Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
12 April 2020
I just belatedly realised that it’s Easter. It’s a full month or more into a fairly solid lockdown and it feels much the same as any other day. Normally I would take a break at Easter, but given that I collected stuff for Winding Down this week, I thought I would just go ahead and pass the material on...
Update:
But first I just had to let you know that our old friends Boeing are back in the news with yet more problems with the 737-Max. I should, perhaps, explain that in order to get the beast flying again they are having to put it through the complete certification procedure – again. In the process of doing that two other software problems emerged!
It seems that two other software bugs have been spotted, involving the autopilot and stabilisation.
Will anyone ever want to fly in a Boeing designed and manufactured aircraft again?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/09/boeing_737_max_software_fixes/
The Good:
It seems that nitrogen dioxide has plummeted over China in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. That’s got to be good news, even though I guess it will go back up again with the restart of the economy there. The same reduction is starting to show up on similar satellite views of Europe, though I seem to have lost the URL for those pictures. I don’t doubt that in due course a similar, though perhaps more patchy, picture will turn up for North America...
https://www.sciencealert.com/nitrogen-dioxide-pollution-has-dramatically-dropped-over-china-because-of-the-coronavirus
If you ever wondered whether all the people walking, and driving, around on the surface of the world makes it shake a little, then wonder no more. They do – and the result of the lockdowns is that the world is having a little peace and quiet for a change!
We know this because geoscientists have actually noticed the effect on their instruments where there is currently a little less background noise.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/many-countries-under-shelter-place-orders-world-shakes-little-less-180974588/
Meanwhile over here in the UK engineers have come up with an alternative for ventilators in cases where people just need some help breathing in and out rather than the full works. It’s a modern, and much less clumsy, version of the ‘iron lung’ familiar to those of my generation who had visited friends who had suffered from polio.
Very nice – and it looks like it could get into production pretty quickly, freeing up intensive care ventilators for those who really need them.
https://newatlas.com/medical/british-engineers-modern-iron-lung-covid-19-ventilator-alternative/
The Bad:
As if things weren’t already bad enough, here in the UK, looney conspiracy theorists have taken to torching wireless 5G network masts on the grounds that they cause COVID-19 infections! Sometimes I despair of the human race...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/06/5g/
If you are unemployed as a result of COVID-19 and live in New Jersey, you are likely to have a long wait for your unemployment pay. It seems the computer system involved is collapsing under the strain of so many people applying all at once.
Unfortunately, the system involved runs on COBAL Last time anyone regularly programmed in COBOL was 20+ years ago – at the time of the Y2K crisis. People who programmed in COBOL pretty much retired after that – COBOL’s heyday was in the 1960s and 70s, so they were mostly into their 60s at the dawn of the 21st Century.
The state governor is appealing for retired COBOL experts to come back and fix things, but I suspect he’s likely to not to have many takers. This is, unfortunately, what happens when you don’t keep your computer software up to date. It’s one of the consequences of ignoring what we in the programming business call ‘tech debt’.
https://josephsteinberg.com/covid-19-response-new-jersey-urgently-needs-cobol-programmers-yes-you-read-that-correctly/
And The Ugly:
Moscow authorities are planning a phone app which will help them micro-control their citizens. An early version revealed not only does it keep tabs on where the mobile phone is, but it also accesses the camera, core settings, address book, and much more. The results it transmits to city hall and even outside Russia. No encryption or privacy controls, of course.
No wonder some observers call Moscow a digital concentration camp!
https://gizmodo.com/russias-planned-coronavirus-app-is-a-state-run-security-1842617429
History:
I thought that now would be a good time to have a look at the history of viruses and plagues and how our ancestors dealt with them.
Bacteria were identified by the end of the 19th Century (1882). It took until 1929 to identify viruses, and when the identification was made, it was of a virus that affected tobacco plants – the tobacco mosaic virus.
Six years later the first crystallised sample of the virus was used to allow it to be visualised using X-rays.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-are-viruses-history-tobacco-mosaic-disease-180974480/
The Smithsonian also has an interesting article on the ‘War on Tuberculosis’ waged by New York City’s Health Department in the 1890s. Targets included spitting in public places and drinking out of shared glasses. Other public health activities included slum clearance and building regulations that mandated light and ventilation.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-epidemics-past-forced-americans-promote-health-ended-up-improving-life-this-country-180974555/
I’d also point you at an article in ‘The Conversation’ about the current threats to the world economy, and the strange echoes of the 1880 ‘Yellow Peril’ hysteria that it invokes.
https://theconversation.com/world-economy-flashes-red-over-coronavirus-with-strange-echoes-of-1880s-yellow-peril-hysteria-132414
And finally, of course, there’s The Great Plague of 1665. If you think the current lockdown is bad, in that plague people who were infected were locked into their dwellings with their families and the doors and windows nailed shut! The wealthy fled the cities for their rural properties as soon as the first signs of the outbreak showed. The rest were left behind to manage as best they could. That sounds familiar even today...
Want to know more? I’d recommend Daniel Defoe’s book ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’. It’s in the public domain since it was published in 1722 (the copyright lobby haven’t managed to push copyright back that far – yet). You can find .pdf and .mobi versions on the net.
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-defoes-account-of-the-great-plague-of-1665-has-startling-parallels-with-today-135579
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/376
And, of course, no history would be complete without a note about historical disinformation. So here to complete this section is a copy of a 1665 advertisement offering a ‘ Famous and Effectual MEDICINE to cure the PLAGUE’!
http://www.openculture.com/2020/04/a-1665-advertisement-promises-a-famous-and-effectual-cure-for-the-great-plague.html
Pictures:
I thought at first that only pictures of dead bodies, mass graves, and empty streets were going to be available this week. In the end, though, a set of pictures broke through showing just how common some humour is across cultures!
I give you a set of pictures of statues around the world, all wearing face masks! It made me smile, I hope it has the same effect on you!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2020/apr/03/masked-statues-around-the-world-in-pictures
Quote:
This quote is taken from an article about the lockdown declared in India last month. Though the quote is specifically about the Indian nation, I suspect that it has a wider relevance than just to India, or even merely third world countries.
“A frequent problem with public health interventions, including this one [i.e. India -AL], is the real and enormous social distance between those who develop them and those they impact. Strategists often fail to consider the living conditions, occupations and other characteristics of the communities and individuals they are seeking to help. Such top-down, authoritarian measures cannot contain the spread of any infections in a nation with such high levels of poverty. Instead, public health authorities and civil society need to mobilize each community and enable it to work out its own strategy for self-protection.”
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/can-india-contain-the-pandemic/
Scanner:
Coronavirus: what is the European Union doing to manage the crisis?
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-what-is-the-european-union-doing-to-manage-the-crisis-135097
Supply, demand and a scary mountain of debt: The challenges facing IT as COVID-19 grips the global economy
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/16/supply_demand_debt_covid19/
Introverts’ joy of lockdown getting ruined by extroverts filling their schedules with video appointments [My sympathise lie with the introverts – AL]
https://boingboing.net/2020/04/09/introverts-joy-of-lockdown-g.html
Coronavirus: three ways the crisis may permanently change our lives
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-three-ways-the-crisis-may-permanently-change-our-lives-133954
Coronavirus to decimate server supply chain, analysts claim: Sales to fall 10% as factories stay shut
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/11/coronavirus_server_sales/
Why did the Wright Brothers succeed when others failed?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-did-the-wright-brothers-succeed-when-others-failed/
Credits: Thanks to readers Astrid, Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Footnote
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
12 April 2020
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.
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