Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
18 July 2021
Things are gradually getting back to normal here in the UK – though I suspect it will probably be a new normal, not the old normal. However, politicians will remain the same, of course!
More or less back to normal this week, and hopefully things are starting to stabilise a bit so that will continue. We start with a bit about an event in New York City that made me smile – I hope it does the same for you! There’s a bunch of updates – nuclear energy, the ‘Mayflower’ AI controlled ship, Boeing (of course), and the return to business for Hubble!
There’s an essay on China’s space story, material on air-con vs. electric fan, CCTV cameras in big cities, and using the Wayback Machine. The picture this week is a scrolling one, and the quote is about maths. Finally there are scanner URLs on UFOs, jail, Mg(OH)2, Apple wearable kit, infosec careers, a drunk comet, and space hotels.
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Normal – next issue next week, 25 July
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Cheerful:
Everything has been so miserable recently, that I thought I’d start with something cheerful about people enjoying themselves! Not really techie at all, but well worth watching. Oh! And make sure you have the volume turned on :)
https://boingboing.net/2021/07/16/sidewalk-decal-sets-impromptu-dance-parties-in-motion.html
Updates:
The push for a clean source of nuclear energy continues with Canadian based General Fusion being authorised to build a 70% of full size demonstration of its technology in the UK. In the USA Terra Power, founded by Bill Gates is due to be built in Wyoming.
It will be interesting to see how each of these different nuclear technologies fare in the near future.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/18/uk_general_fusion/
The AI-based ship which left the UK to sail to the USA made it three days into the Atlantic before failing and returning to base in the UK. Nice try, and hopefully things will go better next time.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/19/in_brief_ai/
I guess no updates section would be complete without a mention of our old friends Boeing! It seems that a new member of the 737-MAX family made its maiden flight recently. It’s the biggest version of the series yet. The company claim that it has the lowest seat per mile cost of any production single-aisle plane. That may interest the travel companies, but what the passengers want to know is will it have the same number of safe landings as there are take-offs...
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/boeing-737-max-10-first-flight/
And finally the really good news is that the Hubble Space Telescope is back in operation!
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/operations-underway-to-restore-payload-computer-on-nasas-hubble-space-telescope
Essays:
The space review has a fascinating piece about how China is using its mythology and its sci-fi to sell its space program to the rest of the world.
For instance it names its programs after its traditional roots and there is a growing corpus of specifically ‘Chinese’ sci-fi work, and it is starting to be popular outside China. Typical of the latter is Liu Cixin’s ‘The Three Body Problem”. I have to confess that although I have been a science fiction fan for around 60 years (yes really!) I found the book boring and abandoned it part way through. Your mileage may vary, though...
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4212/1
Environment:
It’s hot and getting hotter. Anyone with air-conditioning is probably running at max at the moment. However, it seems that in many circumstances the humble electric fan is a better way to keep cool!
New research seems to indicate that whether a fan or air-con is better depends not so much on the temperature but on the humidity. Air-con is definitely needed when the temperature and humidity are both very high and also when the temperature is high and the humidity is very low.
Given that electric fans use 30-50 times less energy I think this is well worth looking in to!
https://www.sciencealert.com/electric-fans-are-being-underutilized-worldwide-as-heatwaves-rage
Infrastructure:
Those of you worried about the increasing loss of privacy in modern society are probably focussed on the Internet and the like. But there is just as much loss of privacy due to the widespread employment of CCTV by municipal and other authorities in both large and small cities.
That being the case I’d draw your attention to a recent survey studying the prevalence of CCTV in some of the world’s larger cities. The results may surprise you. Top of the list with nearly one camera per kilometre of street was... Seoul! Paris came second with a camera every one and a half km, followed by the usual suspects – the US cities of Boston, New York, Baltimore, and San Francisco. London came about midway in the list, with somewhat less than one camera per 2km.
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-prevalence-cctv-cameras-large-cities.html
Internet:
I guess that at some stage we all use the internet to investigate something. Some of us more than others. I thought, therefore, that readers might find a piece on using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine useful in their investigations. The article is mainly targeted at journalists, but these day we could all be said to function as a journalist of some sort at some time!
In the mean time, do take a look on how to use an asset that archives, and makes publicly available, more the one billion archived URLs per day. Make the most of it because sooner or later the politicians are going to realise it exists and block it. After all, no politician wants the voters to be able to look up what they did or said previously!
https://gijn.org/2021/05/05/tips-for-using-the-internet-archives-wayback-machine-in-your-next-investigation/
Pictures:
Just one wonderful piece this week. It’s a scrolling animated illustration of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Kahn’, created using machine learning techniques. Make sure you have sound on so you can hear the poem while you watch the scrolling illustration. Wonderful!
https://boingboing.net/2021/07/15/sinuous-rills-wondrous-scrolling-ai-animation-of-kubla-khan.html
Quotes:
“Beauty is the first test. There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
Godfrey Harold Hardy, English mathematician 1877-1947 (Source: Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Fifth Edition)
Scanner:
Evidence on UFOs ‘largely inconclusive’: US intelligence report
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-evidence-ufos-largely-inconclusive-intelligence.html
Keeping people out of jail keeps people out of jail! [Fascinating – AL]
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/reducing-incarceration-no-prosecuting-minor-non-violent-crimes/
Common mineral could be key to tackling climate change
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-common-mineral-key-tackling-climate.html
Apple warns kit may interfere with implanted medical devices at close proximity [That’s worrying – AL]
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/28/apple_kit_implanted_devices/
Kids in Hong Kong and other highly surveilled states worry infosec careers are just asking for trouble
https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/07/asia_ethical_hacking/
Visiting Comet 46P/Wirtanen Is ‘Abnormally High’ in Alcohol
https://www.sciencealert.com/visiting-comet-46p-wirtanen-is-abnormally-high-in-alcohol
The enduring fantasy of space hotels
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4136/1
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
18 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.
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