, rewards points, gift cards, and cash) in one convenient, tidy place with the Bakkt® App. Unlock the value of your assets and get started today.*

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission to send four civilians into space was a success, with the crew splashing down safely in the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday evening.  
• The Biden Administration is planning to clamp down on crypto ransomware payments.
• OpenSea’s head of product has reportedly left the NFT trading platform following insider-trading accusations.
• Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist with a remote-operated weapon, according to a new report from the New York Times.
• Pfizer-BioNTech said early results from its vaccine trial for five- to 11-year-olds indicate it’s safe and effective. 

THREE THINGS WE’RE WATCHING

Today: The Black Is Tech Conference begins, virtually, and runs through Friday. About 15,000 attendees will come together to hear 100+ Black and Latinx speakers talk about building a diverse startup, increasing transparency in hiring, and more. 

Tuesday: An all-virtual TechCrunch Disrupt begins and runs through Thursday. 

Wednesday: Microsoft wants people to mark their calendars for 11am—and a mysterious announcement. All signs point to unveiling new Surface devices, plus details about Windows 11.

TECH THINGAMAOBS

For feline fun: Ahead of a game against the New York Jets, the Carolina Panthers debuted a mixed-reality animation of a gigantic panther with glowing green eyes leaping about the stadium. With 10+ million views, it’s one of the first large-scale AR projects to go viral. 

For broadband self-determination: Covid has sparked greater interest in community broadband projects. 

For encryption tools: An Iranian app called Nahoft can encrypt messages even without internet connection. 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• Why weed farmers are using drones as crop cops
• One barrier to electric boating? Consumers don’t know they’re real
• A biotech startup raised millions to resurrect woolly mammoths