Month: April 2017

Adult Swim

A full day of Rick and Morty-related teases and jokes on Twitter ended with a nice April Fool's surprise from Adult Swim on Saturday: The complete first episode of the animated series' upcoming third season. As of press time, it's playing over and over at Adult Swim's default live-streaming site. (Update: Readers are noting that it's also airing on the TV version of Adult Swim/Cartoon Network this evening, though channel guides have mis-advertised its listing.)

Much like the second season's premiere, this episode is built to resolve the prior season's cliffhanger arc, and that may make it a confusing episode for anybody unfamiliar with the show. (If you've never watched the bonkers sci-fi cartoon series, head to Hulu to binge, post-haste.) Series fans, on the other hand, can look forward to a nice mix of deep-lore reveals and out-of-nowhere weirdness.

Enlarge (credit: manley099)

Rather than allow public, but still-classified materials found on WikiLeaks to be exposed in court, federal prosecutors in Tacoma, Washington, have dropped two cases related to child pornography. Those two counts were against a man accused of downloading such materials through Playpen, a now-defunct child-pornography website that was hidden through Tor.

The move, which took place earlier this month, means that David Tippens will only face one remaining count of possession of child pornography, which carries no minimum sentence.

Tippens, like all of the over 200 Playpen prosecutions unfolding nationwide, was discovered through the government seizure and temporary operation of Playpen. During that 13-day period in 2015, federal authorities deployed an exploit to logged-in users of the site, which had the effect of forcing users’ computers to expose their true IP address. With such information, translating an IP address into a person’s name became trivial for the investigators. The Department of Justice has called this exploit a "network investigative technique," (NIT) while many security experts have dubbed it as "malware."

Enlarge / Cows. (credit: Getty | jskiba)

Think livestock poop loaded with antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant microbes is already terrifying? According to a new study, doped-up droppings aren’t just biohazards festering on farms across the country. They also contribute to climate change.

Soil microbial communities stressed by farm-borne superbugs and drugs can burn through up to 5.8 times the amount of soil carbon stores as their undisturbed counterparts. This is according to a new report in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Though the study didn’t plunge into the exact cause of the revved-up carbon cycling, the researchers speculate that the heavy use of antibiotics on farms leads to soil microbes getting locked into molecular arms-races and wars—both of which are metabolically costly endeavors.

The findings are troubling given that global livestock production is on the rise. In lockstep, use of antibiotics is expected to leap 67 percent over the next two decades. Already, almost 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the US go to farms, and farm animals excrete anywhere from 40 to 95 percent of the drugs they ingest—alongside a steady stream of drug-resistant germs.

Visual Signals/US Army

The first update in 30 years to the US Army "Visual Signals" (PDF) manual has just been issued. It's filled with black-and-white sketches on how in-the-field soldiers can signal events to one another—from warning about a "nuclear hazard present" to "take a knee." The military notes that, for the most part, the signals apply to "both men and women."

Efficient combat operations depend on clear, accurate, and secure communication among ground units, Army aviation, and supporting Air Force elements. Control and coordination are achieved by the most rapid means of communication available between Soldiers and units. When electrical and/or digital means of communication are inadequate, or not available, a station-to-station system of visual communication is an alternate means for transmitting orders, information, or requests for aid or support.

The Army notes that the signals are not a panacea for when electronic communications run dry. For starters, they are "vulnerable to enemy interception," and their effectiveness is "significantly reduced during periods of poor visibility, and when terrain restricts observation."

Enlarge / Adorable cowboy meeples come standard. (credit: Tom Mendelsohn)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com—and let us know what you think.

To some, the term “heavy Euro” might imply an especially minimal genre of EDM only heard at 6am on a Sunday morning in dank Berlin warehouses, but to board gamers, the term has different—if no less intense—connotations.

Euro games prize function over form, putting game mechanics above fluff and theme, but they can sometimes seem like competitive spreadsheeting in three dimensions, as players push wooden chips across patterned boards in order to maximize token yields. The heavier the Euro, the more loops and interlocking systems there are—and the more it can feel like you’re simulating MC Escher’s abacus.

Enlarge / A mouse. (credit: sean dreilinger)

Richard Harris titled his book Rigor Mortis, referring to the stiffening of the body after death, to convey that biomedical science as it is currently practiced suffers from a lack of rigor. It is a pun he must like, because he employs it very early and very often.

The problem Harris is bemoaning is large and legitimate. Drug trials are incredibly expensive in terms of the time and money spent by the government and researchers—as well as the pain, dashed hopes, and even deaths of the patients enrolled. These drug trials are often based on suggestive findings from basic research done in academic labs, findings like compound X (green tea, vitamin E, whatever) fixes cells or cures animals with disease Y (diabetes, cancer, etc.). If that basic research is flawed, of course, the drug trials will fail.

Harris reports that drug trials do, in fact, often fail. Their failure, he writes, is largely, though not completely, because much of the basic research upon which they are based is enormously flawed.

NEW ORLEANS—Among the reasons Seinfeld continues to resonate nearly 20 years later, the show seemingly had a joke for every situation. And when it comes to Tom Czekanski, director of collections and exhibits at The National World War II Museum, that joke comes from an episode titled "The Andrea Doria." Oddball neighbor Kramer has a lingering cough, but rather than visit the doctor, he has a better idea—a veterinarian.

"I'll take a vet over an MD any day," Kramer tells George. "They gotta be able to cure a lizard, a chicken, a pig, a frog all on the same day."

Within his unique professional world, Czekanski is the vet. His role at the WWII museum involves acquisitions and restoration no matter what vehicle in the cornucopia of war land, air, and sea craft happens to be on the day's agenda. Whether putting an engine in a Sherman Tank from Chicago (via Chile), buying a C-47 Plane off eBay, or confirming free shipping for a Stuart Tank bought online, Czekanski serves as the point person.