Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
16 February 2025
This week we look at the damaging activities of Trump and Musk, how to defeat phone scammers by wasting their time, and the UK voting system. The quote is from Henry Kissinger, and the picture is an amazing one involving the night sky and the land from which it is being photographed. Scanner covers the Public Domain Image Archive, Thames Water, a Trump inspired biography re-write (nasty – AL), Trump tariffs and the effect on tech, killing Microsoft Copilot, Windows Total Recall, and the Great Gold Robbery! No Coda section this week.
Enjoy!
“The poster child for autocracy”: how to understand Trump’s regime
I’m recommending this article, from Democracy for Sale, because it’s the first one I’ve seen that really explains what is happening in the USA at the moment. The fact is that the most dangerous stuff in Trump’s government is not so much Trump’s outpouring, but the work being done by Musk and his team.
Bottom line, not only are they removing material that they disagree with but they are rewriting the code that would allow it to be brought back if they were to lose power. The bulk of this article is an interview with Kim Lane Scheppele who is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs and Director of the Program in Law and Normative Thinking at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.
This is the best analysis of what is going on that I’ve seen anywhere. Highly recommended.
https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/the-poster-child-for-autocracy-kim-lane-scheppele-musk
This is a website tracking legal challenges to Trump’s activities.
https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-legal-challenges-trump-administration-actions/
‘Dear, did you say pastry?’: meet the ‘AI granny’ driving scammers up the wall
I can only quote from the article – I was laughing too much to do anything else!
“Daisy is, of course, not a real grandmother but an AI bot created by computer scientists to combat fraud. Her task is simply to waste the time of the people who are trying to scam her.
O2 rolled out “AI granny” Daisy for a short period to show what could be done with artificial intelligence to counter the scourge of scammers who have become so ubiquitous.
Using a mixture of ambivalence, confusion about how computers work and an eagerness to reminisce about her younger days, the “78 years young” Daisy draws sighs and snapping from fraudsters on the other end of the line.”
(Thanks to Fi for drawing my attention to this brilliant anti-scam)
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/04/ai-granny-scammers-phone-fraud
Half of Britons support voting reform and ‘proportional’ system, poll finds
A recent poll has shown that half of Britain’s support the idea of swapping the current method of voting (first past the post) for proportional representation. I have to say that I’m in full agreement with that. The problems with first past the post are well known, and showed up in the recent UK general election. The 2024 general election was the most disproportional in British history, it gave the Labour Party 63.2 per cent of House of Commons seats on just 33.7 percent of the vote.
This has two bad consequences. One, it doesn’t reflect the actual vote, which commentators immediately seized upon. Not covered is another problem, just as serious. With such a large majority the leadership of the Labour Party can just suspend elected members of the party who do not fully agree, without having to make any concessions to their concerns.
Needless to say the leadership of the ruling party is firmly against proportional representation!
Quotes worth remembering
“Power is the great aphrodisiac.”
Henry Kissinger
Pictures
A stunning picture of the milky way and a crescent moon over unusual rock spires called the Pinnacles, in Australia.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250209.html
Scanner
Public Domain Image Archive is being put online, and most of it is available for download!
https://pdimagearchive.org/galleries/centuries/20th-century/random/desc
Thames Water chairman accused of conflict of interest over £37m dividend payment
https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/thames-water-chairman-accused-of-conflict-of-interest-dividend-payments
What public-private-partnership scandals can tell us about wrongdoing in the water industry
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-private-partnership-scandals-wrongdoing-industry.html
Scientists alarmed as Rubin Observatory changes biography of astronomer Vera Rubin amid Trump’s push to end DEI efforts
https://www.space.com/the-universe/earth/scientists-alarmed-as-rubin-observatory-changes-biography-of-astronomer-vera-rubin-amid-trumps-push-to-end-dei-efforts
Trump’s tariffs and cuts may well put tech in a chokehold, say analysts
https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/31/trump_policies_painting_global_tech/
How do I kill my Microsoft Copilot?
https://unherd.com/2025/01/how-do-i-kill-my-microsoft-copilot/
Giving Windows total recall of everything a user does is a privacy minefield
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/22/windows_recall/
The Great Gold Robbery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gold_Robbery
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
16 February 2025
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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