Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
12 June 2022
Welcome back to Winding Down after something of a hiatus in May.
The main reason for the gap is my wife Barbara (also known as Barb Byro), whose health has been steadily deteriorating for the last five years, needing my full time support for the last three. She finally succumbed and died in hospital in the early hours of Monday 9 May. I know that a number of readers of Winding Down knew Barbara from her professional activities and from meeting her at ACCU Conferences. I’m still engaged in writing her obituary, but I will give details of where it can be found in next week’s issue.
Well, in many ways this is a catchup, but hopefully you will find something useful in it. The issues we cover include Boeing’s Starliner, IBM’s Mayflower, ways of reducing traffic and their effectiveness, there’s a selection of the best of Hubble and a more down-to-Earth pictures. There’s an essay about the study of lying (a topic with some resonance here in the UK) and there is even a joke (well I liked it). There are two quotes I think you will like, and finally there is the usual miscellany of topics in the ‘Scanner’ section.
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue 19 June
Credits: Thanks to Fi Craig for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down and for editing it for spelling, grammar, etc.
Here to get you started is a singularly useless, but fascinating statistic: The TV program Doctor Who has run for 39 seasons with 870 episodes spread across 60 years...
So now you know. And now on with the rest of the stories.
Updates:
Well, I had my doubts, but Boeing’s Starliner CST-100 finally got its act together, and completed an un-personed trip to the space station and back. Mind you, yet again it had problems with its thrusters, but the back up ones worked OK. I think they probably need to take a closer look at these thrusters...
https://www.space.com/nasa-praises-boeing-starliner-oft-2-mission
IBM’s unmanned AI ship – named ‘Mayflower’ – finally made it across the Atlantic starting at Plymouth, the starting point for the original ship that took the pilgrims to what would become Massachusetts in America. That trip took two months. Its namesake has suffered a number of mishaps, but finally made it to Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, taking a year and a half longer than was planned.
Ironically, none of the problems were to do with the ship’s artificial intelligence. They were all engineering problems. That sort of problem is not going to be so easy to overcome without defeating the object by having an engineer on board
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/07/ibm_mayflower_canada/
Essays:
As COVID rules are relaxed (and uncomprehending managers are demanding their minions return to the offices) the number of cars on the roads is starting to approach pre-COVID levels. It’s not an easy issue to grapple with – there are cultural as well as technical issues that can’t be ignored. There are lots of suggestions, but little information available about whether they work, let alone how well they work.
It was therefore with some relief that I found an essay studying nearly 800 peer-reviewed reports and case studies throughout Europe, and drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of each of the top 12 city car use reduction strategies. Definitely an interesting read.
https://theconversation.com/12-best-ways-to-get-cars-out-of-cities-ranked-by-new-research-180642
I think that everyone in the UK must have their own view on the subject of lying. Leaving aside the particular issue itself and the resulting politics, how can you tell, from what people say, whether they are lying? Well, I was amazed to discover that this is one of the topics that philosophers study, and ‘The Conversation’ has an absolutely fascinating piece by Sorin Baiasu, Professor of Philosophy at Keele University.
I wish I’d known philosophy was this interesting when I was at university!
https://theconversation.com/is-boris-johnson-lying-a-philosopher-on-why-its-so-hard-to-tell-181508
I have a stack of interesting essays lined up for you but I think maybe two is enough for an issue. More next week
Pictures:
Space.com has an interesting, and beautiful selection of what it claims is ‘The best’ pictures from The Hubble Space telescope. I have to admit that some of them are really good!
https://www.space.com/best-hubble-space-telescope-images.html
For something a little closer to home, take a look at this superb picture of sunrise and fog at Monument Valley in Utah, United States of America.
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/sunrise-and-fog-at-monument-valley/
Jokes:
I don’t very often publish jokes, but this week I saw a classic in Alistair Dabbs column in’ The Register.’ He claims he stole it from someone else, so I have no hesitation on stealing it from him! Here it is (Warning: danger of punching your fist in the air and shouting yes!):
A shepherd is minding her sheep on a hill one day when a swanky executive car makes its way gingerly down the lane nearby. It comes to a halt and the mirrored electric window rolls down, through which can be seen a complex dashboard of flashing lights and controls. A man sticks his head out and calls to the shepherd, complaining about the stupid sat-nav and lack of road signs, and asking for directions.
The shepherd tells the man how to get back onto the correct route, and makes a joke about relying too much on technology to follow what should have been a straight road.
Not wanting to leave with his tail between his legs, the man in the car proposes a bet: if he can use the tech in his car to calculate the precise number of sheep in her entire flock spread across the hill, would she let him take away one of the sheep as a prize?
Of course, she says.
The driver then pulls out a laptop and erects a mini satellite dish, and calls upon all manner of satellite photography and fractal chaos calculation apps to determine the size of the flock. Five minutes later, he has the answer. And the shepherd confirms he is correct!
She lets him pick a sheep to take, which he duly hauls into the enormous boot of the car. As he does this, the shepherd proposes a counter-bet: if she can guess what he does for a living, she wins her sheep back again. He agrees. Why not?
She tells him he is a management consultant. Fair enough, he replies, right first time. But how did she guess?
“You’ve over-specified the vehicle you need for your journey but thought it looked good. You don’t know where you are going or where you have come from, but you blame other people for this. You chose to waste expensive technology to tell me how many sheep I have – something that I already know and would have been happy to tell you too for free if you’d asked. But most of all, you blindly accepted a challenge about which you know absolutely nothing.
“Now, can I have my dog back?”
The article it’s in is at https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/03/something_for_the_weekend/
Quotes:
This week’s quote is a comment about the founder of the recently crashed Japanese crypto exchange ‘Liquid’:
“Insofar as Mike ever considered security at all, he thought of it as a product that he could buy,” a former employee said sardonically. “Yep, we bought ourselves a security. Got one, don’t need to waste any more cash on another ‘security.’”
A former ‘Liquid’ employee quoted in a CoinDesk article
https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/05/17/how-not-to-run-a-cryptocurrency-exchange/ (Well worth a read – AL)
And as a bonus quote on a different topic, I really laughed at this one:
Stephen Colbert: “Are you afraid of artificial intelligence taking over?”
Ricky Gervais: “I’d love for any intelligence to take over.”
Quoted in PFIR email list
Scanner:
The science behind your cheap wine
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-behind-your-cheap-wine-180962783/
Apple’s grip on iOS browser engines disallowed under latest draft EU rules
https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/26/apple_ios_browser/
There’s an unfortunate causal link between cleaner air and Atlantic hurricanes
https://www.sciencealert.com/in-a-cruel-twist-study-finds-cleaner-air-leads-to-more-atlantic-hurricanes
LIDAR in iPhones is not about better photos – it’s about the future of low-cost augmented reality
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/11/ipone_lidar_future_of_ar/
New super-fast transport system powered by passengers’ screams
https://www.theonion.com/new-super-fast-transport-system-powered-by-passengers-1819575384
There’s one way time travel could be possible, according to this physicist
https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-one-way-time-travel-could-be-possible-according-to-this-physicist
UK government having hard time complying with its own IR35 tax rules
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/26/mps_slam_ir35_government_rollout/
An extremely powerful flare just erupted from our sun, and there’s video!
https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-an-x-class-flare-erupt-from-the-sun
Editor’s note: We are likely to see a lot of articles about aurora being visible in ‘Northern Climes’. Northern climes in the UK means anywhere north of the Newport Pagnell Service Station on the M1 Motorway! – AL
Footnote:
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
12 June 2022
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), 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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