Month: May 2016

The Falcon 9 and its Thaicom satellite payload are ready to go. Will Mother Nature cooperate? (credit: SpaceX)

Despite a two-hour window to get off the ground, SpaceX was unable to launch its Falcon 9 rocket this Thursday. According to the company's founder, Elon Musk, the company couldn't conduct the launch due to "a tiny glitch in the motion of an upper stage engine actuator." Better to scrub for 24 hours to investigate the problem and ensure the rocket's readiness, he said.

Whereas the weather was nigh perfect on Thursday, it's a tad less so today. Forecasters anticipate a 60 percent chance of "go" conditions for launch when the two-hour window opens at 5:39pm ET (10:39pm BST). Fresh off two straight launches and unprecedented water landings of its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX will try for its third sea-based landing this evening after it launches a 3,000kg Thaicom communications satellite to a supersynchronous transfer orbit.

Like a similar launch three weeks ago, the Thaicom mission requires the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket to reach a high velocity relative to the Earth's surface before separating from its payload. "As with other missions going to geostationary orbits, the first stage will be subject to extreme velocities and reentry heating, making a successful landing challenging," the company stated in its mission overview.

(credit: Judit Klein)

Yesterday, Illinois senator Terry Link filed an amendment to the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) to relax rules on the collection of facial recognition data, and he attached that amendment to an unrelated bill pertaining to unclaimed property. But on Friday morning, the senator's spokesperson reached out to Ars saying that the bill "had been put on hold," although he would not comment on the reasons for the decision, nor would he speak to when or if the amendment might be revived. If it passes, the amendment would pull the rug out from under a number of lawsuits filed against Facebook, Google, and Snapchat for using facial recognition in photo tagging.

At first, it seemed that the amendment would be quietly pushed through the legislative process. A law firm representing plaintiffs in the Facebook case suggested that Sen. Link proposed the amendment yesterday and added it to a bill that has been languishing since February so that state representatives would move to quickly pass the amendment before Memorial Day.

But Link's amendment has drawn concern from privacy advocates. The Center for Democracy and Technology wrote that the piece of legislation was proposed "without time for sufficient public debate, less than a week before the end of a legislative session" in an "undemocratic maneuver that minimizes the potential for public engagement on a vital issue of policy and technology." The Electronic Privacy Information Center also wrote that the amendment "would undercut legal protections, exempting facial recognition software from the law." Chris Dore, a partner at the firm representing the Illinois plaintiffs, said that the Illinois Attorney General had also come out this morning against Link's amendment. The Attorney General's Office confirmed to Ars that it is opposed to the changes, although it gave no further statement.

(credit: DailyDot)

FBI agents armed with an assault weapon raided the home of a security professional who discovered sensitive data for 22,000 dental patients was available on the Internet, according to a report published Friday.

Justin Shafer, who is described as a dental computer technician and software security researcher, reportedly said the raid happened on Tuesday at 6:30am as he, his wife, and three young children were sleeping. He said it started when his doorbell rang incessantly and someone banged hard on his door. According to Friday's report:

“My first thought was that my dad had died,” Shafer told Daily Dot in a phone interview, “but then as I went to the door, I saw all the flashing blue and red lights.”

With the baby crying in fear from the racket, Shafer opened the door to find what he estimated to be 12 to 15 FBI agents. One was “pointing a ‘big green’ assault weapon at me,” Shafer told Daily Dot, “and the baby’s crib was only feet from the door.”

The agents allegedly ordered Shafer to put his hands behind his back. As they handcuffed him, his 9-year-old daughter cried in terror, Shafter said, and his wife tried to tell the agents that there were three young children in the house.

Once handcuffed, Shafer was taken outside, still in his boxer shorts, still not knowing what was going on or why.

Over the next few hours, the agents seized all of Shafer’s computers and devices—“and even my Dentrix magazines,” Shafer said. “The only thing they left was my wife’s phone.” The seized property list, a copy of which was provided to Daily Dot, shows that federal agents took 29 items.

Enter Eaglesoft

A FBI agent told Shafer the raid stemmed from an incident in February, when Shafer discovered a file transfer protocol server operated by Eaglesoft, a provider of dental practice management software. The FTP server reportedly stored patient data in a way that made it easily accessible to anyone. Shafer contacted DataBreaches.net and asked for help privately notifying the software maker, and once the patient data was secured, the breach notification site published this disclosure. In a blog post of his own, Shafer later discussed the FTP lapse and a separate Eaglesoft vulnerability involving hard-coded database credentials.

The DJI Phantom 4 tracks a person. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

The owner of a drone store outside Nashville told Ars on Friday that two of his customers have had their unmanned aerial vehicles shot at in recent weeks.

The incident is reminiscent of last year’s similar incident in California and another in Kentucky, which resulted in the shooter being cleared on local firearms charges. As drones become more pervasive, it seems that drones, perceived privacy violations, and firearms are increasingly becoming a dangerous combination.

According to Byron Brock, the owner of Vivid Aerial in Whites Creek, a man named Gary Sammons was flying his new DJI Phantom 4 above his home in Rutherford County last Saturday.

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

This just in: Android updates are still really slow. The latest numbers put the seven-month-old Android 6.0 Marshmallow at just 7.5 percent of devices. That's an average of just over one percent per month, so if this keeps up, by 2020 the majority of devices will be compatible with Marshmallow or higher. Great.

Google's latest attempt at fixing Android's update problem reportedly involves "a list." On this list, OEMs are ranked by how fast they deliver updates, which the report says is used to "highlight proactive manufacturers and shame tardy vendors." Google has even thought about making this list public.

Does anyone think this is going to work? Can "shame" really be the driving force behind getting companies to update? We'd imagine "making the list public" would mean posting it to a website—is that really going to compete with the millions of dollars these companies spend on advertising?

A grid full of stock cars at the hallowed Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This is familiar ground for NASCAR.

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2016 has been a bit of a bumper year for Turn 10. Forza Motorsport 6 has been ported to Windows 10, and the Xbox One version has had not one but two expansion packs—first the return of Porsche and more recently an official NASCAR license. Stock cars have appeared in previous installments of the franchise (last seen in Forza 4), but the $20 (£16) NASCAR expansion puts these 3,300lb (1.497kg) 700hp+ monsters front and center.

Turn 10 also pushed out a fairly significant update to Forza 6 alongside (but independently of) the NASCAR expansion, adding some tweaks to the game that players will benefit from even if they don't want to buy the stock cars. Drafting in the slipstream of another car has been tweaked. When you're racing in a pack, the HUD now has little proximity arrows that let you know someone is in a blind spot. You can configure games to include mandatory pit stops and also rolling starts (as opposed to taking off from a standstill).

As for those NASCAR Cup cars, arguably this is a brave move. The new career campaign transplants these specialized oval racing machines onto race circuits from around the world, pitting them head-to-head against more conventional Forza fodder (sports cars like the Audi R8 LMS, Ferrari 458 GTE, and McLaren 12C GT3, which race at Le Mans and the like). The sport has a well-deserved reputation for extremely careful control of its image, hence my surprise at their willingness to enter into such a direct comparison with other flavors of racing. It's the automotive equivalent of firing up Madden and then facing off against Manchester United or the New Zealand All Blacks.