Month: December 2016

Enlarge / The USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) will be spending a lot of time pier-side in San Diego. (credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

After two unscheduled stops for repairs, the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000), the US Navy's new stealthy all-electric-powered destroyer, arrived at its new home port in San Diego on December 8. The ship also brought along new details about the source of its engineering woes. Zumwalt's propulsion issues, which caused the ship to have engineering failures off Norfolk, Virginia, and while transiting the Panama Canal, were caused by seawater getting into the ship's lubrication system for its huge electric motors.

US Naval Institute News' Sam LeGrone reports that the root cause of the engine failures was seawater contamination in the lube oil for the bearings of Zumwalt's Advanced Induction Motors. Rather than being driven by dedicated gas turbine engines, the Zumwalt's motors are powered by electricity from the gas turbine generators that also power the rest of the ship. The power plant is the first of its kind in a Navy ship, and it could generate enough power to allow Zumwalt to be later refitted with directed energy weapons or electromagnetic railguns.

The seawater apparently got into the motor bearings via a faulty lubrication oil chiller. The chiller uses water drawn in from outside the ship to prevent the oil around the motor's bearings from breaking down and to cool the bearings themselves while they're under load. The cause of the leaks has yet to be determined.

Enlarge (credit: Porsche)

At long last, Porsche's exclusive contract with Electronic Arts is at an end. The news, broken by German site SpeedManiacs, followed the appearance of some Porsche cars in Assetto Corsa. Porsche Branded Entertainment Manager Sebastian Hornung told the site that the contract expires this year. That jibes with what we learned last year on a visit to Turn 10, so we can expect many more Porsches to show up in racing games in the coming years.

The deal, which was struck in 2000, has meant that some of the coolest sports cars on wheels have been excluded from most popular racing games ever since. The Gran Turismo series tried a workaround by using the cars modified by Ruf. The Forza franchise sometimes managed to arrange a sublicense from EA and sometimes didn't. As for everyone else? Forget about it.

Why Porsche signed an exclusive license with EA back then is a mystery. As we understand it, the idea was Porsche's, a move the company probably came to regret as EA's racing titles got lapped again and again by GT and Forza on consoles and hardcore sims like iRacing on the PC. Indeed, in conversations on the topic with Porsche North America over the years, we always got the sense the company knew it was paying a hefty price and couldn't wait for the deal to run its course. (We reached out to Porsche this morning for an official comment but have not received a reply at the time of writing.)

Dozens of low-cost Android phone models come preinstalled with apps that covertly download and install adware and other unwanted programs, researchers said.

At least 26 phone models come preinstalled with a downloader dubbed Android.DownLoader.473.origin, according to a blog post published Monday by antivirus provider Doctor Web. Doctor Web researchers described the app as a downloader trojan that can download not only benign applications but also malicious and unwanted ones. One such app, known as H5GameCenter, displays ads on top of running applications. The image can't be removed, and infected users report that when they uninstall the app, Android.DownLoader.473.origin quickly downloads and installs it again.

Another preinstalled downloader Doctor Web detected is known as Android.Sprovider.7 and comes encrypted inside another app. It has the ability to automatically download Android application files and install them when users click on a confirmation button, make phone calls to certain numbers, and show ads on top of apps.

Enlarge (credit: Waymo)

The Google self-driving car is no more. As of today, the autonomous vehicle project takes its own place under the Alphabet corporate hierarchy and will be known as Waymo.

Earlier in the day, rumors circulated that Alphabet was pulling the plug on the entire self-driving project, preferring instead to partner with other OEMs. It's true that the program has been troubled of late, but spinning the company out on its own seems more of a vote of confidence than handing everyone involved a pink slip. Still, there are some—like Elon Musk—who believe that Google's 2 million autonomously driven miles aren't sufficient and that companies like Tesla or Uber have now eclipsed one of the early pioneers in the field.

In common with just about everyone else working on a self-driving car, Waymo will be all about mobility. Or, in its own words, "Waymo is a self-driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around." In a Medium post announcing the new company, Waymo's CEO John Krafcik highlighted the potential that self-driving vehicles have for cutting the number of road deaths and empowering those who until now have been left behind by the automobile.

Department of Energy in Washington, DC. (credit: Begemot)

The Department of Energy said it will not provide a list of names of staffers who worked on climate change issues to the Trump transition team on Tuesday, despite the team’s demand for that information.

On Friday, Bloomberg leaked a 75-question memo sent from the Trump transition team to the DOE, asking the department to provide information about the kinds of work it’s doing and the legal and procedural basis for certain programs. While such a questionnaire is not uncommon for transition teams to send federal agencies, the questionnaire also included demands that the DOE provide a list of names of staffers who worked on climate change issues. Those demands came across as deeply concerning and highly unusual to career staffers and contractors, some of whom worked at the DOE not only during the Obama administration but under the Bush and Clinton administrations as well.

Trump has publicly called climate change a hoax, and just this weekend, he told the Fox Sunday host that “nobody really knows” about climate change. These are blatant lies from Trump, as climate scientists have decades of research showing that climate change is happening. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showed 95 percent statistical confidence that humans are the primary cause for this undeniable warming trend.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Detroit Free Press )

In many ways, the things we do and the experiences we have shape who we are—from our personalities to the state of our mental health. But an equally important, if not more elusive, force that molds us is our genes.

Now, in an extensive genetic dragnet, researchers have pinpointed six sections of the human genome linked to key personality traits—extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. And some of those stretches of DNA may not only help determine if we’re chatty or cautious, but whether we’re prone to psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Specifically, the researchers found connections linking extraversion with ADHD, neuroticism with depression, and openness with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The findings open the door to a better understanding of such mental conditions, plus the possibility of better ways to identify and treat them.

Enlarge / 10.12.2 fixes some MacBook Pro-specific issues along with its more general fixes. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple has released the final version of the macOS 10.12.2 update to the public today, the second major update to macOS Sierra since its September launch. Like yesterday’s iOS 10.2 update, 10.12.2 includes support for new and redesigned emoji, but unlike the iOS update it focuses almost entirely on fixes and under-the-hood improvements instead of big, user-visible features.

Let’s cover the general improvements first. For those 2013-and-later models that support unlocking via the Apple Watch, setting up and using the feature has been made more reliable. It could sometimes take a try or two to make the feature work, but this inconsistency should be minimized or eliminated post-update.

Apple also tells us it has tweaked the setup and notifications for the iCloud Desktop and Documents feature, something we complained about a bit in our Sierra review. In many cases, it was hard to know what exactly the feature was doing to your stuff, especially when enabling it on multiple Macs with existing files and folders on their desktops and in their Documents folders. Alerts for the related Optimized Storage feature, which deletes local files that are safely backed up to iCloud when you’re running low on local disk space, have also been tweaked.