Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
11 April 2021
We have a Winding Down stuffed with news and info this week. We start with the anniversary of the first human space flight 60 yeas ago, then there are some essays – one on cryptocurrencies, one on customer obsession, and one on the idea of a physical internet. After that we have a look at some legal case involving big tech – Oracle v Google and two Apple v customers. Next is a piece on what looks to me like a genetic breakthrough.
Pictures has a time lapse volcano video, a picture of a mountain, a picture of a canyon and finally a rocket launch. The quote is about the dangers of German’s ‘energy transition’ plan.
Finally scanner carries pointers to material on 28 tons of cocaine, AI governance, a magazine, the Louvre’s collection going online, Apple accused of being unfair (big surprise there!), planning research, and Facebook legal woes.
Have fun and stay safe,
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue 18 April.
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi, and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Special:
Tomorrow night – 12 April – is special. It’s the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight as the first human to get into space. Unlike most of you I can actually remember it! I was 12 at the time and was at boarding school. I sneaked out of the dorm in the early hours of the morning to see if I could see his capsule pass over head in reflected sunlight. I stood in my pyjamas in the freezing cold for an hour (those of you who have ever been in East Anglia will know just how cold it is in the wind blowing off the North Sea...), but had no luck and returned disappointed to my bed.
For the record, 12 April is also the 40th anniversary of the first space shuttle flight.
https://www.space.com/yuris-night-2021-global-livestream
Essays:
In an essay on his blog, software engineer Stephen Diehl makes an interesting case for completely banning cryptocurrencies. I confess that I have some sympathy with his position, which basically says that all cryptocurrencies are Ponzi schemes! He’s not the only one by a long chalk to hold this position.
Significantly, though, all the suggestions along these lines lack any political ideas about how it can be done, and seem to regard it just as a technical issue. That might have been the case when bitcoin was just getting off the ground – but even then it would have required international coordination. It’s certainly not the case now.
Cryptocurrencies are here to stay, and that will remain the case until either there is a massive shift in the political climate or until the currency develops its own internal contradictions that make it much less useful than it is at the moment.
https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/banbitcoin.html
Creative Good has an essay by Mark Hurst looking at what happens when customer obsession goes wrong. He takes as an example Amazon, who in their early days had a mission statement of being “earth’s most customer-centric company.” It is still ‘customer centric’, but the customer has changed now that Amazon is in the ads business. Amazon, is, of course, not the only company on this trajectory.
Take a look, it’s an interesting piece.
https://creativegood.com/blog/21/when-customer-obsession-goes-wrong.html
The final essay for this week is about how to set up a ‘physical internet’. What does that mean? It means that it should be possible to set up distribution systems for physical goods that behave in the same way the internet does (well at least the way the internet theoretically works).
There are some interesting ideas and research in the article and it’s well worth a read.
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-02-physical-internet-revolutionise-goods.html
Big Tech – Legal:
It’s difficult to know where to start with this one!
I guess the Google v Oracle programming interface court case is as good a place as any. This has been running for over ten years in the USA and finally the Supreme Court has given its decision – yes, it is legal for Google to use the Java API because it’s not infringing. The is probably the most critical decision in years for the whole software business, since this is the way most of current and past software is written.
Phew!
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/5/22367851/google-oracle-supreme-court-ruling-java-android-api
https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/05/google_prevails_over_oracle_in/
Next in line is Apple with allegations that it knowingly sold customers laptops with its defective butterfly keyboard mechanisms. Now a judge sitting in the federal district court in San Jose has approved a merger of all the legal challenges to Apple into a single giant class action.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/23/apple_butterfly_lawsuit/
There’s also another possible class action against Apple in the works over a defect in the MacBook Pro. The allegation is that Apple continued to sell the machine around 2016, even though they knew that the cable connecting the screen to the body of the machine had a design fault.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/05/apple_macbook_screen/
And finally, Apple, yes, Apple again, is facing an investigation by the UK’s monopoly watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority. The CMA decided to take a close look at the Apple software store’s terms and conditions after receiving complaints from developers that the rules are an unfair stranglehold, and that the rules may well break competition law.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/05/uk_apple_antitrust/
Biology:
I admit that’s I’m not a biologist, but I found a piece on phy.org about a new type of CRISPR fascinating. CRISPR is a tool used by geneticists. As I understand it the current version is used to cut DNA strands leading to permanent changes in the cell’s genetics. The problem is that it’s a one way event. You can’t unsnip it later.
However, nature has its own way of ‘switching off’ DNA strands using a process known as ‘methylation’. This is called epigenetic silencing. This is achieved by sticking chemical tags onto the strand.
Now some very clever geneticists have come up with a new version of CRISPR that can do the same switching, and what is more it’s reversible – having switched something off, they can use the same tool to switch it back on again.
This, as I’m sure you realise, has massive implications. The original version of CRISPR allowed a lot of genetic manipulation, but I suspect that the new version, called CRISPRoff, is going to be even more revolutionary.
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-reversible-crispr-method-gene-underlying.html
Pictures:
Volcanos are all the rage these days, and the first offering in this section is a YouTube time lapse video – seven days of Icelandic volcanic eruption in a mere two minutes! I especially liked the night sequences...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kach087kwR4
Next, We have a picture of Europe’s Matterhorn mountain in winter. If you ever wondered why it’s supposed to be difficult to climb – this makes it somewhat obvious!
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/mattherhorn-mountain-in-winter-zermatt-switzerland-january-11-2018/
From a mountain to a canyon in Iceland – another impressive picture...
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/mattherhorn-mountain-in-winter-zermatt-switzerland-january-11-2018/
And finally a great picture of the recent Russian rocket launch carrying astronauts to the space station. Unlike most launch pictures you can actually see the rocket, rather than clouds of smoke!
https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2021/thelaunchcam.jpg
Quotes:
This is taken from the ‘Risks Digest 32.59’ newsletter so it’s a bit longer and in a different format than usual, and not available on the internet.
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2021 21:32:18 +0200
From: Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>
Subject: Safe and affordable electricity supply in danger (German finance watchdog)
The Bundesrechnungshof, Germany’s federal financial watchdog, has stated that the “safe and affordable supply of electricity is in increasing danger” due to Germany’s “Energiewende” (energy transition).
https://www.bundesrechnungshof.de/de/presse-service/pressemitteilungen/sammlung/bund-steuert-energiewende-weiterhin-unzureichend
(there is not yet an English version as I write this).
To quote its president: “Affordability is still not measurably determined;
security of supply is incompletely assessed. Whether citizens and the
economy will be reliably supplied with electricity in the future is subject
to risks that the German government is not fully aware of. I am concerned
about the high electricity prices for private households and small and
medium-sized enterprises. This puts the acceptance of the generation project at risk.”
The risk? To push through policies without looking at risks and potential
consequences.
Scanner:
Belgian police seize 28 tons of cocaine after ‘cracking’ Sky ECC’s chat app encryption
https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/08/sky_ecc_drugs/
Exploring the impact of broader impact requirements for AI governance
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03-exploring-impact-broader-requirements-ai.html
City of London Police warn against using ‘open science’ site Sci-Hub
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/22/city_of_london_police_sci_hub_warning/
Paris’s Louvre Museum just put its entire collection online
https://www.timeout.com/news/pariss-louvre-museum-just-put-its-entire-collection-online-033021
Apple accused of unfairly banishing Watch keyboard app for the visually impaired from its software souk
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/19/apple_faces_yet_more_accusations/
How to plan a research project
https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-plan-a-research-project-in-four-clear-steps
America’s Supremes give Facebook nothing but heartaches: Top court won’t stop ‘$15bn wiretap’ lawsuit
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/23/supreme_court_facebook/
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
11 April 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.
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