Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
28 June 2020
This week in Winding Down we have quite a lot of stuff for you to take a look at – starting, inevitably, with the current epidemic. Next we have a round up of stories featuring some of the big tech companies and their legal woes. Moving on we have a look at some of the differences between blockchain base e-coins and fiat currencies (e.g. dollars, euros and the like).
There’s a look at how to make a profit buying your own pizza. A little bit of history about the first anti-vaxxers – as early as 1840, and an incipient argument over the route of a new underwater internet cable.
Pictures has a gallery of photos based around the global lockdown. It also has a nice satellite picture of a massive cloud of dust blowing into the Atlantic on its way to the Americas.
The quote this week is the principles declared by Sir Robert Peel when he set up the UK’s first police force.
The Scanner section contains an eclectic selection of material, including hexagonal salt, the demise of ‘smart’ fridges, 66 million anti-malaria pills, machine-learning models trained on pre-COVID data, the first AI written comic, a pair of skyscrapers re-purposed, Facebook’s Libra Association, and finally a piece on changing how we anaesthetize people. Phew!
Next weekend is July 4th weekend so we will be taking a break – a scheduled break this time – and we will be back on Sunday July 12th.
Credits: Thanks to reader Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Coronavirus:
I mentioned the theory of ‘Superspreading events/Superspreaders’ a few issues ago. At the time it wasn’t much more than one theory among many. Now it seems that the idea is gaining some traction – or at least half of it is. Evidence seems to be coming together that there are definitely superspreader events, but the jury is still out on whether there are super infectious superspreaders or whether they are just normally infected people in superspreader events. Informed opinion seems to be inclined towards the latter.
Significantly, all the superspreader events identified have built up a picture of such events as being indoor, possibly not well ventilated, and involving many people close together, often, but not always, for an extended period. For instance, nursing homes, churches, food-processing plants, schools, shopping areas, worker dormitories, prisons and ships.
Unfortunately, those are just the sorts of events and locations that are now starting to be released from lockdown.
Humans are, after all, social animals...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-superspreading-events-drive-most-covid-19-spread1/
Big tech round up:
There’s some interesting things happening to the big boys of the tech world, while we all concentrate on The Virus. For a start it looks like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and a bunch of other tech giants are going to have to come up with billions of dollars extra, after the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal against a lower court decision.
Then there is the fact that Facebook has been caught out trying to use the Internet’s WhoIs registry to circumvent Europe’s GDPR (Europe’s privacy regulations).
As has been pretty widely reported, Federal and State regulators are planning to file anti-trust lawsuits against Google, over the alleged abuse of its search monopoly to crush competition and enhance its profits. They are especially looking at Google’s ad business.
And earlier this month the news broken that the EU is expected to formally file charges against Amazon.com for collecting data from its third party vendors, and then using that information to compete against them.
Significantly, both of these last two are cases of vendors with a dominant platform, using third party customer information gathered by those platforms to directly compete with those third parties. This is exactly the sort of behaviour that provoked the anti-trust legal action against Microsoft in 1999!
And talking of Microsoft, I note that It is busy egging on anti-trust regulators in the US and the EU to look more closely at the smart phone app stores – in particular whether the regulations for app store developers are consistent with the anti-trust laws...
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/22/supreme_court_tax_stock/
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/facebook_gdpr_workaround/
https://boingboing.net/2020/05/16/google-is-about-to-be-hit-with.html
https://boingboing.net/2020/06/11/amazon-to-be-hit-with-antitrus.html
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/section230_doj/
Blockchain & E-coins:
CoinTelegraph has an interesting article on how and why blockchain based e-cash is different from the fiat currencies we are all familiar with. (Fiat currencies are the national currencies like dollars, pounds and euros). It is, I think a very useful essay, though some people might find it a little heavy going over Sunday breakfast!
https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-and-fiat-currencies-are-worlds-apart-here-are-the-reasons-why [via ADVFN’s cryptocurrency newsletter]
Business:
Have you ever wondered just how the take out delivery food business makes its profit? I confess that I hadn’t really though about it, until I saw this headline – ‘A pizzeria owner made money buying his own $24 pizzas from DoorDash for $16’. Intrigued, I read into the article, and discovered it wasn’t a scam, it’s the way the business works...
Take a look and see how it’s done – and it’s all perfectly legal!
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-profits-venture-capital-the-margins-ranjan-roy
Health/History:
I will make a prediction – once a vaccine actually becomes available for COVID-19, there will be anti-vaxxers who will refuse to be inoculated. I don’t propose to go into the pros and cons, it’s not appropriate here. That said, I always assumed that anti-vaccination was a fairly recent phenomenon.
Not so, it turns out...
The first anti-vaxxers date back to the 1840s in Britain, where they objected to inoculation against smallpox! Interestingly enough, many of the leading lights in the movement against vaccination were also leading lights in the then growing vegetarian movement. Yes. It’s true, and fascinating.
Let me make it absolutely clear that I have nothing against vegetarians – indeed some of my best friends are vegetarians. In fact I have to admit occasionally eating vegetables myself !
https://theconversation.com/meet-the-vegetarian-anti-vaxxers-who-led-the-smallpox-inoculation-backlash-in-victorian-britain-134173
Internet:
The battle between the USA and China over technology is not just, it seems, about chips and other industrial hi-tech. It’s now spilled over into the very fabric of the internet itself. In this case into the issue of where a transpacific internet cable (The Pacific Light Cable Network) should terminate.
The route of the cable, currently under construction by a consortium including Google and Facebook, is intended to run from the USA to the Philippines, Taiwan, and thence to Hong Kong. And that’s the rub. It seems the US government are not happy with the idea of the line terminating in Hong Kong.
There’s also the matter of one of the consortium members having links with the Chinese government. Where this will end, I don’t know. What I do know is this is yet another reminder that the internet is now not only big business, but also big international politics!
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-us-china-battle-over-the-internet-goes-under-the-sea/
Pictures:
New Atlas has an interesting selection of lockdown pictures. My favourites? 11, 17, 18, 25, and 26.
https://newatlas.com/digital-cameras/lockdown-gallery-agora-best-quarantine-photography/
NASA’s Earth Observatory project has an impressive picture of a massive cloud of dust blowing into the Atlantic from the Sahara desert.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146871/dust-traverses-the-atlantic-ocean?src=eoa-iotd
Quotes:
Not so much a quote as a statement of principles this week. They are the ones established by Sir Robert Peel and are the policing principles he laid down for the UK’s first police force. Given the events of the last few weeks, I thought that they were perhaps worth a look. You can find them at:
https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/peel-policing-principles/
Scanner:
For the first time ever, scientists have created hexagonal salt
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-reported-the-first-case-of-hexagonal-salt
Smart fridges are cool, but after a few short years you could be stuck with a big frosty brick in the kitchen
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/08/smart_fridges_support_periods/
US now has stockpile of 66 million anti-malaria pills that can’t be used for COVID-19
https://www.sciencealert.com/fda-u-turn-means-there-is-a-surplus-of-66-million-anti-malaria-pills-in-the-us
Machine-learning models trained on pre-COVID data are now completely out of whack, says Gartner
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/covid19_pandemic_means_data_from/
The first AI produced comic
https://tezuka2020.kioxia.com/en-jp/
Two Brisbane skyscrapers re-purposed into one
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-australia-53046883/australian-architecture-two-brisbane-skyscrapers-repurposed-into-one
Facebook’s Libra Association continues path forward, announces new brass
https://cointelegraph.com/news/libra-continues-path-forward-announces-new-brass
Changing how we anaesthetize people could have a surprising impact on the planet
https://www.sciencealert.com/changing-how-we-knock-people-out-for-surgery-could-have-surprising-benefits-for-our-planet
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
28 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.
If you have any questions or comments about the articles on my web site, click here to send me email.