Hong Kong Team Stores 90GB of Data In 1g of Bacteria 164
Bananana writes "A research team out of the Chinese University of Hong Kong has found a way to do data encryption and storage with bacteria. The project is called 'Bioencryption,' and their presentation (as a PDF file) is here."
Not secure (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not secure (Score:5, Funny)
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Since I am able to decrypt your post to an identical copy of the (intended) original, it is not lossy encryption scheme..
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I dunno, on my screen your so-called identical copy is a lighter shade of gray, so it looks like it still lost some blackness. Nice try though.
On the upshot, it looks like it gained a light gray bar! Maybe that's where all the black went?
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... and when I decrypt a message from the Nazis circa WWII it is on a different type of paper that didn't exist then, or on a computer screen. Desperate attempt to look smart though.
Related News.... (Score:2)
In related news, the scientist was charged with DMCA violation as the bacteria duplicated data every time it divided into a new cell. RIAA was heard saying this is a blatant copy right violation. Test MP3s were all legally purchased.
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You: <sneeze>
Nelson Muntz: Haw-Haw! All your data are belong to me!
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And the next type of malware will be antibiotics? So, Norton will come out with anti-antibiotics software. That sounds sexy.
I think I've heard that quote before... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I think I've heard that quote before... (Score:4, Funny)
That can be a hella expensive form of storage. Both maintenance and upgrade costs will just kill you.
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That can be a hella expensive form of storage. Both maintenance and upgrade costs will just kill you.
Not to mention where we once had to fear strong magnetic fields, we will now freak up over a can of Lysol...
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Not to mention it takes at least 9 months between backups.
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Sometimes you end up with 2 backups, which can be redundant.
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Little Johnny: I did all my homework, but it died.
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That's okay, you can just sue the bacteria for copyright infringement.
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I'm more interested... (Score:3, Interesting)
in what bateria is.
Re:I'm more interested... (Score:4, Funny)
It's what happens when you store your spell-checking software into 1 gram of bacteria.
Re:I'm more interested... (Score:4, Funny)
It's where the bats eat lunch?
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It's a camel with no hump.
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Now they can never fix the title or nobody will get the jokes.
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Also "drum kit"... :-)
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So that mean (Score:5, Funny)
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Naw, just stop feeding it!
What about performance? (Score:1)
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What if they move around and mix up the bits?
Bateria? Holy Data Storage Batman (Score:5, Funny)
Bateria?
Was the research funded by Bruce Wayne
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Come with us, you know too much.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
My anti-virus software just deleted all my data!
My Windows computer has been infected! Go buy another 2TB hard drive, I'm running out of space at an exponential rate!
In Soviet Russia, bacteria infects your data!
The Bacteria Protection Agency is up in arms!
Hello nerds. Look at your keyboard, now back to me, now back at your keyboard, now back to me. Sadly, it's infected with bacteria, but if you stopped washing your hands, it could be a lot worst. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re still at your desk reading this shit. What’s on your hand, back at me. I have it, the solution to your storage problems. Look again, the bacteria are now data. Anything is possible when you stop bathing. I’m a trojan horse.
etc.
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In Soviet Russia, bacteria infects your data!
Better like this: In Soviet Russia, your data infects bacteria!
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Hello nerds. Look at your keyboard, now back to me, now back at your keyboard, now back to me. Sadly, it's infected with bacteria, but if you stopped washing your hands, it could be a lot worst. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re still at your desk reading this shit. What’s on your hand, back at me. I have it, the solution to your storage problems. Look again, the bacteria are now data. Anything is possible when you stop bathing. I’m a trojan horse.
im speechless after reading this ...
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It's about how keyboards are more infected than toilet seats [geek.com]. If you thought about something else, it's your own fault.
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It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
That's not the star trek reference that jumped into my mind.
I was thinking of these [memory-alpha.org].
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never is their supercomputing power called upon in any episode.
Funny answer: How much computing power do YOU think would be necessary to run Windows 2370? And no, the year of Linux on the starship still hasn't happened yet - unless you'd like to attribute the exploding consoles to kernel panics instead of BSODs.
Serious answer: you have a hologram performing surgery. you have Harry Kim's Astrometrics lab which tracks some absurd amount of celestial objects, process regular space and subspace communications, and do database queries that would make Google's web index loo
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someone please mod parent up (Score:2)
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All your bacteria are belong to us.
Contagious meme! (Score:2)
Actually, that's not bad (Score:2)
For data density, that's not too shabby. 1TB of data fits into approximately 12 grams of storage.
Of course, it depends on the size/weight of the read/write equipment, but could this be comparable to mechanical disks for data density?
Just have to remember to feed and water your computer every so often...and wonder if the data cops would be able to use torture to force-retrieve your data? Poor little bugs...
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i'd be pretty skeptical that the bits/kg of biological storage will come anywhere close to that of more traditional media anytime soon.
i'm speculating, but i suspect that if you weighed the magnetic particles responsible for current HD technology they'd come in at way over 100GB/gram.
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Not to mention that current storage technology doesn't need a life support system, which will of course add weight to the overall system...yeah.
I just thought it was decent at a first glance, but if you compare the bacteria (storage) weight to the actual weight of contemporary drive platters alone, it's not so impressive...and as others have mentioned, data management pains would seem to negate most observed advantages, other than possibly the strength of the data encryption.
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Well, that would be dependent on a few things:
1) That all the data in the bacteria can be overwritten. I highly doubt that, that would change the genetic makup of the bacteria, to where it may not be usable any more
2) That you maintain only ONE copy of your data, and this study is based upon both a lot of cheksums, and the fact that the bacteria it self will replicate your data.
3) That you can actually maintain your data on 1g, and never need to extend your storage
Considering these limitations, a factor 1:1
Funny (Score:3, Informative)
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Except, ironically, now your comment will be tagged interesting/informative.
You just foiled your own prediction.
Bacteriabook (Score:1)
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Hah! (Score:1)
And I can quite happily keep it warm under my balls. "Sorry, officer, it's man juice, really".
I know it's pedantic, buuut... (Score:2, Informative)
"The term bateria means “drum kit” in Portuguese and Spanish." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateria [wikipedia.org]
Does that mean we have to samba every time we access data?
Actually, that sounds kinda fun.
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Its also Battery.
They stored about 100 bytes. (Score:4, Informative)
What they actually did was to store about 100 bytes. This may be useful for putting copyright information into genetically engineered organisms. As a method of bulk data storage, though, it leaves much to be desired.
DNA synthesis costs about $0.29 per base pair. [google.com] Sequencing is a bit cheaper, but you currently get less than 1000 base pairs sequenced per run. Reading and writing takes a room of expensive wet lab gear, and hours to days.
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As for copyright or other messages in genetically modified organisms, it has been done before [the-scientist.com].
GIGO (Score:1)
PETG is outraged! (Score:2)
I'm sorry professor, my roomate ate my homework (Score:2, Funny)
I had it stored on my brand-new crash-proof bio-Raid 5 array. But Smokey scored a big bag of weed last night, got the hungry and thought the bio-drives were blocks of ice cream I'd forgotten to put away. He tossed them in the freezer and ate 'em with chocolate sauce. I guess crash-proof, isn't munchy-proof.
And it was all destroyed.... (Score:2)
Shows the ultimate futility of copyright.. (Score:2, Offtopic)
When you can carry around the sum total of humanity's creative works in a backpack that's easily copied, traditional notions of intellectual property become meaningless. No amount of legal penalty will change this. The drive to share the experience of new information is too strong.
Adapt or die.
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You can't enforce artificial scarcity in an environment where storage capacity is free.
Do you think home photos are driving HD capacities, or this research?
Tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" (Score:2)
I read TFA, and they're storing the data in the Bacteria's DNA. I assume there is a minimum chance of this happening, but if somehow the bacteria mutate and reproduce, perhaps with horizontal gene transfer, I don't know what could happen to existing species. What if suddenly one gene is changed and suddenly harmless bacteria become harmful?
Seriously, have they done a study on the safety of this method? Worst of all, we're not talking about a species which can easily be handled and captured if it ever escap
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Not to mention the fact that DNA has this tendency to mutate.
"Gee I really don't know why the sales figures have fallen, I could have sworn they were normal last night when I wrote this presentation!"
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Wow, indeed, I hope they're properly sanitizing their strings, this could produce the mother of all code injection attacks!
I would like to back up this file with pictures of our little son, Bobby Killhost...
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I can help... (Score:3, Funny)
File format (Score:2)
The project is called 'Bioencryption,' and their presentation (as a PDF file) is here.
As a PDF file, as opposed to as a bacterial culture, right?
Good thing they gave a link to a PDF... (Score:2)
Even the worst of the PDF viewers (Adobe) can be freely downloaded, but I haven't quite found a Bacteria Viewer for download yet...
iGEM teams (Score:2, Interesting)
New development (Score:2)
Idea! (Score:2)
"program" the bacteria to generate rainbow tables, then as they reproduce, the size of the tables will expand, meaning you get more useful data over time. Eventually, you'll be able to get a 200 char password from its MD5, even if it's made of random characters and numbers, as well as upper and lower case letters!*
*Note: the above post has a deliberately narrow view as to how Bioencryption, rainbow tables, password cracking, science, etc. works
Can we just clear something up (Score:5, Funny)
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Reedeeculous (Score:2)
Saw the ppt show. There's nothing there.
Just some very basic blather about encoding and redundancy.
Absolutely nothing new.
And AFAICT they have not done any actual DNA coding and decoding.
Perhaps they would have done everyone a service by actually estimating the time and cost of encoding/decoding 90GB.
Perhaps they left that part out as the numbers would be so dismal.
Its grammar negative bacteria. (Score:2)
Skeptical when their links are dead (Score:2)
Extraordinary claims need to have extraordinarily well working links.
Great - yet another confusing unit of measure (Score:5, Funny)
Now we've got three meanings for GB:
1GB = 10^9
1GB = 2^30
1GB = 1 Gram Bacteria
When will the madness end!?
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When they set the Library of Congress as the standard unit.
"When will the madness end!?"
Viruses!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Great...
Now it'll be possible to catch human viruses from the Internet :)
(Seriously -- what would stop an attacker from crafting a message that will code for a virus if this system ever found use?).
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The fact that bacteria != viruses.
Viruses (virii, actually) are simply packets of DNA or RNA that get expressed by a host. Some viruses can integrate themselves into the DNA of their hosts and replicate with their hosts, to be expressed (i.e., "executed" in the programming sense) in later generations.
Bacteria have well-understood mechanisms for gene expression. They can be engineered to express human or plant DNA (insulin is manufactured in this way with genetically engineered bacteria expressing human genes).
If you were storing "data" in
Now, the next hurdle: successfully read it back (Score:2)
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What filesystem is this?
I tried the ZFS "data compression" trick, and all I got was hammered shit.
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What filesystem is this?
I tried the ZFS "data compression" trick, and all I got was hammered shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGIwg6ye1gE [youtube.com]
Am I missing something here? (Score:2)
Am I missing something here?
What is the advantage of having to keep your data storage ALIVE as opposed to...well, just sitting there? This seems like a serious drawback to me.
And besides, terrorists will start using data storage devices to transport biological weaponry and all storage devices will have to be sequenced before travelers will be allowed into the boarding areas.
Wait a second, what thread was I in?
Problems and Benefits... (Score:2, Funny)
Problem: Sneezing, and losing your entire collection of pornography.
Benefit: My offsite backup facility is now a brothel.
"There is no aspect of computing which does not, in some way, relate to sex."
90GB on 1g of bacteria.. (Score:2)
This is what is known in the art world as a perfect marriage of subject and medium
A couple of weeks for genes to go global... (Score:2)
That was what I was told around 1992 by someone who studied bacterial genetics. In just a couple of weeks, some new gene that showed up in bacteria in one place (say, a mutation producing a better way to process some compund in a patch of mud somewhere) could be found in bacteria on the other side of the planet. Which made me realize (in theory) then that coding information into bacteria could be like a low bandwidth internet, by just sequencing packets of data into bacteria that were released, and elsewher
900,000 GB of Data In 1g of Bacteria (Score:2, Informative)
Is this secure? (Score:2, Funny)
Anyone else see a security problem in opening a PDF from some source in China?
Viruses of tomorrow (Score:2, Funny)
Warning! McAfee and Symantec have reported a new computer virus that is spreading widely over internet and snail mail. Actually it is not a virus, but an antibiotic, which will kill all your hard drive bacteria.
Security companies are working hand-on-hand with hard drive manufacturers for injecting the N-1 gene into the affected bacteria, with the hope of making them resistant to the virus or antibiotics, depending on how you want to call it. The medical community is getting nuts with the new definitions, an
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So it is possible to store several petabytes of encrypted data in a human being if the person has had Chinese food at Kendall Square.
Does Wikileaks know about this?