Month: June 2016

Crystal growth, imaged using a CARS microscope. (credit: Martin Jurna, Optical Sciences Group, University of Twente)

Research is like any other human endeavor, as subject to trends and fads as the fashion industry. Everyone wants to jump on the latest new thing. In the world of optics, that means photonics. I'll explain photonics in a second, because it's cool and everyone should be able to talk knowledgeably about photonics to their older relatives.

Photonics involves carefully structuring materials to bend light to the experimenter's will. But photons don't always cooperate. They're a bit like ants—while one photon doesn't do much, several photons carry off all your breadcrumbs and threaten the honey, and the entire photon colony will repossess your fridge, contents included. In other words, photonics labs are filled with the burnt remains of experiments because careless researchers cranked up the laser power.

This is kind of sad, because photonic crystals are incredibly useful, and the world of high power lasers is missing out on all the cool tricks that have been developed by the photonics community. Until now, that is.

That's your money, just flying away. (credit: Getty Images | Colin Anderson)

Charter and its new subsidiary Time Warner Cable (TWC) have been overcharging customers at least $7.2 million per year for equipment and service, a US Senate investigation has found.

Time Warner Cable over-billed customers nationwide an estimated $639,948 between January and April of this year, which projects to a yearly total of $1,919,844. Charter, meanwhile, "informed the [Senate's investigative] Subcommittee that it over-billed customers by at least $442,691 per month," the report said. That works out to overcharges of at least $5,312,292 per year. When added to Time Warner Cable's overcharges, that's $7.2 million that customers paid in erroneous charges over and above the already high prices of cable TV.

The report was released today as senators grilled cable company executives from Charter, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, AT&T-owned DirecTV, and Dish on customer service and billing problems. The Senate report, as well as video of the hearing and transcripts of cable executive testimony, is available here.

The iOS 10 developer betas come with an unencrypted kernel. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple has made encryption and user privacy a pillar of the iOS platform in recent years, but earlier this week, security researchers made a curious discovery: as reported by the MIT Technology Review, the operating system kernel in the iOS 10 betas released at WWDC last week is unencrypted. This makes it much easier to dig into the code and look for security flaws.

There was some speculation as to why Apple had done this or whether the company had even released an unencrypted kernel on purpose. After declining to comment initially, an Apple spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the kernel had been left unencrypted on purpose but that user data continues to be encrypted as it normally is.

“The kernel cache doesn’t contain any user info, and by unencrypting it we’re able to optimize the operating system’s performance without compromising security,” the spokesperson said.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Comcast has done something wrong to one of its customers and didn't make it right until he contacted a reporter.

A story in Consumerist yesterday tells the tale of Robert, who was incorrectly charged $1,775.44 and couldn't get it back for more than 18 months.

"Comcast even admits the money shouldn’t have been debited from Robert’s bank account, but now says it’s his responsibility to sort the mess out with his bank," the story said.

(credit: Instagram)

On the heels of announcing that it has reached 500 million active monthly users, Instagram says it will soon add a translation feature to its app. Through a post on the image-sharing app, the company announced that within a month, users will be able to translate image captions, comments, and profile bios using a new translate button.

The Facebook-owned social media app will structure its translations similarly to its parent company. When you come across a post you want to translate into a language that isn't your default language, you can hit the "See Translation" button to convert it into the language you've chosen in your profile's language settings. Both Facebook and Twitter have translation features already, so this addition brings Instagram up to par with its competition in that respect. Considering that 80 percent of Instagram's user base lives outside the United States, this feature will likely be welcomed by many.

There's no word on how many languages Instagram will support with the first rollout of this feature. The company does explain on its Help website that if a translation isn't showing up, it might be because the app doesn't currently support that language or couldn't detect the initial language being used. It also warns users that translations may not be available for older posts. The full translation feature should be ready for most users by July. Here's hoping we'll be able to post in Klingon (@arstechnica) by August.

Getty Images

Solar Impulse 2 lands at Seville airport, Spain.

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Solar Impulse 2 has landed in Seville, completing the world's first solar-powered crossing of the Atlantic. The 6765km (4,200mi) flight took just shy of three days (71 hours and 8 minutes), taking off from New York three days ago.

Solar Impulse 2, which is slowly making its way back around the world to Abu Dhabi, has two pilots that take turns. The Atlantic hop was Bertrand Piccard's longest flight in Solar Impulse 2. André Borschberg, who piloted the agonisingly drawn-out Nagoya-to-Hawaii leg, still retains the record for longest ever solo flight (8924km over 117 hours and 52 minutes) back in July 2015.

The flights take such a long time because Solar Impulse 2, as the name suggests, is completely powered by sunlight. The plane's massive 72-metre wings (broader than a 747!) are covered in some 269.5 square metres of photovoltaic cells. During the day, the cells power four 14kW (17.4hp) electric motors and top-up four 41kWh lithium-ion batteries. During the evening, the motors are driven by the batteries. Max cruise speed when the sun is up is 49 knots (90km/h), and a rather languid 33 knots (60km/h) at night.

This artist’s impression shows stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It will make its closest approach in 2018, coming to within just 17 light hours. (credit: ESO)

After spending the better part of a decade closely observing the movement of the star S2, which has a mass about 15 times that of the Sun, a team of astrophysicists concluded in 2002 that it orbited the black hole at the center of the galaxy. This is because the orbital dynamics of S2 were extreme, with an orbital period of about 15.5 years and a maximum velocity of 2.5 percent the speed of light. These observations provided the final proof astronomers needed to confirm that the compact radio source Sagitarrius A* was, in fact, that black hole.

Since then astronomers have been keenly interested in the star S2 because its movement can tell them much about the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. They can also test some ideas about general relativity when the star makes its closest approach to the black hole, within about 17 light hours, in 2018. And now, they have a powerful instrument to do just that.

The European Southern Observatory says its GRAVITY instrument has made its first observations, and they were successful. The instrument employs four 8.2-meter telescopes that are part of the "Very Large Telescope" facility in Chile. By using the telescope's interferometer capabilities, astronomers will be able to obtain ultra-precise positions of the orbiting star.