How Does DNA Compare With Conventional Data Storage Now

Well, just like everything else, we've been quite active at improving DNA storing technologies in the past few years.  It's in fact quite amazing how far we've gone and exactly when industry experts figure we'll be able to use the technology commercially.

In 2012, 1 gram of DNA could store about 700 terabytes of data.  Today, in 2017, 1 gram of DNA successfully stored 215,000 terabytes of data.  That's roughly 100,000 2TB hard drives.

That's a lot of information that takes up lots of space and materials.

DNA storage today is so compact that we could fit the entirety of humanity's recorded knowledge inside a standard garage, with room to spare.  Not only that but DNA stored in one's garage would stay stable and accessible for potentially hundreds of thousands of years, unless a fire occurs.

That's because DNA molecules can physically hug each other without a problem, they are chemically hyper stable, aren't affected by EMP (electromagnetic pulses) and magnets of any kind.  So in the case of a cosmic EMP or an artificial one, DNA storage keeps our data safe.

I go through this a bit more along with why this sort of storage medium is important for us and could serve us in the future better than traditional data storage mediums in the following video:

But before I get into further details, I need to explain what is DNA and how information can be stored inside it.

DNA is a molecule composed of 4 different molecules:  Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G) and Cytosine (C).  These molecules are set in the shape of a spiral staircase in sets of either A-T or C-G.

Since A always goes with T and C always with G, DNA is a binary code when used to store bytes.  For example, A-T bonds are "0" and C-G bonds and "1".  In biology however, DNA encodes for proteins in a different way (NOT zeros and ones), but we're not doing biology here.

So basically, DNA is simply replacing our "0" and "1. schema of data storage at this point.

Companies and researchers have been looking into storing data on DNA for almost 70 years with only strong successes appearing 5 years ago, with, for example, the Scripps Institute being one of the first to properly encode and decode data using DNA sequencing using what could be called a biological computer in 2012.

But now, things are progressing quickly and larger firms desire to be the first to use DNA storage properly, cheaply and reliably.  Notably, Microsoft intends to start storing its data by 2020, 3 years from now.  This is an interesting concept to be sure, especially since storing data using DNA is still very expensive at approximately $800,000 USD for 200 megabytes of data.

Another current issue, is that current speed of encoding data in this way is at about 400 bytes per second.  In order to make the process commercially viable and interesting, the cost has to go down by a factor of at least 1,000 and the speed has to increase by a factor of 250,000 (up to about 100 megabytes per second or more).

So there seems to be confidence from Microsoft to achieve these goals pretty quickly.  Honestly, I give them and other entrants into this field a 50-50 chance to achieve these goals by 2020.  But if it's not in 3 years, it may be 5.

Just like anything else, we can't anticipate how other technologies will help this particular project along.

What is definite is that DNA is certainly a superior storage medium as far as efficiency of space, weight and environmental impact (all organic, non-polluting materials).  The cost and speed of processing is something engineers and the economy are quite used to managing quite well as a technology becomes more interesting, more efforts are put into it and if it becomes popular too.

So could we expect having small smartphone sized DNA storage devices in each one of our homes that can contain all the data a household could ever need to store (thousands of movies, home videos, all the music you may need, all the household's pictures, data and even security video footage you'd ever want)?  Sure it certainly looks like it'll be possible.

Will we be able to use house refuse to create the DNA elements needed (A, T, C, G are molecules that need to either be manufactured or purchased) to store more information?  That's also possible since Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine are organic molecules made up of the same type of materials as what is inside your veggies and meats.  Heck, those very molecules are inside since they are composed of cells with DNA in them themselves.  :)

As always, it'll be an interesting ride to see how opportunists and inventors will help make this particular type of technology viable, or help move us towards something even better.

Both cases are interesting and should be encouraged.

So let's make it all happen!

AI: Simulating Humans or Synthetic Humans ?

The elephant in the room for me is not whether Artificial Intelligent machines or robots will be able to gain sentience, but when.

Since the first software we dared to call Artificially Intelligent, we've been talking about simulating human behavior and patterns.  In other words, we were able to copy human behavior using lines of code, algorithms, cameras and math.  

It was cute, it became practical and now these bits of code and even machines are integrated into our society either in very visible ways (computer opponents in games) or very subtle ways (predictive software for the stock market or Google's Search engine).

Fast forward to today's research and the tech industry's surge to develop more and more intelligent applications of our artificial intelligent expertise.  We are developing and commercializing artificial intelligence able to:

• Reliably detect human emotions
• Reliably detect conversation tone of voice
• Understand language and even translate it
• Learn from practice and get better at what they do over time
• Understand human patterns of behavior in order to sympathize or compete against humans.

Those sound like the patterns of intelligence of a growing and learning child to me.  Doesn't it?

In the video here, I talk a little bit more about this idea if you wish to go deeper:

In any case, seems to me that we are passed the theoretical science fiction idea of possibly machines eventually becoming our friends, partners and colleagues.  Once we are able to properly roll out artificial intelligence that is capable of interacting with humans on the emotional intelligence level, we can make some that people can get attached to.

How would you feel if your computer OS would understand speech of any major language, detect your emotional state, understand your posture and tone of voice, and even learn your patterns without having full information (imperfect information problem solving skills), and do as you ask taking all that into account faster than any human can?

That, my friends, is an aware, sensitive, high performance work colleague.... or the AI colleague 5 years from now.

When are we going to start thinking of AI more along the lines of Synthetic Humans (or Synthetic life) versus the current ideology of seeing them as Simulated Humans?  

If it looks like a duck, quack likes a duck, and is a better duck than an actual duck.... 

Tradewars Rising Kickstarter project : first few days

We see a lot of Kickstarter projects floating around.  Some are truly amazing innovations, some are really cool game concepts, and some are.... well, less cool to me, and others are just bad projects (or bad presentations).

In a nutshell, Kickstarter is a great way to get the word out to populations and allow them to pledge their support for money, for which they get cool swag, rewards, thanks and all manner of good stuff.



The OLD Tradewars2002 game

Tradewars is an old brand that has been around since the mid-70's when Bulletin Board Systems were being dabbled on by geeks.  It was a text-based space strategy game where you could play with/against several dozens players using up turns every day, over a number of days, until one spaceship captain came up on top with more points than the others.  The experience for the license owners (called SysOps in the day), was that they could modify the game and differ the experience to their own BBS crowd, which made every instance of Tradewars unique and interesting.
Sylien Games, my games company, has been developing a modern version of the game, called Tradewars Rising on top of a super game engine, for a number of years and we've started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the last bit of development that will allow us to:
- Finish the game (debug session, user experience polish, and some fixes)
- Enhance, augment and polish the web site community experience
- Debug and seriously improve the underlying game engine.



Player checking out another's base

Check out the Kickstarter and get involved!

What's most exciting about Tradewars Rising is in face the engine because, just like the old days and NEW for today's game makers....  The engine allows players to create their own game elements and ultimately their own full game (called whatever you like), running on our servers, no hassle, without the need to write any code. 

Yep, you heard me... our tech if finished, would eventually allow players to create their own games without using code.  Only forms and images, and you have our very own browser-based strategy MMO you can then monetize.

So far, we had really strong and heavy supporters early on in the first 5 days or so bringing the first milestone to complete most of this stuff at 38% of funding amount. 



Front art for the Kickstarter project

We need volume of visitors to the Kickstarter site to bring it up to the next level to get it all funded and beyond as we have plans to do the following on stretch goals beyond the needed $89k to finish the game off:
- Get the "Make your own full game" code fully in place
- Put in the TyphoonLand game that he have as a prototype phase (fleet combat and MMO player strategy, with great brush art use)
- Full 3D game viewer right in your browser
-  And more improvements to the game and engine that we can't list here.

We've had great comments and feedback from being showcased at the #AccelerateOTT event last week, and the Post-Mortem with #Microsoft we did this week, but we need people to drive this out into social and popular.  We need massive spread. 

Can you help us?  Sure.. Visit the page, and Share, Tweet and pledge, even if its only $1, its fine.  :)

Let make this project a huge success together and usher in a new era of game development on multiple platform browser for all to enjoy!

I'll definitively take the time to write a blog after this is over as a post-crowdfunding effort.  These things DO NOT happen on their own.  Takes a lot of effort.

For now, see you all on the other side of the wormhole!  Fly safe!

Sylien on track to complete epic 100 games in 100 days for Microsoft Windows 8…

This is something that was written by a freelance journalist that got interested in what Sylien Games was doing with Microsoft and Windows 8 / Windows Phone 8 apps.  Pretty cool guy and good writup so instead of writing my own... here is his.  Thanks Andrew Noël and kudos.

Ottawa based game development company Sylien Games has been very busy lately, the company has succeeded in the task of churning out 100 games for Microsoft’s new Windows 8 platform, all within a very short timeline. 

Although the programming team encountered the usual hurdles and bugs that come along with development and using a relatively new OS, Sylien (with some help from Microsoft to work out the kinks) has risen to the challenge and was able to figure out much of the good, bad and ugly of this whole Windows 8 business.

I got a chance yesterday to chat with Sylien’s CEO Sylvain Rochon; he gave me a good feel for how the project went.  There have definitely been some challenges; the fact that the Windows 8 phone platform didn’t accept native HTML 5 was initially a roadblock.  No problem, the team found a way to get around that issue to push out the same 100 games on Windows Phone 8 in about 2 extra weeks from now.  This challenge aside, I was given the impression that, overall, Microsoft has really simplified the game development process with its new OS.  Sylvain told me this much:

“The idea with Microsoft was to show how easy it was to produce HTML5 games fast for Windows 8, and for sure, we're doing just that.  Whether it’s an HTML 5 project, or C# project, the Windows 8 and the Win Phone 8 platforms are really cool to work with.”

Chain Lightning Online

  

However, he also added:

            “There is a catch though:  because it’s a young OS with a completely new UI design and internal workings, we found a number of bugs that can hamper or frustrate Win 8 and Win Phone 8 app developers to no end.  Fortunately, we have submitted bugs and in some cases provided solutions that, I hope, will be deployed in future updates to make developer’s lives easier in the future.”

This project has shown that Sylien has what it takes to play ball with the big boys, and has massive potential.  It’s clear that this team is looking forward to the next Microsoft Windows 8 project they can sink their teeth into.  Expect to see more of this company on the development scene in the near future.

Andrew Noël, Freelance Journalist and amateur game nerd

Sylien Games interview on Untethered.tv about how we got to where we are and our current Microsoft adventure

Untethered.tv is a great videocast owned by Rob Woodbridge, one of Canada's foremost experts in the smartphone world with 14 years of immersive experience in the field.  During that period, Rob Woodbridge has been busy helping innovative companies grow their business through mobile.

In this video interview, Rob asks me all about how I started the company, how it was grown from nothingness to over 120 multiplayer strategy games, 2 proprietary game engines and a really cool challenge with Microsoft on Windows 8 and Windows 8 Phones.

Untether.tv Episode 448: Sylien Games and how it came to be

Enjoy!

Sylvain

Churning out games for Microsoft's Windows 8 Marketplace

If you have been following the blogs, our company, Sylien Games, has been producing in a serial way games for Windows 8 with the direct help of the excellent people at Microsoft.

Its been so far a challenging but fun ride.

So far we have 6 games out on the Windows 8 marketplace, and we're putting 3 new games on it every day (providing they pass the Microsoft cerfication process).

Akron Online

Akron was one of the first.  Its a game designed by a man in the US called Cameron Browne.  This is the basic game playout for each one of the games really.  A board, some tools to play versus an opponent (casually or competitively), a chat and a history of moves so you can backtrack and see what you did (or revert to a previous position if both players agree).

Due to the serial aspect of the  project, all games look alike but the strategies needed to win are very different from one another.

The idea with Microsoft was to show how easy it was to produce HTML5 games fast for Windows 8, and for sure, we're doing just that.  Currently, since the Windows 8 shell is done, we're publishing 3 new games per day using 2 artists and 1.5 programmers only.  And that's because one of the programmers is working on a shell for the Windows 8 Phone (which needs to be different due to screen dimentions/UI considerations and the fact that the Phone SDK is NOT HTML5 native... compared to the Windows 8 SDK.

Chess Masters Online (Hub portion)

We did spend about 6 weeks producing the first shell with 2 programmers though.  Also, learning the SDKs, circumventing issues with our own engine technology, networking issues, communications issues, interfacing with Microsoft online accounts and contractual obligations etc....  But all in all, since Microsoft personnel were available to us as well as LOTS of good online information (some would say too much of it).

Now for the readers that wish to consider making a game for Windows 8 like this may think its going to be a breeze.  Wait a minute, its not difficult but its not trivial either.  Remember that we already had the 100 games to be ported onto the two platforms running on another site off a game engine already so we didn't have to code any of the logic, just the front end and UI elements for the shell.

You can see from the Chess Masters Online hub picture above that the system we have supports the creation of new games and waiting for an opponent to essentially sit down with you at your board and start playing... and you can also join an existing game and see how another game is going, and even check out a Finished game to see how it worked out, look at the moves made etc...  This was already present in our original engine.  You can also see at the bottom right the other games for Windows 8 being added (up to the 100, with a scrollbar). 

Talpa Online (being Challenged)

If you look at this Talpa game panel, you'll notice how the game also engages players to challenge one another.  This was a feature we added during the build on the client side that was not present in the original engine build.  Since all of our games are primarily player verus player games, mechanisms like these are quite important to keep players engaged while the app is active.

Ultimately, the goal will be to pick out the games that perform best in the Windows 8 store and improve on the model, deepend the experience, use more of the Windows 8 tools to connect with users, like the Tiles, more Notifications (different types are available), Tournament modules (we have one on the server we could use pretty simply) etc...

But of course, I'll keep that for another post.  :)

Here are the links to the games shown above.  Don't worry, if you want to see the others, simply go to the game's hub (at entrance) and choose any one of the games that populate the bottom right corner to get to the proper Marketplace link for the game.

Link to the games in the Win 8 store to check them out and play:

Chess Masters Online

Talpa Online

Akron Online

 

When we get more games out there and finished with the Windows 8 Phone shell, I'll likely write something more so stay tuned!

 

Sylvain

Making 200 games for Windows 8 .. in 4 months

Dear readers,

As you may know, Sylien Games, our web and smartphone game company, is getting lots of wind in its sails recently, what with being approached by Microsoft itself to create LOADS of games for the brand new Windows 8 and Windows 8 Phone platforms. 

Its a really great opportunity.

We're also getting some interesting press on this from different sources, which is great. 

I thought I would write something about our progress in this project.  With the first game apps coming out on Windows 8 app store this or next week, I think it'll be interesting for readers to follow.

Below is an article that I wrote for Woot Studio, Microsoft's indie developer game blog site (Canada) where I describe the arrangement and some of the pitfalls discovered on the way.

I know those of you who are indie developers considering developing for Windows 8 and Windows 8 Phone should be paying attention and should subscribe to this blog.

Woot Studio (Microsoft) blog article:
http://wootstudio.ca/articles/sylien-games-challenge-making-200-games-for-windows-8-in-4-months

Cheers!
Sylvain