Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
10 April 2022
Last issue before the spring break – see the publishing schedule for details. An update on how not to travel on the airlines (hint – maskless in a confined space with strangers and poor air circulation...). There are details of a couple of essays I found interesting, picture, quotes, and an extended scanner section to keep you in reading over the break.
Cheers!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue is going to be on 8 May. That’s longer than I would have liked, but there’s Easter and a bank holiday in that gap, plus a friend going into hospital for some surgery, among other things...
Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Updates:
The headline says it all – “Hundreds of flights cancelled due to Covid illness immediately after airlines cancelled mask policy.” It seems European airlines went mask optional and almost immediately staff started ringing in sick with Covid. To give one example, EasyJet lifted the mask requirement on 27 March and had to cancel 203 out of 3,517 flights between 28 March and 3 April because of staff being off work with Covid.
I guess you could regard it as a practical demonstration of just how effective masks are, in spite of the hostility they engender in some quarters!
https://boingboing.net/2022/04/07/hundreds-of-flights-cancelled-due-to-covid-illness-immediately-after-airlines-cancelled-mask-policy.html
Essays:
A few weeks ago, the Lawfare site produced an interesting and timely piece on the relationship between social media platforms and politics. There’s been a lot of crud, not to mention wishful thinking on this subject over the last few years. However, the Lawfare site piece is quite clear – it argues that over the last few years the major social media platforms have become an increasingly important part of geopolitics.
Unfortunately, this is not recognised, and so the things they can do (and the things we all wish they wouldn’t do) are being dealt with in an ad hoc manner rather than treated as part of needed geopolitical solutions.
It’s an interesting, well written, read – recommended.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/platforms-war
The second essay I’d like to draw your attention to is about something called neuroergonomics. If you never heard of it before, you’re not alone. It’s about ways the brain deals with information and/or task overloads, and how it can be helped to make decisions to reduce overloading without losing things that need to be done.
Parents of small children have to cope with this sort problem all the time and develop strategies to handle it. Programmers have to handle this sort of thing as well. As you go along you build up a ‘stack’ of things that also need taking care of, in your mind. That’s why programmers get so irritated when they are interrupted – it causes the whole stack to ‘crash’ and stuff gets lost and becomes a bug.
Neuroergonomics is the study of ways to handle these problems, and, of course, the way the brain handles them – usually by dropping some of problems out of the queue. Not good if, say, you are trying to land an airliner.
Have a look at the piece; if nothing else it will give you some insight about the way your brain handles problems under pressure!
https://aeon.co/essays/how-might-neuroergonomics-help-us-deal-with-mental-overload
Geology:
Did you know that the Earth has a sort of 27.5 million year ‘Heartbeat’? No? Neither did I, but the geologists seem to be convinced. It seems that roughly every 27.5 million years there are major events including volcanic activity, mass extinctions, plate reorganisations and sea level rises. These are also times of mass extinctions...
Fortunately, the last one was only seven million years ago so we don’t have to worry too much about riding out the next one!
https://www.sciencealert.com/earth-has-a-27-5-million-year-heartbeat-but-we-have-no-idea-what-causes-it
Internet:
The Internet Address Registries APNIC and LACNIC have produced a report on the internet’s technical success factors. They identify four main factors for why the Internet has succeeded – scalability, flexibility, adaptability and resilience. Add to this the guiding ideals – openness, simplicity and decentralisation.
There are, of course, risks, but those are more complex – for example security and quality of service. There’s more discussion in the article.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/09/study_on_the_internets_technical_success_factors/
Pictures:
A number of good pictures are on display in the Smithsonian Magazine’s 19th annual photo contest. Take a look and see what your think. My top choice? The picture of Najin, the white rhino – a brilliant picture and one that made me smile!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/these-are-the-winners-of-smithsonian-magazines-19th-annual-photo-contest-180979865/
Quotes:
“The vicious zombie of the Soviet Union has come back to add more victims to the many millions devoured between 1917 and 1991”.
Vitali Vitaliev – Author and Ukranian
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/ukraine-memories-of-home
Scanner:
How access to satellite images shifts the view of war
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60762772
What fog of war can’t hide, Putin is doomed to fail [the headline is seriously tempting fate – but the info on modern warfare is fascinating – AL]
https://worldcrunch.com/opinion-analysis/russia-lies/history-and-russia-s-fate
Russia (still) trying to weaponize Facebook for spying, Ukraine-war disinfo
https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/07/russia_weaponize_facebook/
The secret of the pyramids’ perfect alignment might be explained after all
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-secret-of-the-pyramids-perfect-alignment-might-be-explained-after-all
Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/31/windows_11_stalls/
COVID: why the current surge in cases is a problem for some countries but not others
https://theconversation.com/covid-why-the-current-surge-in-cases-is-a-problem-for-some-countries-but-not-others-179716
Sweeteners may be linked to increased cancer risk – new research [interesting discussion of weaknesses in the research on the issue -AL]
https://theconversation.com/sweeteners-may-be-linked-to-increased-cancer-risk-new-research-179709
Improving software supply chain security with tamper-proof builds
https://security.googleblog.com/2022/04/improving-software-supply-chain.html
Sunspot Activity on The Sun Is Seriously Exceeding Official Predictions
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-sun-is-way-more-active-than-official-solar-weather-predictions
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
10 April 2022
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), 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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