6G - some research (and webinar on 4-6th May 2021)

One can only hope that the chip heat/power situation is solved. As for the antennas, it might be trickier, but there is always the option of trying to hack something with a replacement back cover for both, 5 and 6. Al though it would be neat, I too doubt 6G is a real option for Evergreen - it’s just a development model compared to what can now come after it in a decade or a half and 6G can only be taken into account with the next gen.

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If it interests, there was a previous webinar on edge intelligence that had the car case as an example (should be available on their Youtube channel). Tlaked about the challenges and how to overcome latency by having intelligence nearer to the automobile with edge servers. Edgy stuff :wink:

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now imagine a human having to control all those cars by himself. are you telling us that it’s safer to hand control to a single AI entity than keep individual human beings to be responsible for their own individual actions ?

to me this just seems like tempting fate and paying for it from your own pocket at the same time …

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Not at all. I am not even advocating this kind of model. I am just raising the issue of why anyone would care at all whether 5G or 6G has 1ms latency for an autonomous vehicle.

Yes, I am assuming that, if the scenario, a picture of which I was painting, ever came to pass, the semi-autonomous vehicles would be controlled (centrally) by computers, not by humans. Whether that is or needs to be AI is another question.

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I don’t understand why the big hype over 5G and 6G. 3G worked well enough for me. 4G gives me everything I want and more. When I am at any location that I frequent, I can use WiFi anyway. At that point, even 3G is unnecessary. I recently moved from Verizon to Mint Mobile, knowing that the coverage wouldn’t be as good. But it’s plenty good enough and I like paying $15/month vs $100/month. The media tells everyone to want more better of whatever they’re selling. It’s like “I want my 8G or 10G now”, when we don’t really get much benefit from 5G, if we can get it (like it really matters anyway). I personally don’t want the system to drive my car for me anyway. So why really would I even want 5G enough to pay extra for it? I don’t watch TV in traffic. When I am at any destination, there is always WiFi available to me. On the off chance that I ever end up not connected in the moment, the temporary lack of connection won’t kill me. I probably won’t even know or care. With Mint Mobile, once per month or so I might have to switch to VOIP to make a phone call. I kind of like it that others have to text me sometimes if they can’t make my phone ring right when they feel the desire to call me. If I really want to get rid of the coverage holes, I can always go back to Verizon 4G to completely solve that issue. But that still doesn’t explain why I would need more than 4G. The overall population seems to be well served by 4G. If I take a trip out in to the wilderness, I’ll bring my handheld 2M/440 ham radio as a backup to get in to the phone system for emergencies. So the question remains: why would I ever ‘need’ 5G or higher, as a practical matter, to really improve how I live my life? Don’t listen to the marketers about ‘more better’. It’s about: why really do I need it?

For me, the Librem 5 is just one more part of disconnecting from the system anyway. With Tesla, you constantly have to keep your car or powerwall connected to the internet so they can push out updates to you. With your phone, you have no choice most of the time. With your car or powerwall, you don’t have a choice if you value your warranty. This trend is growing. I don’t want to be more connected. I want to be less connected, or connected only upon my own terms. The Librem 5 will take me further in this direction. If it never has 5G, that’s just fine with me.

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Until the day that 4G is switched off because it is obsolete and they want to use the frequencies for something else. (Likelihood of that happening probably depends on population density in your area but noone knows the future with certainty.)

I totally understand your point about “more for more’s sake” but at the end of the day spectrum is a shared resource - and noone can make any more of it - so your opinion or my opinion counts as just one in a sea of opinions that will ultimately shape the future.

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From individual point of view, I agree. 4G would do just fine for our common usecases of today. But there lies the fallacy. They are marketed as making things better for the end user when most of the changes are to the network and networked services. 5G allows for more intelligent (or “intelligent”) devices and services and 6G supposedly is developed to make the network more intelligent for intelligent devices and services (stuff not directly noticed by users). These could be done side by side with the old ones execept for the inconvenient physical limitation of available usable frequencies - old ones need to be shut down to make room for new standards on those same airwaves. An cellphone services are not the only ones competing for that finite resource. And since there seems to be ideas that need the new better (or “better”) network standards (which are a lot more than just about speed), they are going to get built. Inconvenient for sure, as there would be some benefits to stability too.

But since 5G and 6G (and what ever else after that) are coming - and have a chance to change security and privacy in a major way (one key point of 6G) - I’d think we need to prepare for them to manage their eventual impact better. Participate, perhaps. Maybe even make sure they will actually be what they are now planning - or better. Or, if not, start creating stuff like L5.

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not to mention the 1 million connection per square km that 5G will supposedly address … is nobody else here the least bit worried about moving through the outside environment in that kind of Radio-Radiation-Field … here i’ll write AGAIN - 1 MILLION / sq km :mask: :scream:

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I’m not afraid of sunlight, so no, not at all.

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i’m not afraid of sunlight either but i don’t expose myself to sunlight more than it’s recommended … and it’s a known fact that sunlight (depending where you are and the time of year) can be more dangerous for skin during certain moments of the day …

also i’d say that IT nerds aren’t that fond of sunlight to begin with so … :wink:

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Rather than invest in 5G, the world would be better off if that money were invested in LTE-A and more LTE-TDD bands in my opinion. 5G over mmWave (>=24GHz) is a huge waste of resources for little benefit and I do worry about the effects of that much extra RF on humans, because it requires base stations every 250 meters. 5G over sub-6Hz makes a bit more sense, but it isn’t that much better than LTE-A, so again I don’t see the point.

Unfortunately, the mobile phone industry is pushing 5G as the next big thing to sell phones, and the marketing will probably convince most consumers that they have to have it in their next phone. So Purism will have to make a phone that supports 5G in the future, even thought 5G is an energy hog, requires a lot more silicon and is an expensive waste of money.

The good thing is the phone industry plans to keep using LTE until the late 2020’s, so those of us getting Evergreen will be fine. However, Purism will have to figure out how to do 5G in future models if it wants to be able to sell the Librem 5 to a general public, which doesn’t understand the technical issues.

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I don’t know that Purism will need to keep up with 5G and 6G at all. Unless there is some killer app that has a very high value and that can’t run under 4G, the market can make its own independent choices that do not need to conform with what the big companies want us to buy from them. Once the Librem 5 hardware has matured, I would like to see Purism introducing new and simpler products to the market that leverages the freedom of their platform. I think we all want higher security, no bloat nor marketing, and apps that aren’t controlled by a wall that is designed to trap users in to any given eco-system. I won’t follow the pack just to show that I have the latest technology too. While my friends have a phone that is a little faster and has a well known logo on it, I will have a free’d phone that does what I want it to do.

Eventually, the open source community may be able to establish new standards that the rest of the market is forced to adhere to. For example, let’s say that the average user really doesn’t care about security. But what would happen if they all wanted the L5 because there is no planned obsolescence and they like the idea of having a lifetime phone? Then all of the Security features would have to be matched by the other phone manufacturers, just for them to remain competative. If a big enough block of people want to keep their 4G, maybe they can prevent those frequencies from being reassigned. Every large movement started out small. There is no reason to believe that Purism can’t change the market. All it will take is one L5 killer app that can’t be duplicated on Android nor Apple to get everyone’s serious attention. There are certain features that Google and Apple can’t afford to offer to the public if they want to stay in business as they know it. They’ll go down with their own ship first.

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and that’s why ship building is always so profitable :upside_down_face:

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That’s a few centimeters to initiate braking, not to come to a complete stop. The latter would be measured in multiple meters and multiple seconds and would generate significant heat.

Human driver latency is in hundreds milliseconds to initiate braking.

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Oh, this is just… China launched 6G test satellite.
Combined satellite and 6G, anyone? Secure and private 6G tech from China? These are among the alternatives now, it seems. Someone is going to do 6G even if others don’t want.

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for military purposes … yeah why not ? it’s not like the higher frequency can harm us right ?

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If interested to know what researchers and industry developers think the next tech is going to be like, the 6G people are having a big free web symposium. Everything from tech to privacy to society to business, according to https://www.6gworld.com/spring-2021-6g-symposium-agenda/ and t’s 4-6 May. It’s good to be informed - regardless if it’s to get more info on how to make best use of 6G or to understand your enemy’s position (your viewpoint may vary, but the next version seems rather inevitable).

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Every now and then I hear bits and bytes about how 6G is being developed but not so much on what’s the current overall situation. Well, if that interests you too, here’s a good video on the technology and where it’s headed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70BOKA0PmdE - the marketing term [6G] will be outdated as 7 will apparently be the golden number in GHz…

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Thanks. Seems like our community has no interests in it. Everything that will come is to destroy our privacy completely. Device tracking with accuracy of 1-10cm, high speed for many “virtual reality communication” which means Google glasses like applications and who knows what else. Some words are marketing terms as you said (AI-stuff, because nothing 4G could not do I would say). But not a single point that improves our needs.

5G was something different. It also had some positive design decisions. 6G just sounds like a technology for a dystopian surveillance future.

Things still can change. But it looks very clear what goals are behind. 6G will be designed for surveillance capitalism (big tech) and not for individuals.

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I’m still clinging to hope that it’s not going to be quite that bad. The tech is not directly meant for SurCap and BigPlatforms but it’s probably likely that those end up being the big players. What I hope that will happen is that some of those features will be made better controlled (and we get rid of SS7 in the process) and that the virtual networks and edge networks will end up offering some limits (like allowing a personal control). Hard to say yet what kind of balance the goods and bads and privacy will end up to (remembering that everyone has their own risk profile).

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