Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
15 January 2023
Welcome back to Winding Down. It’s not only a new year, but it’s also our 800th edition! That’s quite a lot of words now I come to think about it. Anyway, there’s a good selection of material for me to draw your attention to, starting with good things that happened in 2022. Yes there were some, 183 of them in the article that the URL points to!
Essays looks at the Drake Equation for extra-terrestrial civilisations, and at the EU’s attempts to legislate on Artificial Intelligence. There is also a look at material on Windows 7 and 8 support expiring, an asteroid strike simulation, three sets of pictures on auroras, London at night, and drone video of iced over dwellings. The quote is a classic comment of British politics last year!
Scanner points you at articles covering 11,000 years of weather, artificial corneas, paradox-free time travel, Tesla and hype, the floppy disk porn threat – 1994 style, a forest under the ocean, colour-changing wolves, open-source databases, and the lousiest tech bosses of 2022...
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue 22 January 2023
Credits: Thanks to Fi for editing, correcting errors, etc.
Good Cheer:
It didn’t seem like there was a lot to cheer about in 2022. However, the ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ web site managed to find 183 ways the world got better in 2022. They range from Sweden sending a mere 1% of its trash to landfills, through to projects designed to treat wastewater for drinking purposes having quadrupled since 2000, a trial of a very affordable monthly transit pass in Germany convinced 10 million additional people to take buses and trains instead of driving, and a UK program that helps employees buy tax-free bikes so they can commute more sustainably has been used by more than 1.6 million workers. Plus 179 other reasons to be cheerful!
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/the-year-in-cheer-2022/
Essays:
The first essay I want to recommend to you this year is one looking at the Drake Equation. Formulated by the astrophysicist Frank Drake in 1961, it represents an attempt to figure out how many intelligent civilizations there should be detectable, via their broadcasting, in our galaxy right now. Pretty ambitious, I would say, but the unknowns in equation have been partially filled in in the intervening 60 years. They include:
The rate at which stars are born
The fraction of stars that host planets
The number of habitable planets per planetary system
The fraction of those planets on which life occurs
The fraction of life that evolves intelligence
The fraction of life that evolves communicative technologies
The average length of time civilisations are detectable
Multiply these number together, and you will have an informed estimate of the number of civilisations that we should be able to spot. Of course, the accuracy of the estimate will depend on the accuracy of the values plugged into the equation...
The article looks at how the equation has faired in the light of discoveries in the lats 70 years – an interesting read.
https://www.space.com/drake-equation-intelligent-alien-life-continuing-importance
And a somewhat more recent topic is the subject of my second recommendation in this section. It’s a piece in the Lawfare site on the EU’s attempts via its AI Act to regulate Artificial Intelligence. As part of the discussion the essay also goes some way to explaining how EU laws are developed and work.
Frankly I’m not convinced it’s going to work. As far as I’m aware (and I’m not an AI expert) there are no AI ‘technical’ standards on which such a law could operate. It’s all pretty murky. It’s easy enough to dream up something simplistic, like Asimov’s Laws, but to go further and introduce standards is a bigger problem. Also it’s easy enough to develop standards for mature industries which already have (perhaps unwritten) standards, but much more difficult to write rules for developing industries like AI.
And what about AI that’s written by other AI?
And does AI have rights which should be part of these standards.
The issue is not as simple as it first appears!
https://www.lawfareblog.com/eus-ai-act-barreling-toward-ai-standards-do-not-exist
Computers:
Just a short note to warn you all that Microsoft dropped support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 this last Tuesday. No more bug fixes, you are on your own... If you are one of the 10+ percent of people who still have either of those versions on your desk top computer you need to think about how you are going to handle security.
Personally, I think that when tech companies drop support like this they should be required by law to publish the source code of the program for free use....
https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/09/microsoft_windows_7_8_support_ends/
Earth:
Here is an interesting little simulation for people to play with at the start of a new year. An Asteroid Launcher. You choose the asteroid’s composition (iron, stone, carbon, etc), diameter, speed and the angle of impact. Click on a map to show where you want it to impact and then press the launch button. You then get shown the effects on the map, and in the sidebar.
My first run made a crater 57Km wide and 496 meters deep in New York. The fireball was 90Km across and the shockwave was rated at 242 decibels – 11 on the volume control! There was a 4Km/sec wind speed, and finally, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake...
For the record I tried it out on London and I wouldn’t have survived!
https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/
Pictures:
I found a really impressive set of pictures of London taken at night over the Christmas period. My favourites? The ones of Tower Bridge and of Battersea Power Station.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63951637
Next is another set of pictures, this time of Auroras – a fabulous collection from Atlas Obscura. Wonderful!
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/auroras-northern-lights-photography
And finally in this section a short video of lake front properties in New York State taken via drone. They look more like ice sculptures than somewhere people live!
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/28/winter-storm-turns-lake-erie-waterfront-properties-into-eerie-ice-sculptures.html
Quotes:
“2022 was a year of unprecedented chaos within government. The manic mayhem at the apex of politics gifted Britons three prime ministers, four chancellors, four home secretaries and five education secretaries.”
From an essay entitled ‘What next for British Politics’ by Josh Self
https://www.politics.co.uk/5-minute-read/2022/12/29/the-view-to-2023-what-next-for-british-politics/
Scanner:
Study offers most detailed glimpse yet of planet’s last 11,000 summers and winters
https://phys.org/news/2023-01-glimpse-planet-summers-winters.html
Clinical trial restored sight to 20 people using corneas made from an unlikely source
https://www.sciencealert.com/clinical-trial-restored-sight-to-20-people-with-corneas-made-from-an-unlikely-source
A physicist came up with math that shows ‘Paradox-Free’ time travel is plausible
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-physicist-came-up-with-math-that-shows-paradox-free-time-travel-is-plausible
Tesla reportedly faces criminal probe into self-driving hype
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/27/doj_self_driving_car_criminal
1994 article warns about the “Floppy disk porn threat”
https://boingboing.net/2022/11/07/1994-article-warns-about-the-floppy-disk-porn-threat.html
Hidden forests found deep beneath the ocean cover twice the area of India
https://www.sciencealert.com/hidden-forests-found-deep-beneath-the-ocean-cover-twice-the-area-of-india
The color of wolves mysteriously changes across America. We finally know why
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-color-of-wolves-mysteriously-changes-across-america-we-finally-know-why
Open source databases: What are they and why do they matter?
https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/05/open_source_databases/
Musk, Zuck, SBF: the lousiest tech bosses of 2022 – rated
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/25/worst-tech-ceo-musk-bankman-fried-holmes-zuckerberg-bezos
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
15 January 2023
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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