WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
We had a technical glitch in the production of Winding Down last week. Unfortunately, I have to confess that it was a user error. I managed to accidentally deleted the Chrome browser bookmarks bar folder that contains the URLs I picked up for the week’s news. It was at this stage that I discovered that Chrome doesn’t put them into the recycle bin. When you delete them, they are gone forever - all my work over the preceding week. Phooey!
Well, regardless, Winding Down is back with a bunch of short pieces for your edification...
Shorts:
Most of you have probably heard of smart meters by now - they are meters that monitor patterns of consumption of electricity in your house, ostensibly so that you can make a more efficient use of power, thereby helping to reduce your usage. The problem with them is twofold. First, there is the question of whether people will actually bother to use the reports they produce. I have a sneaking suspicion that I for one wouldn’t get round to it.
Then there is the problem of the extent to which the reports can reveal exactly what it is you are doing. You think that’s an exaggeration? Researchers have already shown that it’s possible to tell what you are watching on a decent flat screen TV, just by monitoring the energy usage patterns. And monitoring the energy usage patterns is exactly what smart meters are designed to do!
Here in Europe the Data Protection Supervisor has warned that smart meters are a significant privacy threat and wants limits on the retention and use of customer data before it’s too late. This is good work - raising the issues that are likely to be involved before they become a problem. Hopefully, this will raise awareness of these problems and the use of this sort of personal data will be restricted.
The truth is though, that smart meters are not the answer to energy usage. What you really need is smart energy using devices, that adjust their energy use to the cost and need for power. Modern embedded computing is capable of delivering that now, but, of course, that doesn’t give the power supply companies personal information about their customers which they can sell on to third parties!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/11/smart_meter_privacy/
Now here is an excellent piece of kit that every motorist will appreciate. It’s a car mirror that eliminates the blind spot in existing mirrors which forces you to take your attention off the road ahead and look behind you before you overtake. The problem with conventional, curved, car mirrors is that they distort the view giving the impression that cars behind you are further away than they appear. If they were to give a full panorama, the distortion would be very serious, so normally they don’t show a chunk of the road immediately behind and to the driver side. In other words, just where you want to move to if you are pulling out.
The new mirror , designed by maths professor Dr. R. Andrew, eliminates this by using a ‘mirror’ that’s made up lots of tiny mirrors set at different angles, giving a field of view that’s a full 45 degrees wide instead of the 17 degrees on the regular mirrors. A clever high tech solution to a problem that’s bugged cars ever since they were invented. I hope they become standard on cars in the near future.
http://dvice.com/archives/2012/06/new-car-mirror.php
Looks like humanity’s biggest killer may soon meet its nemesis in the form of a genetically altered form of the disease carrying mosquito aedes aegypti. The solution is very clever. The modified genes only affect the female mosquitoes (which are the carriers), preventing them from being able to fly when they hatch out of the larva form. The males are unaffected, so they fly off in search of unaffected females, with whom they breed and pass on the modified gene.
A test in the isolated island of Grand Cayman in 2009 killed an estimated 80% of the aedes aegypti population. Pretty efficient. Of course it may not be a permanent solution, but it’s a pretty good start in eradicating a killer that is estimated to have killed half of all humans that have ever lived.
http://www.gizmag.com/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-aegypti-mosquito/20668/
I was more than a little amused to read about a survey funded by the US government. The purpose of the survey was to confirm that the higher the level of scientific or mathematical knowledge a person has, the more likely they are to believe the so-called ‘scientific consensus’ that carbon-driven global warming is ongoing, is extremely dangerous and is a settled fact. And that the priority is now to find some way of getting US voters to believe in the need for urgent, immediate and massive action to reduce CO2 emissions.
Unfortunately... What the survey actually showed was that the higher your level of scientific knowledge was, the more likely you were to be skeptical of the consensus. Oooops! The originators of the survey are now struggling to find an explanation for this rather ‘unfortunate’ result. I’m sure it won’t be long until a suitable ‘commie intellectuals’ theory emerges...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/29/science_and_maths_knowledge_
makes_you_sceptical/
Homework:
I see that the archaeologists are unearthing still more of the terracotta warriors from the grave of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China (Third Century BC). He had himself buried with thousands of life sized figures of his army. The URL points to a slide show, which gives some idea of just how painstaking the work of archaeologists is.
It also got me thinking about how I want to go out from this world (hopefully not for at least another 50 or so years). This Qin guy definitely had a neat idea, but it needs updating. So, I want to be buried (when I’m dead, of course) surrounded by sintered aluminum figures of well-known techies which have been produced in a 3D printer. Half life-size will suffice, since I have no intention of being dwarfed by any one...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-18391197
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army
I see that the Voyager 1 space probe has reached the very edge of the Solar System. It’s taken 35 years to get there, but now it’s registering substantial increase in cosmic rays from out of the system. Space scientists believe this means it is about to leave what are generally considered to be the limits of the solar system. Voyager 1 will become the first manmade object ever to leave the Solar System, quite an achievement when you consider that 60 years ago we hadn’t even managed to put anything into Earth orbit.
Voyager contains a gold record containing information about the human race and its location in space, should there be intelligent extraterrestrials out there. Hopefully, that wasn’t an unwise move, and there isn’t the local equivalent of the Borg waiting to assimilate us!
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/15/us-space-voyager-probe-
idINBRE85E0VU20120615
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
Geek Stuff:
Do you think it would be cool use to your that old typewriter that’s been stuck in the attic as a keyboard for the computer? Now’s your chance, and in true geek style you can build it yourself using a conversion kit supplied by USBTypewriter.com. On the other hand, if you’re feeling lazy, or someone threw out your old typewriter, they offer vintage typewriters ready converted. I have to confess, though, that I find it a bit unnerving to see the same model of portable typewriter I used at school being advertised as ‘vintage’! (My handwriting was once described by one of my teachers as ‘...a classic example of what happens if you dip a spider in an inkwell and allow it to wonder over the paper...’).
http://www.usbtypewriter.com/
Do you hate making the bed? Do you leave it in a rumpled heap for your partner to sort out? Then I have a solution for you (or your partner) - the OHEA self-making bed! Yes, it really does make itself. Working on the assumption that the bedding is usually just badly rumpled when you get out of it in the morning. It uses special bedding, and a series of hooks to restore the bedding to its pristine state. Take a look at the URL - there is a video showing the bed making itself. Coming soon to a furniture store near you...
http://www.gizmag.com/ohea-smart-bed/22887/
Scanner: Other stories
Cartoonist turns lawsuit threat into $100K charity fund raiser
http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/12/12187665-cartoonist-
turns-lawsuit-
threat-into-100k-charity-fundraiser
Europe to warn consumers about dot bank risks
http://domainincite.com/7895-europe-to-warn-consumers-about-bank-risks
$$Kerching$$: That’ll do nicely: ICANN bags US$357m from 1,930 dot-word domains
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/14/icann_top_level_domain_name_list/
Feds tell Megaupload users to forget about their data
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/feds-megaupload-data/
https://plus.google.com/114753028665775786510/posts/hXXGh8ghx1J
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, and to Slashdot's daily newsletter for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.
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 Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
17 June 2712
Alan Lenton is an 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.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
