Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: December 6, 2015

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WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton

Robot camel jockeys head the stories this week, followed by DHS computer security – or rather lack thereof, fingerprint hacking, commercial space development, Sherlock Homes favourites, sci-fi sinister corporations, programming language bugs, and secret London locations. URLs will take you to pieces on encryption, the Raspberry Pi Zero, a new digital storage technology, a paint drying film, telecoms futures, Dell apologies to customers, and Google’s machine learning system.

Shorts:

Last issue (remember last issue – it was two weeks ago) I commented on my surprise as to why anyone would want a motorcycling robot to ride their motorbike. Well, it seems there is already a similar use of robots around. There are, it appears robot camel jockeys, used in camel racing in the Middle East. Obviously, you want your jockeys to weigh as little as possible, and until about ten years ago small children were used. Since then they have been replaced with lightweight robots, which are much more appropriate than the children, given the dangers involved, as well as being lighter. I had no idea there were robot camel jockeys – I guess you live and learn! I wonder how long it will be before they start to build, and use, horse racing variants?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDBGdEZa9eM
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/sports/camel-racing-in-the-united-arab-emirates-is-a-blend-of-centuries-old-traditions-and-modern-technology.html?_r=1
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-12-29/ancient-arabian-tradition-camel-racing-has-taken-modern-twist-robot-jockeys

Oh dear! The US Department of Homeland Security has been caught with its trousers around its ankles. An audit of its IT infrastructures found 136 systems that had no one in charge of keeping them updated. Of those 136, no less than 17 of them had ‘secret’ or ‘top secret’ classifications! And the US government wants to be able to hold decrypted copies of its citizens’ personal info and correspondence in its databases?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/20/homeland_securitys_secret_unpatched_pcs_dbs/

On the subject of security, German hacker Jan Krissler has succeeded in faking the fingerprints of Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen using photographs of her hands. One of the photographs used even came from an official press release. So much for fingerprints as a security device!
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/30/hacker-fakes-german-ministers-fingerprints-using-photos-of-her-hands

Homework:

There’s an interesting piece in The Space Review about funding commercial space development. Actually, much of the piece applies to any high tech development. The point the article is making is that while start-ups in the 20th Century could be funded with a starting capital of a few thousand dollars, and maybe a bit of moonlighting until money started coming in, today many of these sort of start-ups require tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.

As the author points out: “Four of the most noteworthy startups in the space industry—Blue Origin, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Stratolauncher—have one thing in common: they were funded by extremely wealthy individuals with a passion for space.” A far cry from the Wright brothers! And a direct result of the massive start-up costs involved. But it’s not just the space industry that has such costs, many other industries now have similar problems, though maybe not on quite the same scale as the space industry. And if you pick an industry that has government regulation...

The author has some suggestions for tackling this problem by changing the financial regulations governing how you can invest in these sort of start-ups (in the USA). They look feasible to me, but how easy it would be to get the changes made, I don’t know. Take a look; it’s an interesting article that will make you think.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2873/1

Are you a Sherlock Holmes fan? So which one is your favourite? Mine is ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. The Strand Magazine ran a competition to find the all-time favourite in 1927, and as part of the run up to the competition it asked Conan Doyle for his 12 favourites. I’m not going to tell you which ones were on his list – you can read it for yourself at the URL...
http://www.openculture.com/2015/10/arthur-conan-doyle-names-his-19-favorite-sherlock-holmes-stories.html

Geek Stuff:

Introducing your next employer... Point your browser at InfoWorld’s slide show on sinister corporations from the Sci-Fi world. The makers of Terminator robots, Soylent Green, and Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs – they’re all there.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2998201/misadventures/evilco-8-sinister-sci-fi-corporations-you-could-be-working-for-soon.html#slide1

So... Which programming languages do you think produce the most security problems? A recent study indicates that PHP leads the pack, with a suggestion that 86% of applications written in PHP have a cross site scripting problem, and over half have SQL injection problems. It’s an interesting study, but don’t just take it at face value. Little attempt seems to have been made to keep variables other than the language used constant, although the spokesperson for the company doing the research, Veracode, does allude to some of these problems.

Most of the work on this report was done by scanning the cloud and analysing the code found, which implies cloud based web apps. I suspect there aren’t all that many cloud based C++ web apps out there – and, of course they would be compiled, so the source would be unavailable for inspection... An interesting report, but it would have been much more useful if it had been backed with a study of the programmers who write these apps...
http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/the-programming-languages-that-spawn-the-most-software-vulnerabilities/d/d-id/1323397

London:

Should you be visiting London at some time in the not too distant future, you might like to take a look at the ‘Historic UK’ site – in particular its ‘Secret London’ section which covers a variety of interesting but lesser known sites, including such gems as the execution dock in Wapping, where pirates were hung, the only London lighthouse, the Tabard Inn in Southwark which was the starting place for Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, and (if you have kids with you) the legendary platform nine and three quarters.
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/SecretLondon/

Scanner:

Encryption is not the enemy
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3006958/government/encryption-is-not-the-enemy.html

Raspberry Pi Zero: The $5 computer
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/

Digital Optical Technology System
http://group47.com/what-is-dots/

Brit film maker plans 10hour+ Paint Drying epic
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/23/paint_drying_movie/

Quality arbitrage – Who will be the ‘Uber of telecoms’?
http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=f105fd56904428bca9da44a82&id=707335d48a&e=eab3a9dc66

Dell apologizes for HTTPS certificate fiasco, and provides removal tool
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/dell-apologizes-for-https-certificate-fiasco-provides-removal-tool/

Google open sources its machine learning system, ‘TensorFlow’
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2015/11/google-open-sources-its-machine.html

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
6 December 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.

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