The Fallacy of Airplane Mode Disabling the Global Positioning System Tracking of Smartphones

Even when Airplane Mode is activated, the Apple iPhone still receives signals from the global positioning system because this apparatus is a passive, receive only system which does not rely upon a cellular connection, WiFi connection, and/or Bluetooth connection to function. The iPhone scans and listens for satellites orbiting the Earth and calculates its relative position based upon this timing data, which means the iPhone can still determine a users location even without an internet connection, however if this is not desirable by the end user, Location Services can be disabled which theoretically turns this function off. This information is true for most modern smartphones including Android, however not all (e.g. smartphones manufactured prior to 2010, minimalistic/budget conscious smartphone designs, smartphones with custom firmware and/or enterprise restrictions like those managed by corporate information technology teams or running custom read only memory etc.)

The Origin of Google’s Name

Google’s original name was “BackRub”, a reference to its early algorithm which analyzed backlinks to assess their importance. Backlinks are the hyperlinks pointing to webpages on the internet (e.g. navigation from one website to another etc.). Developed at Stanford University in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, BackRub laid the foundation for PageRank, the ranking system which would later power the Google search engine. As the project matured, Page and Brin began to recognize and understand that the name BackRub did not reflect the vast scope of their ambitions for the company as the duo wanted a name that could capture the enormity of the data their engine could and eventually would process. This is why the name “Google” was chosen in 1997. Interestingly, during a domain search for “googol.com”, a mathematical term which represents 10¹⁰⁰ (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 with 100 0’s after it) the friend who registered the domain name for Page and Brin accidentally typed “google.com” instead of “googol.com”. Originally this was an error but Page and Brin believed the misspelling to be simpler, more memorable, and visually cleaner therefore deciding to keep the name as it was

The Usage of 5D Crystals as a Means of Computational Storage

Quartz is being used to create the most powerful data storage device ever developed, the 5D Superman Memory Crystal, a technology which could store data for up to 13,800,000,000 (13.8 billion) years, the calculated age of the universe. The 5D quartz crystal is a method of ensuring a large density of data can be saved within a relatively small object. This is an incredibly secure and long lasting method of saving data as the information is physically encoded into the crystal itself, remaining indefinitely until the quartz itself is destroyed, a very difficult task in and of itself. In 2018, technology entrepreneur Nova Spivack used a 5D crystal to create a permanent space library, sending it to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Heavy Falcon rocket. Quartz is highly stable because it is a crystal, remaining unchanged for billions of years meaning if data is inserted, theoretically it could survive for billions of years. For a quartz crystal approximately 2.5 centimeters by 2.5 centimeters in diameter and 5 millimeters thick, 30 terabytes of data can be held, which is 30,000 gigabytes or 800 Blu-ray discs or 600 smartphones worth of information. This means that the entire British library could be fit into 1000 5D crystal slides, a small enough volume to fit within a single shoebox. A traditional storage medium like a compact disc, stores data in individual pixels, with 1 pixel able to hold the equivalent of 1 bit or 8 bytes of information. In a quartz drive however, each voxel can hold 8 bits or 64 bytes of information. The technology required to achieve this feat however is still in its infancy with scientists still discovering new ways to refine manufacturing, the writing and reading of data, and storage capabilities