Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
15 August 2021
Another thrill-packed issue of WD hits the presses!
As is traditional, we start with an update on Boeing’s woes, and we also look briefly at Apple’s latest excuses. The essay is a review of a book about the state of the tech industry. Moving on, we take a look at AI and at Google’s plans for pay cuts, DNA digital storage, the IBM PC, electro-magnetism, pollution and oysters, repairs and ownership, and time zones.
There’s a nice picture, and a short quote, and scanner material on NASA/Space X/Jupiter, asteroids, taxes, eclipses, COV-19 social effects, and an interview with Gene Hoffman.
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Normal – next issue next week 22 August
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Updates:
Yet again Boeing problems features in our updates section. They really are reaping the fruits of what their management sowed over the past few years. You may remember that their Starliner capsule failed at its first attempt to dock with the International Space Station. At least that time it got off the ground.
This time around a bunch of valves stuck on a test and it turns out it’s going to miss its slot in the launch queue, and things are on hold indefinitely while the engineers try and unstick the valves. I wonder how the astronauts scheduled for this mission feel about this!
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/cst_100_starliner_valves/
https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-oft-2-indefinite-delay-factory-return?
Meanwhile the Apple iPhone scanning affair continues to rumble on with Apple claiming that it is still “leading on privacy.” and that that scanning people’s phones is an advance on privacy! The ghost of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ lives on!
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/apple-defends-iphone-photo-scanning-calls-it-an-advancement-in-privacy/
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/09/apple_csam_faq/
Essays:
This week’s recommended essay is an extended review of the book ‘Your Computer Is On Fire’, which is a detailed look at the state of the tech industry. The book is an interesting analysis of the industry, but, as the review points out, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have any answers. Still, it looks like it might be worth a read...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/06/your_computer_is_on_fire_review/
AI:
Hmm... It turns out that some AI systems can figure out a person’s race just from medical body scans. This was definitely not expected, and the researchers have no idea how the AI did it. I don’t think this is the only surprise that AI is going to spring on us. It may well turn out that AI is good at things that humans aren’t very good at and vice-versa, rather than them being good at things humans are good at.
However you look at it though, it’s clear that AI is outpacing legal, moral and ethical discussion not to mention regulation. And that’s not good...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/08/in_brief_ai/
Big Business:
And so we come to Google... There was a time when every techie I knew would have leapt at the chance to work for Google – it looked after its workers, paid well, and was ethical. Its motto was ‘Don’t be evil’.
Sadly, those days are past and Google is really no better that any other large corporation, as is evinced by its latest wheeze. If you want to work from home after the pandemic is finally over, they will let you do so – in return for a cut in wages! Where next, I ask myself?
Did I aspire to work for Google in those early, heady days? Yes, but only briefly, because it was made unofficially clear to me that since I was over 30 I was too old to work for Google. A taste of things to come...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/11/google_home_workers_pay_cut_reports/
Biocomputing:
This looks really interesting. It’s a report of a paper about the feasibility of using DNA to store programming stack based data structures. If the biologists can really make this work it has a lot of potential to store huge amounts of data in a very small physical space, and to cut the energy costs of doing so.
Definitely the way to go!
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-potential-dna-based-data-structures.html
Computers:
Oh yes, and this week marks the 40th anniversary of the IBM PC, and the weird set of marketing and intellectual property decisions that let everyone else prosper as a result (especially Microsoft)! It was expensive – but less so than IBM’s mainframes, and much more accessible for company executives.
Actually, it also started the arms race between the company executives and the techies running the data/computing/help desk departments, for which cloud computing using your company credit card is only the latest instalment! But that’s another story!
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/12/ibm_pc_40_anniversary/
Electro-magnetism:
The Science X website has an interesting paper about the nature of electromagnetism, suggesting that rather than being something in its own right, it is actually a property of spacetime. This is the latest in a discussion that started in the 19th century, when physicists thought it propagated via an all permeating substance called the ‘aether’.
We know better than that now – or do we? Classical electromagnetic theory doesn’t really tell us just which medium electrical and magnetic field propagate in. The researchers suggest that Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism are directly related to the curvature of spacetime.
If these theorists are correct, it should be possible to perform some sort of practical tests to confirm (or disprove) the theory. If it does turn out to be correct, I wonder what the implications are for far reaching space travel?
https://sciencex.com/news/2021-07-electromagnetism-property-spacetime.html
Pollution:
It’s not very often we get good news about pollution cleanup, but experiments being carried out in various harbours around the world show that colonies of young European flat oysters clean up pollution in water as they mature because they filter the water to build their shells. When they eventually die off the shell will be collected and upcycled as building materials!
Neat, very neat, but I can’t help but wonder whether there is going to turn out to be a downside to seeding places with something that’s not native to the ecology...
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/oysters-clean-ocean-water-new-york-harbor/
Repairs:
There are two major arguments going on at the moment which appear to be completely different – but they are not, they are both consequences of the same thing. The arguments are over Apple’s scanning of people’s iPhones, and the right to repair things you own. The truth is that ownership of the things you buy is being steadily and insidiously eroded.
Things have gone so far in the US that there is a steady stream of litigation on the issue. Even the EU bureaucracy, never the most up to date and with-it bunch, have noticed the problem and are even starting to take action. (I know that sounds unlikely, but it’s true!)
Hackaday have an excellent piece giving you information about the ways in which companies (mostly, but not exclusively, big ones) take steps to prevent you from repairing items they have sold you. Highly recommended.
Ultimately, though, it’s not just about the right to repair, or the right to privacy – it’s about the right to own...
https://hackaday.com/2021/08/11/should-you-be-able-to-repair-it-we-think-so/
Time:
And now for something a little less heavy than dealing with the woes of the world – a little piece on time zones by Vitali Vitaliev. Vitali is an amusing writer and his pieces are always informative as well. I especially liked the idea of time in Mount Athos...
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/07/after-all-you-are-invited-to-a-meeting-at-5pm-yesterday/
Pictures:
This week’s picture is an amazing composite picture of some of Australia’s flora and fauna. It’s a beautiful picture as well as being informative.
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/on-the-brink-3/
Quotes:
“[There are] only two classes of pedestrians in these days of reckless motor traffic – the quick and the dead”
Lord Dewar, British politician
Scanner:
NASA selects SpaceX for mission to Jupiter moon Europa
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-nasa-spacex-mission-jupiter-moon.html
City-sized asteroids smacked ancient Earth 10 times more often than thought
https://www.space.com/ancient-earth-hit-by-city-size-asteroids-often
It is with a heavy heart that we must tell you America’s richest continue to pay not quite as much tax as you do
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/09/tycoon_tax_affairs/
How eclipse anxiety helped lay the foundation for modern astronomy
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-eclipse-anxiety-helped-lay-foundation-modern-astronomy-180963992/
The burden of the COVID-19 pandemic may contribute to outbreaks of violent protest and antigovernment sentiment
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-burden-covid-pandemic-contribute-outbreaks.html
In conversation with Gene Hoffman, co-creator of the internet’s first ad blocker
https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/08/interview_gene_hoffman/
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
15 August 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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