Month: December 2016

A. Cearreta

We can now quantify how much humans have changed the surface of the planet. A scientific analysis of all the human-made substances on Earth—including "houses, factories, farms, mines, roads, airports and shipping ports, computer systems, [and] discarded waste"—reveals their total mass to be 30 trillion tons. That's a mass of more than 50 kilos for every square meter of the Earth's surface. Impressive!

In a paper for The Anthropocene Review, University of Leicester geologist Jan Zalasiewicz and his colleagues describe how they arrived at this number. Zalasiewicz has devoted much of his career to studying the Anthropocene, a geological period that begins in the twentieth century and is characterized by human-created substances such as plastic and radioactive isotopes from nuclear weapons testing.

Enlarge / #squadgoals (credit: HBO)

This week on Decrypted we immersed ourselves in the Westworld season finale, "The Bicameral Mind." It was a mixed bag with some great moments and some unfortunate missteps. Though most plotholes were closed, several of our (anti)heroes did things that seemed way out of character. What does it all mean?

My guest is Evan Narcisse, cultural critic and senior staff writer at io9.com. He also just started work on a Marvel Comics project you miiiiight know (sorry, I cannot reveal anything under pain of death). Evan is immersed in the culture of gaming and superheroes, so I knew he would have fantastic insights about this crucial final episode.

Topics discussed: We just don't care that William and MIB are the same person (seriously why is this such a big deal); how Maeve's final revelation completely sold her character short (and also made no sense given her past actions); why Bernard why (you were our favorite character and now you're a blob); the differences between Arnold and Ford's ideas about consciousness (or lack thereof); W.E.B. Dubois' idea of double consciousness (and why it completely fits robot consciousness in this story); robots and slavery (and some of the not-so-subtle racial subtexts); the trouble with Dolores (it's still not clear why she's leading the rebellion); and how much we want Felix to be promoted (go Felix go!).

Enlarge / Wait, what's hidden in the pixels? (credit: Devcore)

Millions of people visiting mainstream websites over the past two months have been exposed to a novel form of malicious ads that embed attack code in individual pixels of the banners.

Researchers from antivirus provider Eset said "Stegano," as they've dubbed the campaign, dates back to 2014. Beginning in early October, its unusually stealthy operators scored a major coup by getting the ads displayed on a variety of unnamed reputable news sites, each with millions of daily visitors. Borrowing from the word steganography—the practice of concealing secret messages inside a larger document that dates back to at least 440 BC—Stegano hides parts of its malicious code in parameters controlling the transparency of pixels used to display banner ads. While the attack code alters the tone or color of the images, the changes are almost invisible to the untrained eye.

The malicious script is concealed in the alpha channel that defines the transparency of pixels, making it extremely difficult for even sharp-eyed ad networks to detect. After verifying that the targeted browser isn't running in a virtual machine or connected to other types of security software often used to detect attacks, the script redirects the browser to a site that hosts three exploits for now-patched Adobe Flash vulnerabilities.

Enlarge / This slide deck got pulled from the Defense Business Board website after DOD leaders allegedly moved to suppress the data behind it.

In January of 2015, as the Defense Department was chafing under the sequestration of its budget, the Pentagon leadership got some great news. A study prepared by the Defense Business Board (DBB) and a team from the global management consulting giant McKinsey and Company found that even with "moderate" changes to business practices, the DOD could save $125 billion over five years.

That would be enough to fully fund operations for 50 Army brigades, 10 Navy carrier strike group deployments, or 83 wings of F-35 fighter aircraft (one wing being about 36 aircraft—purchase price not included) for each of those five years. And all that savings could be had simply by fixing the military's bureaucratic back-office, according to the study—a force of more than one million uniformed government, civilian, and contractor employees. DOD's bureaucratic force is now almost as large as the military's active duty force itself, which stands at 1.3 million soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen.

That good news, however, did not fall upon welcoming ears. DOD officials had no real idea how much bureaucratic overhead was costing them, as the costs were never accurately measured. When they saw the numbers from the DBB, the Washington Post reports, some of the Pentagon's leadership was afraid of a legislative backlash. After DOD officials had complained for years about not having enough money to Congress, the department feared findings would trigger further cuts to the DOD's budget. So the data for the study was designated as sensitive, and an overview of the report that had already been published to the Defense Business Board website was pulled.

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL) have developed a new method for treating human sewage to create a biocrude oil product that can be refined into a fuel akin to gasoline, diesel, or jet fuels.

The process is called hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), and it has been described as a sped-up version of the way the Earth naturally creates crude oil. Researchers apply a considerable amount of heat and pressure to wastewater, breaking down its chemical components into biocrude and an aqueous liquid in minutes.

PNNL says that wastewater treatment plants handle approximately 34 billion gallons of sewage every day. In a Reddit AMA held last week, Justin Billing, one of the scientists on the project, noted that sewage traditionally has three destinations—being turned into fertilizer or soil additive, going in a landfill, or being incinerated. Some wastewater treatment plants (though not all) will also use anaerobic digestion, which “reduce[s] the volume of solids and mitigates the toxic load while also producing methane that can be used for heat and power at the plant," Billings says. But anaerobic digestion alone can’t solve the whole equation. “From a capital intensity perspective it is reasonable to consider a hydrothermal process like HTL when designing, upgrading, or expanding existing facilities,” he suggested.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

A new report from IDC shows Apple Watch sales have slumped since last year. The report estimates that Apple has sold 1.1 million Watch units in the third quarter of 2016, down 71 percent from a year ago. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly told Reuters that sell-through, or the number of Apple Watches that reach consumers rather than the number on store shelves, reached a new high.

"Sales growth is off the charts," Cook said. "In fact, during the first week of holiday shopping, our sell-through of Apple Watch was greater than any week in the product’s history. And as we expected, we’re on track for the best quarter ever for Apple Watch."

Apple also expects the holiday shopping season to be big for the Watch. This could prove to be true, since it is arguably the most complementary device in Apple's lineup and more suited as a gift than an iPhone. Apple generally doesn't talk about Apple Watch sales on its earnings calls, nor does it reveal exact sales numbers for the device. The Watch remains in an "other products" category (along with the iPod and Apple TV), rather than standing on its own in the company's sales figures.