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

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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: July 17, 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

This week in Winding Down we cover the UK government wasting cash on failing IT projects, Warner Bros paying for good reviews, Microsoft winning an important court case, part three of Cringely’s Big Data article, architecture and security, the bad side of Pokemon Go, Apollo 11 code, Schneir on government regulation of code, an electric highway, and the HERBERT bus in London. We also draw your attention to some nice pictures, one of Paris at night from the ISS, one of the Milky Way, and one of Tokyo street art. Finally, we have some URLs pointing to a terrorist database leak, PCs out performing a supercomputer, current PC sales gloom, the risks of genetic mutations, infographics history, and apartments in NY libraries. Not a bad selection, even if I say so myself.

Most weeks while I’m browsing for news I come across some really good pictures I’d like to share, so this week we introduce a new section, not surprisingly called ‘Pictures’, which showcases some of these pictures.

Shorts:

My US friends assure me that the US government is more than capable of wasting oodles of cash on failed computer projects, but let me tell you that the UK leads the world in this field of human endeavour! At this very moment the UK’s new post-Brexit government is in the process of inheriting no less than UK£18 billion (about US$24 billion) worth of failing IT projects.

And how do I know they are failing? Apart from the fact that I read about it in ‘The Register’, I know because the government’s own Infrastructure Project Authority flagged 19 of the projects as being undeliverable, or highly likely to be undeliverable. On the other hand, in what is probably a first, the new British government includes a minister with a computer degree!

Sadly, I don’t think that having one person with an IT background is likely to make a great deal of difference, especially when their portfolio isn’t concerned with anything to do with computers...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/07/mpa/

I see that the US Federal Trade Commission has taken Warner Bros to task for failing to adequately disclose that they had paid a number of YouTubers for positive reviews of their ‘Shadow of Mordor’ videos. Warner Bros don’t seem to have been fined (though they surely will be if they do it again) but judging from the FTC’s ‘Decision and Order’ document all the bureaucracy the FTC has imposed is going to be a pain and cost money.

We here in the Winding Down bunker don’t have that problem, since I don’t recall anyone ever trying to bribe us to give them a good review...
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/276822/FTC_takes_WB_to_task_for_failing_
to_disclose_sponsored_Shadow_of_Mordor_vids.php

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/07/warner-bros-settles-ftc-charges-it-failed-adequately-disclose-it
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/160711warnerbrosdo.pdf

This week Microsoft won a very important case against the US government, when the court ruled that the US government could not use the 1986 Stored Communications Act to seize email messages on oversea servers.

This is an important win, not just for Microsoft, but for US tech companies. To give you some idea what’s involved, something like 90% of Europeans’ personal data is processed by US services. If Microsoft had lost, it would have been a serious hit against Europeans allowing US companies – think Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc – to collect personal data.

Of course, given that this ruling was by the Second Circuit Appeals Court, this case is likely to go further up the legal hierarchy and maybe even to the lawmakers before it’s finally resolved. Nonetheless, this week’s ruling is a step forward.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2016/07/14/microsoft_wins_landmark_irish_warrant_case_against_usa/

Homework:

Last week I commended a two-parter on Big Data to readers. What I didn’t realize at the time was that there was a third part planned. Now it’s out, and it’s a scary look at the future with Big Data.
http://www.cringely.com/2016/07/11/thinking-big-data-part-3-final-part/

And here’s the URLs to the first two, in case you skipped them last week!
http://www.cringely.com/2016/07/05/thinking-big-data-part-one/
http://www.cringely.com/2016/07/07/15306/

If you thought security was just about bugs in code and police toting guns, then you need to take a look at this piece in Atlas Obscura about security in physical architecture. It’s all about choke points where the flow of users is such that they can be individually seen, cameras blending in to the surroundings so they’re not obvious, where the things people might want to see are placed, and using landscaped settings to create protective barriers.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-hidden-security-bugs-in-architecture-that-you-never-knew-about

Pokemon GO – The Dark Side:

I know there’s a lot of enthusiasm for the latest Pokemon stuff, but my middle name is Cassandra, so I thought I’d pour some cold water on the affair by drawing your attention to some of the downsides of the ‘game’.

Spying on players’ Google accounts
http://www.recode.net/2016/7/11/12154354/pokemon-go-niantic-google-permissions
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/11/pushy_pokemon_go_criticized/

Sending people to play in Washington’s Holocaust Museum
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/07/some-public-places-want-more-pokemon-go-but-the-holocaust-museum-does-not/

Making innocent people’s houses a Pokemon Gym
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/12/12159422/pokemon-go-turned-house-into-gym-augmented-reality-privacy

A racially biased location database
http://boingboing.net/2016/07/15/why-do-pokemon-avoid-black-nei.html

I can’t really think of a better example of why you shouldn’t leave games involving any sort of social interaction in the hands of geeks, who almost by definition have little or no social skills and political awareness!

Geek Stuff:

OK geeks – get ready for the big one. Fire up your browsers and point them at GitHub, where source code for the software used for the Apollo 11 Moon landing has been posted online! Just one problem (or maybe not, depending on your proclivities) the source is all assembly language!

Somehow, I don’t think that your humongous, syntax highlighting, refactoring, all singing and dancing code editor is going to help one bit. Never mind though, at least they believed in using comments way back there in the ‘60s...
http://qz.com/726338/the-code-that-took-america-to-the-moon-was-just-published-to-github-and-its-like-a-1960s-time-capsule/

That was the good news. If you want the bad news, then take a look at this report of a talk by security guru Bruce Schneir. He is of the opinion that we are getting to the stage where government regulation is likely to start restricting what programmers can do, given the up and coming growth of the Internet of Things, the need for secure software, and the need for safety critical software.

This going to be a big problem. Government regulation inevitably involves things like full design specification, certification, planning, vast amounts of documentation, etc. Not exactly agile. I foresee problems ahead.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/10/schneier_iot/

Pending:

There’s an interesting experiment getting under way in Sweden. It’s an electric highway for trucks. It’s one and a quarter miles of test highway with overhead electricity lines, a bit like the overhead lines for electrified railways, to judge from the picture. The idea is that diesel/electric hybrid trucks will use the overheads on the main trunk roads and switch to diesel power to make the pickup and delivery.

It’s an interesting idea. Deserves to work, although I suspect there are more hurdles to overcome than the inventors expect.
http://www.gizmag.com/sweden-electric-highway/44028/

Pictures:

NASA’s Earth Observatory has just published a really cool picture of Paris taken at night from the International Space Station.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=88348&src=eoa-iotd

Another NASA project is called ‘Astronomy Picture of the Day’. One of my favourite pictures is called ‘Firefly Trails and the Summer Milky Way’. Take a look. I’m using it as my computer’s wallpaper at the moment.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160702.html

And for something completely different, here are some pretty stunning examples of street art from Tokyo’s Tennozu Isle.
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2016/06/09/explore-the-street-art-and-murals-of-tokyos-tennozu-isle/

London:

If this weekend is anything to go by, summer has finally arrived (well, possibly; when your country is on the junction of three, or maybe four, different weather systems, rolling a dice is just as likely to forecast correctly as modelling with super computers). Anyway, taking an optimistic view, Hendrick’s gin is bringing its own bus into town.

Dubbed Hendricks Extraordinary Roving Bus for Exceptionally Refined travel – aka HERBERT – for a ticket price of a mere UK£2.50 you get a trip around Westminster, the South Bank, Holborn Euston, and Kings Cross. Not to mention a Gin & Tonic and a cucumber macaron.
http://www.timeout.com/london/blog/all-aboard-a-london-gin-bus-is-rolling-into-town-071416
https://uk.hendricksgin.com/ [A brilliant site – you need to be legally able to drink to enter! – AL]

Scanner:

Global ‘terror database’ World-Check leaked
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/29/global_terror_database_worldcheck_leaked_online

Home PC outperforms a supercomputer in complex calculations
http://www.gizmag.com/nvidia-gpu-outperforms-supercomputer/44112/

Apple crumbles: Mac sales slump while Dell, HP Inc, Lenovo shift PCs
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2016/07/12/gartner_global_pc_market_q2_2016/

Fast-spreading genetic mutations pose an ecological risk
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fast-spreading-genetic-mutations-pose-an-ecological-risk/

The surprising history of the infographic
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/surprising-history-infographic-180959563/?no-ist

Life behind the stacks: The secret apartments of New York libraries
http://www.6sqft.com/life-behind-the-stacks-the-secret-apartments-of-new-york-libraries/

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
17 July 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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