History, Technology

The Tiny Monorails That Once Carried James Bond / Tom Scott

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24 September 2020
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The Roadmachines Mono-Rail may have been the only truly useful, fit-for-purpose monorail in the world. Of the hundreds that were built, most were never meant for passengers. But they did carry a couple of famous people in their time, including a certain secret agent…

Thank you to the staff and volunteers at the Amberley Museum — Harry and Gerry in particular — for running the monorail specially, and letting me film! The Amberley Museum is a massive industrial heritage museum in the South Downs, and you can find out more about them here — via Youtube

Technology

How we make pencils / Faber-Castell

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21 September 2019
23 second read
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Producing 2.3 billion pencils a year and being in the business for over 257 years, Faber-Castell has a sound know-how of how quality pencils are made. Have a look behind the scenes of their manufacturing — via Youtube

Technology

Why Is Duct Tape So Strong? / Insider

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21 January 2019
27 second read
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Duct tapes were first invented by a female factory worker during World War II. They were originally called duck tape because it was made out of a cotton duck fabric and it repelled water like a duck’s back — via Youtube

Technology

Automated Bowling Pin Setter Machine

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5 March 2018
1 min read
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In­ the early days of bowling, respotting the pins was a physically demanding job. There were actually people behind the lanes resetting the pins and sending back the balls.

Today there are amazing robotic devices that do all the pin setting. The automatic pinsetter, first patented by Gottfried Schmidt, was introduced by the American Machine and Foundry Company (AMF) in 1946. This first pinsetter was a monster, weighing nearly 1.8 tons and standing 2.7m tall.

Modern pins­etters are but a fraction of a size of their predecessors and much more intelligent — via Youtube

Politics, Rights, Technology

Former Irish Chief Justice slams data retention as mass surveillance and threat to fundamental rights

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5 October 2017
3 min read
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Former Chief Justice of Ireland John L Murray has warned that retained telecommunications data poses a threat to fundamental rights and freedoms in a searing report [PDF] released on Tuesday alongside proposed amendments by the government to Ireland’s data retention laws.

Murray said Ireland’s data retention system touches every aspect of a person’s communications profile for a lengthy period of time.

[Data retention] establishes a form of mass surveillance of virtually the entire population of the state, involving the retention and storage of historic data, other than actual content, pertaining to every electronic communication, in any form, made by anyone and everyone at any time, he wrote.

A vast amount of private information pertaining to the personal communications of virtually everyone in the state is now retained without the consent of those affected in databases maintained by each private service provider in fulfilment of its statutory obligations.

Ireland’s data retention regime, enacted in 2011, mandates that data related to phone calls, text messages, and phone location be kept for two years and IP addresses for internet connections for one year. Due to a decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) striking down a European Union data retention directive in 2014, Ireland’s laws in the area need to be modified to remain compliant.

The retained data is able to be currently accessed under a disclosure request by Irish Defence Forces, an officer of the Revenue Commissioners, the Garda Síochána (Irish Police), the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, or anyone with an appropriate court order or authorisation by the Data Protection Commissioner. The legislation also allows for individuals to request the data kept on them.

The former chief justice warned that safeguards in place for state authorities to access retained data could be undermined by those agencies believing they are entitled to the data if it is deemed useful by them.

Access to a person’s private historical communications data is an intrusion on their rights and on data which is personal to them, Murray said. Mere utility or potential utility is not the test — via ZDNet

Technology

In fight for free speech, researchers test anti-censorship tool built into the internet’s core

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22 August 2017
3 min read
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When the Chinese government wanted to keep its users off Facebook and Google, it blocked the entire country’s access to the US companies’ apps and sites. And when citizens started using third-party workarounds — like Tor, proxies and VPNs — to get around those blocks, it moved to quash those, too.

So a handful of researchers came up with a crazy idea: What if circumventing censorship didn’t rely on some app or service provider that would eventually get blocked but was built into the very core of the internet itself? What if the routers and servers that underpin the internet — infrastructure so important that it would be impractical to block — could also double as one big anti-censorship tool?

It turns out, the idea isn’t as crazy as it might seem. After six years in development, three research groups have joined forces to conduct real-world tests of an experimental new technique called refraction networking. They call their particular implementation TapDance, and it’s designed to sit within the internet’s core.

In partnership with two medium-sized US internet providers and the popular app Psiphon, they deployed TapDance for over a week this past spring to help more than 50,000 users around the world access the free and open internet — the first time such a test has been done outside the lab, and at such a large scale.

The researchers announced the test in a paper presented at the annual USENIX Security conference earlier this week.

In the long run, we absolutely do want to see refraction networking deployed at as many ISPs that are as deep in the network as possible, said David Robinson, one of the paper’s authors, and co-founder of the Washington-based tech policy consulting firm Upturn. We would love to be so deeply embedded in the core of the network that to block this tool of free communication would be cost-prohibitive for censors  — via CBC

History, Technology

Scrap dealer finds Apollo-era NASA computers in dead engineer’s basement

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15 July 2017
2 min read
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A pair of Apollo-era NASA computers and hundreds of mysterious tape reels have been discovered in a deceased engineer’s basement in Pittsburgh, according to a NASA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Most of the tapes are unmarked, but the majority of the rest appear to be instrumentation reels for Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, NASA’s fly-by missions to Jupiter and Saturn.

The two computers are so heavy that a crane was likely used to move the machines, the report concluded.

At some point in the early 1970s, an IBM engineer working for NASA at the height of the Space Race took home the computers — and the mysterious tape reels. A scrap dealer, invited to clean out the deceased’s electronics-filled basement, discovered the computers. The devices were clearly labelled NASA PROPERTY, so the dealer called NASA to report the find.

Please tell NASA these items were not stolen, the engineer’s heir told the scrap dealer, according to the report. They belonged to IBM Allegheny Center Pittsburgh, PA 15212. During the 1968-1972 timeframe, IBM was getting rid of the items so [redacted engineer] asked if he could have them and was told he could have them.

You can read the entire report; the engineer’s identity has been redacted — Ars Technica UK

Politics, Technology

Elon Musk’s Tesla to build world’s biggest lithium ion battery to secure power for South Australia

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9 July 2017
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South Australia will be home to the world’s largest lithium ion battery thanks to a historic agreement between Tesla and the State Government.

And Tesla boss Elon Musk is promising to build it in 100 days, or it’s free. Key points:

A 100-megawatt (129 megawatt hour) battery is to be in place before summer It will provide energy stability for SA and also be emergency back-up for shortfalls Elon Musk is sticking by a 100 days or free promise for SA taxpayers

Tesla will build the 100-megawatt battery which will store energy from French renewable company Neoen’s Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, which is still under construction.

The project will be in place before summer.

Mr Musk’s 100 days or it’s free pledge starts once the grid interconnection agreement has been signed — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Rights, Technology, World

EU Votes Today On Content Portability to Reduce Piracy

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22 May 2017
3 min read
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Members of the European Parliament will vote today on draft rules that would allow citizens to enjoy legally purchased music and movie streaming subscriptions when they travel to another EU country. It’s hoped that improved access to content will help to dampen frustrations and reduce Internet piracy.

Being a fully-paid up customer of a streaming service such as Spotify or Netflix should be a painless experience, but for citizens of the EU, complexities exist.

Subscribers of Netflix, for example, have access to different libraries, depending on where they’re located. This means that a viewer in the Netherlands could begin watching a movie at home, travel to France for a weekend break, and find on arrival that the content he paid for is not available there.

A similar situation can arise with a UK citizen’s access to BBC’s iPlayer. While he has free access to the service he previously paid for while at home, travel to Spain for a week and access is denied, since the service believes he’s not entitled to view.

While the EU is fiercely protective of its aim to grant free movement to both people and goods, this clearly hasn’t always translated well to the digital domain. There are currently no explicit provisions under EU law which mandate cross-border portability of online content services.

Following a vote today, however, all that may change.

In a few hours time, Members of the European Parliament will vote on whether to introduce new Cross-border portability rules (pdf), that will give citizens the freedom to enjoy their media wherever they are in the EU, without having to resort to piracy — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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