Month: March 2017

US Constitution. (credit: Kim Davies)

Here at Ars, we're always on the lookout for wacky, tech-focused legislation. And we've found one bill that is certain to make our Top 10 list.

Edwin "Ed" Chau.

The new proposal bars the online publication of a "false or deceptive statement designed to influence the vote." Bye-bye online news. On the flip side, this legislation would probably outlaw lawmakers' and candidates' online speech, too.

The bill is proposed by California Assemblyman Edwin "Ed" Chau, a Democrat representing a section of Southern California. The proposal, which is likely unconstitutional on its face, was supposed to have a committee hearing Tuesday afternoon, but it was pulled at the 11th hour.

Enlarge (credit: Tammy Anthony Baker)

After weeks of rumors and delays, President Trump signed an executive order on climate policies Tuesday at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency—an agency the Trump administration tried to hit with a $247 million cut for the current fiscal year, according to Politico, and is seeking a 31 percent budget cut for next year. The order includes a number of actions to undo Obama-era decisions addressing the greenhouse gas emissions that have already warmed the world’s climate about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s.

As part of the announcement, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said, "America's leadership, the president's leadership, on how we achieve energy independence while improving our environment in this country and abroad is determined more by the actions that this president is taking than at any time."

Clean Power Plan ended

The main target of the effort is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan rule. The EPA finalized the rule last August, but a court challenge by a number of Republican state attorneys general (including new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt) has kept it in legal limbo. The goal of the Clean Power Plan was to reduce CO₂ emissions from power plants to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The rule set reduction targets for each state to meet but left it to the states to decide how they wanted to meet it. It would have been particularly difficult for coal-burning plants to meet the new standards, and less burning coal would result in reductions of other pollutants as well.

(credit: Wikimedia)

Developers of the widely used LastPass password manager are scrambling to fix a serious vulnerability that makes it possible for malicious websites to steal user passcodes and in some cases execute malicious code on computers running the program.

The flaw, which affects the latest version of the LastPass browser extension, was briefly described on Saturday by Tavis Ormandy, a researcher with Google's Project Zero vulnerability reporting team. When people have the LastPass binary running, the vulnerability allows malicious websites to execute code of their choice. Even when the binary isn't present, the flaw can be exploited in a way that lets malicious sites steal passwords from the protected LastPass vault. Ormandy said he developed a proof-of-concept exploit and sent it to LastPass officials. Developers now have three months to patch the hole before Project Zero discloses technical details.

"It will take a long time to fix this properly," Ormandy said. "It's a major architectural problem. They have 90 days, no need to scramble!"

Enlarge / This branching tube sponge wouldn't seem to benefit much from a flame retardant. (credit: NOAA)

Scientific advancements have led to the introduction of many new chemicals into daily life. Unfortunately, along with their benefits, some of those chemicals have brought problems with toxicity. One group of chemicals that has faced this challenge is called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs); they have been widely used as fire retardants but are now restricted due to their toxicity and tendency to accumulate in organisms.

Surprisingly, these complicated chemicals are also made naturally. In some cases, the natural compounds actually exhibit higher toxicity than their man-made counterparts. These naturally occurring chemicals are found across all levels of the marine food-chain, from cyanobacteria to whales, and they have also shown up in humans.

Oddly, most of the chemicals come from sponges that live in the tropics. PBDEs can account for more than 10 percent of the sponge’s tissue by dry weight, and these sponges also harbor other related polyhalogenated compounds. Although scientists have been aware of the natural occurrence of PBDEs in these sponges, little has been known about how they were made. In a recent investigation published in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers have found out that the toxic chemicals aren't the sponges' fault. Instead, bacteria living inside the sponge produce them.

There's a new trailer out for Spider-Man: Homecoming, and I now officially love this movie. Or at least I like what I've seen of it in the trailers. This trailer gives us a much better sense of Peter Parker's arc in the movie, and it also gives us a chance to see him hanging out with his hilarious best friend, Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon). Also, we get a better view of what Vulture is up to.

Before we get into anything else, can I just say that I'm endlessly amused by the fact that Michael Keaton is playing Vulture, after playing both Batman and a meta-version of himself in the movie Birdman, where he's a washed up actor known mostly for playing a flying superhero. Now he has come full circle, once again playing a bird guy in a mainstream superhero flick. I don't know how many levels of meta that is, but it's working.

Like the previous Spider-Man trailer, this one shows off Tony Stark's role as Peter's mentor/annoying older brother. Stark gave Peter an amazing Spidey suit in Civil War, but in this trailer, we see that he has decided to take it away. Which sucks, because the suit has that eye-widening feature, plus the Spidey symbol can detach and become a drone. Peter has been getting into too much trouble trying to stop bank robbers (led by Vulture) and saving people on a doomed Staten Island ferry. Stark wants him to be "a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man," not a full-blown superhero. If you watch carefully, some of the fight scenes in the trailer show Peter in his old spandex suit—that's what he's wearing in the amazing airplane fight with Vulture.

NASA

NASA has spent the last six years building the massive Space Launch System rocket, but beyond making general statements about a “Journey to Mars,” the agency has not provided much detail about how the SLS booster would be used to that end. This situation began to change on Tuesday, when the agency’s chief of human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier, briefed the agency’s advisory council on tentative plans for the first dozen launches of the rocket.

During his presentation, Gerstenmaier presented slides outlining the assembly of a “deep space gateway” and subsequent testing of a “deep space transport” system in the vicinity of the Moon. The sequence of missions would culminate in a crewed mission to orbit Mars, but not land, in 2033. Although Gerstenmaier did not identify the funding needed for such a series of events—which would certainly be considerable and require support from the Trump administration—Tuesday’s presentation nonetheless offered an insightful peek into NASA’s future plans.