Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 13, 2013

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WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news

by Alan Lenton

This week I nearly cleaned out my supply of stories for you. They include: Raspberry Pi, a Tribeca billboard (possibly from the NSA), the Adobe heist, Microsoft and Patch Tuesday, rust and hexagonal boron nitride, the US government shutdown, social media demographics, a Tesla gun, and a 3D printed room! For those of you who crave more, there are URLs pointing to NSA data center problems, an Aereo app for Android, mug shot sites, refining titanium, and a story about the NSA exploiting a Firefox browser flaw.

Altogether a rather varied little montage of recent news, but now, if you’ll excuse me I need to go and paint the hallway walls while the workmen have the floor covering ripped up to fix some problems with under floor piping.

Shorts:

At various intervals I rave on about the Raspberry Pi computer. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a tiny, very cheap, credit card sized computer intended for educational use. Well, this week the Sony factory in Pencoed, South Wales shipped its millionth Raspberry Pi. Quite a cause for celebration. Originally the Pi was built in China, because it was believed that western manufacturers were too expensive, but the Pencoed factory made a bid to the Pi people and worked with them to figure out how they could manufacture it for a similar price.

A million Raspberry Pi computers out there is good news in its own right, but so is the news that western manufacturing can compete with Asian establishments. So, Apple, are you going to make an effort to bring your manufacturing back to the US?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24435809
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/raspberry_pi_sony_plant_million_machine_milestone/

This is weird. There is a billboard in the Tribeca area of New York that says “YOUR DATA SHOULD BELONG TO THE NSA”. No one know who it belongs to – maybe the NSA? It’s a little bit on the freaky side, to say the least.
http://gothamist.com/2013/10/03/in_tribeca_nsa_billboard_watches_yo.php

I see that Adobe were hit by a major security breach. That’s serious, though there was much sniggering where I come from. No one likes Adobe with their high prices and heavy, inconvenient, DRM.

Not only did the attackers take a whole slew of personal information and encrypted passwords, they also got their digits on the source code for some of Adobe’s most lucrative apps. I wonder just how long it will be before those start to do the rounds out on the net.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/technology/adobe-announces-security-breach.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131004&_r=0

Ten years ago this month Microsoft gave up on putting out patches to its then bug riddled programs as the patches came off the assembly line. Instead, they instituted ‘Patch Tuesday’. One Tuesday a month, all the available patches are now rolled out in a large lump. From Microsoft’s point of view this was a distinct improvement, because it meant the tech press only got one opportunity a month to make snide remarks about the quality of Microsoft products, instead of several times a week...

Of course, it meant that if they got it wrong, you could have your computer screwed up in several different ways simultaneously, rather than on a sequential basis. In fact, something like that happened last month, and Microsoft had to hurriedly put out some patches to fix screw-ups created by the patch Tuesday patches...

Regardless, this week saw a new bunch of patches which fix some 26 security problems, and since I’ve not seen any moans about things not working, I’d guess it’s time to apply them to your computer – especially if you use Internet Explorer, which is particularly vulnerable, it appears. I use Chrome as my browser, but that’s another story.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/09/patch_tuesday_double_ie_trouble/

Homework:

Stopping iron based things from going rusty is a never ending task, but now maybe, just maybe, the end is nigh. Scientists at Rice University have discovered that a very thin film of hexagonal boron nitride will stop oxidation, even at high temperatures. And when I say thin, I mean thin – so thin, in fact, that it is only a few atoms thick. That’s almost thin enough to be considered two dimensional!

Judging from the report it works on most things that oxidize. If it really scales up to industrial levels then this stuff – sometimes called ‘white graphene’ – could well have ramifications well beyond its obvious uses. Rust prevention is big business, and sometime in the next decade it may well be in line for a very big makeover!
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2013/10/white-graphene-found-to-be-effective.html#more

WARNING: POLITICS! I’m not sure this really counts as hi-tech, but I found the piece interesting enough that I thought some of my readers might also find it interesting. It’s a piece from Stratfor about the roots of the current US government shutdown. It’s not about the rights or wrongs of the shutdown, it’s about how this has come to happen at this specific juncture.

It does this by looking at the evolution of the US voting system since the 1970’s, and, to my mind the explanation make a lot of sense. See what you think.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/roots-government-shutdown

Social Media demographics. Sounds pretty boring, doesn’t it? However, however a report on the subject just out reveals some surprising details of just how different the people who use the various media sites are. For instance, 68 percent of Instagram’s users are women, and Facebook is experiencing a 45 percent increase in growth in the 45-54 year old bracket. The one thing that’s missing from the figures, though, is the percentage of users of the different sites that are cats...
http://www.businessinsider.com/a-primer-on-social-media-demographics-2013-9

For Geeks:

An ace mad scientist story here guys! One Rob Flickenger has built himself a hefty looking Tesla gun. Well more of a Tesla rifle from the look of it. I can only quote the article on this one: “It is a spark gap Tesla coil powered by an 18V drill battery. You pull the trigger, and lightning comes out the front.”
Take a look – the lower of the two videos is the one to look at.
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2012/05/aspiring-mad-scientist-creates.html

So, my friend, how would you like to live in a room with 260 million surfaces? 3D architecture is here to stay. Architects Michael Hansmeyer and Benjamin Dillenburger have created just such a room. It took their 3D printer a month to print, but it took them only a day to assemble the parts. Of course the 3D printer used was somewhat larger than the ones you find in workshops and hi-tech homes. In fact it was the size of a large room, and weighs around 12 tons! For its material it used a newly developed type of sandstone matrix.

Actually, thinking about where I work – Shepperton film studios – I can see this becoming a very popular way of building some of the bigger film sets!
http://www.gizmag.com/swiss-architects-3dprint-a-room/29299/

Scanner: Other stories

Power surges ‘cripple NSA data center’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24443266

Aereo finds new way to enrage TV barons: An app for Android things
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/10/broadcast_tv_bete_noire_aereo_adds_android_app/

Mugged by a mug shot online
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-mug-shot-online.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131006&_r=3&

New refining process being researched could lower cost of titanium by 60%
http://www.gizmag.com/titanium-metal-electrowinning/29337/

NSA using Firefox flaw to snoop on Tor users
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/04/nsa_using_firefox_flaw_to_snoop_on_tor_users/

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
13 October 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.

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