Month: November 2016

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There's a zero-day exploit in the wild that's being used to execute malicious code on the computers of people using Tor and possibly other users of the Firefox browser, officials of the anonymity service confirmed Tuesday.

Word of the previously unknown Firefox vulnerability first surfaced in this post on the official Tor website. It included several hundred lines of JavaScript and an introduction that warned: "This is an [sic] JavaScript exploit actively used against TorBrowser NOW." Tor cofounder Roger Dingledine quickly confirmed the previously unknown vulnerability and said engineers from Mozilla were in the process of developing a patch.

According to security researchers who analyzed the code, it exploits a memory corruption vulnerability that allows malicious code to be executed on computers running Windows. The malicious payload it delivers, according to an independent researcher who goes by the Twitter handle @TheWack0lian, is almost identical to one that was used in 2013 to deanonymize people visiting a Tor-shielded child pornography site. The FBI ultimately acknowledged responsibility for the exploit, which was embedded in Web pages served by a service known as Freedom Hosting.

(credit: NASA)

Early in our Solar System's history, the Earth was slammed by a Mars-sized body. The collision effectively disassembled both bodies and created a swirling mass of debris from which the present Earth and its Moon condensed. The process of forming these two bodies was violent, as debris of various size rained down on their surfaces. As a result, the Moon's surface started out as a global ocean of molten rock.

Eventually, as this ocean cooled, it formed the Moon's crust. But the process was complex. Different minerals solidified at different temperatures and depths. We've had some models of how this might have happened, based on a limited number of experiments, as well as our early understanding of the Moon's composition. But scientists from VU Amsterdam have revisited this issue in light of what we now know of the Moon. The scientists have tested how various mineral mixes behave under extreme temperatures and pressures. Their results indicate that the Moon must have started out with significant amounts of water mixed into its global magma ocean.

How do you model an entire ocean of molten rock? You start with the known composition of the Moon and use that to create a mix of the appropriate minerals. Then you expose those minerals to extreme pressures and temperatures well beyond the melting point of rock. For these experiments, the temperatures ranged up to 1,550°C. Since the magma ocean was potentially hundreds of kilometers deep (current estimates range from 400 to 1,000 kilometers), pressures ranged up to 3 GigaPascals, which is nearly 30,000 atmospheres.

Enlarge / Uh oh. This seems bad. (credit: HBO)

This week's Westworld episode, "The Well-Tempered Clavier," gave us all the answers. Well, most of the answers. OK, SOME answers. Fine. We're still freakin' mystified.

My guest on Decrypted this week is Norman Chan, co-founder of Tested, who writes and makes videos about science, technology, and pop culture. Norm has some fascinating observations about which robot characters are the most realistic, and he told us what he thinks is really going on with Wyatt.

Topics discussed: The big reveal about Arnold (and what this says about Ford's plans); timeframes and robot memory (this is a lot more complex than a "dual timeline" theory); long loops and short loops (and OMG we are starting to think a lot about Matrix: Reloaded); what the robot revolution will really be like (and how maybe we don't really want to see the robots leave Westworld); how the show really sells us on robots (it's not the effects; it's the acting); robot therapy (which involves nuking your memories); Maeve's incredible scene with Bernard (one of the most intense moments in the show so far); what needs to get resolved this season and what we are OK with leaving until season 2 (seriously we don't mind waiting to know more about the Delos plot).

Enlarge / Committee chair Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) (credit: Getty | Allison Shelley)

On Tuesday, President-elect Donald J. Trump announced his nomination of six-term Republican Congress member Tom Price of Georgia to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Like many of his Republican colleagues, Price has been a vocal and long-standing critic of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. But Price, a former orthopedic surgeon, stands apart. While other Republicans have expressed their desire take a hatchet to the landmark healthcare law, he has taken up a scalpel and carved out the most detailed plan yet to repeal and replace the ACA.

‘Repeal and replace’ was a mantra of Trump’s campaign, yet the President-elect provided no specifics on how to do it or what might replace the ACA. Price’s plan could fill that void. But uncertainty still prevails over any prognosis for the country’s healthcare system. Up for speculation is everything from the political maneuvers necessary to repeal the ACA to the Republican establishment’s acceptance of Price’s replacement plan, some aspects of which are at odds with other Republican plans.

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On Tuesday, Zynga sued two of its former employees. The company claims they stole confidential information and took it to their new employer, rival social gaming startup, Scopely.

Massimo Maietti and Ehud Barlach worked as higher-up employees for the San Francisco-based Zynga until they left in July and September, respectively. Scopely, which makes Dice with Buddies, Wheel of Fortune Free Play, and others, is also named as a co-defendant in the case.

According to Zynga’s 28-page civil complaint, Maietti was the creative director on “one of Zynga’s most ambitious soon-to-be released games, which goes by the code name ‘Project Mars.’” Barlach, for his part, was the general manager of Hit It Rich! Slots.

Google Earth Timelapse is a really awesome project that lets you turn back the clock on Planet Earth. In 2013, Google worked with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA, and TIME to compile a history of satellite imagery from 1984 to 2012. Today, Google updated the project with "four additional years of imagery, petabytes of new data, and a sharper view of the Earth from 1984 to 2016."

The new data isn't just "new" data—Google also managed to compile better older images of Earth thanks to the Landsat Global Archive Consolidation Program. Google says it sifted through 5 million satellite images from five different satellites, taking the best of the "three quadrillion pixels" to create 33 images of Earth (one for each year). Thanks to the plethora of data and Google's cloud-computing algorithms, you get all of this without any clouds blocking the view.

The images are up on Google Earth Engine, where the interactive "Timelapse" page basically looks like Google Earth, but with a draggable timeline and a "play" button. Google has even highlighted a few spots where viewers can watch a glacier melt away into nothingness or check out pretty much anywhere in China, which looks like a game of SimCity.

Several automakers have agreed to form a joint venture in Europe to build roughly 400 “ultra-fast” charging sites along highways on the continent to make long distance travel in electric cars more feasible. BMW, Volkswagen Group, Ford, and Daimler are heading up the venture, along with Audi and Porsche—both divisions of VW Group.

In a press release today, the automakers said the charging stations would deliver 350 kW over a DC charging network, which is set to “significantly reduce charging time compared to available systems.” For comparison, Tesla’s supercharging stations deliver 120 kW and can fill a Tesla up to 170 miles of range in 30 minutes.

The European network will use the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard that is compatible with current and future electric vehicles from all the joint venture companies as well as Fiat-Chrysler and Hyundai.

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AT&T's DirecTV Now online streaming service goes live tomorrow, and the best pricing will only be available for a limited time. That's a problem, because the service is missing key features at launch and it's not clear when they'll arrive.

The biggest technical limitations might be the lack of recording functionality and the inability to pause live TV for more than a few seconds. DirecTV Now won't have DVR functionality until sometime next year, according to several news reports. If DVR launches in January or February, then it isn't such a huge deal, but if the functionality only comes late in 2017 that would dramatically reduce the value proposition for customers who sign up right away to lock in the most favorable pricing.

It's not even definite that DVR functionality will come to DirecTV Now in 2017. When contacted by Ars today, the company said that "DVR and pause capability is coming in the future, likely next year." (For customers' sake, we hope "likely next year" doesn't turn into "2018.")

Enlarge (credit: Alirod Ameri)

In a Tuesday blog post, Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, announced plans to mirror the entire massive repository in Canada—largely over fear of the incoming Trump administration.

“On November 9 in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change," he wrote. “It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private, and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions.”

He continued, warning that government surveillance “looks like it will increase.” As such, the Internet Archive is “fighting to protect our readers’ privacy in the digital world.”