Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
13 February 2022
Herewith, this week’s offering of Winding Down. It’s a bit shorter than usual. I would have set it in bigger type so you wouldn’t notice, but it’s not very easy to change the text size in a plain text email! I could tell you that it’s quality, not quantity this week, but that would imply that previous issues weren’t quality issues. Which of course is simply not the case!
Cheers!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: The next issue is due on 20 February.
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Essays:
‘The Conversation’ has an interesting piece on the Little Ice Age. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it roughly covers the period between the 14th and 19th Centuries. It was a period characterised by a lot of volcanic eruptions and severe cold spells.
We’ve got a lot of contemporary written material about the period, and looking at the literature, it’s hard to believe that the average global temperature fell by less that half a degree Celsius. There are reports of blizzards in Florida. Ships were trapped in sea ice in Chesapeake Bay, the Bosporus froze, as did many rivers, and the ice in the Baltic was thick enough in 1658 for an army to march from Sweden to Denmark!
What this does show is the extent to which even small changes in the Earth’s climate can have a major effect on the climate...I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from all this!
https://theconversation.com/small-climate-changes-can-have-devastating-local-consequences-it-happened-in-the-little-ice-age-164916
Astronomy & Cosmology:
As you all probably know The Webb Space Telescope is now successfully launched, in position, unfurled and ready to go. Personally, I confess I had my doubts, given its track record and massive cost over runs. But I take it all back – it is there – and it seems to be working – no Hubble style mirror problems this time!
If you would like to know a bit more about it, especially what it is hoped it will achieve, then I recommend an essay in Quanta magazine. The essay was written last December so it predates the successful launch of the telescope.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-matters-so-much-20211203/
Social Media:
TechXplore asked three experts what we can expect to see happening on the social media platforms in the coming year. They each had their own take on things, but I was particularly taken with the third piece which argues that social media is just another name for propaganda. As such it becomes political speech rather than mere misinformation.
Each piece is short and succinct. A good read!
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-misinformation-social-media-experts.html
The Web:
Cookies – the digital sort, not the crunchie type! How many times have you just clicked on the accept box, because the no cookies option is buried away some levels down? How many times have you been unable to access a site because you refused to click the ‘accept’ box? I guess we all have this experience, and we all suspect that whatever you click makes no damn difference, your data gets hoovered up regardless.
Well, now we have a few facts, because ‘The Conversation’ took a look at some 50 of the more well known websites. And guess what they found? Surprise, surprise, most are gathering our data illegally...
There are rumours that various government bodies are considering new laws to rein in these sort of abuses. That would be nice if it is the case, and it would make a change from their ongoing attempts to sabotage the use of encryption. Of course, even if they do succeed in limiting the use of cookies, the big companies wind find some other way of gathering personal data...
Anyone for a game of ‘Whack-a-Mole’?
https://theconversation.com/cookies-i-looked-at-50-well-known-websites-and-most-are-gathering-our-data-illegally-176203
Pictures:
Oh! Wow! How do you remove water from a radio-telescope dish? Why, you tilt the dish and tip it out, of course! Take a look...
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/earth_to_voyager_2_standby/
Space.com has a series of short pieces on major solar storms, starting with the 1859 Carrington Event, and ending with the 2006 X-Ray Christmas flare. It’s worth looking through, both for the information given and some rather nice close up shots of the sun’s surface in the later ones.
https://www.space.com/12584-worst-solar-storms-sun-flares-history.html
Quotes:
Quotes from a couple of Alan Bennett plays this week:
The first is for my colleagues on the ISO/BSI C++ panel!
“Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.” from the play ‘Forty Years On’
The second is from the play ‘Getting on’:
“We tried setting up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.”
Scanner:
How Microsoft used C++20 to eliminate an entire class of runtime bugs https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/how-we-used-cpp20-to-eliminate-an-entire-class-of-runtime-bugs/
What secrets can the World’s 1st magma observatory discover one mile inside a volcano?
https://www.sciencealert.com/can-the-world-s-first-magma-observatory-discover-the-secrets-of-geothermal-power-a-mile-inside-the-heart-of-a-volcano
HMRC: Contractors, don’t worry about IR35 reforms in private sector ‘cos it all went so well in public sector
https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/hmrc_ir35_status_study/
Researchers suggest battery-powered trains could very soon be economically viable
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-11-battery-powered-economically-viable.html
UK.gov emits draft IoT and smartphone security law for Parliamentary scrutiny
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/25/product_security_telecoms_bill_parliament/
Pink Floyd’s entire studio discography is now on YouTube: Stream the studio & live albums
https://www.openculture.com/2021/12/pink-floyds-entire-studio-discography-is-now-on-youtube-stream-the-studio-live-albums.html
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
13 February 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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