My holiday reading

Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter

I know you can’t judge a book by its cover but I do like the way David Hockney did the covers for this quartet.

They’re all going into my book bag for the Summer. And I’ll start with Spring.

Quote of the Day

”The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of its worth is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.”

• Samuel Johnson

Also applies to those who are asked to provide endorsements for forthcoming books.

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Telemann | Trumpet Concerto in D, IV. Allegro | Maurice André |

Link

Long Read of the Day

The Left Needs Free Speech

Splendid essay by Katha Pollitt in Dissent Magazine.

When you ban a book or shut down a speaker, what you’re really saying is that you need to protect people from ideas you disagree with. You don’t trust people to contextualize, to historicize, to weigh evidence, or even just, like me, satisfy a curiosity, without falling down the rabbit hole of error. And if they do fall down, you don’t trust yourself to haul them out. They will stay there forever, nibbling reactionary carrots. You can argue forever that there is no such thing as “cancel culture,” but people know when their intelligence is being disrespected.

This is a salutary read for the ‘woke’ crowd. If you’re a minority in a society — and all radicals and dissenters are — then establishing a principle that folks you disagree with should be deplatformed (or whatever) can be a double-edged sword. Because if your authoritarian or reactionary enemies do attain power, then they will have no hesitation in silencing you.

So who’s the sucker now!

Nice blast from Jonty Bloom

It’s an old poker saying that if after five minutes of play you can’t tell who the sucker is, it is you. This saying was brought to mind by the PM’s pathetic and hugely damaging attempt to avoid self isolating yesterday. Not only did he put out a press release saying he wouldn’t be following the rules like the rest of us, he sent a junior minister to do the media rounds defending his decision.

Two hours and 38 minutes later he did a complete U-Turn and then put out a video statement that while he had briefly considered not isolating he had decided it was in the country’s best interests if he did.

Actually, it would be in the best interests of the country if he self-isolated in the Antarctic— for a decade or so.

The Anti-virus racket

From Bloomberg ‘Fully Charged” newsletter. Although the company also has a ‘Fully Charged’ website, it never seems to include links for the newsletter content, so I’ll just have to summarise what the newsletter says.

Hey y’all, it’s Austin, with some urgent news: My computer, and presumably yours, is in perilous danger. As McAfee Corp. has repeatedly warned me lately in radioactive-red pop-ups, “Emerging cyber-attack techniques threaten devices worldwide and may let hackers: steal your passwords; infiltrate private photos, emails, documents; [and] exploit hardware flaws in your devices.”

According to the McAfee promotion, which is built into my Windows desktop, I have only two options: click the “accept risk” button or renew my $120-per-year subscription for their antivirus software. For PC users, these types of five-alarm cybersecurity ads will be familiar, a scare tactic ubiquitous since the dawn of the internet. The crazy thing is that they still seem to work, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

They do. Working from Home has sparked has sparked renewed panicked usage of cybersecurity programs.

McAfee, for one, saw net subscriptions jump 885,000 last quarter while revenue increased 25% compared with the same period last year. And NortonLifeLock has attracted nearly 1 million new subscribers since March 2020, after losing 1.2 million the previous eight quarters.

But while the enterprise cybersecurity market is booming, the consumer alternatives, says Bloomberg, seem to be stuck in the past —

still marketing the same frightening digital hazards and swearing that their software will envelope your computer in a cocoon of safety. NortonLifeLock’s Chief Executive Officer Vincent Pilette was only recently on TV talking up how the “bad guys” were coming after people by artificially replicating your voice in order to trick others into divulging information about you. Never mind that Norton’s antivirus software wouldn’t exactly protect against this sort of advanced threat; their pitch is apparently that you should pay for their security blanket so you mitigate the risk of getting into this situation in the first place. NortonLifeLock didn’t respond to a request for comment.

I’m not surprised they didn’t want to comment.

Delta Variant: Everything You Need to Know

By Thomas Pueyo, who thinks that people haven’t been paying enough attention to the Delta variant.

The original Coronavirus variant has an R0 of 2.71. Alpha—the “English variant” that caused a spike around the world around Christmas—is about 60% more infectious. Now it appears that Delta is about 60% more transmissible yet again. Depending on which figure you use, it would put Delta’s R0 between 4 and 9, which could make it more contagious than smallpox.

Key takeaways:

If you’re vaccinated, you’re mostly safe, especially with mRNA vaccines. Keep your guard up for now, avoid events that might become super-spreaders, but you don’t need to worry much more than that.

If you’re not vaccinated though, this is a much more dangerous time than March 2020. The transmission rate is higher than it used to be, and if you catch Delta, you’re much more likely to die—or get Long COVID. You should be extra careful, only hang out with other vaccinated people, and avoid dangerous events.

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if you decide that your inbox is full enough already!

Tea by the cathedral

Climate change arrives in Germany.

And, while we’re on the topic of global warming and climate change…

#Film4Climate 1st Prize Short Film Winner – “Three Seconds” from Connect4Climate on Vimeo.

Link

Quote of the Day

”Never underestimate the courage of the French. Remember, they were the ones who discovered snails are edible.”

• Anon

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Simon & Garfunkel | The Sound of Silence (from The Concert in Central Park)

Link

Long Read of the Day

Primo Levi’s Last Moments

A fascinating Long Read.

Why do people continue to insist that Levi committed suicide when he almost certainly didn’t?

Why mainstream media can’t hold tech companies to account

My column in yesterday’s Observer:

The interview was a classic mainstream media production. Rajan had done the kind of homework that big-time reporters do, right down to reading Henry Kissinger’s musings on the subject of artificial intelligence. “I want to find out,” he declared at the beginning, “who he [Pichai] actually is, apply some proper scrutiny to Google’s power, and understand where technology is taking all of us.” It turns out that he and Pichai both have family in Tamil Nadu and are obsessed with cricket. In the end they even managed to have a cod cricket game in which Rajan tried to bowl a googly at the boss of Google. So they’re both nice guys, got on like a house on fire and told us absolutely nothing.

Like I said: a classic mainstream media treatment of tech. The BBC’s media editor wanted to find out “where technology is taking all of us”. He is thus a native speaker of the narrative of tech determinism – the view that technology drives history and the role of society is simply to mop up afterwards and adjust to the new reality. It is also, incidentally, the narrative that the tech companies have assiduously cultivated from the very beginning, because it usefully diverts attention from awkward questions about human agency and whether democracies might have ideas about which kinds of technology are tolerable or beneficial and which not.

Do read the whole thing.

Cyber Insurance and the Cyber Security Challenge

RUSI, the Royal United Services Institution, a defence think-tank, has just published an interesting paper on the cyber-insurance industry.

It’s a classically understated paper, which cloaks serious criticism in soothing language.

Sample:

While some mature insurers are moving in the right direction, cyber insurance as a whole is still struggling to move from theory into practice when it comes to incentivising cyber security.”

Most of the market has used neither carrots (financial incentives) nor sticks (security obligations) to improve the cyber security practices of policyholders. The industry is also struggling to collect and share reliable cyber risk data that can inform underwriting and risk modelling. The difficulties inherent in understanding cyber risk, which is anthropogenic and systemic, mean insurers and reinsurers are unable to accurately quantify its causes and effects. This limits insurers’ ability to accurately assess an organisation’s risk profile or security practices and price policy premiums accordingly. The spectre of systemic incidents such as NotPetya1 and SolarWinds2 has also limited the availability of capital for cyber insurance markets.

However, the most pressing challenge currently facing the industry is ransomware. Although it is a societal problem, cyber insurers have received considerable criticism for facilitating ransom payments to cybercriminals. These add fuel to the fire by incentivising cybercriminals’ engagement in ransomware operations and enabling existing operators to invest in and expand their capabilities. Growing losses from ransomware attacks have also emphasised that the current reality is not sustainable for insurers either.

Translation (courtesy of Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity guru famous for direct speaking): “The insurance industry incents (i.e. incentivises) companies to do the cheapest mitigation possible. Often, that’s paying the ransom.”

Yep.

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if you decide that your inbox is full enough already!

Deep Waters

Every time I embark on reading Foucault I think of this sign.

Quote of the Day

”I went to a fight the other night and an Ice Hockey game broke out.”

• Rodney Dangerfield

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Bach | Goldberg Variations, BMV 998 (Zenph re-performance)

Link

I’ve had the most amazing — and fascinating — correspondence following my suggestion that readers might like to compare Lang Lang’s recent recording of the Goldburg variations with a Glen Gould recording. It turns out that there’s a long story behind that.

Seb Schmoller (Whom God Preserve) wrote to say that my suggestion had him listening again to Gould’s 1981 (swansong) version of the Goldberg Variations, then finding his 1955 (start of career) recording, and then coming across this ‘Slate’ article, which comments on both.

The ‘Slate’ piece is fascinating:

With a couple of trivial exceptions, plus one that’s absolutely gigantic, pianist Glenn Gould never recorded the same piece twice. Unlike, say, Rudolf Serkin, who as his ideas evolved made it a practice to revisit certain key masterpieces, Gould preferred to document one interpretation and never look back.

This comports with his decision, taken in 1964, not to perform in public any more. Unlike every other virtuoso of the past 300 years, Gould didn’t have to go from city to city with the same bundle of dependable war horses in his satchel, playing them over and over. Instead, he would occasionally venture out of his hermitic Toronto apartment very late at night, drive to a studio a few miles away, and there, working in virtual solitude, record and edit a piece until he was satisfied. And that would be that.

The one significant exception to this rule is Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which he recorded twice. The first recording, from 1955, was his major-label debut and instantly made him an international star. The second, from 1981, was, eerily enough, his swan song, the last recording he ever made. Critical opinion of the first release is close to unanimous: It’s considered a milestone in Bach performance and one of the greatest keyboard recordings ever made. The second enjoys a somewhat rockier reputation, although it has its passionate champions.

And then Greg Jeffreys took time off from his holiday to write about the Zenph remastering of the 1955 performance — which is the one linked to above.

The original 1955 version was the revelation that made his name and re-established the piece itself into the canon. It’s perfect in its own way, but with technical limitations plus his own annoying croonings and his signature squeaky piano stool.

The Zenph remastering technique is radically different from the usual ones. The NYT piece mentioned by Greg gives chapter and verse.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to my musical education this week.

Long Read of the Day

Lost in Space

Terrific essay in the Boston Review by my colleague Alina Utrata.

Billionaires such as Elon Musk and Richard Branson peddle the idea that space represents a public hope, all the while reaping big private profits. If you’ve ever wondered why Musk, Bezos, Branson & Co are obsessed with extra-planetary ventures, then there’s lots for you here.

The results you get from Google search depend on where you are

Great story in Wired about a remarkable piece of research by Rodrigo Ochigame and Katherine Ye.

Google’s claim to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” has earned it an aura of objectivity. Its dominance in search, and the disappearance of most competitors, make its lists of links appear still more canonical. An experimental new interface for Google Search aims to remove that mantle of neutrality.

Search Atlas makes it easy to see how Google offers different responses to the same query on versions of its search engine offered in different parts of the world. The research project reveals how Google’s service can reflect or amplify cultural differences or government preferences—such as whether Beijing’s Tiananmen Square should be seen first as a sunny tourist attraction or the site of a lethal military crackdown on protesters.

Divergent results like that show how the idea of search engines as neutral is a myth, says Rodrigo Ochigame, a PhD student in science, technology, and society at MIT and cocreator of Search Atlas. “Any attempt to quantify relevance necessarily encodes moral and political priorities,” Ochigame says.

Like Google’s homepage, the main feature of Search Atlas is a blank box. But instead of returning a single column of results, the site displays three lists of links, from different geographic versions of Google Search selected from the more than 100 the company offers.

An obvious demonstration is searches for “Tiananmen Square” — with results that you might predict.

More interesting, though, is a search for “God”. In Japan, the results emphasize Shinto spirits (kami). In the United Arab Emirates, they point exclusively to Islamic sources. In the United States, they refer exclusively to a monotheistic Christian god.

A lovely example of relevant, illuminating academic research.

Two great videos

Well, it is the weekend…

1. The secret life of the photocopier A remastered video from Tim Hunkin’s original TV series. Link

2. Joel Meyerowitz on His Summers Photographing in Provincetown Joel is the world’s most distinguished street photographer. This lecture is about what he learned from spending summers in Provincetown, Mass. taking portraits with a huge 10×8 View camera. It’s gentle, thoughtful, sometimes profound. And, if you’re a photographer, like me, just wonderful. Link

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if you decide that your inbox is full enough already!

Once upon a time…

… I used to go to London on the train. And bring my bike. But that was in another universe.

Quote of the Day

”The Pentagon: a place where costs are always rounded off to the nearest tenth of a billion dollars.”

• Merton Tyrrell, 1970.

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood |Can’t find my way home

Link

Long Read of the Day

 Antitrust posturing

Benedict Evans is one of the most astute and knowledgeable commentators on the tech industry, and he’s always worth reading. This essay gives his sceptical take on the raft of ‘antitrust’ bills tabled by the Democrats in the US House of Representatives recently, and is worth a read.

My 2p-worth Although I’m passionately in favour of regulating tech giants, I agree with much of what Ben says. The current wave of legislative action belongs to the “something must be done” genre. Some of the antitrust suits — like the Facebook complaints recently rejected out of hand by a US judge — are feeble and poorly thought out. And there’s a kind of ‘disjointed incrementalism’ about lots of the others. A longer view would say that democracies face two — currently unsolved — problems:

• what kinds of regulatory instruments are appropriate for reining in the tech giants?
• What would appropriate new regulators look like?

The strange attractions of automobile exhaust

Further to my musings yesterday on why some drivers (mostly male, I’d say) like to buy gars that make a lot of noise, I had a lovely email from Euan Williamson who tells me that I can get an app that compensates for the eerie quietness of our Tesla.

XLR8 (pronounced accelerate) is an exciting new app from 2XL Games that makes your car sound like an exotic supercar as you drive! Connect your iPhone, iPod or iPad to your car stereo and you’re off and running. Select from one of five exciting engines: * Classic V8 muscle car  NASCAR engine * Ford GT40 * Ferrari sports car * Lamborghini supercar

Funnily enough, I regard the Tesla as ‘an exotic supercar’.

Finally, Italy bans cruise liners from docking in Venice

From Reuters:

ROME, July 13 (Reuters) – Italy on Tuesday banned cruise liners from Venice lagoon to defend its ecosystem and heritage, moving to end years of hesitation and putting the demands of residents and culture bodies above those of the tourist industry.

The government decided to act after the United Nations culture organisation UNESCO threatened to put Italy on a blacklist for not banning liners from the World Heritage site, cabinet sources said.

The ban will take effect from Aug. 1, barring ships weighing more than 25,000 tonnes from the shallow Giudecca Canal that leads past Piazza San Marco, the city’s most famous landmark.

Hooray! I wonder if it would have happened without the pandemic, which reminded people of what a civilised place Venice could/can be. Those cruise liners are grotesque. I remember being shocked when I first encountered them in Sydney harbour. They’re basically floating apartment blocks and they looked out of place even against that larger backdrop. But in Venice they were so out of proportion that it was obscene.

How to write an opening chapter

One of my grandsons, who currently lives in Italy, was with us for the weekend. He’s 11 and had been reading Italo Calvino, so at breakfast we began to talk about his writing, and I mentioned If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, which I’d loved but he hadn’t read. So I dug it out and opened it, and this is what we found:

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a Winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice — they won’t hear you otherwise — “I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!”

And so it goes on — like this:

Link

You get the idea. Without realising it, you’re hooked.

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if you decide that your inbox is full enough already!

Manuel Castells

The great scholar of Cyberspace, photographed during one of his visits to Cambridge.

Quote of the Day

”T.S. Eliot is quite at a loss
When clubwomen bustle across
At literary teas
Crying – ‘What if you please,
Do you mean by the Mill on the Floss?’”

• W.H. Auden

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Matt Molloy & Laoise Kelly | The Mayo Fling

Link

New to me. Lovely combination of flute and harp.

Long Read of the Day

Illusions of empire: Amartya Sen on what British rule really did for India

An interesting essay adapted from Sen’s new book. Surprise, surprise! Many of the arguments defending the Raj are based on serious misconceptions about India’s past, imperialism and history itself.

As a long-time critic of the Imperial afterglow that still grips British governments I particularly liked this quote:

Those who wish to be inspired by the glory of the British empire would do well to avoid reading Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, including his discussion of the abuse of state power by a “mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies”. As the historian William Dalrymple has observed: “The economic figures speak for themselves. In 1600, when the East India Company was founded, Britain was generating 1.8% of the world’s GDP, while India was producing 22.5%. By the peak of the Raj, those figures had more or less been reversed: India was reduced from the world’s leading manufacturing nation to a symbol of famine and deprivation.”

This was Boris Johnson’’s Global Britain’ at its best.

Olympics News

Coronavirus Variant Excited To Compete With World’s Top Mutations In Tokyo This Summer

Exciting news from The Onion about the forthcoming ‘superspreader’ event in Tokyo:

LONDON—Having prepared for months to make its mark at this year’s Olympics, coronavirus variant B.1.525—a U.K. native best known for its skillful weakening of antibody responses—confirmed Thursday that it was excited to compete in Tokyo against top mutations from across the globe. “I can’t wait to travel to Japan this July and show the whole world what I’m capable of,” said the highly transmissible permutation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, recounting how it had honed its spike proteins and vaccine resistance in anticipation of the international gathering of deadly pathogens. “I know South Africa, Brazil, and India will be bringing the heat, but I’m planning to have a big breakout moment myself. And if I’m not a household name by the closing ceremonies, well, there’s always the 2021 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally later in the summer.” Olympic bookmakers, observing that the United States is overdue to produce a highly lethal mutation, are reported to have the young California variants B.1.427 and B.1.429 favored in the spread.

How to write about cars

Stephen Bayley is, like I once was, a petrolhead. He’s always been fascinated by automobiles, and he writes about them with a dreamlike fluency.

I bought this — his latest book — a few weeks ago and have been dipping into it with delight ever since. Here’s a sample:

Link

As a Tesla owner, I have a dog in this fight. I love the fact that there’s no engine noise. I have a friend who is an ardent petrolhead, and he has the most beautiful Aston-Martin convertible you ever saw. It’s a gorgeous car, but despite its ultra-powerful engine, not actually as quick as our EV. One day I found him gazing admiringly at the Tesla and asked him if he’d buy one. He shook his head. Why not? I asked. “Because it doesn’t make any noise,” he replied.

Stephen Bayley is onto something.

Geology as Art

A rock formation in Co. Donegal, which is — geologically — the most interesting county in Ireland.

A fishy story

Our goldfish passed away last night. He was 26 years old. When we used to tell people that they invariably thought we were fibbing. But we weren’t. I got him as a 10th birthday present for my son, who was 36 last March, so we’re sure about his age. On further investigation, though, it turns out that, by goldfish standards, he wasn’t so old. One source says that they have an average lifespan of between 20 and 40 years.

Quote of the Day

Oscar Wilde

”Do you mind if I smoke?

Sarah Bernhardt

”I don’t mind if you burn.”

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

J.S. Bach | Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Aria | Lang Lang

Link

Lovely. But also interesting to compare it with the Glenn Gould version.

Long Read of the Day

 How Rentier Capitalism Is Destroying Dublin

A sobering essay by Jack Sheehan on how Dublin, ‘Dear Dirty Dublin’, has become like every other capital city in the Western world — a bastion of inequality in which no normal person can afford to live. Dublin is now the capital city of a country in hock to foreign banks and tech giants. Its PR portrays it as a modern city that is home to the world’s most dynamic industries; but for its residents, daily life is scarred by one of Europe’s worst housing crises and rampant workplace precarity.

Nicely written too.

Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability

Another Long Read, but also one that’s too good to miss. Cory Doctorow (Whom God Preserve) on why monopolies are bad for everyone except those who own them.

I care about monopolies for exactly one reason: self-determination. I don’t care about competition as an end unto itself, or fetishize “choice” for its own sake. What I care about is your ability to live your life in the way you think will suit you, to the greatest extent possible, and taking into account the obvious limits when other people’s needs and wants conflict with you realizing your own desires.

We live in a world of vast and increasing monopoli­zation, with one, two, or a few companies controlling everything from the arts (publishing, movies, music, streaming, comics, bookselling, movie theaters, tal­ent agencies, games, wrestling) to finance (banks, investment funds, auditors, bond-rating agencies) to agribusiness (seeds, livestock, tractors, fertilizer, pesticides, precision agriculture) and everything in between (radio stations, cruise lines, cheerleader uniforms, pharmaceuticals, glass bottles, airlines, eyeglasses, athletic shoes, fast food, food delivery, pet food).

When just a few people have the ultimate say over what you can read, or where you can work, or how our food is grown, or even what you feed your cat, you’d better hope that they value the same things as you!

Nobody writes as compellingly about tech as Cory does. And this is just the latest example of what he can do. So read it and marvel.

En passant I loved the way he picks up on Justice Stevens’s Dissent in the Citizens United case, in particular this passage about the absurdity of treating corporations as persons in a political context:

‘Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their “personhood” often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.’

Yep.

Other, hopefully interesting, links

• Text of Joe Biden’s Executive Order on restoring competition in the US economy. Really interesting and much more far-reaching than most of us expected. Link
• Don’t Piss Off Bradley, the Parts Seller Keeping Atari Machines Alive The world’s greatest hoard of original Atari equipment is guarded by a very temperamental, very devoted dragon named Bradley. Lovely profile of a nerd original. Link
• Why Do Electric Cars Look The Way They Do? Because They Can Nice essay on how not having to accommodate a petrol engine could free up EV designers. Link

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if you decide that your inbox is full enough already!

Orchid in a cottage window

Quote of the Day

”The profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business.”

• John Steinbeck, accepting the Nobel Prize for literature.

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Elvis Costello Plays “Penny Lane” for Paul McCartney at the Obama White House

Link

Long Read of the Day The woman who brought us the world

MIT Technology Review profile of Virginia Tower Norwood.

Had Virginia Tower Norwood listened to her high school guidance counselor, she would have become a librarian. Her aptitude test showed a remarkable facility with numbers, and in 1943, he could think of no better way for a young woman to put such skills to use. Luckily, Norwood didn’t suffer from the same lack of imagination. The salutatorian of her Philadelphia high school class, she had long been devouring logic puzzles and putting the slide rule her father had given her at age nine to good use. Norwood ignored her counselor’s advice and applied to MIT.

She would go on to become a pioneering inventor in the new field of microwave antenna design. She designed the transmitter for a reconnaissance mission to the moon that cleared the way for the Apollo landings. And she conceived and led the development of the first multispectral scanner to image Earth from space—the first in a series of satellite-based scanners that have been continuously imaging the world for nearly half a century.

Great story.

How bitcoin and Putin are enabling the ransomware crime spree

My column in yesterday’s Observer:

I’ve just visited the Kaseya website. “We Are Kaseya,” it burbles cheerfully. “Providing you with best-in-breed technologies that allow you to efficiently manage, secure and back up IT under a single pane of glass.

“Technology,” it continues, “is the backbone of all modern business. Small to mid-size businesses deserve powerful security and IT management tools that are efficient, cost-effective, and secure. Enter Kaseya. We exist to help multi-function IT professionals get the most out of their IT tool stack.”

Translation: Kaseya produces remote management software for the IT industry. It develops and sells this software to remotely manage and monitor computers running Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems. As many organisations will grimly confirm, managing your own IT systems is a pain in the arse. So Kaseya has lots of happy customers in the US, the UK and elsewhere.

Or, rather, it did have. On 2 July it was the victim of a ransomware attack that affected between 800 and 1,500 of its small business customers, potentially making it the largest ransomware attack ever.

Do read the whole thing

Why the fact that Biden’s ‘right to repair’ order also covers electronics could be a really big deal.

Great piece by Cory Doctorow which — as usual — is full of relevant links, including to Zephyr Teachout’s article in The Nation:

Presidential power in this area is technically limited but vast in practice. While some agencies, like the Department of Agriculture, must follow his orders, independent agencies like the FTC don’t have to listen to their president. They can sit on their hands and do nothing. But a clear signal of purpose and vision from the president has, in practice, an enormous energizing effect. It gives cover for agencies that want to be aggressive but find themselves drowned in the arguments by corporate lobbyists. It gives dissidents within somnolent agencies the argument that action is necessary. And it forces agencies that disagree to do some explaining: If any independent agency heads choose not to go forth with the rulemaking in the directive, they’ll be getting lots of questions about why not. For someone like FTC Chair Lina Khan, who undoubtedly was moving in the direction laid out in the directives regardless, it puts the wind at her back, and quiets the corporate critics within the Democratic Party who would be tempted to say that responsible exercise of power is stepping out of line.

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if you decide that your inbox is full enough already!

Quote of the Day

”A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.”

• Gloria Steinem

(Note for younger readers: Playboy was a magazine, now defunct, founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953 with the aim of making soft porn respectable. It was a great commercial success for a while, but its last issue was Spring 2020. NYmag had a good, and judicious essay marking its demise.)

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Handel | Where’er you walk | Kenneth McKellar | Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Adrian Boult

Link

This what I would sing in the bath. If I could sing.

Long Read of the Day

Will China invade Taiwan?

A panel of so-called ‘superforecasters’ considers the likelihood of an imminent global conflict.

Interesting piece by Tom Chivers. As some readers know, I have deep forebodings about Taiwan’s future — and not just because I’ve been reading 2034: a novel of the next World War.

Just this week, a Chinese magazine published a video showing a simulation of a ballistic missile attack on Taiwan, disabling its defences ahead of an invasion. A week before, China sent 28 warplanes, including nuclear-capable bombers, into the air defence zone around Taiwan. At the same time, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping gave a speech promising to “utterly defeat any attempt toward ‘Taiwan independence’.”

The US is an ally of Taiwan’s; it would be expected to defend it, should China attempt to invade. But just as in Korea, two-thirds of a century ago, the question is: would it? And will China invade?

So the question was put to six people who have a track record of being good forecasters.

Read on.

Biden is drafting an Executive Order to promote a ‘Right to Repair’

This is really interesting.

On Tuesday, the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed President Biden is preparing an executive order on “competition.” At the same time, the Biden administration has directed the US Department of Agriculture to develop new rules that’ll grant farmers the “right to repair their own equipment how they like.”

According to Bloomberg, the upcoming executive order will also direct the Federal Trade Commission to craft new rules to stop manufacturers, including phone makers, from imposing onerous repair restrictions on their products.

The news represents a significant win for Right to Repair advocates. For years now, the movement has been calling on electronics vendors, including Apple, to make their products easier to fix, citing the benefits to consumers and to the environment. However, many consumers must instead go through official repair services from the tech companies, which can cost more.

I wrote about this four years ago, and our new research Centre is returning to the issue now by exploring user-repairable and upgradeable smartphones like the Fairphone.

There are at least two things going on here. One is the increasingly intrusive push by companies for continuing control over their digital products long after the customer has paid to ‘own’ them. (That’s the John Deere and Amazon Kindle philosophy.)

The other is the pernicious way incessant technological advance combines with the marketing strategy of planned obsolescence to push consumers into ceaseless updating. The smartphone market is the most notable example of this, but lots of other tech-related outfits do it too.

Tyler Cowen’s ideal university

This Bloomberg column of his is predictably provocative.

I would start with what I expect students to know. They should be able to write very well, have a basic understanding of economics and public policy, and a decent working knowledge of statistical reasoning. I would give a degree to students who demonstrated “B-grade” competence in all of these areas; what now goes for passing C-minus work wouldn’t cut it.

Most important, the people who write and grade the students’ tests would not be their instructors. So students would have to acquire a genuine general knowledge base, not just memorize what is supposed to be on the exam.

His ideal school would dispense with assistant deans, student affairs staff and sports teams. (I’m with him all the way here.) The focus would be on paying more money to the better teachers. Students would have the option of living on campus but not be required to do so.

Instructors would not have tenure, but would have to compete for students — by offering them classes and services that would help them graduate and improve the quality of their certification pages. Teachers would be compensated on the basis of how many students they could attract, in a manner suggested long ago by Adam Smith, who himself lived under such a system in 18th-century Scotland.

The very best instructors could earn $300,000 to $400,000 a year. They might attract students through their research, or with their active online presence, or even by helping students negotiate online courses from other institutions; the students themselves would judge the efficacy of those investments. Faculty would also be paid for mentoring students, as each student would choose a small circle of advisers to serve as guides to the system.

Don’t try recommending this in an Ivy League Faculty Club.

Other, hopefully interesting, links

• Christ in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Where is Walter Benjamin when you need him? Link.
• How I Saved Enough to Buy a House With My Parents’ Money By Eli Grober. Link

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if you decide that your inbox is full enough already!