WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Another Sunday, another Winding Down. And this week we look at terrorist attacks and encryption, Google diversity, the current state of robots, AI, smart assistants and bots, algorithmic bias, the Royal Society’s Summer Fair, railguns, a tilt rotor drone, blocking ads, and old store posters. URLs point you in the direction of five-nano chip technology, Bruce Schneier on the IoT, 2D magnets, heavy equipment, WannaCry, and a little controversy over dinosaur DNA.
I hope you like it!
Shorts:
Predictably, the recent terrorist attack on London Bridge has renewed calls from politicians for encryption to be banned, or at least badly weakened. Unfortunately, they don’t follow the logic of their position. Victims were run down with a hired van and stabbed to death with kitchen knives. I’ve seen no evidence that the terrorists used encrypted digital messages to communicate. Surely it would be much more ‘logical’ to call for the banning of the sale of kitchen knives and the hire of vans?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/03/london-bridge-everything-know-far/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/06/break_e2e_crypto_fight_jihad_cunning_plan/
I see that Google is trying to wriggle out of providing the US Department of Labour and a court with figures that would show whether women it employs are underpaid. They claim it would be too expensive. Since it had revenue of US$28 billion last year, this seems a little dubious. The Register calculated that its claim that providing the figures would cost US$100,000, which is much too expensive, represents 113 seconds income.
I don’t know about you, but my normal assumption in cases where there are refusals to provide data like this is that the refusee has something serious to hide! Of course, I may be wrong, but I doubt it...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/29/google_tries_to_hide_diversity_data/
Homework:
I don’t talk much about robots, artificial intelligence, bots and ‘smart’ assistants in this newsletter. That’s mainly because they are so overhyped in the technical media, and, to a lesser extent elsewhere. However, I would recommend that you take a look at a recent piece in InfoWorld about what the current state of play really is in these fields. It is a nice sober, jargon free assessment.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3199296/artificial-intelligence/reality-check-the-state-of-ai-bots-and-smart-assistants.html
And following on from that, you might also like to take a look at an article on algorithmic bias. A larger number of things than you probably realise are decided by computer algorithms. Examples include decisions on your credit limit, whether you get a job, and the price of something depending on where you live. You have no control or say in these decisions, and they are virtually impossible to challenge.
How can you make a challenge when you don’t know the data used to generate the decision, or, even if you are a programmer, the code used in the algorithm?
Take a look and be prepared to start worrying!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/08/algorithmic_bias/
Going to be in London between any time Tuesday 4 and Sunday 9 July? Then I recommend you go along and visit the Royal Society’s Science Fair. It’s an annual event well worth attending, because it’s not just about new technologies and science, it’s an opportunity to chat to the people making those breakthroughs.
Among the exhibits this year are smart infection-resistant surfaces, storing solar power, voices, safety testing, gravitational waves, glowing corals, bicycle engineering, and quantum computers. And that’s just a sample!
And best of all – it’s hands on and totally free to go to! What more could you want?
https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2017/summer-science-exhibition/exhibits/
Geek Stuff:
The very first iteration of my game Federation 2 in the 1980s had railguns as a possible weaponry for players’ spaceships. Now, some 30 years later science and engineering is finally catching up and hypersonic railguns look like becoming de rigeur for larger wet navy ships. Take a look at this piece about General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems Blitzer railgun.
http://newatlas.com/general-atomics-hypersonic-railgun-projectiles/49514/
Here’s something new for drone fanciers. A tilt rotor hexacopter that can fly sideways, or at any other angle to the ground you can think of. That’s pretty good – especially when you consider that most other drones can only fly parallel to the ground. It’s called the Voliro, and it’s still under development, but it’s already looking good. I doubt if we are going to have wait more than a year or so before they start appearing commercially.
http://newatlas.com/voliro-hexacopter-drone-orientation/49969/
I was going to tell you about a new super-dooper-ultra-wide-all-bells-and-whistles monitor from Samsung. Sadly, I can’t because the site reviewing it won’t show me anything unless I turn off my ad blocker. Since I declined to do so, it forfeits an opportunity for me to suggest you use it. You know, we went through this sort of crap when digital video recorders started to come with facilities to skip adverts. Presumably we are now going to see a re-run.
It’s not that I don’t like adverts per se. Well actually, I do think most of them are created by idiots for other idiots who have more money than sense, but that’s beside the point. The real reason is speed. I tried allowing adverts from a couple of sites I really like and wanted to support, and discovered that loading web pages became several orders of magnitude slower. I have a nice fast -paid for- internet connection, and I have no truck with slowness from the other end, especially when it’s caused by slow advertising sites downloading stuff I have no interest in anyway.
Grrr!
Pictures:
Here’s something rather unusual. It’s a selection of advertising posters from the London Oxford Street store Selfridges. The posters date from its opening in 1909 and are an interesting reflection of the times. Frankly, I had no idea that in 1931 you could buy an aeroplane in a department store!
http://londonist.com/london/history/vintage-selfridges-ads
Scanner:
Moore’s Law has another life with development of 5 nanometer chip technology
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2017/06/moores-law-has-another-life-with.html
Infosec guru Schneier: Govts WILL intervene to regulate Internet of Things
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/08/governments_will_intervene_insecure_iot/
Discovery of 2D magnet could lead to super slim electronics
http://newatlas.com/2d-magnetic-material-found/49946/
The future of heavy equipment (Some nice pictures and informative -AL)
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2017/05/the-future-of-heavy-equipment.html
WannaCry hit Windows 7 machines most
http://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/wannacry-hit-windows-7-machines-most/d/d-id/1328934
New tests reveal controversial dinosaur DNA isn’t so ancient after all
http://newatlas.com/dinosaur-dna-ostrich/49875/
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
11 June 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.
