WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Well we’ve got quite a collection for you this week: Ada Lovelace Day, JP Morgan security breach, Microsoft seizes No-IP DNS, South Korea to issue everyone with new IDs, Google+ – alive and kicking, obesity, MegaBots, the Exosuit, and inside London’s Tower Bridge. If you’re not exhausted after that little lot, there are URLs on Microsoft’s Android Taxes, Fermilab’s 500-mile neutrino experiment, an oil project fiasco, intelligent street lamps, an AT&T insider data slurp, and Microsoft yanks botched patches.
So let’s go for the first item...
Shorts:
This last week saw the annual ‘Ada Lovelace’ day. She worked with Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine, and as such is considered the world’s first programmer. You can read more about her at the iProgrammer URL.
http://www.i-programmer.info/history/people/173.html
https://www.google.com/doodles/ada-lovelaces-197th-birthday
I see that JP Morgan are now admitting that something in the region of seven million small businesses and 76 million households were compromised in a security breach initially reported in late August as being much smaller. The information compromised included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and internal customer data.
That’s bad enough, although the hackers don’t seem to have gained access to account numbers, passwords, user IDs, dates of birth or Social Security numbers, but they did get copies of the software running on JP Morgan’s computers, which means they can figure out what unpatched vulnerabilities, they can use to engineer further breaches.
JP Morgan has made it clear that customers aren’t liable for any unauthorized transactions on their account.
http://www.cnet.com/news/jpmorgan-cyberbreach-exposed-contact-info-for-75m-households/
Wired has an interesting piece on the recent seizing of the Domain names of a small internet service provider called No-IP by Microsoft. The result? Millions of customers of No-IP were knocked off-line. Microsoft it turned out had obtained a secret court order giving them control of the domains, because, they claimed, botnets were using some of the addresses.
You can read the full story in the Wired article. After massive amounts of hostile publicity, Microsoft finally handed back the addresses. And the final irony? Microsoft had only had to pick up the phone and ring No-IP to get No-IP to investigate and stop the use of the botnet addresses – just like No-IP had four years earlier when the Mariposa botnet was being stopped!
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/microsoft-pinkerton/
One ID to rule them all... Or maybe not. The South Korean government is finding out the hard way that staking everything on one computerized ID has its drawbacks. For instance, once the bad guys get hold of the ID they have access to everything that uses the ID. Add to that the fact that there is no way for a citizen to change his or her ID number. And the killer – the government requires the use of a Microsoft product to deal with banks or shop online.
And, of course, there is the fact that, according to experts, something like 80% of the population have had their IDs compromised! Of the country’s 50 million people, 20 million have already suffered from a data theft from three credit card companies.
So they’ve decided to re-do the whole system, which is going to cost untold billions of dollars, and take up to five years. Of course there’s nothing to stop it happening again once you mandate the same system for all identification and transactions...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29617196
Homework:
I want to talk about Google+. The conventional view is that it’s dead. Computerworld has an interesting piece on this issue. It makes some very interesting points, with which, as a Google+, user I find myself in agreement with. The first thing to understand is the source of the view that Google+ is dead – Facebook and Twitter users. They take a look and find that it isn’t like either Facebook or Twitter, and leave, pronouncing it dead!
And it’s true – it isn’t like Facebook or Twitter, but it’s definitely not dead, just different. It’s a place where people share their interests, and if that’s what you want, then you will find that the amount of material you get on Google+ is overwhelming. I estimate that I only manage to read about 50% of the material that flows through my Google+ account – pictures, comments, analysis, news, reports, announcements and much more.
So if Google+ is for sharing interests, what are Twitter and Facebook for? Well the article suggests that Twitter is mostly for news, celebrities, pundits, professionals and narcissists, while Facebook is mostly about family and friends, and narcissists.
There’s not a lot of overlap, as you can imagine, so when Twitter and the Facebook users come looking for more gratification on Google+ they don’t find it, so they go back and pronounce Google+ dead. This is compounded by the fact that Google+ users don’t tend to go out proselytizing, they mention it to people who they think would be interested.
The people on Google+ just get on with it!
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2824613/why-google-is-the-place-for-passions.html
The Register has a very interesting piece on obesity by computer scientist, mathematical modeler, and author Dr Pan Pantziarka. It uses UK figures to look at whether the reported rise in obesity holds up, and, if it does hold up, whether the suggested reasons for the rise are confirmed by the figures.
Since the UK figures are not untypical of the western world, I think readers in other countries will find both the analysis and the conclusions interesting whether they agree with them or not. Take a look – it’s well worth the read.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/12/obesity_fats_and_figures/
For Geeks:
Want to get in on the ground floor of a league for massive 15-foot-tall, seven-ton steel fighting robots? Well it just so happens that a Kickstarter campaign is going to be launched around the concept later this month. Comics fan have already had a taste when they attended the New York Convention earlier this month and were confronted by a partially completed robot.
Unlike current robot v robot competitions, in the seven tonners the crew sit in the actual robot and fight it. Definitely what you would call the hot seat!
http://www.businessinsider.com/megabots-at-new-york-comic-con-2014-10
For those of you who’d like something a little more restful, take a look at the report on the newly developed Exosuit in GizMag. This diving suit will let you dive down to as much as 1,000 ft below the surface, and move around when you get there. It looks pretty impressive to me, though I’m not sure I would want to be the one to make sure it works!
http://www.gizmag.com/nuytco-research-exosuit-atmospheric-diving-system/34230/
London:
From the middle of November through to March, you can get to visit a real treat in London. A guided tour of all the off-limits parts of Tower Bridge. Not only do you get to try out thewalk ways at the very top of the bridge, but you get to see the original lifting equipment and the hydraulics that run it now.
There’s a Senior Technical Officer on the tour as well, so you can ask questions and find out how things work. You also get to visit the Bascule Chambers, which contain the bridge’s counterweights and are below river level. Oh, and you get to visit the Bridge Control Room as well.
Just the sort of thing to release your inner geek – the one that you didn’t know you had!
http://londonist.com/2014/10/chance-to-see-the-the-off-limits-bits-of-tower-bridge.php
Scanner:
How much is Microsoft earning from its Android taxes?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/07/how_much_is_that_microsoft_android_tax_again/
Fermilab’s 500-mile neutrino experiment up and running
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-fermilab-mile-neutrino.html
One of the world’s biggest oil projects is a total fiasco
http://www.businessinsider.com/one-of-the-worlds-biggest-oil-projects-is-a-total-fiasco-2014-10
Intelligent street lamps and the intelligent city
http://www.information-age.com/it-management/strategy-and-innovation/123458507/intelligent-streetlamps-and-intelligent-city-gartner
AT&T fires insider for slurping customers’ social security numbers, driver licenses and more
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/06/att_cops_to_insider_data_breach/
Microsoft yanks botched patch KB 2949927, re-issues KB 2952664
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2834930/security/microsoft-yanks-botched-patch-kb-2949927-re-issues-kb-2952664.html
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Dj 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
19 October 2014
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/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
