[SCCC] Phone Skimmer in Alpha Test

[Dennis Vernacchia]

In a message dated 4/1/2015 11:27:26 <calendar:T7:4/1/2015 11:27:26> GMT
Standard Time, n4zr at contesting.com
writes:

To CQ  Contest: This press release appeared in PY1NB?s mailbox a few days
ago.The  original was written in Esperanto, presumably to disguise the
national  origin of those involved, but we have managed to get it
translated, and  believe that the news it transmits is too important not
to pass it  on.

73

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 1, 2015 <calendar:T2:April 1, 2015> Teresopolis,  Brazil

_Phone Skimmer in Alpha Test_

Thanks to an anonymous NSA  computer scientist who is presumed to be a
radio amateur, working computer  code for a Phone Skimmer has been made
available to a clandestine  development team, and will be released for
beta test to the amateur radio  community in coming months.It promises to
bring to phone contesting and  DXing the same incredible capabilities
that VE3NEA?s CW and RTTY Skimmers  have brought to those modes.

It was long thought that the decoding  problems posed by human speech,
even with the limited vocabulary employed  by radio amateurs, rendered a
workable automated system beyond the reach  of anyone but the NSA and
their competitors in the shadowy world of  signals
intelligence.Fortunately,as predicted by Moore?s Law, recent
developments in microprocessor architecture such as Intel?s new Skylake
series have made it possible to move voice recognition and decoding from
a massively-parallel-processor environment to a relatively
straightforward 32-core CPU.The development team believes that within a
few months PCs running these CPUs under Windows 10 will be able to begin
serious beta testing.

Lest readers question whether the new Phone  Skimmer is just more
vaporware, the development team has been using alpha  test versions of
the software since last fall?s CQWW SSB contest.While the  testers are
not yet ready to disclose their identities, the emergence of  some new
calls in the top ranks of phone contesting since then  demonstrates the
impact it can have.

At the same time, the  developers wish to emphasize the challenges that
remain before the phone  Skimmer can reach full potential.Testing against
phonetics in different  languages, as well as English phonetics when
pronounced by non-native  speakers, has brought out some of the hardest
issues.High accuracy in  copying the International phonetics Juliet,
Kilo, Lima, Romeo and Golf,  for example, will probably depend on rapid
lookup in Super Check Partial  files and online licensing databases to
help accuracy,Similarly, numbers  like Five and Nine pose special
challenges, and may lead to initiatives to  do away with signal reports
altogether in contests.

The development  team has asked me to represent them in the media, to
spare them the  bombardment of e-mails from radio amateurs from Ireland
to California to  Thailand, so they can get the product ready for beta
release as soon as  possible.Please bear with us as, once again,
technology moves  forward!

73,

Larson E. Rapp, WIOU

Ludditeville,  WV

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