Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
23 January 2022
It seems to have been really quiet on the techie front this week. I think everyone in the UK is busy watching UK Prime Minister squirm. Highlight of the week for me was a flyer from my favourite brewery – The Black Isle Brewing Co – reminding me that this coming Tuesday (25 January) is Burns Night and it is offering to sell me haggis spiced beer for the occasion!
I think I’ll pass on that one...
Cheers!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next Issue 30 January 2022.
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Updates:
Let’s get this straight once and for all. 5G near US airports is not currently at issue UNLESS it involves AT&T/Verizon C-band. 5G at higher and lower frequencies is not involved in this controversy. So stop saying “5G” as if *all* 5G is involved in the radio altimeter war.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/19/5g_airliners_solved_by_japan/
Energy:
As government plans for partying – ooops, I mean energy use, of course – become clearer it seems that heat pumps are going to become the way forward in the not too distant future. I don’t know about my readers, but, frankly, I had no idea what they were other than a vague idea that they might be used for pumping molten sodium around the cores of nuclear reactors.
Actually, it turns out they are not quite as exotic as that – pity, I’ve always wanted my own nuclear reactor... The article at the URL explains it as well as reporting on a successful deployment of these beasts in Norway. Well if they can get warmth out of winter air in Norway, I guess they must have something going for them!
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/heat-pumps-norway-efficiency-emissions/
Shopping:
Amazon UK and Visa, of credit card fame, have been facing off over here in the UK. Basically Amazon decided that Visa were taking too big a share of the sales out of Amazon’s cut. Since both of them could fairly be described as the ‘top dog’ in each of their businesses it promised to be an interesting punch up.
This household has been on Amazon Prime almost from the day it started, and a week or so ago we got an email from Amazon telling us that when Visa is shut out we can buy stuff paying for it over X months at zero interest. Yes that’s zero interest – and according to the last Visa spiel I looked at the Visa charge is an APR of 28.9%. on outstanding balances!
Wow! No wonder only a few days later news came through that Visa and Amazon are talking again!
And in other Amazon news it turns out that in Los Angeles having someone make off with Amazon packages from your door step while you are at work is not the only thing you need to worry about. It seems that thieves actually raided a goods train to get their hands on valuable packages in transit from Amazon!
https://boingboing.net/2022/01/19/cargo-trains-in-la-raided-for-amazon-packages.html
Pictures:
I know a large proportion of my readers are cats and their people, so here to cheer you up are some rather nice cat pictures!
https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2022/01/13/diorama-restaurant-stray-cats/
And for those of you who are Lord of the Rings types here’s something a little different – Lord of the Rings in classic Chinese style! Nice pictures – the Chinese outfit really suits Gandalf!
https://leiaham.com (click on the Lord of the Rings picture to go to the gallery)
Quotes:
In the intro to a piece on Boing Boing is the following whammy of a sentence from The New York Times 2022 Food Forecast:
“food industry leaders in the United States say 2022 will be another pragmatic, roll-up-your sleeves kind of year, shaped by the needs of people working from home and by the culinarily-astute-but-fickle Gen Z, whose members want food with sustainable ingredients and a strong cultural back story, prepared without exploitation and delivered in a carbon-neutral way — within 30 minutes.”
https://boingboing.net/2021/12/30/food-forecasters-are-bullish-on-mushrooms-in-2022.html
Scanner:
Web daddy Tim Berners-Lee on privacy, data sharing, and the web’s future
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/20/tim_bernerslee/
Robot vacuum cleaner escapes from Cambridge Travelodge
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-60084347
In 19th-Century Gibraltar, survivors of a deadly virus used ‘Fever Passes’ to prove their immunity
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-19th-century-gibraltar-survivors-of-a-deadly-virus-used-fever-passes-to-prove-their-immunity-180978885/
Pandemic London: How have the city’s travel habits changed?
https://www.onlondon.co.uk/pandemic-london-how-have-the-citys-travel-habits-changed/
Sovereignty? We’ve heard of it. UK government gives contract to store MI5, MI6 and GCHQ’s data to AWS
https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/26/uk_security_services_aws/
Calculate but don’t shut up
https://aeon.co/essays/shut-up-and-calculate-does-a-disservice-to-quantum-mechanics
Made to spec: Prototyping as a service
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/08/made-to-spec-the-coming-age-of-prototyping-as-a-service/
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
23 January 2022
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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