Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
2 April 2023
Another thrill-packed edition of Winding Down! We look at an essay on cognitive decline, a thoughtful (and amusing) piece on ChatGPT, gamma ray instruments ‘blinded by the light’, a $14million ATM heist, Google anti-trust evidence collection, Stonehenge, mobile phones, and the Metropolitan Police. Pictures has a slew of prize winners from its annual competitions, and there are videos of a chunk falling off a bridge and cycling through London’s new main ring sewer.
The quote is an apt and classic one from Blaise Pascal , and Scanner points you to material on ghost jobs, a mysterious celestial object, evolution and domestication, book copyrights and the Internet Archive, EU mandated messaging platform issues, and countdown screens at London bus stops!
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: No issue next week since it’s the Easter Holiday, which is a fine example of just how closely the modern church is still linked to ancient pagan religions. How do you figure out when Easter is? Easter falls on the first Sunday after the Full Moon date, based on mathematical calculations, that falls on or after 21 March. If the Full Moon is on a Sunday, Easter is celebrated on the following Sunday!
That means that the next issue will be out on 16 April…
Credits: Thanks to Fi for editing, correcting errors, etc.
Essays:
Cognitive decline.... Happens to most of us as we get older, unfortunately. There are various things that are generally believed to slow down the effect, and some seem to be more effective than others.
One of the things frequently suggested to slow the decline is ‘education’. Unfortunately, a recent meta-study on this subject have shown that ‘the average effect of education on cognitive decline is zero.’ Part of the problem with studying things like cognitive decline in populations is the fact that they literally take a lifetime! So is there any hope? Well yes and no. What we can study are some components like reasoning and verbal skills, and perhaps the onset of dementia.
The essay is a useful and interesting useful introduction to the problems of studying this phenomenon which affects us all, eventually, and has a stab at considering some of the possible factors involved.
https://www.sciencealert.com/well-known-buffer-against-cognitive-decline-has-zero-effect-study-finds
Artificial ‘Intelligence’:
ChatGPT has been in the news a lot recently. A piece in the UK Guardian newspaper by restaurant critic Jay Rayner, who was curious to see what it could come up with if asked to write a restaurant review in the style of Jay Rayner, makes fascinating and amusing reading and is one of a number of articles that have appeared citing the limitations of this flavour of AI.
ChatGPT did come up with “The dining room was a low-lit, faux-oriental den of off-pink walls and glittering papier-mâché dragons; the air was thick with a miasma of MSG and regret.” Which made me laugh, and the author did admit that he might have come up with something like that...
Nonetheless this is a very good piece on the limitations of ChatGPT, at least in its current iteration. A well worthwhile witty and informative piece.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/26/could-a-chatbot-write-my-restaurant-reviews-jay-rayner
Cosmology:
It seems that the most powerful explosion ever seen in space was too bright to accurately measure. In fact it was so bright that it temporarily blinded all that gamma ray instruments that we have in space! In fact, according to the scientists studying these things it was 70 times brighter than any previously recorded event.
Gamma ray bursts (aka GRBs) are among the most violent events in the cosmos and they are caused by super-massive stars collapsing to black holes. Definitely not something you would want to get caught up in! The article has a nifty little animation showing how it works. (Or at least how they think it works, no one has been there to take a close up look at the event yet.)
https://www.sciencealert.com/most-powerful-explosion-ever-seen-in-space-was-too-bright-to-accurately-measure
Crime:
Wow! The BBC report that in August 2018 hackers, believed to be from North Korea, co-ordinated a series of ATM thefts that lasted two hours and netted a total of $14million in cash (£11.5m) from cash machines in 28 countries, including the UK, USA and even Russia.
I’m not going to go through the details here because it is a long story and the BBC has a good version of what happened. Well worth a read though – highly recommended.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-65130220
Google:
Google is currently involved in an anti-trust battle, and it turns out that the internal chat histories suggest that it has been destroying evidence by turning off the recording of such chat sessions.
Frankly, I’m not convinced, given the examples shown. It looks to me more like a case of loyal employees thinking they were ‘helping’ the company by making sure they weren’t recorded even of the most innocent of thing. And we know that Google staff tend to be very loyal – at least until the recent round of layoffs!
On the other hand, Google has been accused of destroying previously...
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/28/google_destroying_evidence_claim/
Stonehenge:
Ah! The mystical something or other from somewhere or other in history. I note that the idea that Stonehenge is some sort of calendar is under attack from mathematician Guilio Magli and astronomer Juan Antonio Belmonte who argue otherwise. I’m not going to get caught up in these arguments which could go on for ever.
More to the point, I thought everyone knew that it was a practical joke played by a bunch of mischievous time travellers!
https://www.sciencealert.com/nope-stonehenge-isnt-an-ancient-calendar-after-all-scientists-say
Mobile Phones:
OK. Not really a story, but I thought you might like to read this amazing interview with 94 year old Martin Cooper who invented, and produced, the first mobile phone.
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-03-eyes-mobile-inventor-years.html
Metropolitan Police (London’s police):
Well I finally finished reading the Casey report on the Metropolitan Police. It’s at once disturbing, appalling, depressing and fascinating in a horrible sort of way. I’m not going to go into the details here, the report is 360 pages long, and actually readable! One thing that is missing though – ‘the Elephant in the Room’, so to speak – is the role of the government in worsening things through its so-called ‘austerity’ measures over the last ten years.
These measures caused a withdrawal from local policing and an exodus of trained staff. The later reversal of these measures resulted in insufficient staff able to train new recruits. The consequences are laid out, but the role of the government in causing the problems is never made explicit. A very frightening read.
https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/met/about-us/baroness-casey-review/update-march-2023/baroness-casey-review-march-2023.pdf
Pictures:
Lots of pictures this week, the first two courtesy of the Smithsonian institute.
Milky Way at Devils Tower
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/milky-way-at-devils-tower/
Winners of Smithsonian Magazine’s 20th Annual Photo Contest – the category winners are on show. My favourite is the last one – the Readers’ Choice one!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/announcing-winners-20th-annual-photo-contest-180981812/
Man in Alabama steps out of car to watch cracks forming on the ground — then the bridge collapses. (amazing video – AL)
https://boingboing.net/2023/03/29/man-in-alabama-steps-out-of-car-to-watch-cracks-forming-on-ground-then-bridge-collapses-video.html
Inside Britain’s biggest sewer under London’s River Thames [Thanks to Fi for drawing my attention to this video]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-65091803
Quotes:
“I made this [letter] longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”
Blaise Pascal 1623-1662.
From ‘The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 5th Edition
Scanner:
Why there are so many “Ghost Jobs” haunting hiring websites
https://boingboing.net/2023/03/30/why-there-are-so-many-ghost-jobs-haunting-hiring-websites.html
Hubble telescope spies mysterious celestial object that defies classification
https://www.space.com/hubble-telescope-mystery-object-lyra-Z-229-15
Why do animals living with humans evolve such similar features? A new theory could explain ‘domestication syndrome’
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-animals-humans-evolve-similar-features.html
Publishers land killer punch on Internet Archive in book copyright court battle
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/27/publishers_internet_archive_judgment/
EU mandated messaging platform love-in is easier said than done: Cambridge boffins
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/29/eu_mandated_messaging_interop_paper/
New digital countdown screens being trialled at London bus stops
https://londonist.com/london/hundreds-of-bus-countdown-signs-coming-to-london-bus-stops
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
2 April 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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