Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
21 June 2020
Well, hopefully, Winding Down will turn up on time this week. Last week we ran into one of Google’s impenetrable algorithms, which thought we might be some sort of spam, but waited until early Tuesday morning to tell us. Very odd. To be fair we don’t have these sort of problems very often, and if we do they normally tell us pretty rapidly!
This week I decided there’s enough pandemic stuff going round in the news and social media, so we could take a look at what else is happening – and there is quite a lot. First we have an update on the QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange, then we look at the report on the CIA’s hacking tools hack, and a South African bank having its master key copied. Next a bit of politics – with a look at the implications of the last Space X launch. After that, we have a round up of space news covering the Hubble Space telescope, early SpaceX history, a new type of rocket engine, China’s latest space stuff, a Russian rocket orbital break up, and finally a rather nice little video.
There’s a load of pictures ranging from illustrations for HG Wells ‘War of the Worlds’, sculptures made from old newspapers, some nice creative photography, and some pictures of the latest Space X trip taken from orbit. The quote is from a telegram I found quite amusing.
Finally, the Scanner section has links to pieces about nasty Chrome browser extensions, the Tunguska explosion, a very bad algorithm, stronger carbon fibre, a national budget whoopsie, Google and URLs, and end-to-end encryption for all Zoom users (including those using the free version).
I hope you like it all (or at least some of it),
Alan
Credits: Thanks to reader Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Updates:
Remember QuadrigaCX, the Canadian cryptocurrency trading company whose founder/owner died under mysterious circumstances in India at the end of 2018? More to the point, the money that it supposedly held for its customers also went missing.
The Ontario Securities Commission has now produced a report , which basically says the whole thing was a great big Ponzi scheme which left its customers at least US$124.2 million out of pocket! A small amount – about 10% – has been recovered, but don’t hold your breath for the rest.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-quadriga/canadian-cryptocurrency-firm-collapsed-due-to-ponzi-scheme-by-late-founder-regulator-says-idUSKBN23I3AF
Security:
Some time ago an interesting collection of CIA hacking tools fell into the hands of WikiLeaks. The CIA found someone to blame the leak on, but when he appeared in court some interesting details of the sloppy security started to come out. Well the official CIA report on the leak is now out.
It is fascinating reading, and makes your average internet based company look like a paragon of virtue on the security front!
For a start 180GB of hacking tools and documentation was protected by the password ‘123ABDdef ‘- but that was only the start. The same password was shared by the entire team... Oh! And don’t forget the root login on the main server – ‘mysweetsummer’. As the CIA’s report put it, “The WikiLeaks disclosures revealed gaps and weaknesses in CIA’s Insider Threat program.”
What a shambles.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/16/cia_report_vault_7_leak/
Of course, the CIA is not the only one to have insider problems when it comes to security. In December 2018 someone in the South Africa Postbank printed the bank’s master key on a piece of paper at its old data centre in the city of Pretoria. Yep, actually printed it out!
The result? More than US$3.2 million in fraudulent transactions and having to replace more than 12 million cards for its customers. Wondering exactly what the master key does? Here’s ZDNet’s explanation:
“The master key is a 36-digit code (encryption key) that allows its holder to decrypt the bank’s operations and even access and modify banking systems. It is also used to generate keys for customer cards.”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-african-bank-to-replace-12m-cards-after-employees-stole-master-key/
Politics:
Most countries have their own versions of the political intellectual elite who inhabit an ever changing pool of university research departments, think tanks, quangos, government advisory posts, and top civil servant positions. None of them are elected, of course, even though their advice and decisions frequently have a major impact on society.
Washington is perhaps the best known of this type of activity, so that’s why I was pleased when I discovered a really fascinating article in the Space Review explaining how the different parts of the US elite view the recent success of SpaceX in launching American astronauts into space from the US.
It’s a fairly long piece, but well explained. Definitely recommended!
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3966/1
Space:
Since the last piece was about the politics of space, now would be a good time to look at other things going on in space the form of a round up.
With yet another delay in the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement for Hubble, suggestions are being raised for a new maintenance trip to the venerable Hubble telescope which has produced so much over its lifetime. Apparently this is an entirely feasible project which would put the Hubble back into commission for a long time.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3965/1
Science alert has a story about how SpaceX nearly went bust early in their life after three launch failures. Spoiler: the fourth used up the last of their cash – and succeeded, bringing in new cash!
https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-the-story-of-how-spacex-got-to-this-incredible-moment-in-space-exploration
On the rocket engine front, Florida researchers are reporting that, working with the US Air Force, they have managed to build a working experimental model of an engine long known in theory but which no one has previously managed to build in practice. It’s called a rotating detonation rocket engine, and is supposed to be very efficient.
https://newatlas.com/space/rotating-detonation-engine-ucf-hydrogen-oxygen/
In other space stories China successfully launched a spacecraft which succeeded in returning to Earth safely with its cabin intact. The launch rocket wasn’t so successful and a 20 ton chunk of it fell out of control into the Atlantic! Space Review has an analysis of China’s space ambitions and goals.
https://www.sciencealert.com/china-s-new-spacecraft-has-officially-returned-to-earth
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/huge-hunk-space-debris-fell-earth-monday-180974855/
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3944/1
Russia too had a few problems recently. A bunch of fuel tanks from a rocket used to launch a space radio telescope broke up into 65 different parts. Yet more orbital debris...
https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/12/russia_rocket_tank_disintegrates/
I note that NASA is proposing new rules for the moon focussed space race. Nice try!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-proposes-new-rules-for-moon-focused-space-race/
And finally, a nifty little video of some model transparent rockets, which allows you to watch how the fuel goes down as they head for space. Ingenious!
https://boingboing.net/2020/05/14/see-thru-rockets-are-go-for-la.html
Pictures:
I thought we could start with some rather nice pictures featuring illustrations from the French edition of H.G. Wells ‘War of the Worlds’. Personally, I prefer these illustrations to the ones in the early UK editions. Click on the pictures at the end of the article to get the full size gallery.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/henrique-alvim-correa-war-of-the-worlds
And coming much more up to date, take a look at some of these pictures of sculptures made from old newspapers. I wish I could do that sort of thing!
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2019/12/03/atsushi-adachi/
New atlas has a selection of winning pictures from the 2020 Creative Photography Awards. My favourites: numbers: 5, 7, 10, 11, and especially number 1, which is an absolutely brilliant picture!
https://newatlas.com/digital-cameras/creative-photography-awards-winners-2020-siena-gallery/
NASA’s Earth Observatory web site has a couple of rather nice pictures of the successful SpaceX launch that you might well not have seen in the flood of news about the event.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146794/astronauts-launch-from-american-soil?src=eoa-iotd
Quotes:
This week, to cheer you all up, a telegram sent by American humorist Robert Benchley on his arrival at Venice:
“STREETS FLOODED, PLEASE ADVISE”
Scanner:
Chrome extensions are ‘the new rootkit’ say researchers linking surveillance campaign to Israeli registrar Galcomm
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/chrome_browser_extensions_new_rootkit/
New paper has a wild explanation for the most explosive ‘meteor impact’ on record
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-a-new-theory-about-the-colossal-tunguska-event-explosion
Australia to refund $720m in ‘debts’ determined by dodgy algorithm
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/01/robodebt_refunds/
Graphene makes carbon fibre stronger, stiffer and possibly cheaper
https://newatlas.com/materials/graphene-carbon-fiber-stronger-stiffer-cheaper/
Guess who came thiiis close to signing off a €102k annual budget? Austria. Someone omitted ‘figures in millions’
https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/29/austria_budget_millions/
Google is messing with the address bar again – new experiment hides URL path
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/google-is-messing-with-the-address-bar-again-new-experiment-hides-url-path/
Zoom will offer proper end-to-end encryption to free vid-chat accounts – not just paid-up bods – once you verify your phone number...
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/17/zoom_e2ee/
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
21 June 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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