WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Well here we are with another edition of Winding Down at the start of a new month. This issue has material on an Intel License, a Facebook numbers dispute, the first vending machine, flat Earth believers – or maybe not, IBM drone delivering coffee for the distressed, an unusual video using ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd as the soundtrack, a night time snap of Java from the ISS – spot the volcanoes, and some guidelines for budding bureaucrats. Scanner has URLs pointing to material on cryptocurrency and bail, why a lack of coffee causes a headache, Facebook and a nude Picasso, how to lose a million visitors, a reverse filter, Hunger Stones, and a maths version of a time machine.
Enjoy!
Shorts:
One of last week’s Scanner URLs pointed to an article about Intel patching yet more security holes in its chip sets. Well, some eagle eyed type actually read the license that went with the fixes. It turned out that there was a clause in the license saying you couldn’t publish the results of comparing how fast the chip performed before and after the patches.
General outrage in the community ensued and Intel rapidly backed off and issued a new version of the license without the offending clause! For the record, all of these patches issued by the chip makers over the last six months or so slow things down. That’s because the bugs they are trying to fix were caused by their original attempts to make their chips run faster. It’s a very competitive environment, and everyone wanted to trumpet the claim that they produced the fastest chip. In doing so they neglected to take into account all the possible security problems.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/21/intel_cpu_patch_licence/
I see that Facebook is being dragged into court by one of its advertisers, who claims it has less members than it is claiming in the billing for the adverts. For instance, the complainant suggests that claimed reach for 18-to-34 year-olds in each of the US states is more than the actual population of 18-to-34 year-olds in each state. Actually, complainants go as far as claiming that Facebook’s figures are inflated by a massive 400%!
I look forward to reading more as this case proceeds – I’ll keep you up to date...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/17/facebook_ad_reach_lawsuit/
Homework:
Vending machines are pretty ubiquitous these days, and are dispensing even more different items. But, did you know that the first vending machine was built in England in the 18th Century? Not only that, it sold gin!
What happened was that in 1736 the British parliament passed an act which restricted the sale of gin to people with a license – and the license was expensive. An enterprising ex-soldier, Captain Dudley Bradstreet, spotted the fact that the police had to take the seller to court, but the act gave them no authority to enter a building.
So, he rented a building and placed a statue of a cat in the wall of the building – it was called the Puss and Mew. The would-be drinker had to walk up to the statue and say, “Puss, do you have any gin?” The statue would meow, and a drawer would open in its mouth. The thirsty punter would put the coins into the drawer, which then closed, and gin would be dispensed through a hose under one of the cat’s paws.
The whole shebang was being operated by Bradstreet, but since the good Captain was in the house the police didn’t know who to arrest! OK, it may not have been mechanically operated but it did accept coins, and it did dispense the goods. I think that’s a reasonable definition of a vending machine...
https://hackaday.com/2018/08/23/the-first-vending-machine-hacked-liquor-laws-the-puss-and-mew/
Do people really think Earth might be flat? A poll says lots of Millennials do. To be precise only 66% think that it’s round. Well, that’s what the headline in Scientific American said. Hmmm! Well for a start, the journal got a copy of the spreadsheet and worked out that the figure was 83% according to the spreadsheet. But that’s as far as the article went.
So do I really think a sixth of people participating in the survey don’t think the Earth is roun?. Not really. Frankly, my first thought on reading the headline was that if someone asked a question like that I would assume this was an opportunity to string them along and pretend to be some sort of Flat Earth type! But looking further, we find out that the statement they were asked to agree or disagree with was, “I have always believed the world is round.” Note that the question wasn’t, “Do you believe the world is round?”
Given the question asked, I think we can fairly say that only 17% of the sample gave truthful answers, because it’s extremely unlikely that at some time during early childhood people have not thought the world was flat. Therefore, the correct answer is, “I have not ALWAYS believed the world is round.” The correct question to ask is, of course, “I believe the world is round.” It’s actually quite easy to be precise in English. (It’s also a magnificent language to be vague in, but that’s another story!) Maybe YouGov, who conducted the poll, should get someone who has a thorough grasp of the English language to write their questions...
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-people-really-think-earth-might-be-flat/
Geek Stuff:
I had to snigger at one of the latest patent filings from IBM. I think they must be getting really desperate. It’s for coffee drones that fly around looking for people they (the drones) think need a caffeine hit. When they find a poor unsuspecting victim, sorry, I mean customer, they lower a gimbal mounted coffee cup – with an inbuilt heater – on a piece of string. Once they think you’ve taken it they cut the string! As ‘The Register’ so aptly put it, “What could possibly go wrong?”
What indeed!
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/23/ibm_coffee_drone_patent/
Pictures:
This week’s main picture is, in fact, a video animation. A video made by two of the most unlikely collaborators – Salvador Dali and Walt Disney! It’s only seven minutes long, and the original music chosen by Dali was not what I’d call brilliant. However, someone (I don’t know who), has replaced the music with “Time” from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, and it completely transforms it. Well worth seven minutes of anyone’s time.
http://www.openculture.com/2018/08/salvador-dali-walt-disneys-short-animated-film-destino-set-music-pink-floyd.html
If you prefer static pictures you might like to take a look at a picture of Java taken at night from the International Space Station. Since it’s a night time photograph, you can see the urban areas by their lighting. But Java is part of a chain of active volcanoes. Obviously no one lives in volcanoes (unless you are a James Bond villain), but space is limited and they do live close to the edges. This means you can see where the volcanoes are, because they appear as black rings – no lights in them. Interestingly enough, you can see the lights of the villages clustered around them as a lit ring. Fascinating.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92666/lights-of-java
Scanner:
Here’s why the FBI didn’t let an alleged hacker use cryptocurrency to pay his bail [Spotted via ADVFN Crypto newsletter]
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-we-need-bailcoin-fbi-refuses-to-take-cryptocurrency-in-videogame-hacking-case-2018-08-17
Here’s why missing your daily coffee can lead to a headache
https://www.sciencealert.com/why-missing-a-coffee-can-give-you-headaches
Facebook censors Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s advert featuring nude Picasso painting
https://hyperallergic.com/454589/facebook-censors-montreal-museum-of-fine-arts-ad-featuring-nude-picasso-painting/
The UK’s National Portrait Gallery ‘lost’ a million visitors thanks to counting system that could not count
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/28/national-portrait-gallery-lost-half-million-visitors-thanks/
“Reverse filter” traps small objects but lets larger ones through
https://newatlas.com/reverse-filter-liquid-membrane/56084/
‘Hunger Stones’ with dire warnings have been surfacing in Central Europe
https://www.sciencealert.com/sinister-hunger-stones-dire-warnings-surfacing-european-heatwave-czech-drought-elbe-decin
Physicists say they’ve come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-came-up-with-a-mathematical-model-for-a-viable-time-machine
Quote for the week:
This week’s quote is from James H. Boren, an American bureaucrat...
Guidelines for bureaucrats:
(1) When in charge, ponder
(2) When in trouble, delegate
(3) When in doubt, mumble
from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Coda:
Hold the front page! As we go to press, news is breaking that Mastercard and Google have done a deal to get Google even more data on its customers... Details, first appearing in a Blooberg report, are sketchy, but I have little doubt this one will run and run if there is anything in the story.
More next week...
https://www.rt.com/business/437386-mastercard-google-deal-cards/
https://slate.com/technology/2018/08/google-mastercard-data-track-offline-purchases.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
2 September 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.
