WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week we return, briefly, to a more usual style of Winding Down with the normal number of articles. We start with a piece about how many data records were stolen or went missing last year, then we move onto a Facebook privacy audit, a little discussion about plagiarism, then on to dirty keyboards, and a video of Bill Gates presenting the then brand new Windows 98. In the Scanner section there are URLs pointing to material on measuring astronomical distances, doubt about whether there are Earth-like planets elsewhere, hacker attacks moving from Adobe to Microsoft, diabetic blindness, the effects of lift technology, and finally lasers powering devices.
The more observant of you will undoubtedly have noticed the word ‘briefly’ in the first sentence. That’s because we’ll all be on holiday next weekend. Its what we in England call a ‘Bank Holiday’. That means you get the Monday off, giving you a long weekend. What usually happens is that you get to watch the rain through your living room window, instead of the office window. It’s supposed to be the May Day holiday, but May 1st falls on a Tuesday this year, so the actual holiday is the following Monday. May Day comes from either, depending on your political or religious affiliation, Beltain, the Celtic festival marking the start of summer, or alternatively, since 1904, it’s been International Workers’ Day. Take your pick. Incidentally, May Day was banned by the English puritan government after they chopped the head off king Charles I. They seem to have disliked people having a good time.
Shorts:
How many data records do you think were stolen last year? One million? Ten million? A hundred million? No – that’s far too low. There were more than 2.6 BILLION records lost, stolen, or left exposed online last year. As I write this, the figure for the world population is 7,618,572,269. That’s just over 7.6 billion. Incidentally, the population will be bigger by the time you read this, you can check the latest figure by clicking on the second URL.
According to the calculator on my trusty but ageing Samsung Galaxy note 1 phone 2.6 divided by 7.6 comes to approximately 0.3421052632. I think we can safely take that as being slightly more than a third. Think about it – the number of data breaches was theoretically enough to compromise the private data of a third of the world’s population. Of course, it’s not quite that bad because some people will have had more than one record stolen, some of the records will be duplicated, some of the records will be for people who had already died, and some of them won’t contain any personal data.
Nonetheless, it’s a staggeringly large number, even more worrying when you consider that 1.9 billion of those records were compromised because of human error. So next time you are about to, for instance, click on a browser button that lets a web site track you, remember those figures, and think twice before clicking...
https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/26-billion-plus-data-records-breached-last-year/d/d-id/1331514
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
I’m all you’ll all be absolutely delighted to know that according to a heavily redacted document recently issued by the US Federal Trade Commission, none of us need worry about the privacy of our data on Facebook. The document is the report on an audit of Facebook’s privacy policies by accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (aka PwC). Why you would ask an accountancy firm to do a privacy audit is beyond me. Silly me, I would have asked a digital security firm.
According to PwC, “In our opinion, Facebook’s privacy controls were operating with sufficient effectiveness to provide reasonable assurance to protect the privacy of covered information.” I wonder if any of PWC’s senior partners use Facebook?
The report covered 2015 and 2016, but in 2014 Cambridge Analytica had already started collecting personally identifiable information on some 87 million Facebook users. According to the US New York Times and the UK Guardian as of March 17, 2018 the data was available on the open internet and in general circulation.
I suspect PwC may have a somewhat different idea of what constitutes privacy than the rest of us do. But what else would you expect from a bunch of accountants? Especially one whose Wikipedia entry includes no less than 26 entries under the ‘Controversies’ heading!
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/21/facebook_privacy_audit_finds_everything_is_awesome/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PricewaterhouseCoopers#Controversies
Homework:
Well – that’s interesting. I was going to draw your attention to an interesting piece in ‘The Space Review’ about cybersecurity in space. However, when I came to check the URL, I discovered the article had gone, and all that was left was a statement saying that the article had been removed because of plagiarism by its author!
That’s interesting in its own right. Before the internet came around plagiarism was something that only really happened in academic circles. Now it’s easy to publish on the internet, and even easier to copy large chunks of other people’s work into your own piece, without acknowledging its source. In the case where no money is involved, it’s mostly just bad manners, and people who do that are likely to be outed anyway. Where money is involved it’s different. You are being paid to do the work, and copying other people’s work is, at the least, defrauding your publisher.
Actually, it’s not only that the internet that makes it easy to commit plagiarism, the internet also makes it easy to be caught indulging in the vice. The reason is simple: if you write a piece on a subject, it will get indexed by Google, Bing, and the like, and this will draw the attention of those interested in the subject when they make a search to see what’s new. And those people, of course, are the most likely ones to have read the originals. Thus, it doesn’t take long before you find that your reputation is destroyed...
As an aside, in the case of the space security article, I wish the publishers had included a link to the original article (the one that was plagiarised), because the piece in ‘The Space Review’ was interesting. I guess we’ll never know now!
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3468/1
Geek Stuff:
Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you cleaned your keyboard? Never or very infrequently? OK – there is a URL for where you can buy biohazard stickers at the end of this piece!
Joking aside, even if you do sometimes clean the keyboard, a recent study found that the typical desk has 400 time the amount of bacteria found on a toilet seat. I’d guess the keyboard is probably one of the worst offenders.
Even more alarming, one hospital in Chicago found that its computer keyboards held drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus like MRSA for up to 24 hours. Ick!
You should probably wipe your keyboard down once a week. I can’t think of anyone I know who wipes their keyboard even once a month, so getting people to wipe keyboards frequently is going to be an uphill task. Anyway. if you want to know how to clean your keyboard properly, take a click on the sciencealert.com URL and see what you can manage.
https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-how-often-you-should-clean-your-keyboard-according-to-science
https://www.google.com/search?q=biohazard+sticker&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Pictures:
And now for something completely different! This week we have a historic video for you to watch... Those of you with long enough memories may remember the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 98. That was 20 years ago, and the portents were not good, though it coasted along on the success of the earlier Windows 95. One of the most hyped features of the ‘new improved’ Windows was its plug and play feature. Amazing at the time, the idea that you could just plug in a device and it would just work with no messing around was revolutionary for Windows (USB hadn’t been invented then).
At Comdex 1998, Bill Gates went on stage in front of a huge audience to present Microsoft’s new operating system and demonstrated the plug and play facilities. You can probably guess what happened, but just in case I’ll let you find out for yourself. The URL points to a ‘Register’ article which has the a video of the event’s highlight!
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/20/windows_98_comdex_bsod_video/
Scanner:
There’s no consistent measuring system for space, and it’s hurting astronomy
https://www.sciencealert.com/retired-professor-calls-for-standard-measurements-in-astronomy-astrophysics
Study casts doubt on existence of a potential “Earth 2.0”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-casts-doubt-on-existence-of-a-potential-earth-2-0/
Attackers shift from Adobe flaws to Microsoft products
https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/attackers-shift-from-adobe-flaws-to-microsoft-products/d/d-id/1331381
Could diabetic blindness be prevented by glowing contact lenses?
https://newatlas.com/glowing-contact-lens-diabetic-blindness/54353/
New lift technology is reshaping cities
https://medium.economist.com/new-lift-technology-is-reshaping-cities-1f45174bcd86
Lasers could power computers wirelessly
https://www.networkworld.com/article/3267969/mobile-wireless/lasers-could-power-computers-wirelessly.html
Coda:
Quote for the Week:
“Forget love, I’d much rather fall into chocolate!” seen in a shop window, Turnham Green, London, England
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
29 April 2018
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.
