Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
15 November 2020
Another week in which the bulk of the news was about politicians. However, I managed to dig out a few bits and pieces you might like to know about. This week the updates cover Boeing and Quadriga. Then there is PayPal and crypto, while essays cover complexity, and Amazon. There’s an interesting video in the pictures section and the quote is from Napoleon. Stuff in the scanner section includes TV habits in lockdown, Pfizer’s vaccine, iPad/Combo Touch, Virgin Hyperloop, a change of name, and a robot wolf.
Stay safe!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: No issue – 29 November
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb, for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Updates:
Well, of course, we start with Boeing. Maybe I should get them to put me on their ‘recent screw-ups’ mailing list. The latest is that Boeing have announced the appointment of a vice president of software engineering. Apparently they didn’t have one before. It’s two years since a failure in their software killed 189 people, and a year and eight months since a second failure of the same software killed a further 157 people. And they’ve only just noticed that nobody has been in charge!
The new VP is Jinna Dylan Hossein, some of his previous jobs sound like he might make a difference – VP of software engineering at SpaceX and director of software engineering at Google. However, the stint as interim VP of autopilot software at Tesla does not sound too good...
https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/09/boeing_veep_of_software/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/22/18275736/boeing-737-max-plane-crashes-grounded-problems-info-details-explained-reasons
More info is emerging about the crash of the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX. I covered it early in 2019 when it crashed after the founder died in somewhat mysterious circumstances. Ernst & Young were appointed to be trustees once the whole mess reached the courts, and now they’ve just reported on what they found.
Bottom line? US$171 million in debts and only US$29.8 million in the kitty, with 17,053 former customers wanting their money back!
https://cointelegraph.com/news/quadrigacx-trustee-only-has-30m-to-pay-171m-worth-of-claims [via ADVFN crypto newsletter]
Blockchain & Digital currency:
I guess a lot of people’s interest in digital currencies perked up at the news this week that PayPal were moving into the cryptocurrency business. Many people who would normally be interested in crypto are leery about the business because of the number of scams and frauds reported.
PayPal, though, has a pretty reasonable reputation, and the suggestion is that it might well be the thing that brings digital currencies into the mainstream. Well having looked into it, I think the answer is...
Yes and No!
It will be good for sticking your toe into the water, but if you really want to fully use a digital currency, there are a few drawbacks.
One problem is that you can’t actually use your cryptocurrency to buy things. If you just want to treat your cryptocurrency as an asset (hopefully one that appreciates over time) then this probably won’t be a killer. The other major problem is that you don’t control your digital currency wallet. PayPal keeps your private key. That means that PayPal will move stuff in and out of the wallet for you, but you can’t do it yourself, and more importantly, you can’t transfer it out of PayPal to a wallet you control.
This may well be an acceptable set of limitations for a lot of people, given the complexity of handling cryptocurrencies, and the frequency of highly publicised thefts from wallets. In which case, usage of cryptocurrencies may finally start to become common.
I think we will just have to wait and see.
https://boingboing.net/2020/11/12/beware-of-buying-cryptocurrency-on-paypal.html
Essays:
I’m bending things a bit this week on essays by including a report from The Register about a talk given at the Black Hat Asia conference. The talk was by Graz University of Tech’s Daniel Gruss. Basically what he was putting forward was the thesis that increasing complexity has broken computer security.
Gruss points out that the complexity of computers and networks now approaches that of structures, organisms, and populations of the sort seen in biology, and we need new methods to study them. I personally don’t agree with some of his other conclusions, but I do think that the biology analogue is one of the most important I’ve come across in a long time.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/02/daniel_gruss_complexity_broke_security/
Worldcrunch has translated an interesting (and short) piece entitled “What Europe gets all wrong about Amazon”. It was originally written in the French business daily Les Echos. It’s an interesting (and short) discussion about what Amazon does get right and what its role in business really is.
https://mailchi.mp/worldcrunch/europe-amazon-bezos
Pictures:
Just one entry in the pictures section this week. In fact, it’s two videos – shown at the same time! Both are videos of a trip on the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, the world’s oldest electric suspension railway. One video is a film taken in 1902, the other is taken in 2015. It enables you to see just how things have changed in the intervening years.
https://www.openculture.com/2020/11/trips-on-the-worlds-oldest-electric-suspension-railway-in-1902-1917-show-how-a-city-changes-over-a-century.html
Quotes:
“England is a nation of shopkeepers.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
Scanner:
How coronavirus might have changed TV viewing habits for good – new research
https://theconversation.com/how-coronavirus-might-have-changed-tv-viewing-habits-for-good-new-research-146040
Infectious-disease expert urges for caution over Pfizer’s vaccine. Here’s why
https://www.sciencealert.com/infectious-disease-expert-urges-for-caution-over-pfizer-s-vaccine-here-s-why
Magic! If you have an entry-level iPad, the Combo Touch could make it your workhorse
https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/09/logitech_combo_touch_keyboard/
Virgin Hyperloop completes its first ever passenger test
https://newatlas.com/urban-transport/virgin-hyperloop-first-passenger-test/
Company forced to change name that could be used to hack websites
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/06/companies-house-forces-business-name-change-to-prevent-security-risk
(See also https://xkcd.com/327/)
Japanese town deploys Monster Wolf robots to deter bears
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/japanese-town-deploys-monster-wolf-robots-to-deter-bears
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
15 November 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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