Month: April 2017

If you love action figures and medieval insanity (and who doesn't?), you need to make room in your display cabinets for these incredible recreations of figures from the paintings of 15th century artist Hieronymus Bosch. A famous late Medieval painter, Bosch's work focused entirely on Christian themes, often depicting heaven and hell in imaginatively lurid detail.

These delightfully demonic figurines are the creation of Parastone, a company in the Netherlands that specializes in 3-D recreations of classic paintings. They sell their wares in museum stores and Amazon. Bosch's work is perfect for them, not only because he hails from the place where they work, but also because his paintings are full of tiny details. Every person and beast in a Bosch canvas is so well-rendered that their diminutive contortions hold up to intense scrutiny. Most of these are taken from Bosch's triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights, but there are a few from elsewhere. (There's a great interactive tour of The Garden of Earthly Delights here, complete with helpful commentary on many of the images.)

Federal court documents

Tesla is the subject of a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging that its Model X and Model S vehicles are prone to sudden, unintended acceleration (SUA). A number of owners are claiming that their electric vehicles suddenly drove through a garage or into a wall either by human or computer error—and at least 23 accounts of Teslas experiencing unintended acceleration are on record with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The California automaker run by Elon Musk claims that, among other things, its data shows it was human error that caused the crashes described in the lawsuit.

The suit claims that from the Model S's 2012 introduction through June 2016, approximately 75,000 Model S vehicles have been sold. The suit then states there have been 13 reports to NHTSA in which Model S drivers experienced full-power acceleration while parking or traveling at low speed. Regarding the Model X, in which 18,240 cars were sold by the end of 2016, "Tesla has received, or is otherwise aware of, 13 nearly identical instances in which drivers of the Model X experienced full power acceleration either while in the act of parking the Model X or while driving the Model X at slow speed, ten of which resulted in a crash of the vehicle," according to the suit.

Enlarge (credit: AgnosticPreachersKid)

Russia's 2014 hack of an unclassified State Department computer system was much more aggressive than previously reported, with one official describing it as "hand-to-hand combat," according to an article published Monday by The Washington Post.

Over a 24-hour period, top US network defenders repeatedly ejected the intruders. Just as quickly, the intruders reentered the breached computer system, the news organization reported, citing both named and unnamed officials. Whenever the defenders severed a link between the malware inside the infected network and a command-and-control server belonging to the hackers, the Russians established a new connection. The new details came amid new warnings by the National Security Agency that Russia is likely visiting the same aggressive tactics on private industry sectors, which have fewer resources and less expertise in repelling such attacks.

“It was hand-to-hand combat,” the Post quoted NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett as saying. The official described the incident at a recent forum, but he didn't name the nation responsible. Russia was identified by other current and former officials. Ledgett, the news organization reported, said "the attackers’ thrust-and-parry moves inside the network while defenders were trying to kick them out amounted to 'a new level of interaction between a cyber attacker and a defender.'"

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to eliminate a merger requirement that would have forced Charter Communications to expand its network into the territory of other high-speed broadband providers.

The FCC's approval of the Charter/Time Warner Cable merger last year required Charter to deploy broadband with download speeds of 60Mbps to at least two million residential and small business locations, of which at least one million would have to be in areas served by at least one other high-speed provider. The FCC's then-Democratic leadership said that "overbuilding" in areas served by only one ISP would bring lower prices and greater choice to consumers.

But the FCC's new Republican leadership has now eliminated the overbuild portion of the merger condition so that Charter can instead provide two million new connections in areas that don't already have high-speed service. Reuters reported the move today, and an FCC spokesperson confirmed it to Ars. The full order has not yet been released.

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iOS 10.3.1 is out. The release notes don't specify what it fixes that wasn't addressed in the wide-ranging iOS 10.3 update released just a week ago, but we do know that this new update includes bug fixes and improves the security of your iPhone or iPad. Specifically, according to the more detailed notes on Apple's security page, 10.3.1 addresses a buffer overflow that could be exploited to execute code on your phone or tablet's Wi-Fi chip.

The bug is credited to Google's Project Zero, which discloses bugs to the public 90 days after telling companies about them to encourage faster security patches.

Apple released a beta of iOS 10.3.2 last week shortly after releasing iOS 10.3. It will likely go through a handful of additional beta builds and be released to the public in a month or two. We don't expect it to change much, given that the public reveal of iOS 11 in June is just a couple of months away.

Enlarge (credit: US Customs and Border Protection)

As the government begins approving H-1B applications for the year, the Justice Department has issued a public warning to employers seeking those visas not to use them to harbor bias against US-based workers.

"The Justice Department will not tolerate employers misusing the H-1B visa process to discriminate against US workers," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler of DOJ's Civil Rights Division. "US workers should not be placed in a disfavored status, and the department is wholeheartedly committed to investigating and vigorously prosecuting these claims."

The warning comes as debate heats up in Washington over the proper administration of the H-1B visa program, which the Justice Department described today as allowing US companies "to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations such as science and information technology." Some critics allege the program has been used as a source of cheap outsourced labor.

Enlarge / The P100D at rest. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

On Sunday Tesla said that it had delivered 25,418 cars in 2017’s first quarter, which is a record for the company. This sales figure puts Tesla on track to meet its stated goal of delivering 47,000 to 50,000 Model S and Model X vehicles in the first half of 2017.

The company’s electric vehicle (EV) deliveries have been closely watched after suffering manufacturing setbacks in 2015 and 2016 and repeatedly posting losses in quarterly financial reports. Last year, CEO Elon Musk made a point of talking about building the most efficient manufacturing process possible, calling Tesla’s factories “the machine that builds the machine.” Tesla had hoped to deliver 50,000 vehicles in the second half of 2016, but it just missed that goal—the company delivered 24,500 vehicles in Q3 and 22,200 vehicles in Q4, bringing its total to 46,700 for 2016’s second half.

In an e-mail on Sunday, Tesla spokesperson Dave Arnold said that in Q1 the company delivered 13,450 Model S cars and approximately 11,550 Model X cars. An additional 4,650 vehicles were produced but had not been delivered to the customers at the time the announcement was made. “Our delivery count should be viewed as slightly conservative, as we only count a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct,” Arnold wrote.