Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
12 July 2020
Welcome to another issue of Winding Down. This week we have, as usual, a mixed bunch of stuff. We start with a couple of updates, both relating to our old friends Boeing, who have been working on fixing the software for the 737 Max and the Starliner. Then we take a look at how long ago string was invented, followed by a piece on China and its attitude to digital currencies, blockchain and cryptography.
Moving on we consider the implications of the pandemic for the use of machine learning/AI in the business realm. Cosmology also gets a look in with a piece on dark matter, and coming down to Earth we have the vexed question of power cables for tech devices.
Pictures tells you about classical backdrops for your video confabs, and there is a little video of a non-Euclidean game world engine (very nifty). The quote is a take on national economic data and how it’s calculated!
Finally, in the ‘Scanner’ section we provide URLs for material on hopeless humans, 80 characters a line coding, a Moon landing retort against those who think it was all faked, London’s military drone history, and finally the onset of the paperless office (again, but maybe for real this time...),
Enjoy!
Alan
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Lois for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Updates:
Well, it’s Boeing, of course. At the end of last month, it managed to get the first 737 Max test flight into the air and back onto the ground without crashing. Well it’s a start, but there is a long way to go. For a start it will need to pass the American certification tests. But even after that is achieved, there are certifications that will be needed from other countries, who no longer trust the US certifications. The EU springs to mind and it is already conducting its own analysis on the 737 Max’s software.
And, if that wasn’t enough, on the same day Scandinavian Airline ‘Norwegian’ announced it was cancelling an order for 97 of the beasts, and will be claiming compensation from Boeing for the extended grounding.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/737_max_test_flight/
But the 737 Max is not Boeing’s only problem. There is also the Starliner spaceship commissioned by NASA. That was supposed to deliver goodies to the International Space Station (ISS) last year, and failed to dock.
Why?
Software bugs! Even more to the point NASA admitted that it hadn’t supervised Boeing closely, because it was concentrating on Space X’s newer programming techniques! Space X, of course, had no problems transporting US astronauts from American soil to the ISS...
https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/nasa_boeing_starliner/
Archaeology:
Here’s an interesting question. How long ago do you think it was that humans invented string? Hint. It was a long time ago. In fact from some recent finds of ancient shells that we can date, and that have signs of wear from string of some sort threaded through them, we know that humans were using string 120,000 years ago!
The discovery, it seems, has narrowed down the invention of string to somewhere between 160,000 and 120,000 years ago. Seems that the humble piece of string has been around in various forms for a very long time!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-suggests-humans-invented-string-least-120000-years-ago-180975286/
Blockchain & E-coins:
There was something interesting happened in China with little fanfare during the period while we were offline for a couple of weeks. There were two things in particular, both on the use of blockchain/crypto/digital currency front. The first was that China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security added blockchain related jobs to its list of officially recognized jobs.
The second came a few weeks later, when the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China produced a book covering Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptography. This book is part of a series used by Party officials to assist with their work. Take these with China’s own experiments in digital currency and it becomes obvious that the leadership is planning to seriously invest in the technology.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-officially-recognizes-blockchain-jobs-as-new-occupation [via ADVFN Newsletter]
https://cointelegraph.com/news/chinese-communist-party-adds-crypto-to-curriculum [via ADVFN Newsletter]
Business AI & Coronavirus:
Machine learning (ML) as used by most businesses – especially that used for supply chain predictions – is going to take quite a hit once the pandemic subsides. This is because most ML in businesses uses accumulated historical data to train the machines, and it’s unlikely that things will be the same even after a full recovery.
The truth is that the lockdowns and the resulting social isolation has, in most case, been for a long enough period to engender new habits and social mores. The models built with pre-pandemic data are unlikely to fit the new environment, and it’s going to take some while to build up a meaningful new dataset.
The howlers will be obvious immediately – do you really want to take delivery of 42 tons of toilet paper, sir? – but other elements of the change will probably be more subtle. Let me give you an example.
The UK government recently gave London Transport money to keep the tubes (subways) and buses going. Pre-pandemic, there was a lot of encouragement to use public transport to keep carbon, etc. emissions down. But, one of the things that has emerged from an analysis of virus transmission data is that close packed, badly ventilated areas are the places where super-spreading occurs. That’s exactly what you have on buses and commuter trains. Mentally everyone is stuck with the old model, but things will have to be re-thought.
I’m sure my readers can come up with a whole series of other likely changes that will have to be thought out. Just don’t expect historically based AI models to do the thinking for you!
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/covid19_pandemic_means_data_from/
Cosmology:
Scientists have been searching for so-called ‘Dark Matter’ for some 50 years now, and they still haven’t found it! The problem it’s supposed to solve is that stars on the edges of galaxies are moving faster than predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity. The obvious solution is that there must more mass in the centre of the galaxies than we know about.
Various contenders were put forward for this ‘extra mass’, and the idea of ‘dark matter’ – so called because we can’t detect it, except by its effect on galaxies – emerged as the leading contender. However, in the 50 years since it was ‘discovered’, we’ve never been able to isolate it! It’s not through lack of trying – vast sums of money have been spent to try and spot it – all to no avail.
Some astrophysicists are now looking into alternatives such as ‘MOND’ which stands for Modified Newtonian Dynamics, but at the moment most people working in the field are still trying to find dark matter. How this will eventually pan out, I don’t know; maybe something completely new will pan out, but then, that’s the way science works. In the meantime, I would recommend an interesting, maths free, article from Aeon explaining what’s going on.
https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-time-to-take-alternatives-to-dark-matter-seriously
Devices:
I don’t know about other people, but our house is infested with dead device charging cables. These confounded nuisances seem to breed like rabbits, and no matter how many of them you try out, they either don’t fit into the device you want to charge, or they are broken when you do find one the right shape.
Well, finally someone has taken up the cudgels against the broken cable syndrome. The company is called Anchor Labs, and their product, ‘Evercable’ is a steel reinforced cable that comes in USB-C and Lightening varieties. Inevitably the Apple version costs more! BoingBoing have a piece on it if you want to know more. I for one will certainly be looking into it when I next need to replace a cable!
https://boingboing.net/2020/07/07/the-evercable-is-the-steel-rei.html
Pictures:
Having difficulty finding something acceptable to hang on the wall behind you when you make video calls or video conferences? The UK’s National Gallery has the answer! It’s made available a selection of its paintings in digital format that you can use as a backdrop when you are on using the video!
https://my-masterpiece.nationalgallery.co.uk/homepage
Now here is something I really wish I’d had access to when I was originally writing the Federation II game. It’s a game engine for non-Euclidean game worlds. You want something that’s bigger on the inside than the outside? no problem! Take a look at the video – it’s not explainable in mere words!
https://boingboing.net/2020/07/07/non-euclidean-game-worlds.html
Quotes:
This made me smile when I read it! As we are all being urged to ditch the car and get back on our bikes, consider the following:
Sanjay Thakrar, CEO at Euro Exim Bank Ltd. got economists thinking when he said, “A cyclist is a disaster for the country’s economy -
He does not buy the car & does not take a car loan -
Does not buy car insurance -
Does not buy fuel -
Does not send his car for servicing & repairs -
Does not use paid parking -
Does not become obese -
Yes... and well, damn it !! Healthy people are not needed for economy.
They do not buy drugs. They do not go to Hospitals & Doctors. They add nothing to country’s GDP.
On the contrary, every new Fast Food outlet creates at least 30 jobs -
10 Cardiologists, 10 Dentists, 10 weight loss experts, apart from the people working in the Fast Food outlet
Choose wisely: A Cyclist or a McDonald’s customer? Worth thinking about.
PS. Walkers are even worse. They do not even buy a bicycle!”
Scanner:
Study reveals why large groups of humans are hopeless in a crisis
https://www.sciencealert.com/large-groups-of-humans-are-hopeless-during-a-crisis-even-when-the-emergency-is-simulated
Neil Armstrong sets straight an internet truther who accused him of faking the Moon landing (2000)
http://www.openculture.com/2020/06/neil-armstrong-sets-straight-an-internet-truther-who-accused-him-of-faking-the-moon-landing-2000.html
Military drones were made in London... 100 years ago
https://londonist.com/london/history/world-s-first-drone-london-archibald-low?rel=handpicked
Are 80 characters per line still reasonable in 2020? (programmers only! – AL)
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/18/ask-hackaday-are-80-characters-per-line-still-reasonable-in-2020/
By emptying offices, coronavirus has hastened the paperless office
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/19/idc_printing_plunge_prediction/
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 July 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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