WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week we feature 3D printers, spying on lawyers, forensic artists, asteroid fireballs, mini-satellites, a Lego particle accelerator, ‘break off’ USB sticks, an X-Wing knife block, and London in 1941. If that isn’t enough for you, then our URLs will point you at drones, API copyright, renewable energy, QR codes, Swiss net neutrality, high-tech lettuce, Antarctic ice, and quasars.
Small, but perfectly formed this week – and packed with stuff! Actually, we are moving into the season of the year where everything is packed with gift suggestions, reviews of the last year, or predictions for next year. I’ll try and avoid that, but it’s not easy!
Anyway, let’s cut to the action...
Shorts:
For many years now enthusiasts have been enthusing about how home based 3D printers are going to revolutionize the way we make and buy goods. Hyperbole has ruled most of the time, and the much touted advantages have been slow to materialize.
The biggest area where 3D printers have had an effect is in prototyping, but we have yet to see any general adoption in the home.
Things are moving forward, though. The latest incarnation, a machine called ‘Squink’, is definitely a step forward. The key difference is that it has a detachable head, which can be swapped to allow it to perform a range of functions. The effect, still in its primitive stages, is to allow it to perform some of the functions of numerically controlled industrial machines.
We are still suffering from hyperbole, though. The article refers to Squink as a ‘home factory’. That’s a little over the top – for instance you still have change the different heads by hand. A turret system would be more appropriate. None the less I agree that the machine shows the way forward.
In the meantime you can follow the development of 3D printers by the simple expedient of keeping an eye on how people refer to them. When people use the word ‘printer’ to mean a 3D printer, and you have talk about what we now call a ‘printer’ as a 2D printer, you will know that 3D printing has truly arrived!
http://www.gizmag.com/beyond-3d-printers-home-electronics-factory-squink-botfactory/34371/
It turns out that in the UK, should you be so foolish as to sue the government, its spies will start spying on you and your lawyer and pass on the supposedly confidential information to the government’s legal team. I wonder if that’s the only place where this happens?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/07/british_government_spying_on_lawyers
Homework:
The BBC web site has a really interesting piece about the work of forensic artists. You might think that with the advent of digital technology, forensic artistry would be a dying trade. Not so. There is still plenty of scope for the artist, particularly in cases where the person vanished several years ago, making any extant photographs out of date.
In these sort of cases, and in ones where the body is badly damaged, the police call in the forensic artist to try to produce a likeness for identification. Point your browser at the URL to read all about it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29223278
Did you know that a small asteroid hits the Earth’s atmosphere roughly every other week? No? Neither did I, until I saw a map of all of the known ‘hits’ between 1994 and 2013. The asteroids burn up in the atmosphere, and are known as fireballs. The best known recent one is the one that burned up over Chelyabinsk in February last year.
Apparently, an asteroid about the size of an automobile hits the atmosphere about once a year. About once every 5,000 years we get one the size of a football field. That doesn’t sound very nice! Anyway, you can take a look at the map yourself and see if one has ‘landed’ near you in the last 20 years...
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=84763&src=eoa-iotd
I don’t watch videos all that often, but I think this TED video is well worth eight minutes of your time. It’s about a project, already under way, to spot the changes in the Earth, both natural and man-made, in semi-real time using a host of tiny satellites. Highly recommended.
http://www.ted.com/talks/will_marshall_teeny_tiny_satellites_that_photograph_
the_entire_planet_every_day
For Geeks:
Now here’s a treat for all aspiring high energy particle physicists – a Lego particle accelerator! Unlike its big brother at CERN, it doesn’t produce a beam of protons. It would be more accurate to characterize its output as a clump of protons, together with neutrons and electrons, traveling at relatively high, rather than relativistic, speeds...
http://kottke.org/14/11/a-working-lego-particle-accelerator
Here’s a nifty present for the aspiring geek – a credit card sized set of four ‘break off’ USB sticks, which fit into your wallet or purse. Need to make a quick digital copy? Just break one off, use it, and throw it away when you’ve finished with it. Don’t forget to wipe it clean (digitally) first though!
http://www.mensjournal.com/gear/electronics/the-worlds-most-portable-flash-drive-20140911
Infoworld has a selection of geek gifts for Xmas. I wasn’t very impressed, but I did rather like the X-Wing knife block! What do you think?
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2835084/gadgets/the-infoworld-2014-geek-gadget-gift-guide.html
London:
Something a little different this week. I live in a part of London called Chiswick. London, you should understand, is not so much a city as a collection of villages that grew together. This means that each area is often quite different to the next one, and the villages are still quite small.
Chiswick is one such village, and like a lot of villages we have our own bus garage and we used to have the major bus works depot, since turned into a business park. ‘20th Century London’ has a picture of buses in the depot in May 1941, with members of the Home Guard marching past with their rifles.
At that time Hitler had not yet turned the German Army’s attention to Russia, and invasion was still considered to be a strong possibility. With a large chunk of the British Army based abroad, the government turned to volunteers, often ex-soldiers now too old to serve, to defend again the threat of German paratroopers. These were known as the ‘Home Guard’, and judging from tales my grandfather, who was in the Home Guard, told me, they had a great deal of fun.
Incidentally, American visitors often complain about the lack of signs pointing the way to local towns. This too dates back to World War II when all the sign posts were removed, so that invading Germans would get lost. For some people the threat of a German invasion has never gone away...
If you want to get a feel for what it was like to be in the Home Guard, see if you can find an episode of the Television series “Dad’s Army’ – I’m told that it’s terrifyingly accurate, even though it’s a comedy.
http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/ltm-1998-53043
Scanner:
Christmas gift: attack of the drones
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/23/toy-drones-christmas-present-hobby
Computer scientists petition Supreme Court over API copyright
http://i-programmer.info/news/99/7959.html
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’ say top Google engineers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_
wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
QR codes could generate 3D images on phones – no internet required
http://www.gizmag.com/qr-codes-3d-images/34771/
Has Switzerland cracked the net neutrality riddle?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/10/swiss_neutrality_code/
Toshiba’s high-tech grow rooms are churning out lettuce that never needs washing
http://qz.com/295936/toshibas-high-tech-grow-rooms-are-churning-out-lettuce-that-never-needs-washing/
Antarctic ice thicker than first feared – penguin-bot boffins
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/25/penguinpowered_robot_finds_
antarctic_sea_ice_is_thicker_than_first_thought/
Quasars found to strangely align across billions of light-years
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2014/11/quasars-found-to-strangely-align-across.html
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
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
30 November 2014
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
