WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Wow! Back for the second consecutive week! Encryption is on the agenda this week, together with a CIA study of the effectiveness of drone killings, how airlines make your life miserable, brain training, how to uninstall, how to find product keys, and how to access a hard drive, London’s Silver Vaults, and some nasty comments about London. Scanner concentrates on URLs about the current drive to nix communications security.
I thought you might like to see a picture of our sub-editor making sure I work hard here in Winding Down’s palatial London headquarters...
http://www.ibgames.net/newimages/alan/Rosie_0.jpg.
There won’t be an edition of Winding Down next week because I have to take care of some family business. Your dose of tech news will be back the following weekend, on 1 February.
Shorts:
With western governments, led by the UK’s Prime Minister and the US President, attempting to use the recent events in France to prevent the use of secure encryption on the Internet, I’d like to draw your attention to two important and readable pieces. The first is an article in Stamford Magazine about the history of attempts by the NASA to prevent the use of secure encryption outside the government, and their deliberate weakening of the USA’s national public encryption standards to make them easier to hack.
The second is a piece by Cory Doctorow on his BoingBoing site explaining just exactly what the proposals made by UK Prime Minister David Cameron would mean for the Internet. You need to read it, it’s not just about privacy.
The thing to remember when you read any material about encryption, and security in general, is very simple. Anything that makes it easier for the ‘good’ guys (however you define ‘good’) to read secure communications, also makes it easier for the bad guys to break in. And we all know what happens when the bad guys get in...
I’m also including a set of URLs on the issue in the Scanner section for those of you who want to read a little deeper into the matter.
https://medium.com/stanford-select/keeping-secrets-84a7697bf89f
http://boingboing.net/2015/01/13/what-david-cameron-just-propos.html
Just before Christmas, the Sydney Morning Herald published a story from WikiLeaks about a secret 2009 CIA Study on the use of drones for so-called targeted killings, which concluded that such activities can strengthen existing groups, and be counter-productive. Interestingly enough, I haven’t been able to track down any other reports, and the Herald doesn’t seem to have followed up the report.
I guess it’s a classic example of the fact that at Christmas only good news is allowed!
http://www.smh.com.au/world/drone-strikes-counterproductive-says-secret-cia-report-20141218-129ynq.html
http://www.wikileaks.org/cia-hvt-counterinsurgency/
Do you travel by airline? If you do (or even if you don’t) you need to read a fascinating piece in the New Yorker entitled, ‘Why airlines want to make you suffer’. It turns out that over the last ten to fifteen years the major airlines have been systematically degrading their standards, in order to make extra money by charging for comfort.
Air travel is really unpleasant unless you are prepared to pay for ‘extras’ that were once standard, such as fast lane boarding, wider seats etc. In fact this activity is so lucrative that in 2013 the major airlines between them made something in the region of US$31.5 billion in income from these fees. No, I didn’t mistype, it is billion, not million.
As the author points out, in order to make something worth paying for, the alternative has to be pretty nasty. And that’s precisely what the airlines have come up with – an unpleasant and vile experience. I’m normally not much of a fan of regulation, but the only way I can see of stopping this racketeering, is for the regulator to lay down minimum standards of passenger space and time. Sadly there’s probably not much chance of that.
As an aside, the author of the piece is Tim Wu, has a brilliant book out called ‘The Master Switch’, which is about the telephone, radio, TV, movie, and internet business. It’s an excellent book which I recommend. You can read my review of it at the ibgames URL.
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/airlines-want-you-to-suffer?intcid=mod-most-popular
http://www.ibgames.com/alan/morereading.html
Homework:
Bad news for those of you who indulge in the latest fad for ‘Brain Training’. For those of you who haven’t come across it, it’s one of the hottest new fads. It’s supposed to improve your mental processes, such as memory and attention, by playing computer ‘brain games’. Presumably, people think this will make them smarter and get better paying jobs.
Well I’m afraid that, at least according to Scientific American, it just doesn’t work. They make a pretty good case over the course of a long article, and come to a pretty unequivocal conclusion that ,”The bottom line is that there is no solid evidence that commercial brain games improve general cognitive abilities.”
The article does tell you the two things that have been proven to improve cognitive ability – physical aerobic exercise, and learning new things. Simple really, but much less fun than playing computer games!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/
Geek Stuff:
This week I’d like to draw your attention to three solutions to problems you (hopefully) won’t have very often, but which you will really need when they do happen. They are all drawn from the excellent ‘How-To Geek’ web site.
First: How to roll back or uninstall a problematic Windows update. Sooner or later a windows update will go wrong. It’s just inevitable, after every Patch Tuesday, there are reports of one, or more, updates going wrong and messing up some part of the system. This piece tells you how to roll back the update. If you think this will never affect you, point your browser at the second of the two URLs...
http://www.howtogeek.com/206271/how-to-roll-back-or-uninstall-a-problematic-windows-update/
http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/microsoft-software-flaws-increase-sharply-but-majority-affect-ie/d/d-id/1318562
Second: How to find your lost Windows or Office product keys. How often have you bought a new computer and been unable to find where you put the bit of paper with the key to MS Office, for instance? Well the key is on your old computer – it has to be, otherwise the computer couldn’t access it. So, point your browser at the URL, and find out where it is.
http://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/
And finally: How to get data off an old hard drive without putting it into a PC. It’s another thing that occurs once every three years or so, when you buy a new computer. Obviously, you zip everything on the old one up and unzip it on the new one. Then you junk the old one.
Everything goes smoothly until you find that there was something you missed. There’s always something you miss. Always. Well, the solution is to take the drive out and put it somewhere safe before you junk the old computer. Then you can use the techniques laid out in the URL to access the hard drive. All you have to do is to remember where you put the old hard drive to keep it ‘safe’...
http://www.howtogeek.com/182452/how-to-get-data-off-an-old-hard-drive-without-putting-it-in-a-pc/
London:
Now, here’s something you won’t find elsewhere. London’s Silver Vaults. A subterranean Victorian high security storage facility that is one of the biggest silver markets in Europe. It’s pretty secure – it survived a direct hit in the Second World War. There are around 30 small shops in it, all specializing in silver items, ranged along the corridor.
And they all look gorgeous .
Point your browser at the URL and have a look at the pictures, words just can’t do it justice!
http://londonist.com/2015/01/have-you-ever-explored-londons-silver-vaults.php
And just in case you think that everyone here on the right hand side of the pond dotes on my home city, here are a few choice quotes from people who didn’t like it! (Beware: bad language...)
http://londonist.com/2015/01/londonisshit.php
Scanner: Internet Security and encryption
EU response to free speech killings? More internet censorship
https://gigaom.com/2015/01/11/eu-response-to-free-speech-killings-more-internet-censorship/
WhatsApp and iMessage could be banned under new surveillance plans
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/whatsapp-and-snapchat-could-be-banned-under-new-surveillance-plans-9973035.html
What do UK and Iran have in common? Both want to outlaw encrypted apps
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/12/iranuk_in_accord_as_pm_promises_to_
block_encrypted_comms_after_election/
Don’t use Charlie Hebdo to justify Big Brother data-slurp – Data protection MEP
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/14/dont_use_charlie_hebdo_to_justify_your_
orwellian_aims_says_data_protection_mep/
Euro security agency says more crypto needed in gov policy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/14/ensia_encryptions_great_but_privacy_still_sucks/
President Obama is waging a war on hackers
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/president-obama-waging-war-hackers/
David Cameron seeks cooperation of US president over encryption crackdown
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/15/david-cameron-ask-us-barack-
obama-help-tracking-islamist-extremists-online
Why western governments want to destroy computer security – and your security along the way
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001084.html
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi and Lois 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
18 January 2015
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.
