Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
27 March 2022
Bit of a thin issue this week. I’ve been caught up in a backlog of thing shelved for the duration of the COVID affair. I’m afraid it’s probably going to continue for a few weeks yet before things settle down :(
Things won’t be the same again, too much has happened, but I don’t doubt that we will have a new normal by the end of the year...
Cheers!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: No issue next week Winding Down will return (Hopefully with a wider selection of content) on April 10
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
COVID:
There is an excellent piece in The Conversation about the effectiveness of lockdown in controlling the spread of COVID. It looks at how and when they were implemented, and how well they acted to prevent the spread of the disease and resulting deaths. Short and to the point.
https://theconversation.com/did-the-covid-lockdowns-work-heres-what-we-know-two-years-on-176623
Digital Data:
I’m not sure what to make of this article. It is, after all, very close to April Fools Day. Well here goes...
There is an article in Science Alert that suggests digital data has mass! In all honesty, I don’t know. It’s well outside my expertise, it’s very well written, it’s fascinating, and has an air of plausibility. Worth a read, even if it does turn out to be a hoax...
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicist-claims-information-has-mass-and-might-be-considered-a-state-of-matter
Economics:
Have you ever wondered how the UK Office for National Statistics figures out the figures on inflation across the UK?
No? Well now is your chance to find out because Phil Gooding, Senior Statistician for Consumer Prices Inflation, has written a blog post all about it.
For a start their notional shopping basket has over 700 items in it, and each month they compare the prices for last month with the prices for the current month. Then there are other items like buying a car (difficult to fit that in the basket!). They look at what items are driving price up – think petrol, for instance at the moment.
Of course we are suffering from inflation at the moment but we are hardly alone – the USA has an annual rate of 6.2% and Germany is looking at 4.5%.
Take a look it’s an interesting piece written for the non-technical.
https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/11/17/made-to-measure-how-we-estimate-inflation-across-the-uk/
In memorium:
Enough years have now passed since the inception of the microcomputing revolution that the original pioneers are starting to die. This week we say good bye to two such – Stephen E. Wilhite and John Roach. The former was the inventor of the GIFF format, and the latter was instrumental in the rise of the TRS-80 micro.
On a personal level a GIFF encoder/decoder was the first program I ever wrote in the ‘C’ language that worked first time and had no bugs!
Rest in Peace.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/24/in_memoriam_stephen_wilhite_john_roach/
Pictures:
This week’s picture is from the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site and is a Hubble Telescope picture of the Bubble Nebula aka NGC 7635.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220323.html
Quotes:
“I don’t mind you thinking slowly: I mind you publishing faster than you think.”
Wolfgang Pauli – physicist
“I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.”
Samuel Pepys – English Diarist
Scanner:
Half of bosses out of touch with reality, study shows
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/16/microsoft_work_trends_index/
In an Unexpected First, an Ice Shelf in Antarctica’s “Coldest Region” Has Collapsed
https://www.sciencealert.com/ice-shelf-collapses-in-previously-stable-east-antarctica
Ten Pioneering Women of Antarctica and the Places Named for Them
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/ten-pioneering-women-of-antarctica-and-the-places-named-for-them-180979812/
What happened the last time the U.S. tried to make daylight saving time permanent?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-happened-the-last-time-the-us-tried-to-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent-180979742/
Sensor breakthrough paves way for groundbreaking map of world under Earth surface
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-sensor-breakthrough-paves-groundbreaking-world.html
Pioneer 10 turns 50: Remembering humankind’s first jaunt to Jupiter
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/15/pioneer_10_anniversary/
Record-breaking, ultrafast devices provide a step toward protecting the power grid from EMPs
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-03-record-breaking-ultrafast-devices-power-grid.html
Deere & Co won’t give out software and data needed for repairs, watchdog told
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/07/deere_repair_ftc/
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
27 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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