Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
26 April 2020
Things are still pretty chaotic here, but I didn’t want to miss two weeks in a row so I’ve produced something from the stuff I received during the week, but it’s all a bit stream of consciousness in its presentation, I’m afraid...
Good news for AD&D players – Wizards of the Coast have a new section on their web site. It’s called ‘Stay at Home: Play at Home’ and it provides tools and information for online D&D.
https://boingboing.net/2020/04/12/wizards-of-the-coasts-stay.html
The BBC website has a useful piece on how to understand all the pandemic data that we are being bombarded with. Its examples are based on the UK’s figures, but they will help people understand the figures in other countries. Whatever way you look at it, the outlook is grim.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654
Spoon & Tomago has material on a 100-year old pandemic manual produced during the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ outbreak. It includes posters from the time, and it’s interesting to see how much of the advice was similar to that which we are being offered today.
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2020/04/25/japan-spanish-flu-pandemic-manual/?mc_cid=7e854b2f83&mc_eid=3cb21853dd
One of the most contentious issues around at the moment is contact tracing apps for your digital phones. Theoretically, they are an excellent idea. Practically, they are a privacy nightmare. And I, for one, am not even clear that they work as advertised! To give you some idea of the scope here are some figures on the subject of the state of government digital responses to the pandemic:
1. Contact Tracing Apps are being used in 23 countries
2. Alternative digital tracking measures are active in 22 countries
3. Physical surveillance technologies are in use in 10 countries
4. COVID-19-related censorship has been imposed by 12 governments
5. Internet shutdowns continue in 4 countries despite the outbreak
https://www.top10vpn.com/news/surveillance/covid-19-digital-rights-tracker/
In the meantime, on a purely IT front, Apple have introduced a new product – a set of wheel for the Mac Pro. They are a snip at... US$699. Straight up, honest guv, I’m not making it up. That phrase about those who the Gods want to destroy, they first make mad, comes to mind.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/16/apple_mac_pro_699_dollar_wheels/
One of my newsletters from People For Internet Responsibility (PFIR) contained the following snippet:
“How to create a corporate COVID-19 commercial
1) Backing track: slow, minor key piano
2) Overdub slow synth strings.
3) Slow cross fades: photos of people wearing surgical masks
4) Mellow male Voice Over: “We’re here for you. We’re all in this together.”
5) Corporate logo
6) Fade to black.”
So now you know!
And while I’m quoting stuff from PFIR, there was an interesting comment about the problems the lockdown/home working and conferencing is causing for cheapskate Internet Service Providers:
“Rise in video conferencing use spells big trouble for ISPs [via PFIR]
With the exception of persons on symmetric fibre connections, most Internet last-mile connections (including mobile) are highly asymmetric. This is especially true for cable and other typical consumer, small-business grade wireline circuits. Cable systems can be the worst of the bunch, since they have been routinely designed to vastly favour downstream traffic toward users (e.g., typical web browsing, watching videos, etc.)
Now with the rise of videoconferencing for schools and work at home, the impact on many cable systems is dramatic, with upstream speeds (usually anaemic compared with downstream even under normal conditions) being massively negatively impacted in many cases, since videoconferencing uses similar bandwidth in both directions.
For many years ISPs have neglected upstream speeds, now this neglect is coming home to roost, big time.”
No URL for either of these, because they were in email newsletters, not on the web.
For the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope, NASA has created a neat little application. You can enter the month and day of your birthday, and find out what Hubble photographed on your birthday. Neat. Very neat! I checked mine out, and it turns out to be a picture of the ‘Bow Shock’ around the star LL Orionis...
https://www.sciencealert.com/you-can-now-check-out-what-image-hubble-took-on-your-birthday
While we are on the subject of space, those of you still suffering from lockdown and who have a hankering to be an astronaut might like to take a look at the online astronaut training being offered by NASA. It isn’t mentioned in the report, but I seem to remember that there is also the requirement that Astronauts have to be small, so they can fit into the tiny capsule on the top of that very big rocket!
https://www.sciencealert.com/become-a-virtual-astronaut-with-nasa-from-the-comfort-of-your-home
While we are on the subject of NASA, I have to say that one of its more spectacular possible projects is to build a one kilometre wide radio telescope in a crater on the far side of the moon! The project may never come to fruition, but it’s a great idea, well worth keeping an eye out for over the next decade or so!
https://www.sciencealert.com/check-out-this-amazing-plan-to-turn-a-crater-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-into-a-radio-telescope
Lots of industries have been damaged by the effects of the pandemic – for instance oil producers are paying to have it taken away as they run out of storage space – but, perhaps, the most obvious is the airline industry. The Conversation asked three industry experts what they thought the future would be like for airlines.
The result was an interesting selection of views about what is definitely going to be a global problem when borders re-open.
https://theconversation.com/what-future-do-airlines-have-three-experts-discuss-135365
Pictures:
We start this week’s pictures with a six minute video of the building of New York’s Chrysler Building in 1929-30. It looks pretty good, though I was only able to watch a very short piece at the start, because I really, really, really, don’t like heights. The video is a tour by those who were building it, while they were building it.
https://aeon.co/videos/quite-a-height-ah-a-tour-of-the-chrysler-building-by-those-building-it
On a more down to earth level, The Smithsonian Magazine has a selection of pictures showing how street artists around the world are reacting to the pandemic. My favourite? The picture of Gollum with a roll of toilet paper! But then my humour was always a little warped...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-street-artists-around-world-are-reacting-to-life-with-covid-19-180974712/
Quote:
This week’s quote is one attributed to the American humorist Fred Allen:
Committee – a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
Credits: Thanks to readers 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
26 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.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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