Fed2 Star - July 8, 2018 - page 1 (of 2)
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Fiona Craig
Jul 8, 2018, 7:07:11 AM7/8/18
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Fed2 Star
Earthdate July 8, 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
In this week’s Fed2 Star: the newsdroids return and Thing2 is in a much
better mood, how to avoid our spam filters, Japanese probe arrives at
asteroid, recovering fifty-year-old moon images, get out of your car
before you park it, more info about the ‘safety’ driver of the
self-drive Uber car that hit a pedestrian, disgruntled gamer is shot by
the mother of a girl he intended to harass, stupid salesman wants
face-to-face customer to prove she is human, and pictures of buildings
constructed out of spite. Plus the welcome return of Winding Down, the
tech newsletter from Alan.
Official News part one
THING2 COMES BACK FROM THE FACTORY WITH RAISED SPIRITS
by Hazed
The newsdroids have returned from their stay at the factory where they
had their moods checked and regularised. You may recall that Thing2 had
been extremely melancholy, and had taken to moping in corners rather
than doing any work. The last issue of the Star it had worked on had
ended up with problems in the email version, which I now know was a
symptom of the decline in its mood.
It has returned a completely different droid. Not literally – I mean
that its mood has been adjusted and it is now sunny and optimistic, keen
and helpful – everything a model newsdroid should be. As well as working
on this issue of the Star, it has donned an apron and is frantically
cleaning the offices to make sure everything is spic and span.
Thing1 and Thing3 have also had their personalities tweaked a little.
The change is not so noticeable in those two newsdroids, because they
hadn’t been showing any outward signs of problems, but the service
report I was sent showed that they would have eventually have started to
display similar signs of depression.
The manufacturers will now have to roll out a software patch for all the
other droids of this model that are out there, to fix the problem in
their programming that can lead to depression. If they can’t come up
with a way to address the issue with remote software upgrades, they may
have to issue a recall and get them all sent back to the factory for
modification – and that will prove very expensive!
Meanwhile, Alan is feeling a bit better and is far enough along the
metaphorical road to recovery that he is able to produce a short issue
of Winding Down for your reading pleasure.
MAKE SURE OUR EMAIL FILTERS DON’T ZAP YOUR MAIL
by Hazed
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers
from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” says the
unofficial motto of the post office. Well, modern day couriers that
regularly lose parcels obviously don’t follow this, but it sounds
impressive.
Snow and rain don’t affect email but there are plenty of other things
that can stop your mail getting to the recipient, and one of those
things is the volume of spam that overwhelms legitimate mail. It is
estimated that about 60% of all email is spam at the moment.
Here at ibgames we use spam filters to try to stem the tide, but
sometimes they block emails that are not junk mail by mistake.
To make sure your very important emails don’t get caught up in the spam
filters, you need to put “Fed2” in the subject line.
Spam is one of the internet scourges we all have to put up with. Spam
filters help, but the problem with them is that if you make them too
tight to stop any unwanted solicitations getting through, you risk
losing genuine email which is mistaken for spam. This is known as a
false positive. Loosen the filters to stop that happening, and spam will
find its way through – false negatives.
The way to get around this is to set up rules in your mail client that
identifies emails that you know you want to receive, using certain
criteria that they conform to. The obvious one is to whitelist email
addresses for your friends, businesses you want to hear from, and
mailing lists you have subscribed to. But that’s no help when a Fed2
player who has never emailed me before wants to get in touch.
So I’ve set up a rule that identifies genuine mail about Fed by looking
for the magic word in the subject line: Fed2. Make sure you put that
somewhere in the subject line and your mail won’t be consigned to the
bit bucket.
REAL LIFE NEWS: SPACE PROBE REACHES ITS TARGET ASTEROID
by Hazed
A Japanese spacecraft has arrived at the asteroid it has been travelling
towards for four years.
Hayabusa 2’s target is a space rock called Ryugu, which is shaped like a
diamond (you can see a picture at the source link below). The probe will
study the asteroid close up and take samples of rocks and soil, which
will be delivered back to Earth.
It will start by studying the surface features, and then will use
explosives to propel a projectile into the rock so it can dig out a
sample from below the surface. While Hayabusa 2 remains in orbit around
the asteroid, a copper “impactor” will separate and float down to the
surface.
Studying asteroids gives scientists insights into the origins of the
Solar System, since the rocks are leftover bits of the materials that
formed the planets. In the coming months and years we are sure to get
some fascinating findings from the Hayabusa 2 mission.
Meanwhile in other asteroid mission news, a NASA probe is on its way to
an asteroid called Bennu and is expected to arrive there in August. It
too hopes to bring back samples of asteroid dust.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44603120
REAL LIFE NEWS: MOON IMAGES FROM FIFTY YEARS AGO ARE OF SURPRISING QUALITY
by Hazed
At the start of the space race fifty years ago, when the Apollo missions
were being planned, five unmanned lunar orbiters circled the moon. Their
job was to take pictures of the surface, so mission control back home
could pick the best landing site.
The images were extremely high resolution and could be blown up to 40 x
54 size, so the exact spots where the astronauts would walk could be
identified.
Then these super-hi-res images were locked away until after the bulk of
the moon landings, because the USA didn’t want to give away details of
its secret spy satellite cameras, the technology of which was used in
the orbiters.
In 1971, low-res images from the cameras were released. But they were
grainy and of poor quality, and were mostly of interest to academics.
The data that the lunar orbiters sent back to Earth was stored on
analogue tapes. These were moved around for many years, until finally
some forward-thinking scientists decided they had to be digitised for
future generations, before the tapes decayed or the technology needed to
read them was no longer available.
Getting the pictures off the tapes was quite a challenge, and how they
did it is detailed at the first link below.
The recovery project has now brought back 2,000 images from 1,500 tapes
and they are of surprising quality. The second link below has the
pictures recovered between 2007 and 2014. Warning: the files are very large!
Source: http://www.worldofindie.co.uk/?p=682
http://www.moonviews.com/
REAL LIFE NEWS: PARKING BY REMOTE CONTROL
by Hazed
It will soon be legal in the UK to let your car park itself. New rules
from the Department for Transport (DfT) will allow use of the
technology, and will pave the way towards legislation for driverless
cars in the future.
A number of high-end models of cars already come equipped with
ultrasonic sensors and this allows them to undertake a number of tasks
without the driver actually sitting in the driving seat, such as
parallel or end-on parking.
The DfT consulted with a range of groups including manufacturers,
insurance groups and haulage companies, and support for allowing the
technology as overwhelming.
The technology will allow much better use of parking spaces, since the
cars will be able to park in much tighter gaps.
Speaking as a driver who is crap at parking, I am delighted at this
change and look forward to the next car I buy doing the parking for me.
Source:
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/05/remote-control-parking-legalised-in-the-uk-from-next-month/
REAL LIFE NEWS: UBER CRASH DRIVER WAS WATCHING TV TALENT SHOW
by Hazed
Speaking of driverless cars… more news has been released about the
tragic incident in which a self-driving Uber car killed a pedestrian in
Arizona. It has been revealed that the ‘safety’ driver Rafaela Vasquez
who was behind the wheel was watching a stream of the TV show The Voice
on her phone when the crash happened. Not very safe!
Police say that the collision, in which Elaine Herzberg was killed while
crossing the road, was “entirely avoidable”. Instead of paying
attention, Vasquez repeatedly looked down at her phone, and only glanced
up half a second before the car hit the pedestrian. Before that she kept
her head down for 5.3 seconds.
She may face charges of vehicular manslaughter, said police.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/22/driver-was-streaming-the-voice-when-uber-self-driving-car-crashed-say-police
REAL LIFE NEWS: GAMER FLIES ROUND WORLD TO HARASS TEENAGE GIRL – AND
GETS SHOT!
by Hazed
In a story that shows how dangerous is can be when online relationships
move into the real world, a gamer from New Zealand flew halfway around
the world to confront a teenage girl that he’d met online. His threats
and harassment were met by the girl’s irate mom – who shot him.
25-year-old Troy George Skinner got friendly with the girl on a gaming
chat app called Discord. But after several months she told him she
didn’t want to talk to him again, so he decided to go and visit her.
This involved an epic journey. Starting in Auckland, New Zealand, he
caught a flight to Sydney, Australia, then a connecting flight to Los
Angeles and another to Washington DC, and then finally caught a bus to
Goochland County, Virginia. That took some determination.
However, he didn’t just want to talk to her. He went armed with a knife,
pepper spray and some duct tape bought from a neighbourhood Walmart – so
clearly his intentions were anything but innocent.
He rang the doorbell of the house and told the girl’s mother, who
answered the door, that he had been hitchhiking for 30 miles and needed
help. But the mother was suspicious and didn’t let him in, so he went to
the back of the house and tried to break into a basement door.
The mother, who had no idea who the guy was or that her daughter knew
him online, warned Skinner that she had a gun. But this didn’t deter the
interloper, who went back to the front of the house and threw a stone
through a window, then tried to unlock it by putting his hand through
the hole.
At this point the mother made good on her threat, and shot him. She
fired twice, and hit him once in the neck. Skinner tried to run away but
collapsed in a neighbour’s front yard. The mom called the police and
they found Skinner and took him to hospital. He is expected to live, and
is facing charges of breaking and entering with a deadly weapon with the
intent to commit a serious offense.
Wow. It just goes to show that you really shouldn’t give people you meet
online any personal information – especially your address!
Source:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/27/troy_george_skinner_new_zealand_shot_by_mom/
Earthdate July 8, 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
In this week’s Fed2 Star: the newsdroids return and Thing2 is in a much
better mood, how to avoid our spam filters, Japanese probe arrives at
asteroid, recovering fifty-year-old moon images, get out of your car
before you park it, more info about the ‘safety’ driver of the
self-drive Uber car that hit a pedestrian, disgruntled gamer is shot by
the mother of a girl he intended to harass, stupid salesman wants
face-to-face customer to prove she is human, and pictures of buildings
constructed out of spite. Plus the welcome return of Winding Down, the
tech newsletter from Alan.
Official News part one
THING2 COMES BACK FROM THE FACTORY WITH RAISED SPIRITS
by Hazed
The newsdroids have returned from their stay at the factory where they
had their moods checked and regularised. You may recall that Thing2 had
been extremely melancholy, and had taken to moping in corners rather
than doing any work. The last issue of the Star it had worked on had
ended up with problems in the email version, which I now know was a
symptom of the decline in its mood.
It has returned a completely different droid. Not literally – I mean
that its mood has been adjusted and it is now sunny and optimistic, keen
and helpful – everything a model newsdroid should be. As well as working
on this issue of the Star, it has donned an apron and is frantically
cleaning the offices to make sure everything is spic and span.
Thing1 and Thing3 have also had their personalities tweaked a little.
The change is not so noticeable in those two newsdroids, because they
hadn’t been showing any outward signs of problems, but the service
report I was sent showed that they would have eventually have started to
display similar signs of depression.
The manufacturers will now have to roll out a software patch for all the
other droids of this model that are out there, to fix the problem in
their programming that can lead to depression. If they can’t come up
with a way to address the issue with remote software upgrades, they may
have to issue a recall and get them all sent back to the factory for
modification – and that will prove very expensive!
Meanwhile, Alan is feeling a bit better and is far enough along the
metaphorical road to recovery that he is able to produce a short issue
of Winding Down for your reading pleasure.
MAKE SURE OUR EMAIL FILTERS DON’T ZAP YOUR MAIL
by Hazed
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers
from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” says the
unofficial motto of the post office. Well, modern day couriers that
regularly lose parcels obviously don’t follow this, but it sounds
impressive.
Snow and rain don’t affect email but there are plenty of other things
that can stop your mail getting to the recipient, and one of those
things is the volume of spam that overwhelms legitimate mail. It is
estimated that about 60% of all email is spam at the moment.
Here at ibgames we use spam filters to try to stem the tide, but
sometimes they block emails that are not junk mail by mistake.
To make sure your very important emails don’t get caught up in the spam
filters, you need to put “Fed2” in the subject line.
Spam is one of the internet scourges we all have to put up with. Spam
filters help, but the problem with them is that if you make them too
tight to stop any unwanted solicitations getting through, you risk
losing genuine email which is mistaken for spam. This is known as a
false positive. Loosen the filters to stop that happening, and spam will
find its way through – false negatives.
The way to get around this is to set up rules in your mail client that
identifies emails that you know you want to receive, using certain
criteria that they conform to. The obvious one is to whitelist email
addresses for your friends, businesses you want to hear from, and
mailing lists you have subscribed to. But that’s no help when a Fed2
player who has never emailed me before wants to get in touch.
So I’ve set up a rule that identifies genuine mail about Fed by looking
for the magic word in the subject line: Fed2. Make sure you put that
somewhere in the subject line and your mail won’t be consigned to the
bit bucket.
REAL LIFE NEWS: SPACE PROBE REACHES ITS TARGET ASTEROID
by Hazed
A Japanese spacecraft has arrived at the asteroid it has been travelling
towards for four years.
Hayabusa 2’s target is a space rock called Ryugu, which is shaped like a
diamond (you can see a picture at the source link below). The probe will
study the asteroid close up and take samples of rocks and soil, which
will be delivered back to Earth.
It will start by studying the surface features, and then will use
explosives to propel a projectile into the rock so it can dig out a
sample from below the surface. While Hayabusa 2 remains in orbit around
the asteroid, a copper “impactor” will separate and float down to the
surface.
Studying asteroids gives scientists insights into the origins of the
Solar System, since the rocks are leftover bits of the materials that
formed the planets. In the coming months and years we are sure to get
some fascinating findings from the Hayabusa 2 mission.
Meanwhile in other asteroid mission news, a NASA probe is on its way to
an asteroid called Bennu and is expected to arrive there in August. It
too hopes to bring back samples of asteroid dust.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44603120
REAL LIFE NEWS: MOON IMAGES FROM FIFTY YEARS AGO ARE OF SURPRISING QUALITY
by Hazed
At the start of the space race fifty years ago, when the Apollo missions
were being planned, five unmanned lunar orbiters circled the moon. Their
job was to take pictures of the surface, so mission control back home
could pick the best landing site.
The images were extremely high resolution and could be blown up to 40 x
54 size, so the exact spots where the astronauts would walk could be
identified.
Then these super-hi-res images were locked away until after the bulk of
the moon landings, because the USA didn’t want to give away details of
its secret spy satellite cameras, the technology of which was used in
the orbiters.
In 1971, low-res images from the cameras were released. But they were
grainy and of poor quality, and were mostly of interest to academics.
The data that the lunar orbiters sent back to Earth was stored on
analogue tapes. These were moved around for many years, until finally
some forward-thinking scientists decided they had to be digitised for
future generations, before the tapes decayed or the technology needed to
read them was no longer available.
Getting the pictures off the tapes was quite a challenge, and how they
did it is detailed at the first link below.
The recovery project has now brought back 2,000 images from 1,500 tapes
and they are of surprising quality. The second link below has the
pictures recovered between 2007 and 2014. Warning: the files are very large!
Source: http://www.worldofindie.co.uk/?p=682
http://www.moonviews.com/
REAL LIFE NEWS: PARKING BY REMOTE CONTROL
by Hazed
It will soon be legal in the UK to let your car park itself. New rules
from the Department for Transport (DfT) will allow use of the
technology, and will pave the way towards legislation for driverless
cars in the future.
A number of high-end models of cars already come equipped with
ultrasonic sensors and this allows them to undertake a number of tasks
without the driver actually sitting in the driving seat, such as
parallel or end-on parking.
The DfT consulted with a range of groups including manufacturers,
insurance groups and haulage companies, and support for allowing the
technology as overwhelming.
The technology will allow much better use of parking spaces, since the
cars will be able to park in much tighter gaps.
Speaking as a driver who is crap at parking, I am delighted at this
change and look forward to the next car I buy doing the parking for me.
Source:
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/05/remote-control-parking-legalised-in-the-uk-from-next-month/
REAL LIFE NEWS: UBER CRASH DRIVER WAS WATCHING TV TALENT SHOW
by Hazed
Speaking of driverless cars… more news has been released about the
tragic incident in which a self-driving Uber car killed a pedestrian in
Arizona. It has been revealed that the ‘safety’ driver Rafaela Vasquez
who was behind the wheel was watching a stream of the TV show The Voice
on her phone when the crash happened. Not very safe!
Police say that the collision, in which Elaine Herzberg was killed while
crossing the road, was “entirely avoidable”. Instead of paying
attention, Vasquez repeatedly looked down at her phone, and only glanced
up half a second before the car hit the pedestrian. Before that she kept
her head down for 5.3 seconds.
She may face charges of vehicular manslaughter, said police.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/22/driver-was-streaming-the-voice-when-uber-self-driving-car-crashed-say-police
REAL LIFE NEWS: GAMER FLIES ROUND WORLD TO HARASS TEENAGE GIRL – AND
GETS SHOT!
by Hazed
In a story that shows how dangerous is can be when online relationships
move into the real world, a gamer from New Zealand flew halfway around
the world to confront a teenage girl that he’d met online. His threats
and harassment were met by the girl’s irate mom – who shot him.
25-year-old Troy George Skinner got friendly with the girl on a gaming
chat app called Discord. But after several months she told him she
didn’t want to talk to him again, so he decided to go and visit her.
This involved an epic journey. Starting in Auckland, New Zealand, he
caught a flight to Sydney, Australia, then a connecting flight to Los
Angeles and another to Washington DC, and then finally caught a bus to
Goochland County, Virginia. That took some determination.
However, he didn’t just want to talk to her. He went armed with a knife,
pepper spray and some duct tape bought from a neighbourhood Walmart – so
clearly his intentions were anything but innocent.
He rang the doorbell of the house and told the girl’s mother, who
answered the door, that he had been hitchhiking for 30 miles and needed
help. But the mother was suspicious and didn’t let him in, so he went to
the back of the house and tried to break into a basement door.
The mother, who had no idea who the guy was or that her daughter knew
him online, warned Skinner that she had a gun. But this didn’t deter the
interloper, who went back to the front of the house and threw a stone
through a window, then tried to unlock it by putting his hand through
the hole.
At this point the mother made good on her threat, and shot him. She
fired twice, and hit him once in the neck. Skinner tried to run away but
collapsed in a neighbour’s front yard. The mom called the police and
they found Skinner and took him to hospital. He is expected to live, and
is facing charges of breaking and entering with a deadly weapon with the
intent to commit a serious offense.
Wow. It just goes to show that you really shouldn’t give people you meet
online any personal information – especially your address!
Source:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/27/troy_george_skinner_new_zealand_shot_by_mom/
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