Month: March 2017

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | KrulUA)

ISPs that want the federal government to eliminate broadband privacy rules say that your Web browsing and app usage data should not be classified as "sensitive" information.

"Web browsing and app usage history are not 'sensitive information,'" CTIA said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday. CTIA is the main lobbyist group representing mobile broadband providers such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint.

The FCC rules passed during the Obama administration require ISPs to get opt-in consent from consumers before sharing sensitive customer information with advertisers and other third parties. The FCC defined Web browsing history and app usage history as sensitive information, along with other categories such as geo-location data, financial and health information, and the content of communications. If the rules are overturned, ISPs would be able to sell this kind of customer information to advertisers.

Enlarge (credit: FBI)

Convicting someone of a crime depends in part on the mental state of the criminal. We make a distinction between knowing criminality and recklessness, and we give the two states of mind different levels of legal culpability. In the courtroom, however, assessing these mental states and a criminal’s past intentions can be extremely challenging.

However, neuroscience may soon give us hints about what’s going on internally as criminals knowingly committed their crimes. A recent study published in PNAS asserts that brain activity is different in people who know they are committing a crime, and that activity can be used to distinguish them from people who commit crimes recklessly (no, this is not science fiction). If the data is sound, this study seems to suggest that brain imaging could determine a criminal’s mindset—but only if the imaging is performed while the crime is being committed.

To conduct this study, the authors in PNAS performed brain imaging with human subjects and then analyzed the data using a machine-learning algorithm. Brain-imaging study participants were placed in an fMRI machine and presented with a scenario in which they mentally role-played carrying a suitcase through a guarded checkpoint. This mental role-play was accompanied by images on a screen within the MRI tube.

Enlarge / If you have to run your cords to the left with the Nintendo Switch Dock, you'll have to wind them around its body.

It looks like Nintendo is doing what it can to prevent the current retail shortage of Nintendo Switch hardware from persisting into the future. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that "people briefed on [Nintendo's] plans" say the company is doubling its expected Switch production from 8 million units to 16 million units for the fiscal year running from April through March of 2018.

To put that number in some context, Nintendo only sold 13.5 million Wii U units in that console's entire four-year run on the market. The original Wii, meanwhile, shipped roughly 17 million units in its first full calendar year on the shelves (following a holiday-season launch), amid massive long-term retail shortages and on the way to selling over 100 million units over its lifespan. The PS4 sold just over 14 million consoles worldwide in 2014, after selling about 4 million units during its 2013 holiday launch.

The news follows reports of strong initial interest in the Switch worldwide following its March 3 debut, with one report estimating 1.5 million units sold in the system's first week. Nintendo previously said it planned to ship 2 million units by the end of March, though some industry watchers expect that number may now be lower than reality.

Enlarge / This well-known photograph was taken (extremely) shortly after the detonation of a nuclear device during Operation Tumbler-Snapper. The projecting spikes are known as a rope trick effect. (credit: US Department of Defense)

From 1945 until the practice was ended in 1963 with the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the US conducted 210 above-ground nuclear weapons tests. The majority of those took place at the Nevada National Security Site, then on remote Pacific atolls. Obviously, since the purpose of the tests was to understand this powerful new class of weapon, all of the tests were captured with multiple high-speed cameras (running at roughly 2,400 frames per second). And until now, many of those films have languished in classified vaults. But Greg Spriggs and his colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) are rescuing and declassifying many of them, posting them on YouTube in the process.

The first 64 declassified films were uploaded this week, with footage from Operations Upshot-Knothole, Castle, Teapot, Plumbbob, Hardtack I, Hardtack II, and Dominic. And they're utterly mesmerizing. In fact, they're truly awesome, in the literal sense of the word.

For example, watch how the fireball grows down along the test tower and guide wires during the initial states of the Tesla shot during Operation Teapot. This test took place on March 1, 1955 in Nevada and was just 7 kilotons—a mere firecracker compared to later thermonuclear devices.