WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week we have, for your reading and enjoyment, material on US Senate security, Epsilon Eridani, genetically engineered algae, gene sequencing for better beer, an ‘interdimensional portal’, Edgar Allan Poe and the Big Bang, a book review about what we don’t know in science, and in the pictures section a 360 degree animation, plus a night time pic of the US I-95 corridor. URLs in the Scanner section cover Nazi board games, net neutrality, fraudulent SIM swaps, and BlackBerry’s new KEYone.
And here it is...
Shorts:
How about this as a security quote of the week: “Our government isn’t exactly known for its security chops, but in a letter sent recently from [US] Senator Ron Wyden to two of his colleagues who head the Committee on Rules & Administration, it’s noted that (incredibly), the ID cards used by Senate Staffers only appear to have a smart chip in them. Instead of the real thing, some genius just decided to put a photo of a smart chip on each card [PDF], rather than an actual smart chip. This isn’t security by obscurity, it’s... bad security through cheap Photoshopping. From our Senate.” — Mike Masnick in ‘Techdirt’.
I resisted temptation to smirk, since I bet there are equally looney ‘security’ decisions at least as stupid as this one within my own, British, government.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170421/12072037207/senate-id-cards-use-photo-chip-rather-than-actual-smart-chip.shtml
Hands up Babylon Five TV series fans! I’m sure you will all remember that the space station was located in the Epsilon Eridani star system. Well guess what. It turns out that our exoplanet gazers have discovered that the system is the most similar yet found to our own Solar system! I wonder if J. Michael Straczynski, writer, producer, and guru of the series knows something that the rest of us don’t?
http://newatlas.com/solar-system-twin/49328/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105946/
I have to confess that the news that a genetically engineered version of an algae has been released outside the lab made me a little nervous. It’s probably OK, but I suspect memories from seeing the ‘B’ movie ‘The Blob’ as an impressionable youth are the main cause of the twitchiness!
http://newatlas.com/ge-algae-trialed-outdoors/49373/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob
Most reports of genome sequencing are pretty obscure, and mainly of interest to scientists in the field. But happily, this week I read of a gene sequencing that could mean a lot to the working man (like myself, for instance). Yes, researchers have sequenced the entire genome of barley, a key component of beer and whiskey! We are assured that this will (eventually) lead to better and tastier beer and whiskey, for which barley is a major component.
I’m sure this is something you were all desperate to know about!
http://newatlas.com/barley-genome-sequenced-better-beer/49264/
Homework:
I don’t normally like the work of ‘sculptor’ Anish Kapoor’, especially the warped Tatlin Tower knockoff he ran up outside the UK’s Olympic Stadium. However, I have to admit that the latest piece opened recently in New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Park is cool – very cool. If fact if you didn’t know better, you could easily mistake it for an interdimensional portal! Take a look – especially at the 28 second video of the feature.
http://gothamist.com/2017/05/04/brooklyn_portal_anish_kapoor.php#photo-1
I think most people have heard of the Big Bang theory of the universe, even if they disagree with it. It originally emerged in the 1920s among cosmologists and by the 1950s had become the most favoured theory for explaining the evolution of the universe. What most people don’t know, and I certainly didn’t, was that the Big Bang theory was anticipated in a piece Edgar Allan Poe in 1848, the year before he died.
I recommend a look at a short essay about the subject in ‘aeon’ magazine. It was enough to make me see if I can obtain the a copy of the Poe piece.
https://aeon.co/essays/edgar-allan-poe-visionary-of-big-bang-cosmology
Finding out, and knowing what we know about science is sometimes difficult (I once wrote a paper as part of my sociology degree about how groups like scientists and technicians use group developed jargon to maintain the mystique of their profession). Those of you who want to know more might like to take a quick look at a short review of Marcus du Sautoy’s new book ‘The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science’. It sounds an interesting book – in fact it’s already on my Amazon Wish List!
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3227/1
Pictures:
This week I have a five minute video animation you might be interested to look at. It’s a fantasy based on the lights of Tokyo city. One of the reasons it first came to my attention was because it’s a 360 degree video – you can use the mouse to look around in all directions. I did some early work on 360 degree videos. We had five GoPro cameras mounted on a car – four were horizontal, one was straight up. It was interesting work – especially developing a user interface that worked.
Things have moved on somewhat since then, and this video is an interesting example of how far it has developed.
https://aeon.co/videos/is-this-what-a-city-looks-like-in-its-dreams-a-360-dive-into-tokyo
Those of you who are more still photograph oriented, especially if you live near the US 1-95 highway, might like to take a look at a shot of a 200 mile section from Hartford to Philadelphia taken from space at night. If you really like it, you can always download a 4,928 x 3,280 pixel version of it!
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=90129&src=eoa-iotd
Scanner:
The Nazi board games of World War II [My sociology instincts insisted on adding this one :) -AL]
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nazi-board-games-wwii
FCC’s Pai: I am going to kill net neutrality in US
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/26/fcc_pai_kills_net_neutrality/
Fraudsters draining accounts with ‘SIM swaps’ – what to do
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/05/02/fraudsters-draining-accounts-with-sim-swaps-what-to-do/#
Well, hot-diggity-damn, BlackBerry’s KEYone is one hell of a comeback
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/28/blackberry_keyone_production_24hr_test/
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
7 May 2017
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.
