WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week's Winding down covers a multitude of topics - stock picking, Pierre-sur-Haute, Facebook, Twitter, terahertz technology, spreadsheets, a dragon bridge, toilet seats (yes, really), the Horsehead Nebula, the Large Hadron Collider, a pirate ship, Seabreacher, and, of course, vintage port wine. URLs include Google and national security, zip codes as personal identification, and hacking aircraft controls with Android.
After my week's trip to the ISO C++ conference in Bristol, UK, I can report that we are on track for a new version of the C++ standard in 2014. It was pretty hard going with 160 papers submitted, plus reports of defects to the current standard to look at and sort out. One session I was at ran through till gone midnight. Going back to work was really restful compared the hectic nature of that week.
Of course I came back to loads of newsletters, and even after a savage triage of items for this issue, I still had nearly a hundred things to talk about. Needless to say, I couldn't get that many into a single issue, so what you've got is just a selection, and most of the rest will be turned into bits and byte to be recycled in future issues. Remember, we only use recycled electrons in the making of Winding Down!
Shorts:
Last issue (remember last issue? It was at the beginning of the month...) I ran a piece about a monkey simulation out performing fund managers, when it came to picking stocks for a portfolio. Well, that wasn't a real monkey, it was a computer simulation. However, several people drew my attention to the case of Orlando the cat - a real one, not a simulation - who can also beat the professionals. I'm sure this won't surprise my regular readers, most of whom I suspect are themselves cats. More details about the wealthy ginger moggy at the URL.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/jan/13/investments-stock-picking
I note that earlier this month the French equivalent of Homeland Security - the DCRI - decided to tell the world about the existence of their top secret military radio station at Pierre-sur-Haute. They did this by dragging a Wikipedia volunteer into their offices and forcing him to delete a Wikipedia article on the radio station. The volunteer had nothing to do with the article, and, like most of the rest of the world, didn't even know it existed before the DCRI loonies decided to draw attention to it.
Incidentally, the article, an English version of which is available, had been there for a number of years before the DCRI decided to take exception to it... The French version was rapidly restored, and as a result of the DCRI intervention became the most read page on the French Wikipedia, with over 120,000 page views over the weekend of 6/7 April 2013.
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/dcri-threat-a-sysop-to-delete-a-wikipedia-article-5493
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_radio_station_of_Pierre-sur-Haute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia#France
Social media is a big thing, really, really BIG. Enjoy it while you can - it won't be free for ever. But, just remember that things are not always what they seem to be. Take your Facebook friends, for instance. How do you know they are human beings? Or even cats, if comes to that? It seems that many so-called 'friends' are in reality computer bots designed to siphon off your information and data, so that your decisions can be influenced. InfoWorld has an interesting piece on the issue, which I'd advise any regular Facebook user to study.
Then, perhaps, you are one of the 29.5 million members of the twitterati following @BarackObama on Twitter? I've got news for you. All of the president's named social media accounts have, in fact, been handed over to a non-partisan, not-for-profit group. "Wait!" I hear you cry, "The account is verified by Twitter." And so it probably is, but do they know what they are talking about? They have wrongly certified accounts in the past, and undoubtedly will do so again in the future. More to the point who is going to willingly authorize zapping an account with 29.5 million followers?
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/your-facebook-friends-may-be-evil-bots-215016?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_am_2013-04-08
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/04/youre-not-following-barackobama-twitter/63930/
Oh, and by the way, don't look for me on Facebook and Twitter, I don't have accounts there. I'm not on LinkedIn either. I cancelled LinkedIn after they allowed my password to be compromised in a security breach (though their crappy system still insists that I am still on it, despite not allowing me to access the alleged account). If you're really desperate, you can find me on Google+.
https://plus.google.com
Homework:
I note that the technology used in the TSA's full body scanners has found a somewhat less intrusive use in the field of art. Scientists working at the Louvre Museum in Paris have used the imaging technology to reveal images beneath a famous, but known forged fresco. It looks like there is probably a genuine Roman fresco underneath.
This sort of thing is not unusual in the art world. Artists have often re-used canvases, mainly because of the cost, but sometimes because they didn't want the original to become public. In the past, infra-red cameras and X-rays have been used to identify hidden pictures, but the terahertz technology used by the TSA style scanners is much more efficient. I think we can expect to find a whole rash of reports of 'two-in-one' pictures in the not too distant future as the technology spreads.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112821683/tsa-scanner-reveals-hidden-artwork-041213/
And while we are on the subject of terahertz technology, I'd like to draw your attention to a really interesting piece by Robert X Cringely about the use of cheap hand held terahertz scanners in the hands of the crowd to prevent tragedies like the Boston Marathon explosion. Cringely is an excellent writer, and what he suggests makes a great deal of sense. I'd urge you to take a look.
http://www.cringely.com/2013/04/17/the-terahertz-revolution-and-local-security/
I've never particularly liked spreadsheets. The dislike goes back a long way. I think the underlying reason is because there is no way to see what the assumptions underlying the figures are. As we in the computer business are wont to say, "Garbage in, garbage out" (aka GIGO). Put crap data into a spread sheet, and you will get crap out, no matter how clever the processing you do with the spread sheet.
Another problem is that spreadsheets never make explicit the underlying assumptions that they are working on. The output may look convincing, the input may be meaningful and accurate, but the assumptions can be way out, and there is no way, from looking at the sheet, that you can tell what the assumptions are.
Then, of course, spreadsheets and their manipulators have no recognized way of testing the instructions they've programmed into the spreadsheet to make sure there are no mistakes. It's taken the programming community a long time to understand the importance of, and the best way to implement, tests, and even now we still have serious problems. The aficionados of the spreadsheet world haven't even reached the starting blocks yet.
Which brings me to the question of the economy... Much of the theoretical justification for austerity is based on the work of a couple of famous economists who used a spreadsheet to predict, in a paper in 2010, that there was a critical threshold - a tipping point - for the level of government debt. Go over that level (90%) and Kaboom! the bottom drops out of economic growth. As western government debt approached this level in the last couple of years, the paper has been used to provide the theoretical justification for austerity policies.
Whether or not you agree with austerity policies or not is another matter, but the paper has been widely quoted as justification. There was one niggling little problem, though. No one else had been able to get the same figures, showing a 90% tipping point out of their own spreadsheet programs. Eventually, the paper's authors allowed researcher to look at their original spreadsheet, and, lo and behold, the examination revealed all three types of error referred to earlier!
In the first place, the authors had omitted some of the data. Secondly, they used unusual and somewhat questionable statistical procedures, and finally, they made an error in the spreadsheet calculations. And that doesn't even cover the issue of correlation as opposed to cause and effect, which I've covered previously...
So, next time someone tells you that their spreadsheet proves something 'conclusively' just ask them to prove it, before the economy gets really messed up...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-depression.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_ee_20130419&_r=2&
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22213219
For Geeks:
OK - time for a little fun! Just take a look at this - a real life fire-breathing dragon bridge, which has just been completed in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang. Totally amazing.
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/society/70067/inauguration-of-world-s-largest-dragon-shaped-steel-in-da-nang.html
Perhaps you'd something a little more discrete? How about a glow-in-the-dark toilet seat, invented by the Canadians.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/348408
No? OK. How about one of the most amazing photographs to come out of the Hubble telescope? A truly magnificent picture of the Horsehead Nebula. One of my favourite pictures of all time.
http://phys.org/news/2013-04-fresh-horsehead-nebula.html#nwlt
Maybe you'd like to play with something a bit closer to home? 'The Register' managed to get one of its hacks into the Large Hadron Collider. Story and pics at the URL.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/19/reg_lhc_tour_pics/
Some people are never satisfied. However, for a mere US$79,000 you can buy your own pirate ship, or at least a very comfortable looking replica thereof!
http://gulfport.craigslist.org/boa/3730171827.html
Of course, I realize that some people may prefer something a little faster - so feast your eyes on this little baby - the Seabreacher X, aka The Shark. A boat to lust for...
http://www.gizmag.com/seabreacher-x-test-drive/26475/
And finally, for those with more, how shall I put it, hedonistic tastes, a low tech solution to getting the wine out of old port bottles whose corks are crumbling. An excellent use of school physics to save the day, not to mention very expensive vintage port wine.
http://bbrblog.com/2013/04/24/port-tongs-at-the-ready/
Scanner: Other stories
Google fights U.S. National Security probe data demand
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-04/google-fights-u-s-national-security-probe-data-demand.html
Massachusetts Supreme Court rules ZIP codes are definitely “Personal Identification Information”
http://privacylaw.proskauer.com/2013/04/articles/data-privacy-laws/massachusetts-supreme-court-rules-zip-codes-are-definitely-personal-identification-information/
Researcher hacks aircraft controls with Android smartphone
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/11/hacking_aircraft_with_android_handset/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
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
28 April 2013
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.
