WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
We’re back with the first issue of 2017. (Did you know that 2017 is a prime number, by the way?) This week we have, for your Sunday breakfast reading, material on trouble with Amazon Echo, Echo and police requests for records, the demise of Prenda Law, an easy guide to the Blockchain, an old and brilliantly funny car advert, CIA maps declassified and digitised, a map of the Internet in 1973, Dell’s new ‘Canvas’ hardware, pictures of the Andromeda Galaxy and the Horsehead Nebula, and finally a look at some old maps of London. Maps are definitely in this week. If you want more there are URLs pointing to diesel emissions in the EU, new NASA launches, the US congress and encryption, Apple fight back over their tax bill, an interview with Vitaly Bulgarov, and finally Oracle and Java. Phew!
This week saw an important event – Federation’s 29th birthday. Yep – my multi-player game has been running uninterrupted for 29 years, which is probably something of a record! If you want to get a flavour of the first frantic year take a look at http://www.ibgames.com/archives/fed/compunet1988/firstyear.html.
Shorts:
Oh good grief! San Diego TV station CW-6 was reporting on a story about an inadvertent order made on Amazon’s Echo machine. Apparently the household’s six year old asked the device, “Can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?”. The device responded by ordering a US$160 dolls house from Amazon!
That was bad enough, but to make things worse, in the course of reporting the story, the reporter said, “I love the little girl, saying ‘Alexa ordered me a dollhouse’.” Uh huh! A whole bunch of Echos in rooms with the TV tuned in to CW-6 promptly ordered their own dollhouses... A lot of people blamed the reporter and/or the station for not being more careful, but in my opinion they’re wrong to do so.
The fault lies with Amazon. In the first place, it shouldn’t be shipped with voice command purchasing enabled by default. And even more to the point, voice command purchasing should require some sort of security authorisation before it goes ahead and purchases items. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of ways of verifying that the requester has the authority to command purchases. You could have a password, for instance, or perhaps voice recognition, to name only the two most obvious.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/07/tv_anchor_says_alexa_buy_me_a_dollhouse_and_she_does/
And while we are on the subject of Amazon Echo, police in Bentonville Arkansas issued a warrant to find out if an Echo device in an alleged murderer’s home recorded anything useful. Given that Echo only records stuff that starts with the word ‘Alexa’, I think it’s pretty unlikely that it could pick anything useful up. I seriously doubt that the accused discussed it with ‘Alexa’ first. “Alexa, I’m seriously considering offing this guy, could you order me a blunt instrument or a gun?”
That aside, it’s worth noting that Amazon refused the warrant and have stated, “Amazon will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us. Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.”
You know, this is indicative of the fact that Internet of Things is going to open up a whole can of privacy worms. One that will make the FBI vs. iPhone encrypted data affair last year seem like a drop in the ocean.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/27/amazon-echo-audio-data-murder-case/
One nice thing that happened over the break was that the guys behind copyright troll ‘Prenda Law’ were hit with criminal charges over their use of porn movies to extort millions of dollars from their victims. According to ‘The Register’ “Attorneys Paul Hansmeier and John Steele have each been charged in a US federal indictment with ten counts of wire fraud, five counts of mail fraud, and one count each of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit perjury and suborn perjury, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
That’s a pretty hefty indictment! Click on the URL to get full details of their activities. (I was going to refer to them as ‘loathsome toads’, but on more mature reflection, I think that would probably be an insult to toads...)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/doj_pounds_prenda_lawyers_with_36_criminal_counts/
Homework:
I would guess that all of you have heard of Bitcoin. What you may not be aware of is its underlying mechanism – the Blockchain. It’s clear that while Bitcoin may, or may not, continue to be significant (Bitcoin is only the biggest and best known of the Internet crypto currencies), the Blockchain mechanism is here to stay. A lot of work is in progress on it – including by banks. I’d guess in the long run it, or a derivative of Blockchain, will become the key part of any digital ledger. And, because it’s such a general mechanism, it will be used for much more than just financial transactions.
No, I’m not going to explain the Blockchain here. However, the URL for this piece will point you to a short (four page) introduction to the Blockchain. You won’t be able to write code to implement a Blockchain – but you will be able to follow non-technical discussion on the subject!
https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.06244
I don’t normally watch adverts, but after reading the Blockchain stuff you may well need a little light hearted relaxation. This advert for a Toyota car is an oldie, but it’s the funniest 30 secs of advertising I’ve seen for ages!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77rG-M7KwzE
This looks interesting. 75 years’ worth of CIA maps have now been declassified and are now available online. Before computers were available the CIA relied on paper maps, which have now been digitised. You can read all about the maps on the CIA’s website, and see a good selection of the maps on its flickr account.
Incidentally, I note that there is a map of German concentration camps dated June 1944 – I was under the impression that the Allies had denied all knowledge of such camps until they were liberated, which would have been in the following year. But I may be wrong on that, and I can’t find the book I saw the reference to it in...
Anyway, the collection is interesting in its own right – a must for cartography and history buffs!
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2016-featured-story-archive/mapmakers-craft.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/albums
Geek Stuff:
Given that this time of the year is traditionally for naval gazing, looking back, looking forward and squinting sideways, I thought you might like to see a map of the entire Internet in the year 1973. Yes – that’s a picture of all 45 of the computers linked to the Internet in 1973 – take a look!
https://qz.com/860873/a-1973-map-of-the-internet-charted-by-darpa/
Of all the new techie stuff on show at the CES this week, the thing that really excites me is Dell’s Canvas. It has massive appeal to the graphic designer that I was before I became a game designer and a programmer. Canvas is similar to Microsoft’s Surface Studio, but I’ve always preferred Dell Kit to that of Microsoft. Sigh...
http://newatlas.com/dell-ces-2017-canvas-laptops-monitors/47253/
Pictures:
Two magnificent astronomy pictures to start the new year! The first is an absolutely classic view of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). The second is equally spectacular – it’s the Horsehead Nebula. Very impressive!
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161227.html
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161225.html
London:
I love maps – the paper ones have gone out of fashion, which is a bit sad – personally I find them much more usable than the ones on my phone, which aren’t really big enough to orient myself. In addition, they are ruthless about the one route from A to B, which allows no room for serendipitous findings along the way.
One thing London does have is history, and maps of the place go back hundreds of years, indicating what it used to be like. So, take a look at this set of old maps of London, and get exploring. As Susan Sontag once said, “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”
http://londonist.com/london/oldmaps
Scanner:
Europe to launch legal action against countries over diesel emissions cheating
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/13/europe_to_launch_legal_action_against_
countries_over_diesel_emissions_cheating/
Congressional Encryption Working Group says encryption back doors are near unworkable
http://betanews.com/2016/12/23/ewg-encryption-report/
NASA – get this – just launched 8 satellites from a rocket dropped from a plane at 40,000ft
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/nasa_orbital_atk_cygnss_launch/
Will 2017 finally be the year of the small launcher?
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3128/1
Screw EU! Apple to fight back over Euro 13bn tax bill
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/19/apple_to_fight_back_over_13bn_tax_bill/
Interview: Vitaly Bulgarov, designer of that giant Korean robot suit
http://newatlas.com/vitaly-bulgarov-interview-giant-korean-mech-suit/47100/
Oracle finally targets Java non-payers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/oracle_targets_java_users_non_compliance/
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
8 January 2017
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.
