Winding Down

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
11 July 2021

We’re back, if only briefly because we have workmen in the house. I thought they were coming in yesterday, but I’d put the wrong day in my diary...

So here’s a few pictures, quotes and URLs to keep you going until next week...

Alan Lenton

Publishing schedule: Normal service will be resumed next week, 18 July.

Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.

Pictures:

The crab nebula makes a pretty impressive picture, in fact I have the stock picture as one of my computer backgrounds! However, that’s not the only view that’s available of this piece of real estate, here are a bunch more pictures, taken at different wavelengths...
https://www.space.com/14611-photos-crab-nebula-space-images.html

And for something a little more close to home how about a sheep herd? Have a look at this wonderful drone time lapse sequence of the flock being moved to its summer pasture. Just relax and watch!
https://boingboing.net/2021/07/05/watch-this-mesmerizing-time-lapse-of-a-sheep-herd-moving-to-its-summer-pasture.html

Sadly, not all good photographs/videos show good things – and here is one that shows the fire in the gulf of Mexico after gas leaked from an underwater pipe. I imagine that things were pretty hot on the nearby platform!
https://boingboing.net/2021/07/03/gulf-of-mexico-burnt-for-nearly-5-hours-after-a-gas-pipeline-burst.html

And finally one of the most amazing pictures I’ve seen, and I suspect it’s not a fake, given its provenance... Neptune making an appearance!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-57770547

Quotes:

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
The Register’s suggestion for sorting out the Hubble Space Telescope problems...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/21/hubble_memory_fail/

“There has been a lot of research aimed at understanding why humans should or should not trust robots, but unfortunately, we know much less about why robots should or should not trust humans,” Herbert Azevedo-Sa
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-humans-robots-specific-tasks.html (via Risks Digest 32.74)

“If the climate were a bank, it would have been saved!” – Placard spotted on a demonstration

Scanner:

Inside a ransomware attack
https://theconversation.com/inside-a-ransomware-attack-how-dark-webs-of-cybercriminals-collaborate-to-pull-one-off-163015

UK product safety regulations are failing consumers online, in the IoT, and … with artificial intelligence?
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/17/uk_product_safety_regulations_failing/

Why the online safety bill threatens our civil liberties
https://www.politics.co.uk/comment/2021/05/26/why-the-online-safety-bill-threatens-our-civil-liberties/

Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features
https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/06/audacity_fork/

Biden’s executive order calls for greater open source security but not how to achieve it
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/bidens-executive-order-calls-for-greater-open-source-security-but-not-how-to-achieve-it/

Earth has a 27.5-million-year ‘Heartbeat’, but we don’t know what causes it
https://www.sciencealert.com/our-planet-has-a-27-5-million-year-old-pulse-says-study-we-don-t-know-what-causes-it

Chinese hydropower plants on sale as crypto miners move abroad
https://cointelegraph.com/news/chinese-hydropower-plants-on-sale-as-crypto-miners-move-abroad

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 July 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.