Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
14 March 2021
We’re playing catchup again this week. Updates covers FAA inadequacies and more SolarWinds stuff, and essays looks at the ethics of ‘Immunity Passports’. Then we look at net neutrality, the Brit police losing files earlier this year, the cost of shoddy software, the implications of recycling, NetGear’s SOHO switch bugs, and the UK census in a lockdown environment.
Pictures carries before and after pictures for both the Japanese 2011 tsunami, and the UK’s second lockdown, and the quote is an interesting take on education. Scanner covers issues on the UK Post Office computer scandal, semiconductor materials, a low-code programming language, Bezos to step down this summer, the switch to electronic navigation charts, and a piece on the man who invented mail order – in the 19th Century!
There won’t be a Winding Down next week, because I have a new computer coming at the weekend. Experience indicates that it usually takes several days to get it set up. However, there will be an issue the following week (28 March) though I’m not sure exactly what time it will come out, because it’s the move to Summer Time here in the UK.
The following weekend (4 April) is Easter weekend, so no Winding Down then. After that, assuming I haven’t completely lost track of time, Winding Down will resume its regular weekly publication! Phew!!!
Have fun and stay safe,
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: No issue next week – 21 March. Next issue 28 March.
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi, and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Updates:
Well, I guess no update section would be complete without a reference to Boeing’s 737-Max. The audit report on the sorry mess made of the whole issue by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is now out. It points to serious weaknesses in the certification, delegation and oversight of the whole process.
You can read a summary of the problems and the recommendations at the URL, which also contains a link to a PDF version of the full report.
https://www.oig.dot.gov/library-item/38302
And so to the SolarWinds fiasco... It seems that yet another strain of malware – this one known as SUNSHUTTLE – has been spotted on servers compromised by the SolarWinds hack. It’s going to be months, if not years before the clean up from this affair is finished...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/08/in_brief_security/
Essays:
Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center has just published an interesting paper looking at the ethics of ‘Immunity Passports’. This is going to become a thorny issue in the western democracies in the not too distant future. The key question, of course, is whether they would become yet another weapon in state control over the day-to-day lives of the citizens.
The real question comes down to whether requiring such certificates for travel or school attendance, for instance, is necessary or proportionate, an issue that is made more complex by the fact that when you are vaccinated it doesn’t just protect you, but protects other people from being infected by you.
I don’t have an answer, but it’s an issue that is going to have to be faced in the not too distant future, and one of the first groups to face it will be the highly mobile, technically qualified IT workers.
https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/005-covid_discussion_paper.pdf
Internet:
I note that the US net neutrality caucus is back pushing the idea that, contrary to the ideas of Trump et al, the internet is a public utility and entitled to the same protections as other utilities. Can’t say that I disagree with them, and they have a good chance to win this round. However, in the long term the fight is not going to go away. There are extremely powerful vested interests who have effectively bottomless pockets. This issue is going to be fought backwards and forwards for years to come.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/02/net_neutrality_advocates/
Police:
The UK police have a National Computer database (PNC). It’s quite important, if only because it allows police anywhere in the country to check whether a given individual has any had interaction with the police before and the details of that interaction.
Nothing unusual about that, most countries have something similar and there are always arguments on what sort of info should go on it and how long it should be held for.
And, of course, there is a ‘housekeeping’ program which is run regularly keep everything hunky dory.
I suspect you can see what’s coming...
Yes, last January someone ran the housekeeping program and managed to delete something over 150k records (or maybe even 400k records). Exactly what caused the problem, and whether they can be restored, is the subject of argument, but guess what – the topic has entirely vanished from the news.
You can draw your own conclusions...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/15/pnc_records_deleted/
https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/18/lost_police_records_jump_to_400k/
https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/21/police_national_computer_pmqs/
Programming:
According to the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ), shoddy software cost the US over US$2 trillion last year. They just produced their annual report which covered unsuccessful IT initiatives, failed software projects, poor quality legacy systems, and operational software failures.
Staggering! I’m not sure whether this also covers losses due to security breaches, but regardless, that’s a lot of cash.
I think a lot of the problems are down to the failure of management to understand that over the last 20 years large companies in particular, have become fundamentally IT businesses specialising in whatever was their original speciality.
This means that instead of seeing IT as being central to and the core of their business, they continue to see it as a useful adjunct but entirely secondary to what they do. Consequently, few steps are taken to make sure that senior and board level management are truly IT literate, rather than people with the right contacts.
Bad move – last year it cost US$2 trillion. How much longer can this go on for?
https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/09/buggy_code_costs/
Recycling:
Looks like sooner or later we are going to have to reconsider how we recycle things, and how to alter the attitude of the manufacturers to repair instead of replacement. Scientists from the University of Plymouth and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign came up with some rather alarming results when they started analysing a range of new and used items like children’s toys, office equipment and cosmetic containers.
Not only did they find one or more rare earth elements in most of the samples, but also bromine and antimony, used as flame retardants in electrical equipment.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be recycling stuff, but we definitely should be looking more closely at what, where and how!
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-plastic-recycling-results-rare-metals.html
Security:
Anyone out there running a Netgear SOHO switch? In particular the snappily named JGS516PE Ethernet switch? You are? Well you need to hotfoot it to Netgear’s site and upgrade the firmware, because security researchers discovered no less than 15 vulnerabilities – one of them critical.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/11/netgear_jgs516pe_switch_15_vulns/
Sociology:
We have a census coming up this spring, here in the UK. It’s important because the figures from the census will be used by the government to allocate resources (including money) in the coming period. Therefore, it’s also important that it accurately reflects society. With the pandemic that’s not as easy as you might think.
For a start anyone who can has moved out of the cities into rural areas. Students who would normally be at university away from home are still at home. Many people have lost their jobs because their employer has gone out of business and will need to move to get new jobs.
And a lot of people are going to be moving out to the country or to the more leafy suburbs once the lockdown is eased. So, take a look at the article at the URL and get some idea of the discussion going on about the problems as envisaged by the statisticians.
https://www.onlondon.co.uk/paul-wheeler-the-pandemic-could-have-big-effects-on-the-census-and-that-could-be-bad-news-for-london/
Pictures:
Two sets of ‘before and after’ pictures from the UK Guardian newspaper this week.
The first is a set of pictures taken immediately after Japan’s 2011 tsunami, showing the extent of the devastation, and how the reconstruction restored things. I was impressed by the level of reconstruction and the restoration of normalcy, though, I confess, not by the architecture...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/japans-2011-tsunami-then-and-now-in-pictures
The second set is around the UK’s second lockdown. It is pairs of pictures, mostly of city centres, taken in the same place and from the same angle, before and during the lockdown. At least it shows that people are taking it seriously!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/11/before-and-after-the-start-of-englands-second-lockdown-in-pictures
Quotes:
“Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.”
Attributed to Lord Brougham 1778-1868, Scottish lawyer and politician. From the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Scanner:
Post Office scandal: Postmasters have convictions quashed [Long overdue – wrongly convicted of fraud because of programming errors – AL]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55271193
Researchers report switching material between semiconductor and metallic states
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-material-semiconductor-metallic-states.html
Microsoft’s new Power Fx offers developers an open source, low-code programming language [Yet more opportunity to make Excel type errors! – AL]
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03-microsoft-power-fx-source-low-code.html
See also: https://theconversation.com/excel-errors-the-uk-government-has-an-embarrassingly-long-history-of-spreadsheet-horror-stories-147606
Michael Andretti drives a winning car and the crowd eats it up (literally!)
https://boingboing.net/2021/02/24/michael-andretti-drives-a-winning-car-and-the-crowd-eats-it-up-literally.html
Researchers developed AI that tells apart true conspiracies from conspiracy theories
https://www.sciencealert.com/an-ai-tool-can-distinguish-between-a-conspiracy-theory-and-a-true-conspiracy
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to step down this summer, AWS boss Andy Jassy to step up
https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/02/bezos_ceo_amazon/
US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration begins transition exclusively to electronic navigation charts
https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-begins-transition-exclusively-to-electronic-navigation-charts
Christmas: The mail order pioneer who started a billion-pound industry
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55244397
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
14 March 2021
Alan Lenton is a retired 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.