WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
I seriously considered leaving this edition until tomorrow, since it’s a leap year and tomorrow is the 29th of February, but I guess I’ll just have to wait until the 29th falls on a Sunday to carry a load of leap year wisecracks. So, what do we have for you this week? Well, a very creepy picture of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Cory Doctorow on encryption back doors, video of a ship graveyard, untouch typing, salt, the Milky Way, Termux, the Duesenberg Torpedo Phaeton, Chiswick, and The Royal Society Bakerian Lecture. Apart from those items we have URLs pointing to a radio telescope evacuation, books taken to the Antarctic, Android back door apps (that’s a story about, not a pointer to malware!), Google stuff to stop cyber attacks on news sites, a breakthrough in producing hydrocarbon fuels, and a leaked report on the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
All good stuff!
Shorts:
Eeeek! Take a look at this ultra-creepy picture of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. It’s genuine, and he thought that it was such a good image that he posted it on his Facebook page. Everyone else in the picture is blinkered by VR headsets, seeing only what the operators want them to see. The only ‘free’ person in the picture is Zuckerberg sporting a rictus of a grin. We have seen the future and Mark Zuckerberg likes it...
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/22/11087890/mark-zuckerberg-mwc-picture-future-samsung
There’s an interesting piece on the current round of crypto wars by Cory Doctorow in the UK’s Guardian newspaper. He made the key point very well – the governments want an encryption back door that the bad guys can’t use. The problem is that as Doctorow points out wanting it doesn’t actually make it physically possible. No doubt governments also want anti-gravity devices, time machines and psychic powers. Unfortunately wanting doesn’t mean they can have those either!
The trouble is that by the time they discover that these things don’t work, they’ve jumped out of an aircraft with an ‘anti-gravity’ belt or the bad guys have discovered the back door. In either case the results aren’t good, to put it mildly. OK, I can see that some of you might be able to see something acceptable about politicians jumping out of an aircraft with a non-functioning anti-gravity belt, but I think you get my drift...
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/24/the-fbi-wants-a-backdoor-only-it-can-use-but-wanting-it-doesnt-make-it-possible
I think you might like to take a look at a short video (seven and a half minutes) taken by a drone of the Staten Island Ships’ Graveyard. It’s a classy piece of work, complete with suitably doom laden music. Not to be missed.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/video-wonder-a-drones-eye-view-of-staten-islands-ship-graveyard
Homework:
Yes! As a non-touch-typist I was delighted to read in iProgrammer that recent research on this issue shows that, at least in programming, self-taught people like myself can type just as fast as trained touch-typists. Probably the most interesting comment was that “The touch typing system was developed for typing sentences on typewriters.” Actually, I do type sentences – for Winding Down if nothing else! Even so I’m a fast (and inaccurate) typist, but that’s because my brain frequently runs well ahead of my typing, so that on the first cut it ends up like those ‘fill in the blanks’ puzzles!
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/99/9427.html
I want to talk about salt. You know, the white stuff you sprinkle over food (or not, if you take any notice of the endless public health warnings about salt). I’ve always taken the health warnings with a pinch of salt, if you’ll excuse the expression! My problem is simple. I don’t eat processed foods, so, in reality, virtually all the salt I get is what I put in the cooking or what I sprinkle on the food on my plate. Add to this that I seem to sweat salt a lot more than most people. Cats and dogs just love to lick me. As a child I thought this was because I was a nice child (those who knew me then assure me that wasn’t the case...), but in retrospect it was the salt issue. The net result of this is that if I cut down on salt I pretty soon start to suffer from serious cramps.
So it was that with some interest I recently read a piece looking at the results of 269 studies investigating the link between sodium and health (salt is sodium chloride). This is what is known as a ‘meta-study’. Meta-studies are useful because they often find interesting things that are not obvious to the researchers in the individual studies.
So what did they find in this case?
Well, I guess the best description would be ‘link not proven’, or possibly a very weak case in favour of the anti-salt lobby. To be precise, 54% of the studies supported the idea of a link between salt and health problems, 33% contradicted the idea of a link, and the remaining 13% were inconclusive.
I’m not surprised. It’s my belief that it means that both required and safe salt intake levels vary for individuals. In my opinion the pronouncements of the public health officials trying to mandate levels of salt is an example of what I call ‘mainframe’ mentality. One size fits all if you like. This, unfortunately, is an all too familiar mindset in politicians, high level health officials, and bureaucrats. Incidentally, another example of this mentality is using BMI to define obesity. Bottom line – they like things to be tidy.
It’s a bit sad really, because I think most of the increases in life expectancy in the western world have been generated by public health initiatives which do apply to everyone – clean water, childhood inoculation, campaigns against spitting, to name but a few. The problem is that when they move away from the things that affect everyone to those that vary for individuals, the public health people get mired into ‘averages’ by the very mindset that made them so successful earlier.
http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/tales-from-the-salt-wars
The European Space organisation has just released a fantastic new picture of the southern plane of the Milky Way. Take a look – click on the picture to get an enlarged view.
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1606/
Geek Stuff:
Do you find smart phones and tablets a real pain because they don’t give access to proper facilities to work with them, like file systems and shells? Well here is something you might like to try out. I certainly will if I ever get round to purchasing a tablet. It’s called Termux and it describes itself as combining a powerful terminal emulation with an extensive Linux package collection.
Items provided by Termux include the bash shell (which I use all the time for developing Federation) and the zsh shell. Editors include the nano and vim editors. I personally rate nano very highly for use on servers – vim you can keep! It also includes ssh – useful for server access. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, so I can really only draw your attention to it, rather than recommending it, but it sounds excellent.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux
Oooh! I’d love to be able to drive around in a 1933 Duesenberg Torpedo Phaeton. I’d even settle for a 2017 replica of one of them – it would be so cool. Of course, I would have to hire some 1930s Chicago gangsters to go on the running boards, but that’s a mere bagatelle...
http://www.gizmag.com/duesenberg-torpedo-phaeton-hartje-eddie-paul-interview/41953/
London:
London is a collection of villages that have grown together over the centuries. The one I live in is called Chiswick, which was the site of the Battle of Turnham Green in the English Civil War. That battle was the nearest the Royalist forces ever got to London as it was then. Basically the Royalists beat the Parliamentary forces in the battle, and then went on an orgy of looting, boozing and burning. The following morning a new bunch of Parliamentarians turned up and thrashed the Royalists who were suffering from very bad hangovers... If you want to see what Chiswick looks like now, the first URL has some contemporary pictures.
But I digress. What I really wanted to tell you about is the Magic Lantern Festival currently on in the grounds of Chiswick House. It’s on until March 6, and it looks gorgeous. Chiswick House is a nice place to stroll around in the summer anyway – if you have small children it’s a great place to let them safely run of some off that energy!
http://londonist.com/2016/02/the-best-of-chiswick-in-photos
http://londonist.com/2016/02/a-look-around-the-magical-lantern-festival-at-chiswick-house-gardens
http://www.magicallantern.uk/
I know this is short notice, but if you are in London on March 1 and you are interested in astronomy (which I know a lot of my readers are) then the Royal Society is presenting this year’s Bakerian Lecture, which is on the subject of black holes. The first Bakerian Lecture was in 1775! What’s more it’s free and on a first come first served basis. I’ve been to several of the Royal Society’s free evening lectures in the past, and I thoroughly recommend them.
https://royalsociety.org/events/2016/03/bakerian-lecture/
Scanner:
China ‘evacuates’ 9,000 around monster radio ‘scope
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/17/chinese_monster_radio_telescope/
What books were taken to the Antarctic 100 years ago?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35633374
Android users installed 2 -billion- data-stealing, back dooring apps
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/24/android_users_installed_2_billion_datastealing_
backdooring_apps/
Google wants to save news sites from cyber-attacks
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/google-wants-save-news-sites-cyberattacks-free/
Liquid hydrocarbon fuel created from CO2 and water in breakthrough one-step process
http://www.gizmag.com/co2-water-hydrocarbon-fuel-uta/41976/
Secret UN report finds against controversial WIPO chief
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/22/wipo_whistleblower_report/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi and Michael 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
28 February 2016
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.
