WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
I decided not to ‘bang on’ about Samsung Phones this issue! It’s a rather thin edition because we’ve had visitors and I’ve been suffering from the effects of a flu jab, both of which affected my ability to search out stuff for you all. You will, however, find stories about a bugged samovar, a piece about women scientists in science fiction and in real life, an old and very distant computer, some very nice HD wallpaper, and a London sculpture park.
The scanner section is slightly different this week. It consists of stories that I’ve had on my list for a while but which, for various reasons, I never got round to using. Normally, when my list of potential stories gets too large I just go through and prune it, but this time I thought I’d put the more interesting ones into scanner for a change. Among the stories is a possible new type of battery, a game company suing a cheat site, some new ideas about plate tectonics, transparent wood, free academic courses, and a piece about using graphene to clean drinking water. I trust you’ll each find something of interest there.
In the meantime...
Shorts:
My favourite story this week was the one about the bugged samovar! You haven’t heard it? It seems that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) were investigating bribery and corruption among senior bureaucrats. The samovar was given to a senior official who was unwise enough to keep it in his office, and who is now, with other officials, up in court on the basis of the material recorded.
I guess the moral of this story for we decadent westerners is to check the water cooler for bugs before chatting casually to our mates!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-37584761
Homework:
I’ve mentioned Baen Publishing’s excellent blog before, and I’d like to draw your attention to a good piece by Jim Beall about women nuclear scientists in fact and science fiction. It makes an interesting read – take a look.
http://www.baen.com/radium_girls
Geek Stuff:
Tell me, where do you think the oldest computer still carrying out its original programmed task is? Give up? OK – I’ll tell you. There are two of them, and they’re 39 years old and 12 billion miles away, in the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes. They have 69.63 kilobytes of memory, and an 8-track tape system for storage.
I think that’s awesome. I wrote my game, Federation 2, some 30 years ago, but the machine I wrote it on – an Atari Mega ST running OS9-68K operating system – only lasted two years. The game may still be running, but it’s been moved on to new computers at least a dozen times since then. I doubt that more than one or two of the latest of those computers are still running. I raise my glass to the engineers who designed and built the Voyager computers...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/oct/03/one-governments-oldest-computers-isnt-earth/
Pictures:
Slightly different this week – instead of just one stunning picture I thought I’d point you in the direction of some really stunning HD wallpapers for your computer screens. My favourite is the ‘Awesome Sun Wallpaper’, though I have to admit that it’s a bit overpowering on my screen!
http://hdwallsource.com/category/space
London:
Visitors to London (and the natives) might like to take a look in Regents Park, which until January 8 is home to the Frieze sculpture park. If your taste in sculpture runs to a giant cabbage with chicken legs, a giant stubbed out cigarette, or a nice piece of Jean Dubuffet’s work, then this is definitely the place for you. It’s free, and there’s even a guide app which gives you more info about each of the 19 large scale sculptures and installations. Check it out.
http://londonist.com/2016/10/frieze-sculpture-park
https://frieze.com/article/frieze-sculpture-park-2016
Scanner: Catchup
“Fool’s gold” nanocrystals present cheap, abundant alternative to lithium in batteries
http://newatlas.com/fools-gold-replace-lithium-batteries/40404/
League of lawsuits: Game developer sues cheat-toting website
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/13/league_of_lawsuits/
Deep geological scars influence modern earthquakes
Plate tectonics just a stage in Earth’s life cycle
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/06/10/Deep-geological-scars-influence-modern-earthquakes/1191465577631/
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/plate-tectonics-just-stage-earth%E2%80%99s-life-cycle
Transparent wood opens a window to cooler homes
http://newatlas.com/transparent-wooden-windows-cooler/44943/
A master list of 1,200 free courses from top universities: 40,000 hours of audio/video lectures
http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/a-master-list-of-1200-free-courses-from-top-universities.html
Graphene-based sheets make dirty water drinkable simply and cheaply
http://newatlas.com/graphene-oxide-water-purification-wustl/44586/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Andrew, 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
9 October 2016
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.
