Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
6 September 2020
Welcome to Winding Down. I trust my American readers are having a nice Labor Day Weekend break in spite of the pandemic. This week’s thrill-packed issue contains material on the Andromeda galaxy, which is heading our way, Iranian state hacking (Catching up from the period WD was ‘off the air’ six weeks ago) and the NSA’s social network mapping tool.
The essays section contains details of three essays I thought you all might be interested in – on inefficiency, CEOs and programmers, and working remotely. That actually clears the essay ‘backlog’, so future issues will usually contain one, at the most, piece on an essay.
We also take a look at some of the lesser known implications of the ongoing Huawei spat, and a look at a new -transparent- TV.
There are three pictures. Some restaurant signage that will make you smile, the earliest war photograph and a very tall iceberg. There are multiple quotes about blockchain technology from ‘experts’, some of which you may well wish to take with a pinch of salt!
Finally, Scanner has URLs pointing to material on the Meow attacks, DNA as a storage medium, delivery drones take off, Chrome overloading the root DNS servers, Denmark’s spy chief zapped, ferries that don’t fit under the bridges, 1,200 dodgy iOS apps, a new UK map database, a foam Coliseum, and a video of the biggest nuclear explosion ever.
That little lot should keep you in reading matter over breakfast!
Stay safe!
Alan Lenton
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb, for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Astronomy & Cosmology:
The Andromeda galaxy is our nearest major galactic neighbour, and it’s moving in our direction. Don’t worry, though, it won’t arrive here at the Milky Way galaxy for around 4.5 billion years. However, astronomers have recently discovered that the Andromeda galaxy is surrounded by a halo of dust and gas that stretches half the distance between the two galaxies.
Presumably, the gas and dust halo of our own galaxy is of a similar extent and reaches half way to Andromeda, so that the dust and gas halos are already touching, or on the verge of doing so!
Astronomers are only just starting to study this issue, so at the moment we don’t really have a handle on what sort of interactions will happen as the halos rub up against one another, but given the time scales involved, I doubt anybody living today will be affected!
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2020/09/02/andromedas-vast-halo-offers-clues-about-galactic-evolution/
Digital Espionage:
In case you missed it at the time, a month or so ago researchers caught Iranian state hackers with their pant down and managed to grab some 40GB of material used by the hackers, including training videos. The videos were an interesting find showing how the hackers work. Other interesting things included online personas and Iranian phone numbers used by group members.
Nice work by the researchers!
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/iran-state-hackers-caught-with-their-pants-down-in-intercepted-videos/
And while we are on the topic of digital espionage, Wired magazine has published an extended piece on the USA’s NSA’s secret tool for mapping social networks. It’s a long, interesting, and somewhat scary piece – in fact I nearly put it in the Essays section, but it’s a description rather than an essay.
I highly recommend the piece so that people get an idea of what can be done with modern technology and the sort computing power available to nation states. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the speed of technological advance means that this sort of technology will soon be available to commercial entities, if it’s not already available to the larger ones!
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-nsas-secret-tool-for-mapping-your-social-network/
Essays:
Three essays to choose from this week, and the first is about the advantages of having some inefficiency. The author argues that having a certain amount of inefficiency is a form of insurance against a messy world. He illustrates his thesis with a number of examples, including, predictably, the current pandemic. It would be considered ‘inefficient’ and ‘wasteful’, for instance, to have medical masks and gowns stored in a warehouse gathering dust against the possibility of a future epidemic, but we have all seen what happens when you don’t do that!
An interesting take on the modern drive for ‘efficiency’.
https://psyche.co/ideas/why-efficiency-is-dangerous-and-slowing-down-makes-life-better
The second of this week’s essays cunningly gained my attention with the title “Why are CEOs failing software engineers?”... The essay looks at the three dominant forms of management – financial management, business management, and creative management. The author explains how the first two came into existence to deal with specific problems, and how it is that the culture of these mitigates against successfully handling the third.
In particular, the overriding feature/culture, call it what you will, of the first two is success. Every manager wants what he is managing to be successful. And, of course, the rewards he/she gets are keyed to success. The problem is that creativity is built not on immediate success, but from failing and learning the lessons for the next iteration.
A useful, informative, and knowledgeable read, even if you end up disagreeing with it.
https://iism.org/article/why-are-ceos-failing-software-engineers-56
The final essay I’d like to draw your attention to is one of the more sensible pieces on working remotely. The thrust of the piece is that a lot more people will regularly work at least part of the time remotely, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be anyone working from the office, or that office workers won’t spend part of their working time at home.
https://theconversation.com/remote-working-is-here-to-stay-but-that-doesnt-mean-the-end-of-offices-or-city-centres-145414
Mobile Phones:
When the powers that be in the US, the UK and France instructed the telecoms companies to purge their systems of Huawei kit, they seem to have overlooked an important issue: patents. It seems that Huawei is not only one of the major suppliers of equipment, it also holds a lot of patents relating to the standards used in mobile networks.
That’s not all. Quite a lot of the patents relate to the up and coming 5G networking standards. In fact, it probably holds more patents on 5G than anyone else! At the moment, rather than collect royalties it tends to use cross license with the other companies involved in the base station business.
However, once it starts to be excluded, it is going to be collecting royalties on those patents. And that could run into billions!
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-5g-security-breakingviews/breakingviews-chinas-huawei-holds-a-5g-trump-card-idUSKCN24S09Y
Televisions:
China’s Xiaomi company is showing off a 55-inch transparent OLED TV which is launching in China. I’m not a television watching type of person, but apart from the status symbolism involved, I’m not sure just why you would want a see-through TV...
Certainly in this house it would be difficult to watch, since there are no blank walls to place it against. Still, I have to admit that it does look rather classy – a sheet of transparent material (no frame) mounted on a black, circular block. So, if you have something slightly over US$7,000 burning a hole in your pocket, keep your eyes peeled for when it comes to your neighbourhood, since it’s only available in China at the moment!
https://newatlas.com/home-entertainment/xiaomi-mi-tv-lux-transparent-television/
Pictures:
I had to smile at the slogan on this restaurant in Phnom Penh. I’d guess that not many people are eating there during the pandemic!
https://boingboing.net/2020/08/22/what-definitely-not-to-name-yo.html
Our second pic is one of the earliest war photographs available – from the Crimean War in 1855. There’s also an interesting discussion on faking these classic war photographs.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/roger-fenton-valley-of-the-shadow-of-death
You will probably have to scroll up and down to see the last pic in this week’s selection – it’s an immensely tall iceberg. While you’re looking at it, you might like to reflect on the fact that only 10% of an iceberg is above the water – the other 90% is under the surface!
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/iceberg-tower/
Quotes:
Not just a single quote this week, but a whole slew of them! CoinTelegraph Magazine asked a number of blockchain leading lights to complete the sentence, “We will know blockchain has gone mainstream when _______.” The replies are interesting!
To get you started here is the first one:
“There were over 50 million Blockchain wallet users at the end of June 2020. Traditionally this is the number of users [needed] to accept that a technology has gone mainstream. It took the automobile 62 years to reach the ‘magic’ 50-million-user mark, the telephone 50 years, electricity 46 years, and the internet seven years.”
That quote was from Michael Peshkam, executive in residence at European business school INSEAD.
You can read the rest at https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/2020/08/24/crypto-mass-adoption [via ADVFN]
Scanner:
It’s a Meow-nixed system, I know this: Purr-fect storm of 3,000+ insecure databases – and a data-wiping bot
https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/24/meow_database_attack/
Breakthrough tech makes DNA data storage more practical and scalable
https://newatlas.com/technology/doris-dna-data-storage/
Sounds like the black helicopters have come for us. Oh, just another swarm of FAA-approved Amazon delivery drones
https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/01/amazon_prime_drones/
A Chrome feature is creating enormous load on global root DNS servers
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/a-chrome-feature-is-creating-enormous-load-on-global-root-dns-servers/
The Viking Snowden: Denmark spy chief ‘relieved of duty’ after whistleblower reveals illegal snooping on citizens
https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/denmark_domestic_spying/
Low blow: Sydney’s new ferries won’t fit under bridges with passengers on top deck
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/24/sydney-new-ferries-wont-fit-under-bridges-while-passengers-on-top-deck
This’ll upset the Apple cart: 1,200 iOS apps downloaded 300 million times a month include ‘ad fraud’ code
https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/24/advertising_sdk_1200_ios_apps/
Astonishingly-detailed foam Coliseum for Tabletop Gaming
https://boingboing.net/2020/06/23/astonishingly-detailed-foam-c.html
One map to rule them all: UK’s Ordnance Survey rolls out its Data Hub and the juicy API goodness that lies therein
https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/01/os_data_hub/
“Newly-declassified” footage of the Tsar Bomba nuclear test [The largest nuclear bomb ever exploded – AL]
https://boingboing.net/2020/08/22/footage-of-the-tsar-bomba-nucl.html
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
6 September 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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