Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
16 May 2021
Welcome to a new edition of Winding Down, which this week includes details of another attempt to commercialise UK health records, material pointing to an important essay of AI hackers, number systems, wormholes, 2D transistors, NFTs, and macro quantum entanglement.
Pictures includes two videos, one on the James Webb telescope, and one by the European Space Agency. The quote is from Artist David Hockney, and finally there are pointers to materials on satellite ocean surveillance, a detonation engine, the Plan 9 OS, Chernobyl, 8.5 million fake comments, and a few web sites dominating the web...
Stay Safe,
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue 23 May. No issue 30 May (UK Spring Bank Holiday).
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
UK National Health Service:
ATTENTION ALL BRITS. The NHS is making another attempt to hand over health records to private businesses. Last time it tried this it was stymied by the publicity and so many people opted out that they were forced to abandon the attempt. This time they are trying to keep it low key. Hopefully they will fail to be able to do so, even though they are making opting out as difficult as they can by making it necessary to have access to a printer, and by using Microsoft’s proprietary .docx format.
Details: https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/13/nhs_data_grab/
Opt Out Form: https://nhs-prod.global.ssl.fastly.net/binaries/content/assets/website-assets/data-and-information/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/type-1-opt-out-form.docx
Essays:
This week I’d like to draw your attention to an important essay called ‘The Coming AI Hackers’ by Bruce Schneier. Bruce Schneier is one of the leading lights in digital security – I still have his 1990’s book, Applied Cryptography* on my shelf! The essay isn’t about human hackers hacking AI , it’s about why AI, by virtue of the way it works, will hack things. It doesn’t have to be maliciously written, hacking is built into the way AI works.
It’s written very clearly, and you don’t have to know a great deal about AI, Schneier explains how things work.
Highly recommended! (Note: It’s a fairly long piece)
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/coming-ai-hackers
Hackaday has an interesting little piece on representing dates, and the confusion caused by different systems. Unfortunately, it ends with railing against the way we don’t use base 10 for some things. So, let me just quickly explain. Base ten is useful for counting things, but it is useless for sharing them. The only things you can divide it by and still have whole numbers are two and five.
On the other hand, 12 can be divided by two, three, four, and six. 20 can be divided into two, four, five and ten. Remember Brit decimal currency? And, of course, there is the magnificent 60, which is divisible by two, three, four, five, six, ten, 12, 15, 20 and 30. Bottom line, 12, 20, and 60 are for sharing, 10 is for bureaucrats and tax collectors!
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/21/iso-8601-ending-the-date-wars-and-confusing-everyone-equally/
Astronomy and Cosmology:
It looks like that old staple of Science Fiction – wormholes – may actually exist! However, the chances of using them for interstellar or intergalactic travel are not good, since the indications are that they would be connecting black holes. It might, though be possible to use them for messaging, since the putative wormholes could carry information.
Hmmm... Perhaps you could reduce yourself to just the info to reconstruct yourself at the other end...
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-are-coming-up-with-clever-new-ways-to-keep-up-the-search-for-worm-holes
Computers:
Wow! 2D transistors. It seems that it’s already possible to make transistors using certain 2D materials. And, of course they take up less space that 3D transistors, so you could get more of them onto a chip, a la Moore’s Law. BUT, the problem is getting the bits on and off the chip. Now however it looks like a solution to that electrical connection problem may have been solved, and then, at least for a while, Moore’s Law will be back in action, with smaller and more powerful chips!
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-advance-enable-2d-transistors-tinier.html
Non-Fungible Tokens:
The Atlantic magazine has a major piece on non-fungible tokens, including a look at the whole eco-structure including blockchain and digital currencies. It’s a fairly long piece but worth a read.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/nfts-werent-supposed-end-like/618488/
Actually, thinking about it, maybe I should put up a digital copy of my original map of Earth for my Federation game up as an NFT. It is, after all, like the game, over 30 years old. It’s a bit worn and crinkly round the edges (like me I guess) but otherwise OK. Perhaps I could get 3.14159 Bitcoin for it...
Physics:
Wow! The headline in Science Alert says it all: ‘Quantum Entanglement Has Now Been Directly Observed at a Larger Macroscopic Scale.’ So there you have it – Einstein’s spooky action at a distance, previously only seen by physicists in sub-atomic particles, has now been seen in a bigger object. Bigger is a relative term of course, in this case the object’s about one fifth the width of a human hair. This is a big breakthrough – expect to hear more about it in the not too distant future!
https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-entanglement-has-now-been-directly-observed-at-a-larger-macroscopic-scale
Aksherley... I did write about how there were macro quantum objects, giving examples, some three years ago. I seem to remember it was 1 April 2018. You can find it here if you missed it at the time: https://www.ibgames.net/alan/technical/practicalquantumtheory.html. One reader wrote to me to tell me that her cats greatly appreciated the article...
Pictures:
Just a couple of videos this week. The first is a short piece showing the final test for the mirror of the new James Webb Space telescope. An impressive piece of kit, massively overdue, but seems to be getting there.
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-final-mirror-test
I’m not sure how to describe the second video. It seems that the European Space Agency have launched something a little closer to Earth – their version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody!
https://www.space.com/european-space-agency-bohemian-rhapsody-queen-parody
Quote:
This week’s quote is from the British artist David Hockney:
“The thing with high-tech is that you always end up using scissors.”
from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Fifth Edition
Scanner:
Spybirds: POPPY 8 and the dawn of satellite ocean surveillance
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4174/1
Your old mobile phone number could compromise your cybersecurity
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-mobile-compromise-cybersecurity.html
World first: Oblique wave detonation engine may unlock Mach 17 aircraft
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/oblique-wave-detonation-engine-hypersonic-ucf/
Bell Labs transfers copyright of influential ‘Plan 9’ OS to new foundation
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/24/bell_labs_transfers_plan9pto_foundation/
Chernobyl’s molten guts are warming up, and scientists don’t know why
https://www.sciencealert.com/chernobyl-s-molten-guts-are-warming-and-it-could-go-critical-all-over-again
Telcos crammed 8.5m fake comments against net neutrality into FCC’s inbox
https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/06/new_york_neutrality/
https://www.wired.com/story/isps-funded-85-million-fake-comments-opposing-net-neutrality/
The same handful of websites are dominating the web and that could be a problem
https://www.sciencealert.com/we-re-going-to-fewer-and-fewer-websites-and-that-could-be-a-problem
* And yes, I did read the book!
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
16 May2021
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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