Fed2 Star - September 2, 2018 - page 2 (of 2)
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Fiona Craig
Sep 2, 2018, 5:45:16 AM9/2/18
to fed2...@googlegroups.com
Fed2 Star
Earthdate September 2, 2018
[This is a subscription mailing list. Details about how to stop
receiving it are at the foot of the email.]
For a fancy formatted version go the Fed2 Star website:
http://www.ibgames.net/fednews/current/index.html
Official News part two
DUMB CRIMINAL OF THE WEEK: HACKY HACK HACK
by Hazed
An Australian fan of Apple was desperate to get a job at the company, so
he decided to impress them with his skills by hacking the company’s systems.
The 16-year-old broke into Apple’s servers several times and downloaded
about 90GB of stuff.
When Apple found out that their computers had been breached they called
in the FBI, who cooperated with Australian law enforcement to trace the
intrusion to computers owned by the unnamed teenager.
They seized laptops, a phone and a hard drive that all connected the
miscreant to the hack attack. One of the biggest giveaways was finding
the data that had been downloaded, saved into a folder labelled “hacky
hack hack.”
Rather than landing himself a job at the company, the hacker is likely
to end up with a criminal conviction.
Source:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/16/who_hacked_apple_ozzie_ozzie_ozzie_boy_boy_boy/
DUMB ART LOVER OF THE WEEK: STEPPED INTO A HOLE
by Hazed
A piece of art by Anish Kapoor that is on display in a Portuguese
gallery fooled a visitor recently. It is called ‘Descent Into Limbo’ and
it looks like a large black hole in the ground. Is it a real hole, or is
just a black circle painted on the floor?
Well, it turns out it really is a hole because an Italian visitor
stepped onto it – and fell in. The hole looks as if it goes on for ever
but in fact it’s about 8 feet deep.
This might sound like a health and safety nightmare, but visitors are
warned: they have to sign a disclaimer, there are warning signs posted,
and a member of staff stands next to the hole. But somehow this person
ignored them all and stepped into the void.
Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt – at least not physically, but I would
imagine he fell pretty stupid!
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/aug/21/holed-up-man-falls-into-art-installation-of-8ft-hole-painted-black
ON THE WEB: HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE IN SPACE RIGHT NOW
by Hazed
If you want to know how many people are in space right now, click here:
https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/. The site tells you the
number and gives a bit of information about who they are.
Right now, all of them are on the International Space Station. Maybe one
day we’ll have people on the moon again, or even on Mars.
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: STANDING ON THE SURFACE OF A COMET
by Hazed
Rosetta’s mission to comet 67/P ended nearly two years ago, but there
are still some incredible images of the comet being produced from the
probe’s data.
Here’s one that has been processed to make it feel as though you are
standing right on the surface of the comet. Take a look at the picture
here:
https://gizmodo.com/rosetta-image-makes-you-feel-like-youre-on-the-surface-1828131744
WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and
science news
by Alan Lenton
Well here we are with another edition of Winding Down at the start of a
new month. This issue has material on an Intel License, a Facebook
numbers dispute, the first vending machine, flat Earth believers – or
maybe not, IBM drone delivering coffee for the distressed, an unusual
video using ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd as the soundtrack, a night time snap of
Java from the ISS – spot the volcanoes, and some guidelines for budding
bureaucrats. Scanner has URLs pointing to material on cryptocurrency and
bail, why a lack of coffee causes a headache, Facebook and a nude
Picasso, how to lose a million visitors, a reverse filter, Hunger
Stones, and a maths version of a time machine.
Enjoy!
Shorts:
One of last week’s Scanner URLs pointed to an article about Intel
patching yet more security holes in its chip sets. Well, some eagle eyed
type actually read the license that went with the fixes. It turned out
that there was a clause in the license saying you couldn’t publish the
results of comparing how fast the chip performed before and after the
patches.
General outrage in the community ensued and Intel rapidly backed off and
issued a new version of the license without the offending clause! For
the record, all of these patches issued by the chip makers over the last
six months or so slow things down. That’s because the bugs they are
trying to fix were caused by their original attempts to make their chips
run faster. It’s a very competitive environment, and everyone wanted to
trumpet the claim that they produced the fastest chip. In doing so they
neglected to take into account all the possible security problems.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/21/intel_cpu_patch_licence/
I see that Facebook is being dragged into court by one of its
advertisers, who claims it has less members than it is claiming in the
billing for the adverts. For instance, the complainant suggests that
claimed reach for 18-to-34 year-olds in each of the US states is more
than the actual population of 18-to-34 year-olds in each state.
Actually, complainants go as far as claiming that Facebook’s figures are
inflated by a massive 400%!
I look forward to reading more as this case proceeds – I’ll keep you up
to date...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/17/facebook_ad_reach_lawsuit/
Homework:
Vending machines are pretty ubiquitous these days, and are dispensing
even more different items. But, did you know that the first vending
machine was built in England in the 18th Century? Not only that, it sold
gin!
What happened was that in 1736 the British parliament passed an act
which restricted the sale of gin to people with a license – and the
license was expensive. An enterprising ex-soldier, Captain Dudley
Bradstreet, spotted the fact that the police had to take the seller to
court, but the act gave them no authority to enter a building.
So, he rented a building and placed a statue of a cat in the wall of the
building – it was called the Puss and Mew. The would-be drinker had to
walk up to the statue and say, “Puss, do you have any gin?” The statue
would meow, and a drawer would open in its mouth. The thirsty punter
would put the coins into the drawer, which then closed, and gin would be
dispensed through a hose under one of the cat’s paws.
The whole shebang was being operated by Bradstreet, but since the good
Captain was in the house the police didn’t know who to arrest! OK, it
may not have been mechanically operated but it did accept coins, and it
did dispense the goods. I think that’s a reasonable definition of a
vending machine...
https://hackaday.com/2018/08/23/the-first-vending-machine-hacked-liquor-laws-the-puss-and-mew/
Do people really think Earth might be flat? A poll says lots of
Millennials do. To be precise only 66% think that it’s round. Well,
that’s what the headline in Scientific American said. Hmmm! Well for a
start, the journal got a copy of the spreadsheet and worked out that the
figure was 83% according to the spreadsheet. But that’s as far as the
article went.
So do I really think a sixth of people participating in the survey don’t
think the Earth is roun?. Not really. Frankly, my first thought on
reading the headline was that if someone asked a question like that I
would assume this was an opportunity to string them along and pretend to
be some sort of Flat Earth type! But looking further, we find out that
the statement they were asked to agree or disagree with was, “I have
always believed the world is round.” Note that the question wasn’t, “Do
you believe the world is round?”
Given the question asked, I think we can fairly say that only 17% of the
sample gave truthful answers, because it’s extremely unlikely that at
some time during early childhood people have not thought the world was
flat. Therefore, the correct answer is, “I have not ALWAYS believed the
world is round.” The correct question to ask is, of course, “I believe
the world is round.” It’s actually quite easy to be precise in English.
(It’s also a magnificent language to be vague in, but that’s another
story!) Maybe YouGov, who conducted the poll, should get someone who has
a thorough grasp of the English language to write their questions...
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-people-really-think-earth-might-be-flat/
Geek Stuff:
I had to snigger at one of the latest patent filings from IBM. I think
they must be getting really desperate. It’s for coffee drones that fly
around looking for people they (the drones) think need a caffeine hit.
When they find a poor unsuspecting victim, sorry, I mean customer, they
lower a gimbal mounted coffee cup – with an inbuilt heater – on a piece
of string. Once they think you’ve taken it they cut the string! As ‘The
Register’ so aptly put it, “What could possibly go wrong?”
What indeed!
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/23/ibm_coffee_drone_patent/
Pictures:
This week’s main picture is, in fact, a video animation. A video made by
two of the most unlikely collaborators – Salvador Dali and Walt Disney!
It’s only seven minutes long, and the original music chosen by Dali was
not what I’d call brilliant. However, someone (I don’t know who), has
replaced the music with “Time” from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the
Moon”, and it completely transforms it. Well worth seven minutes of
anyone’s time.
http://www.openculture.com/2018/08/salvador-dali-walt-disneys-short-animated-film-destino-set-music-pink-floyd.html
If you prefer static pictures you might like to take a look at a picture
of Java taken at night from the International Space Station. Since it’s
a night time photograph, you can see the urban areas by their lighting.
But Java is part of a chain of active volcanoes. Obviously no one lives
in volcanoes (unless you are a James Bond villain), but space is limited
and they do live close to the edges. This means you can see where the
volcanoes are, because they appear as black rings – no lights in them.
Interestingly enough, you can see the lights of the villages clustered
around them as a lit ring. Fascinating.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92666/lights-of-java
Scanner:
Here’s why the FBI didn’t let an alleged hacker use cryptocurrency to
pay his bail [Spotted via ADVFN Crypto newsletter]
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-we-need-bailcoin-fbi-refuses-to-take-cryptocurrency-in-videogame-hacking-case-2018-08-17
Here’s why missing your daily coffee can lead to a headache
https://www.sciencealert.com/why-missing-a-coffee-can-give-you-headaches
Facebook censors Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s advert featuring nude
Picasso painting
https://hyperallergic.com/454589/facebook-censors-montreal-museum-of-fine-arts-ad-featuring-nude-picasso-painting/
The UK’s National Portrait Gallery ‘lost’ a million visitors thanks to
counting system that could not count
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/28/national-portrait-gallery-lost-half-million-visitors-thanks/
“Reverse filter” traps small objects but lets larger ones through
https://newatlas.com/reverse-filter-liquid-membrane/56084/
‘Hunger Stones’ with dire warnings have been surfacing in Central Europe
https://www.sciencealert.com/sinister-hunger-stones-dire-warnings-surfacing-european-heatwave-czech-drought-elbe-decin
Physicists say they’ve come up with a mathematical model for a viable
time machine
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-came-up-with-a-mathematical-model-for-a-viable-time-machine
Quote for the week:
This week’s quote is from James H. Boren, an American bureaucrat...
Guidelines for bureaucrats:
(1) When in charge, ponder
(2) When in trouble, delegate
(3) When in doubt, mumble
from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Coda:
Hold the front page! As we go to press, news is breaking that Mastercard
and Google have done a deal to get Google even more data on its
customers... Details, first appearing in a Blooberg report, are sketchy,
but I have little doubt this one will run and run if there is anything
in the story.
More next week...
https://www.rt.com/business/437386-mastercard-google-deal-cards/
https://slate.com/technology/2018/08/google-mastercard-data-track-offline-purchases.html
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for
Winding Down.
Please send suggestions for stories to al...@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
al...@ibgames.com
2 September 2018
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.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at
http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
Earthdate September 2, 2018
[This is a subscription mailing list. Details about how to stop
receiving it are at the foot of the email.]
For a fancy formatted version go the Fed2 Star website:
http://www.ibgames.net/fednews/current/index.html
Official News part two
DUMB CRIMINAL OF THE WEEK: HACKY HACK HACK
by Hazed
An Australian fan of Apple was desperate to get a job at the company, so
he decided to impress them with his skills by hacking the company’s systems.
The 16-year-old broke into Apple’s servers several times and downloaded
about 90GB of stuff.
When Apple found out that their computers had been breached they called
in the FBI, who cooperated with Australian law enforcement to trace the
intrusion to computers owned by the unnamed teenager.
They seized laptops, a phone and a hard drive that all connected the
miscreant to the hack attack. One of the biggest giveaways was finding
the data that had been downloaded, saved into a folder labelled “hacky
hack hack.”
Rather than landing himself a job at the company, the hacker is likely
to end up with a criminal conviction.
Source:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/16/who_hacked_apple_ozzie_ozzie_ozzie_boy_boy_boy/
DUMB ART LOVER OF THE WEEK: STEPPED INTO A HOLE
by Hazed
A piece of art by Anish Kapoor that is on display in a Portuguese
gallery fooled a visitor recently. It is called ‘Descent Into Limbo’ and
it looks like a large black hole in the ground. Is it a real hole, or is
just a black circle painted on the floor?
Well, it turns out it really is a hole because an Italian visitor
stepped onto it – and fell in. The hole looks as if it goes on for ever
but in fact it’s about 8 feet deep.
This might sound like a health and safety nightmare, but visitors are
warned: they have to sign a disclaimer, there are warning signs posted,
and a member of staff stands next to the hole. But somehow this person
ignored them all and stepped into the void.
Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt – at least not physically, but I would
imagine he fell pretty stupid!
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/aug/21/holed-up-man-falls-into-art-installation-of-8ft-hole-painted-black
ON THE WEB: HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE IN SPACE RIGHT NOW
by Hazed
If you want to know how many people are in space right now, click here:
https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/. The site tells you the
number and gives a bit of information about who they are.
Right now, all of them are on the International Space Station. Maybe one
day we’ll have people on the moon again, or even on Mars.
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: STANDING ON THE SURFACE OF A COMET
by Hazed
Rosetta’s mission to comet 67/P ended nearly two years ago, but there
are still some incredible images of the comet being produced from the
probe’s data.
Here’s one that has been processed to make it feel as though you are
standing right on the surface of the comet. Take a look at the picture
here:
https://gizmodo.com/rosetta-image-makes-you-feel-like-youre-on-the-surface-1828131744
WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and
science news
by Alan Lenton
Well here we are with another edition of Winding Down at the start of a
new month. This issue has material on an Intel License, a Facebook
numbers dispute, the first vending machine, flat Earth believers – or
maybe not, IBM drone delivering coffee for the distressed, an unusual
video using ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd as the soundtrack, a night time snap of
Java from the ISS – spot the volcanoes, and some guidelines for budding
bureaucrats. Scanner has URLs pointing to material on cryptocurrency and
bail, why a lack of coffee causes a headache, Facebook and a nude
Picasso, how to lose a million visitors, a reverse filter, Hunger
Stones, and a maths version of a time machine.
Enjoy!
Shorts:
One of last week’s Scanner URLs pointed to an article about Intel
patching yet more security holes in its chip sets. Well, some eagle eyed
type actually read the license that went with the fixes. It turned out
that there was a clause in the license saying you couldn’t publish the
results of comparing how fast the chip performed before and after the
patches.
General outrage in the community ensued and Intel rapidly backed off and
issued a new version of the license without the offending clause! For
the record, all of these patches issued by the chip makers over the last
six months or so slow things down. That’s because the bugs they are
trying to fix were caused by their original attempts to make their chips
run faster. It’s a very competitive environment, and everyone wanted to
trumpet the claim that they produced the fastest chip. In doing so they
neglected to take into account all the possible security problems.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/21/intel_cpu_patch_licence/
I see that Facebook is being dragged into court by one of its
advertisers, who claims it has less members than it is claiming in the
billing for the adverts. For instance, the complainant suggests that
claimed reach for 18-to-34 year-olds in each of the US states is more
than the actual population of 18-to-34 year-olds in each state.
Actually, complainants go as far as claiming that Facebook’s figures are
inflated by a massive 400%!
I look forward to reading more as this case proceeds – I’ll keep you up
to date...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/17/facebook_ad_reach_lawsuit/
Homework:
Vending machines are pretty ubiquitous these days, and are dispensing
even more different items. But, did you know that the first vending
machine was built in England in the 18th Century? Not only that, it sold
gin!
What happened was that in 1736 the British parliament passed an act
which restricted the sale of gin to people with a license – and the
license was expensive. An enterprising ex-soldier, Captain Dudley
Bradstreet, spotted the fact that the police had to take the seller to
court, but the act gave them no authority to enter a building.
So, he rented a building and placed a statue of a cat in the wall of the
building – it was called the Puss and Mew. The would-be drinker had to
walk up to the statue and say, “Puss, do you have any gin?” The statue
would meow, and a drawer would open in its mouth. The thirsty punter
would put the coins into the drawer, which then closed, and gin would be
dispensed through a hose under one of the cat’s paws.
The whole shebang was being operated by Bradstreet, but since the good
Captain was in the house the police didn’t know who to arrest! OK, it
may not have been mechanically operated but it did accept coins, and it
did dispense the goods. I think that’s a reasonable definition of a
vending machine...
https://hackaday.com/2018/08/23/the-first-vending-machine-hacked-liquor-laws-the-puss-and-mew/
Do people really think Earth might be flat? A poll says lots of
Millennials do. To be precise only 66% think that it’s round. Well,
that’s what the headline in Scientific American said. Hmmm! Well for a
start, the journal got a copy of the spreadsheet and worked out that the
figure was 83% according to the spreadsheet. But that’s as far as the
article went.
So do I really think a sixth of people participating in the survey don’t
think the Earth is roun?. Not really. Frankly, my first thought on
reading the headline was that if someone asked a question like that I
would assume this was an opportunity to string them along and pretend to
be some sort of Flat Earth type! But looking further, we find out that
the statement they were asked to agree or disagree with was, “I have
always believed the world is round.” Note that the question wasn’t, “Do
you believe the world is round?”
Given the question asked, I think we can fairly say that only 17% of the
sample gave truthful answers, because it’s extremely unlikely that at
some time during early childhood people have not thought the world was
flat. Therefore, the correct answer is, “I have not ALWAYS believed the
world is round.” The correct question to ask is, of course, “I believe
the world is round.” It’s actually quite easy to be precise in English.
(It’s also a magnificent language to be vague in, but that’s another
story!) Maybe YouGov, who conducted the poll, should get someone who has
a thorough grasp of the English language to write their questions...
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-people-really-think-earth-might-be-flat/
Geek Stuff:
I had to snigger at one of the latest patent filings from IBM. I think
they must be getting really desperate. It’s for coffee drones that fly
around looking for people they (the drones) think need a caffeine hit.
When they find a poor unsuspecting victim, sorry, I mean customer, they
lower a gimbal mounted coffee cup – with an inbuilt heater – on a piece
of string. Once they think you’ve taken it they cut the string! As ‘The
Register’ so aptly put it, “What could possibly go wrong?”
What indeed!
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/23/ibm_coffee_drone_patent/
Pictures:
This week’s main picture is, in fact, a video animation. A video made by
two of the most unlikely collaborators – Salvador Dali and Walt Disney!
It’s only seven minutes long, and the original music chosen by Dali was
not what I’d call brilliant. However, someone (I don’t know who), has
replaced the music with “Time” from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the
Moon”, and it completely transforms it. Well worth seven minutes of
anyone’s time.
http://www.openculture.com/2018/08/salvador-dali-walt-disneys-short-animated-film-destino-set-music-pink-floyd.html
If you prefer static pictures you might like to take a look at a picture
of Java taken at night from the International Space Station. Since it’s
a night time photograph, you can see the urban areas by their lighting.
But Java is part of a chain of active volcanoes. Obviously no one lives
in volcanoes (unless you are a James Bond villain), but space is limited
and they do live close to the edges. This means you can see where the
volcanoes are, because they appear as black rings – no lights in them.
Interestingly enough, you can see the lights of the villages clustered
around them as a lit ring. Fascinating.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92666/lights-of-java
Scanner:
Here’s why the FBI didn’t let an alleged hacker use cryptocurrency to
pay his bail [Spotted via ADVFN Crypto newsletter]
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-we-need-bailcoin-fbi-refuses-to-take-cryptocurrency-in-videogame-hacking-case-2018-08-17
Here’s why missing your daily coffee can lead to a headache
https://www.sciencealert.com/why-missing-a-coffee-can-give-you-headaches
Facebook censors Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s advert featuring nude
Picasso painting
https://hyperallergic.com/454589/facebook-censors-montreal-museum-of-fine-arts-ad-featuring-nude-picasso-painting/
The UK’s National Portrait Gallery ‘lost’ a million visitors thanks to
counting system that could not count
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/28/national-portrait-gallery-lost-half-million-visitors-thanks/
“Reverse filter” traps small objects but lets larger ones through
https://newatlas.com/reverse-filter-liquid-membrane/56084/
‘Hunger Stones’ with dire warnings have been surfacing in Central Europe
https://www.sciencealert.com/sinister-hunger-stones-dire-warnings-surfacing-european-heatwave-czech-drought-elbe-decin
Physicists say they’ve come up with a mathematical model for a viable
time machine
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-came-up-with-a-mathematical-model-for-a-viable-time-machine
Quote for the week:
This week’s quote is from James H. Boren, an American bureaucrat...
Guidelines for bureaucrats:
(1) When in charge, ponder
(2) When in trouble, delegate
(3) When in doubt, mumble
from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Coda:
Hold the front page! As we go to press, news is breaking that Mastercard
and Google have done a deal to get Google even more data on its
customers... Details, first appearing in a Blooberg report, are sketchy,
but I have little doubt this one will run and run if there is anything
in the story.
More next week...
https://www.rt.com/business/437386-mastercard-google-deal-cards/
https://slate.com/technology/2018/08/google-mastercard-data-track-offline-purchases.html
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for
Winding Down.
Please send suggestions for stories to al...@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
al...@ibgames.com
2 September 2018
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.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at
http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages