Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
24 November 2024
We open this issue with an important piece about the Middle Eastern exploding phones. I’ve lifted it out of the blog, because the rest of that blog item is a technical discussion on how it was done. And I have no wish to provide a link to that discussion here.
Moving on we look at what happens when neutron stars collide, and a piece about the US government trying to get programmers to switch to so-called ‘memory safe’ programming languages. The quote is from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. There are two lots of pictures of Japanese sculptures, and rather unusual handcrafted leather accessories.
Scanner has URLs pointing to material on global warming, NHS (UK) drones, chemistry and laundry, U.S. Air Force’s First Black Female Pilot, 2D materials, a home radio telescope, London tube zones, laser light casting a shadow, one of the more interesting pieces inspired by the US election, and a possible future for the internet.
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Opening Pandora’s Box – An extract from an article on bunnie’s blog
“Not all things that could exist should exist, and some ideas are better left unimplemented. Technology alone has no ethics: the difference between a patch and an exploit is the method in which a technology is disclosed. Exploding batteries have probably been conceived of and tested by spy agencies around the world, but never deployed en masse because while it may achieve a tactical win, it is too easy for weaker adversaries to copy the idea and justify its re-deployment in an asymmetric and devastating retaliation.
However, now that I’ve seen it executed, I am left with the terrifying realization that not only is it feasible, it’s relatively easy for any modestly-funded entity to implement. Not just our allies can do this – a wide cast of adversaries have this capability in their reach, from nation-states to cartels and gangs, to shady copycat battery factories just looking for a big payday (if chemical suppliers can moonlight in illicit drugs, what stops battery factories from dealing in bespoke munitions?). Bottom line is: we should approach the public policy debate around this assuming that someday, we could be victims of exploding batteries, too. Turning everyday objects into fragmentation grenades should be a crime, as it blurs the line between civilian and military technologies.
I fear that if we do not universally and swiftly condemn the practice of turning everyday gadgets into bombs, we risk legitimizing a military technology that can literally bring the front line of every conflict into your pocket, purse or home.”
----- End of extract -----
When neutron stars collide, they explode like a mini-Big Bang
In August 2017, astronomers for the first time spotted a collision between two neutron stars, their merging, and the resulting formation of a black hole. Normally, stars, even colliding ones, can’t form elements heavier than iron. That’s because they only produce enough energy to fuse elements to become iron or one of the lighter elements.
The resulting black hole from this collision, though, it turns out, does have enough energy to fuse heavier elements, as watching astronomers realised when they discovered the signature of strontium in the spectrum of the resulting black hole. And it seems that what we are see in the expanding kilonova is very similar to a period in the early development of the universe, known as the Epoch of Recombination.
There is a 46 second simulation of the event at the URL – though it took 380,000 years after the Big Bang for the plasma to start combining into atoms.
https://www.sciencealert.com/when-neutron-stars-collide-they-explode-like-a-mini-big-bang
The US government wants developers to stop using C and C++
Oh dear. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI want us to stop programming in ‘C’ and ‘C++’ or other so called ‘memory-unsafe’ languages. CISA and friends have been banging this drum for a long time now.
It’s just not that simple. There is a massive amount of stuff out there and it’s not just the programs themselves. All the programs I can think of use libraries, which would also have to be re-written – preferably before starting on the ‘unsafe’ programs.
And just who is going to pay for this re-writing?
The commercial companies? You’ve got to be joking. There’s no money in re-writing. They are all to busy hyping AI in any case. Re-writing existing programs is not going to set the world on fire, or increase the next quarter’s earnings. Far from it, it’s going to reduce the earnings – all those expensive programmers re-writing programs that already exist...
Okay, how about Open Source programmers? They have better and more interesting things to do with their time. And they already write memory safe code, and see little need to go back and re-write it, especially after they’ve moved on to new projects!
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/08/the_us_government_wants_developers/
Quotes worth remembering:
“...we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Abraham Lincoln – From the Gettysburg Address, 19th November 1863
Pictures:
Our 5 Favorite Things From DesignArt Tokyo 2024
I really like the Forest of Urushi Lights and the Smoke Sculptures.
https://www.spoon-tamago.com/designart-tokyo-2024/
Tentacle-Inspired Leather Accessories Handcrafted by Cokeco
For those with more gripping tastes...
https://www.spoon-tamago.com/cokeco-leather-accessories/
Scanner:
2024 Predicted to Be First Full Year Above 1.5°C of Global Warming
https://www.sciencealert.com/2024-predicted-to-be-first-full-year-above-1-5c-of-global-warming
NHS using drones to fly blood tests between Southwark hospitals
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/nhs-using-drones-to-fly-blood-tests-between-southwark-hospitals-77063/
A chemistry expert reveals what they personally use in the laundry
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-chemistry-expert-reveals-what-they-personally-use-in-the-laundry
Meet the U.S. Air Force’s First Black Female Pilot
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/air-space-museum/2024/11/11/meet-the-us-air-forces-first-black-female-pilot/
Moving graphene from the lab to fab: How 2D materials could transform everyday electronics
https://phys.org/news/2024-11-graphene-lab-fab-2d-materials.html
How to build a home radio telescope to detect clouds of hydrogen in the Milky Way
https://phys.org/news/2024-11-home-radio-telescope-clouds-hydrogen.html
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.00057 (Technical info)
Time to scrap the London tube zones
https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/its-time-to-scrap-the-tube-zones/
Scientists discover laser light can cast a shadow
https://phys.org/news/2024-11-scientists-laser-shadow.html
Three Liberalisms
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/three-liberalisms
An 83-year-old short story by Borges portends a bleak future for the internet
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-11-year-short-story-borges-portends.html
Footnote:
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
24 November 2024
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.com/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.com/alan/winding/index.html.
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