Short Takes – 10-3-22

The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time. NewYorker.com article (thanks to https://grugq.substack.com/p/october-1-2022 for pointing me at this). Pull quote: “By 1988, Mills had refined N.T.P. to the point where it could synchronize the clocks of connected computers that had been telling vastly differing times to within tens of milliseconds—a fraction of a blink of an eye. “I always thought that was sort of black magic,” Vint Cerf, a pioneer of Internet infrastructure, told me.”

Tua Tagovailoa’s Head Injury Prompts Changes To NFL Concussion Protocols. WSJ.com article. This was discussed on at least one (Alabama-Arkansas) Saturday football game. “The NFL and NFLPA said in a joint statement Saturday that an investigation into the situation is ongoing and that they have not made any conclusions about medical errors or protocol violations. But they added that they anticipate changes to those protocols in the coming days based on the probe.”

National Security Experts Warn Of Mass Causality Chemical Disaster. RandomLengthNews.com article. More than a little slanted. Pull quote: “National Security experts led by former Governor and EPA Administator Christie Todd Whitman submitted their third letter, warning of terrorist attacks on refineries and chemical facilities using chemicals that can cause mass casualities and called for conversion to commercially proven safer alternative technology.” Whitman has some decent environmental creds, but is not a ‘national security expert’.

This Anti-Tracking Tool Checks If You’re Being Followed. Wired.com article (from August). “The homemade system works by scanning for wireless devices around it and then checking its logs to see whether they also were present within the past 20 minutes. It was designed to be used while people are on the move rather than sitting in, say, a coffee shop, where it would pick up too many false readings.” Might have problems on daily human migration routes.

New Europa Pictures Beamed Home by NASA’s Juno Spacecraft. NYTimes.com article. Pull quote: ““We’re going to be able to tell the sort of geological history story better because you can link up different ridges and fault lines and get a more global or regional picture,” Dr. Hansen-Koharcheck said.”