Fed2 Star - December 10, 2017 - page 2 (of 2)

[Fiona Craig]

Fed2 Star
Earthdate December 10, 2017


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Official News part two


VIDEO OF THE WEEK: PIZZA… IN… SPAAAAACE!

by Hazed

The astronauts on the International Space Station were treated to pizza
night recently, because NASA sent them a special meal kit of pizza bases
and assorted toppings.

You can see the astronauts assembling the pizzas and then spinning them
around in the micro-gravity of the station in this video:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-42234813/pizza-night-aboard-the-international-space-station

It looks like a lot of fun.


PICTURE OF THE WEEK: A VERY COMPLEX STORM ON JUPITER

by Hazed

The Juno spacecraft has been watching Jupiter’s swirling storms, and
last month it took a close-up picture of one very complex storm system.
I say close-up – the image actually shows a span of about 30,000
kilometres, which is about as wide as the Earth.

Take a look at the storm picture here:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171128.html


WINDING DOWN

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


Welcome back to Winding Down. I have managed to get a short edition
together, in spite of my doubts last week about whether it would be
possible. For your reading we have material on Android trackers, the
National Credit Federation security failure, scientific theories,
botnets taken down, nice pictures of the moon, a quote from physicist
James Dewar and a cartoon about self-driving cars. Scanner URLs point
you to legal issues with space applications, modular nuclear reactors
for space exploration, how to find out if anyone has used your name to
make comments opposing net neutrality to the FCC, old tools made from
meteorites, and finally another setback for Uber.

What more could you want?


Shorts:

Your Android phone knows where you are, and it’s not shy about telling
the apps on the phone where you are! Security researchers recently
identified a staggering 44 trackers in more than 300 Android apps on
Google Play. The researchers suspect that iOS phones may have similar
problems, but they haven’t yet produced any figures. Worrying.
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/24/staggering-variety-of-clandestine-trackers-found-in-popular-android-apps/

Groan... Another data breach by people failing to use Amazon cloud’s
security features properly. This time it was, of all things, a credit
repair service. Forty thousand individuals personal details in the
National Credit Federation database are at risk. I wonder if company
directors and executives would start taking security seriously if loss
of personal data was punishable by the confiscation of all company
assets and the jailing the person involved and all the line managers up
to and including the managing director!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/02/national_credit_federation_aws_leak/


Homework:

I discovered a fascinating piece by the late Isaac Asimov about whether
scientific theories can be wrong. Asimov’s view is that as long as the
theory happens to be the best fit for the facts known at the time the
theory is promulgated, then, no, they are not wrong. For Asimov wrong
and right in relation to scientific theory are not absolutes. Over time
improvements in experimental methods, or new discoveries may be made
producing information that doesn’t fit the current theory, rendering it
in need of enhancement, or substantial rewriting.

Even amazing upgrades rarely completely ‘overthrow’ old ones, they
usually subsume them. Even something as radically new as the theory of
relativity didn’t make Newton’s theory wrong, it showed that it only
applied within certain limits. We often still assume that the Earth is
flat – for instance if you want to build a house, you don’t assume that
the curvature of the Earth is going to make the middle walls shorter
than the outside one. You just assume that for the purposes of building
a house the Earth is flat over the distance involved!

Take a look at the article; it’s very easy to read. And for the curious,
even if you smoothed out all the mountains, filled in the seas, etc, the
Earth would still not be round, because it’s actually an oblate
spheroid, and that matters for the GPS satellite system!
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm


Geek Stuff:

Good news. A team made up from the FFBI, Europol’s European Cybercrime
Center, Joint Cybercrime Action Task Force (J-CAT), Eurojust, and
Germany’s Luneburg Central Criminal Investigation Inspectorate, along
with Microsoft and ESET have managed to take down one of the world’s
largest malware rings. This achievements knocks out a bunch of botnets
that between them infected over a million computers. Good work.
https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/fbi-europol-microsoft-eset-team-up-dismantle-one-of-worlds-largest-malware-operations/d/d-id/1330548


Pictures:

A moon picture and a moon video this week. The picture is of this
month’s full moon over the Alps, taken shortly before moonset. Stunning.

Even more stunning is the video, it takes just under just under four
minutes to show a complete moonrise. No tricks, it’s the event in real
time.. One of the most amazing pieces of video I’ve seen for a long
time. The blurb at the bottom explains how it was done. A must see.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171208.html
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171203.html


Coda:

“Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.”
Attributed to James Dewar, Scottish physicist and inventor of the vacuum
flask.

And finally to cheer you up in run up to Christmas, take a look at this
very funny XKCD on self-driving cars...
https://xkcd.com/1925/


Scanner:

Seeking regulatory certainty for new space applications
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3385/1

Mars and beyond: Modular nuclear reactors set to power next wave of deep
space exploration
https://newatlas.com/nasa-nuclear-reactor-mars-kilopower/52355/

Did you unwittingly support the destruction of net neutrality rules?
Find out with the New York’s Attorney General search tool
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/04/unwitting_support_destruction_net_neutrality/

Discover the Jacobean Traveling Library: The 17th Century precursor to
the Kindle
http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/discover-the-jacobean-traveling-library-the-17th-century-precursor-to-the-kindle.html

Iron tools from the Bronze Age found to have otherworldly origins
https://newatlas.com/bronze-age-iron-tools-meteorites/52474/

Denied: Uber’s request to skip to UK Supreme Court to appeal workers’ rights
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/05/uber_denied_right_to_appeal_employment_rights_case_in_supreme_court/


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
10 December 2017

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.