Month: March 2016

Sean McMahon

Reconstruction of the Tully Monster as it would have looked 300 million years ago, swimming in the Carboniferous seas. Notice the jointed proboscis, the multiple rows of teeth, and the dorsal eye bar.

4 more images in gallery

The "Tully monster," a mysterious animal that swam in the inland oceans of Illinois more than 300 million years ago, left behind a tantalizingly detailed map of its body in a well-preserved package of fossils. Unfortunately, nobody could figure out what the creature was for half a century—until now.

Francis Tully found the remains of the tiny beast (it's only about 10 centimeters long) in Illinois in 1958 and gave it the whimsical scientific name Tullimonstrum (nickname: Tully monster). A long stalk extends from the front of its body, which ends in a toothy orifice called a buccal apparatus. Its body is covered in gills and narrows down into a powerful tail that it probably used for propulsion. Its eyes peer out from either end of a long, rigid bar attached to the animal's back.

The Tully monster lived during the Carboniferous period, when the North American Great Basin was an enormous inland sea. Trees were colonizing the land for the first time, transforming the soil and filling the atmosphere with higher levels of oxygen than Earth had known before or since. Giant arthropods, like the 8-foot-long millipede known as Arthropleura, crawled through the new forests. It was a good time to be a weird animal, and the Tully monster probably fit right in.

(credit: Uber)

The nation's second-largest rapid transit system is shut down today, and ride-hailing service Uber has assured users it will cap its "surge" pricing at 3.9x.

The Uber app automatically imposes surge pricing based on the ratio of riders to drivers, but that algorithm gets very controversial during times of extreme stress. When residents of downtown Sydney were fleeing a hostage situation in 2014, a 4x surge turned into a storm of criticism. (Uber quickly refunded those high-priced rides and began offering free rides in the city.)

In early 2015, Uber adopted a policy of limiting surges during natural disasters and other emergencies. However, a Metro outage in DC in May caused spikes in prices again, since Uber didn't consider that event an emergency. This time, it will impose the surge cap.

Chevrolet

The 2017 Camaro ZL1 looks rather angry, doesn't it?

5 more images in gallery

2017 is a big year for Chevrolet when it comes to electric vehicles. Between the second-generation Volt and the forthcoming Bolt, the company is in a race with Tesla to see which manufacturer will be the first to sell 200,000 EVs and lose the IRS tax credit. But lest you think that GM only cares about efficiency and being kind to the environment, think again. Today, it took the wraps off a new track monster—the 2017 Camaro ZL1. Under the hood is a supercharged V8 (the 640hp/477kW 6.2L LT4) and General Motors' all-new 10-speed automatic transmission.

The ZL1 has also been on a significant weight loss program. It's 200lbs (91kg) lighter than the previous ZL1, but the new car has an extra 60hp (45kW) and 80ft-lbs (109Nm) to play with. Although you can get the ZL1 with a conventional six-speed, the new automatic gearbox sounds rather interesting. Several years ago, Ford and GM decided to collaborate on a new generation of automatic transmissions for rear-wheel drive cars and trucks—this is the first application of that project to come from Chevrolet, although with some parts and software unique to the ZL1.

The car has also had an aerodynamic facelift to distinguish it from lesser Camaros—but more importantly, to aid high-speed stability and improve cooling. Chevrolet's Corvette Z06 supercar has faced criticism that it overheats too quickly on track—a shame given that it's so ludicrously fast that the track is the only real place it has to stretch its legs. GM will be hoping the same isn't true for the ZL1, which uses the same engine.

Charter's footprint after the proposed merger. (credit: Charter)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is likely to support Charter's proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and may circulate a proposal to approve the merger with conditions "as soon as this week," The Wall Street Journal reported last night, citing "people familiar with the matter."

Wheeler would be circulating a draft order to fellow commissioners, a preliminary step to approving the deal.

"The order would impose a number of conditions on the transaction, many of them aimed at boosting online video as a competitor to cable," the Journal reported. "One condition would bar Charter from including clauses in its pay-TV contracts that restrict a content company’s ability to offer its programming online or to new entrants, the people said. FCC officials worry those clauses, which are thought to be widespread in the pay-TV marketplace, could be impeding the growth of online video."

If encryption isn't the default on your phone, when should you enable it? (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

On Monday, experts speaking to The Wall Street Journal about the ongoing smartphone encryption debate estimated that roughly "10 percent of the world's 1.4 billion Android phones were encrypted," compared to 95 percent of all iPhones. For iPhones, that estimate is based on data provided by the company's OS distribution chart—this isn't a perfect source since it also includes iPods and iPads. In any case, the vast majority of iDevices are running iOS 8 or 9 and thus all data on them is encrypted in a way that makes it impossible for Apple or others to directly access data on them without their passcodes.

The figure for Android phones is likely an estimate based on other sources, since it's impossible to get similar data from the Android distribution chart. Google has historically had trouble getting its hardware partners to encrypt their phones and even had to backtrack on promises that Android 5.0 phones would be encrypted by default because of performance concerns. Ultimately, the company was able to make encrypted storage a requirement for Android 6.0 phones that meet the required specs (Nexus devices have been encrypted by default since the Nexus 6 and 9 came out in 2014), but currently only 2.3 percent of all Android phones run Marshmallow. Even worse, only new phones that ship with Android 6.0 need to be encrypted, and it's still optional for those that upgrade.

iOS and Android's OS distribution charts. If a device is running iOS 8 or 9, you can assume things about how encryption is working. Not so much in Android's case. (credit: Wall Street Journal)

Most people just stick with whatever default settings their stuff comes with, which is what makes default settings so important—almost all Android phones support encryption, but few actually use it. Assuming that people don't begin encrypting their Android phones en masse or that Google doesn't change its policies, it means that it could easily be another two or three years before even a plurality of Android devices are encrypted.