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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: January 10, 2016

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WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton

We’re back! I hope you had a nice Christmas this year – it rained continuously here, but we survived. Well, there’s a pretty reasonable crop of stories for you this week. VTech and hackers, streaming and CD purchases, surveillance cameras, the 1914 Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic, the CBR is bombarding the Earth with random numbers (little bit of hyperbole there!), new light on the causes of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster in 1940, RIP Lemmy, drones and dancers, and info on an exhibition about the effect of the internet on artists. There are also, of course, a number of URLs to take you further if you not yet satiated – the music of Delia Derbyshire, the internet fights back, T-Mobile, an interesting piece on rocket launch failures, and, inevitably, Windows 10.

So sit back in your chair and get surfing!

Shorts:

I see that VTech who currently make internet connected toys are moving into the business of providing devices to monitor your house via the internet. “So what”, do I hear you ask? Well, their security is not on record as being particularly good, to say the least. Last year a hacker was able to break in and access the personal data of six million children and four million parents. In addition there were tens of thousands of pictures taken using the company’s Kid Connect app. Pretty grim.

So, would you use devices from this company to secure your house?
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacked-toy-company-vtech-let-us-monitor-your-house

Something interesting emerged from a survey by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). They found that two thirds of the music fans surveyed used streaming to find new music. When they do find new music, they go and buy it on CD or vinyl. The industry calls it multi-channelling, and it’s not just something for older fans – 72% of 16-34 years old fans do the same. Finally just over 40% of those surveyed, and who pay to stream, claim that streaming has either increased their purchase of CDs or kept it at the same level as before.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/35058533/streaming-hasnt-killed-off-cds-and-vinyl-yet-says-bpi

In case you were unaware of the level of surveillance there is today (and not just in urban areas), then you might be interested in a project from a bunch of artists who have produced a stream made from live streams on internet connected cameras that are open to anyone. The result is somewhat variable, but it does show, as it cuts from one camera to another, the sheer breadth of video surveillance today. Obviously the output from public cameras isn’t 4K type resolution, and the creators have blurred it a little to protect privacy. You need a bit of patience – sometimes the cameras are in a night zone and there is little or no light, but in general it’s worth a look.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/to-remind-of-surveillance-arists-stream-web-cams-from-around-the-world
http://you-are-watching.me/watch/

Homework:

The UK’s Royal Geographical Society has recently digitised photographs taken on the legendary Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914-1916. Their ship, the Endurance, got caught in the ice in January 1915, and eventually sank in November of that year. Ernest Shackleton, the expedition’s leader, got all the members safely out of the ship and they trekked overland to Elephant Island. Shackleton and five other members of the expedition then -rowed- a boat, which the expedition had dragged overland with them, 750 miles to South Georgia, where there was a whaling station.

A few years ago there was an exhibition about this expedition at London’s National Maritime Museum, which I went to see. In one of the rooms they had a rowing boat of the same type as Shackleton used, and on the walls of the room they projected life sized video footage of the waves in that area – they were at least twice the height of the boat. It was the only time I’ve felt sea-sick in a museum! Well worth a look.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34856379
http://images.rgs.org/ErnestShackletonCollection.aspx

Looks like the UK’s government will have to ban astrophysics in its attempt to ban secure encryption! It’s just been discovered that the cosmic background radiation left over from the ‘Big Bang’ with which the universe is considered to have come into existence, bombards the Earth with enough random numbers to encrypt everything – forever! All you need is a radio telescope. Presumably, that will be next on the list of objects forbidden to ordinary citizens of the UK...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/12/big_bang_left_us_with_a_perfect_random_number_generator/

Video of the destruction of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 is regularly trotted out in school physics lessons as an example of resonance. It’s certainly a spectacular piece of imagery, but, unfortunately, for the last 75 years, generations of school children have been given the wrong story.

The idea that it was caused by resonance was first trotted out two days after the fall by the New York Times. The idea caught on, and no one could come up with an alternative theory. Until now. I’m not even going to try to explain it here, but the article pointed to by the URL does a good job of explaining it without getting lost too deeply in the physics. Take a look – I was fascinated.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-myth-of-galloping-gertie

Geek Stuff:

So, goodbye to Lemmy, frontman for Motorhead, definitely one of the top bands on the aging geek’s playlist. In true style his funeral yesterday was streamed live for his fans. As he himself once put it, “If you didn’t do anything that wasn’t good for you it would be a very dull life. What are you gonna do? Everything that is pleasant in life is dangerous.” Indeed!
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/lemmy-kilmister-funeral-motorhead-frontmans-memorial-be-streamed-live-online-via-youtube-1536494
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9-smBLCGbM

If you want to look at a pretty amazing use of drones have a look at the Spoon & Tamago web site, where there is video of drones being used to cover up the “naughty bits” of a pair of nude dancers. It’s absolutely stunning – superb timing on the part of both the drones and the dancers. Note that there’s a video of the full dance at the bottom of the article.
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2015/12/14/japanese-online-retailer-uses-drones-to-perfectly-censor-nude-dancers/

London:

If you happen to be in London in the period 29 January to 15 May, you might like to drop in to the Whitechapel Gallery to take a look at their forthcoming exhibition entitled ‘Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966)’. It’s a major exhibition bringing together over a hundred works to show the impact of computer and internet tech on artists from the 1960s to the present day.
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/electronicsuperhighway/

Scanner:

The fascinating story of how Delia Derbyshire created the original Doctor Who theme. http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/the-fascinating-story-of-how-delia-derbyshire-created-the-original-doctor-who-theme.html

The Internet is now attacking those that try to damage it, not just avoiding them
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-internet-is-now-attacking-those.html

The truth about T-Mobile, net neutrality, and video throttling
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3020027/internet/the-truth-about-t-mobile-net-neutrality-video-throttling.html

Rocket launch failures: the predictables
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2884/1

Bloke sues dad who shot down his drone – and why it may decide who owns the skies
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/07/drone_lawsuit_who_owns_the_skies/

Falling into the Encryption Trap
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001108.html

Microsoft walks a thin line between Windows 10 telemetry and snooping
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3020152/microsoft-windows/microsoft-walks-a-thin-line-between-windows-10-telemetry-and-snooping.html

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
10 January 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.

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