WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Winding Down has for your Sunday reading items on CryptoLocker, a simulated anthrax attack, the Amazon rain forest, a report of a rather special dinner party, the Parrot Rolling Spider, and an unusual BBQ. URLs contain most of the heavy lifting – PCs, Lab accident consequences, Nokia, a data storage breakthrough, a long standing Chrome browser bug, and a billion password hack.
More of a light snack than a full meal this week, I’m afraid. I had a wisdom tooth removed yesterday and I’m finding it difficult to concentrate. But for all its brevity, I think you’ll like what’s there today. I hope you will, anyway...
Shorts:
Good news for people hit by the CryptoLocker ransom demand malware – help is at hand. CryptoLocker is a computer virus that encrypts all the files on the victim’s disk, so they can’t be accessed. It then demands payment in Bitcoin in return for the key to unlock the files.
Now two security firms – California based FireEye and Fox-IT in the Netherlands – have launched decryptcryptolocker.com. Send the site your email address and a sample CryptoLocker encrypted file and they will email a link that you can use to download a recovery program to decrypt all of their scrambled files. Wonderful!
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/08/new-site-recovers-files-locked-by-cryptolocker-ransomware/
There’s a great story on Gizmodo about how New York simulated an anthrax attack on the subway, and how it responded. It’s fascinating. It makes me wonder if the authorities in my own city, London are as well prepared as the New York authorities. Somehow, I suspect not...
http://gizmodo.com/how-new-york-city-simulates-an-anthrax-attack-1614539966
Homework:
It’s general knowledge that cutting down the Amazon rain forest would lead to unmitigated climate disaster. Now, however, it turns out that, a few thousand years ago, large chunks of the of the forest were, in fact, farmland!
It’s only recently that it was discovered that irrigation ditches and earthworks are present across large swathes of what is now the Amazon rain forest. The general assumption among those investigating was that either they represent extensive slash and burn agriculture in the past, or that there were just a few incursions into the forests by pre-Columbian civilizations.
Now an expedition led by Dr John Carson of the UK’s Reading University has found that neither of these explanations hold up. What seems to be the case is that in the areas where there are earthworks and irrigation, there was no jungle to clear! Two thousand or so years ago the extent of the Amazon jungle was much less than it is now, and the area not covered was the site of primitive farming.
Sometime around 0AD-300AD something happened to make the jungle expand to cover the area it does now. We don’t know what caused it, but I would guess the most likely contender would be local climate change.
All of which, to my mind, goes to show that climate is nothing like as simple as the doomsayers, on both sides, would have us believe.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/08/would_it_be_bad_if_the_amazon_rainforest_was_all_farms_well_it_was_once/
The Centauri Dreams blog has reproduced a wonderful article by sci-fi author and scientist Gregory Benford. It’s about a dinner party with Paul Dirac, Martin Rees and Stephen Hawking, and their wives. Paul Dirac was one of the founders of quantum theory, and the man who predicted the existence of anti-matter. Martin Rees is now the UK’s Astronomer Royal, one of its top scientists. Stephen Hawking is probably the world’s best known cosmologist.
This is well worth a read, and I love the opening quote from Paul Dirac!
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=31230
For Geeks:
I want a Parrot Rolling Spider! Nope, it’s not an exotic inhabitant of the jungles of South East Asia, It’s the best drone I’ve seen yet, and it’s relatively cheap at UK£89.00 (about US$150) . Not many drones have wheels as well as propellers, but this one does, and what’s more you can control it from your smart phone.
Take a look – the videos are rather amusing!
http://www.firebox.com/product/6715/Parrot-Rolling-Spider
Want to put on a BBQ that your friends will never forget? Then take a look at the URL for this piece. It’s a BBQ using molten lava at over 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit... Of course, you will need protective clothing – leather at the very least, but I guess you won’t have to worry about partially cooked food!
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/08/01/bompas_parr_join_forces_with_robert_wysocki_of_syracuse_university_to_barbecue.html
Scanner:
Experts gathered round corpse of the PC market: It’s alive!
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/07/22/xp_refresh/
Bio-Unsafety Level 3: Could the next lab accident result in a pandemic?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bio-unsafety-level-3-could-the-next-lab-accident-result-in-a-pandemic/
Cheer up, Nokia fans. The company can start making mobes again in 18 months
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/21/cheer_up_europeans_nokia_can_make_mobes_again_in_18_months/
Memory breakthrough capable of storing one terabyte onto postage stamp-sized device
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2014/07/memory-breakthrough-capable-of-storing.html#more
The Chrome browser has been draining PC batteries for years
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/19/chrome_power_sucking_bug/
Russian hackers amass over a billion internet passwords
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/technology/russian-gang-said-to-amass-more-than-a-billion-stolen-internet-credentials.html?_r=0
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Dj 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 August 2014
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.
