Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
20 March 2022
Welcome back to Winding Down. Apologies for the missing issue last week – caused by a failing keyboard compounded by a family crisis.
I can’t event begin to count the number of articles I’ve read this year about the effects of COVID on society. Interestingly enough, I haven’t seen any of those articles mention the one striking thing I did notice – women delivery drivers from the big supermarket chains.
For as long as I can remember groceries and such like were always delivered by men. It’s great to see women starting to get these formerly men-only jobs – I just hope they are getting the same wages as male drivers are!
Cheers!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: The next issue is due on 27 March.
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Updates:
In the previous issue I drew attention to the renewed search for Shackleton’s ship, which got caught in the Antarctic ice and sank in 1915. Well, in case you hadn’t already spotted it, they’ve found it and it’s apparently in really good condition. You can even read the ship’s name on the stern.
The wreck itself has been made a designated monument, so it’s not allowed to be disturbed in any way, either by raising it, or ‘collecting’ bits of it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60662541
Essays:
The Conversation has an interesting essay from Cardiff University historian Jan Machielsen looking at the recent apology for witchcraft executions in the period between 1563 and 1736, given by Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. The essays sets the events in their historical period and in the process discusses other areas in Europe where there were similar outbreaks.
It’s a useful essay full of information (did you know, for instance that one in six executed witches were men?). It also takes up the issue of whether an ‘apology’ is appropriate, which some may find contentious.
Well worth a read though!
https://theconversation.com/scotland-has-apologised-for-witchcraft-executions-as-a-historian-i-worry-this-was-a-mistake-179355
Still on material on ‘The Conversation’, but moving from backwards to forward in time, there is an essay about the possibility of a solar power station in space. The article covers not only what it is but all the details – think, for instance how many dirty rocket launches would be needed to get the parts into space.
There are several aspects that the article doesn’t cover, the first and foremost being security. How, for instance, would you stop it being highjacked and repositioned to point at a different ground station?
Even more serious, how would you overcome the derision invoked by the fact that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson supports the idea...
https://theconversation.com/a-solar-power-station-in-space-heres-how-it-would-work-and-the-benefits-it-could-bring-179344
The War in Ukraine:
The war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight. There’s no end in sight of the stories about it either, but here are a few items you may have missed in all the coverage.
The first is that there are a surprising number of chip designers whose R&D is carried out in Ukraine (not to mention outsourced code development), and Ukraine is a major source of other materials involved in silicon chip making.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/04/chipmakers_ukraine_supplies/
https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/25/ukraine_chipmaking_supply/
Data Centre Knowledge publication has a rather interesting piece on keeping Ukraine online in the middle of the battles. Russian forces dismantling mobile phone cell towers and destroying network cables are only a part of what is being coped with. Have a read – it’s amazing stuff.
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/networks/battle-intensifies-keep-ukraine-online
Finally I’d draw your attention to another piece in ‘The Conversation’ with the snappy title of ‘Ukraine: Putin isn’t mad – he’s following a long-established great power playbook for conquest’. It maybe should have gone into the essays section, but it does make some sense out of what Putin is trying to do. Unfortunately for Putin, that ‘playbook’ was written before digital communications and nuclear weapons were available...
https://theconversation.com/ukraine-putin-isnt-mad-hes-following-a-long-established-great-power-playbook-for-conquest-179410
Batteries:
TechXplore has an interesting piece about solid state batteries. Currently they are only really used for smaller items, like mobile phones. However, it seems that change is in the air, and bigger, more powerful, versions are in the offing. The possibility of using a small amount of a liquid electrolyte to help speed up the movement of charges is under serious consideration, but the prevailing consensus is that this can make the devices more prone exploding or catching fire.
However, it looks like there is some movement with different types of liquid electrolyte and tests are underway. If the tests prove that safety is possible, then we would get an added bonus from the speed up – much faster battery charging!
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-03-safer-powerful-batteries-electric-cars.html
Climate:
Wow! I had no idea that California transfers water across the state using canals – some 4,000 miles of them! Not unnaturally, they lose quite a lot of water to evaporation given that you are talking about open bodies of water in a hot arid climate.
Well, they are just starting to work on a trial to cover some of the canals with solar panels. That’s a very nifty idea giving you two for the price of one. One, you are covering the canals to reduce evaporation, so more water gets through to where it’s need. Two, by using solar panels for the cover you get an energy bonus.
Actually, there’s an additional bonus – the solar panels are not using up valuable agricultural land so there is no reduction in food grown!
What a brilliant scheme!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/california-is-about-to-test-its-first-solar-canals-180979637/
Pictures:
Something really rather unusual this week – a video made up from time lapse pictures of the Aurora Borealis. A beautiful gift from the powerhouse of our solar system!
https://boingboing.net/2022/03/17/this-otherworldly-timelapse-of-the-aurora-borealis-is-astonishing.html
Quotes:
“Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.”
Laurens van der Post, South African explorer and writer
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Fifth Edition.
Scanner:
Stratolaunch’s Roc soars again: Biggest airplane ever built aces 4th test flight
https://www.space.com/stratolaunch-roc-aces-fourth-test-flight
Techniques to fool AI with hidden triggers are outpacing defenses – study
https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/25/dnn-trojan-attacks/
Risk of Death For Female Patients Is Much Higher if Surgeon Is a Man, Study Reveals
https://www.sciencealert.com/female-patients-are-much-likelier-to-suffer-complications-and-death-at-the-hands-of-male-surgeons
The future is floating for the Netherlands and other low-lying countries
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/floating-houses-netherlands
Unravelling the mysteries around type 2 diabetes
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-unravelling-mysteries-diabetes.html
114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple’s M1 Ultra wake-up call. What if we’ve built the future, but nobody wants to come?
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/14/apple_m1_opinion_column/
COVID Economics: Signs that the switch to remote work may not stick
https://worldcrunch.com/business-finance/remote-working/
Log4j postmortem: Developers are taking a hard look at software supply-chain security gaps
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/log4j-postmortem-developers-are-taking-a-hard-look-at-software-supply-chain-security-gaps/
How scholars cracked a medieval alchemist’s secret code
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-alchemist-secret-code
Proposed law in Minnesota would ban algorithms to protect the children
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/proposed-law-in-minnesota-would-ban-algorithms-to-protect-the-children/
Alarm raised after Microsoft wins data-encoding patent
https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/
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
20 March 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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