Month: June 2017

DC

Wonder Woman is a terrifically fun movie, deftly balancing action sequences and emotional beats. Gal Gadot is charismatic as the eponymous anti-war Amazon princess, easily carrying the movie on her armored shoulders. But there's one basic problem. The storytelling is aimless and occasionally just downright incoherent.

Light spoilers ahead!

Enlarge / The orbits of stars and gas around the Milky Way's black hole. (credit: M. Schartmann and L. Calcada/ European Southern Observatory and Max-Planck-Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik.)

Testing general relativity is a fraught business. The theory has proven to be so robust that anyone who thinks it's wrong gets slapped around by reality in a pretty serious way. The tests that we apply are also limited by our environment, in that we can only look at gravity with precision where it's rather weak: in the lab, or by tracking the motion of planets. That's a  whole range of scales and forces, but it doesn't cover where it might truly matter, which is right next to a black hole.

Observing orbits around a black hole would take a career's worth of measurements and, frankly, who has the time? It is also a rare benefactor who will fund a couple of decades worth of telescope time. Luckily, telescopes have been collecting data for a while, and some of that happens to include the vicinity of some black holes. Recently, some scientists decided to dig up the data and test general relativity in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole.

Beware of the black hole

At the center of our galaxy, there lies a black hole, which like the Rabbit of Caerbannog, fiercely devours unwary wanderers. Nevertheless, there are a few foolhardy stars that orbit close to the rabbit black hole. These stars have orbits of just a couple of decades, and they experience rather large gravitational forces. So, astronomers expect that accurate observations of these stars might pick out deviations from general relativity.

Enlarge / UNITED STATES - SEPTEMBER 13: A customer looks over a gasoline pump at an Exxon station in Columbus, Ohio, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007. (Photo by Gary Gardiner/Bloomberg via Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images)

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wants a state court to make oil giant Exxon Mobil turn over more documents in an investigation into whether the company lied to investors about the risks of climate change policy. Schneiderman launched the investigation of Exxon in 2015, claiming that the company was downplaying climate change and the problems that could arise for the company because of it in a way that defrauded investors.

Exxon, one of the top US companies by market capitalization and also one of the top five polluters in the US, has claimed that complying with current subpoenas from the state’s top prosecutor is unduly burdensome.

The court filing today (PDF) claims that New York’s investigation so far “has uncovered significant evidence of potential materially false and misleading statements by Exxon” concerning how the oil giant calculated the cost of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its investment decisions.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Riou)

Exclusive deals between broadband providers and landlords have long been a problem for Internet users, despite rules that are supposed to prevent or at least limit such arrangements. The Federal Communications Commission is starting to ask questions about whether it can do more to stop deals that impede broadband competition inside apartment and condominium buildings.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai yesterday released a draft Notice of Inquiry (NOI) that seeks public comment “on ways to facilitate greater consumer choice and to enhance broadband deployment in multiple tenant environments (MTEs).” The commission is scheduled to vote on the NOI at its June 22 meeting, and it would then take public comments before deciding whether to issue new rules or take any other action.

This could go in multiple directions. The NOI contains no specific proposal but asks questions suggesting possible actions the commission might take. Pai has worked aggressively to eliminate regulations industry-wide, and the NOI raises the possibility of preempting state or city regulations that prevent “market entry or impos[e] overly burdensome infrastructure access requirements onto private companies.”

Enlarge (credit: Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

News that Google intends to install an ad-blocker in its Chrome browser shocked the tech and publishing world in April. Now, details of how the program will work are starting to become clear.

The Google ad-blocker will block all advertising on sites that have a certain number of "unacceptable ads," according to The Wall Street Journal. That includes ads that have pop-ups, auto-playing video, and "prestitial" count-down ads that delay the display of content.

Google, which refers to the ad-blocker as an ad "filter," is using a list of unacceptable ad types provided by the Coalition for Better Ads, an advertising industry trade group.

Enlarge (credit: oddharmonic)

Visa applicants who the US State Department suspects may pose a danger if allowed into the country will be required to provide their social media handles on a new application (PDF) the government just unveiled.

The new vetting, the State Department said, would likely ensnare about 0.5 percent of visa applicants annually—the equivalent of roughly 65,000 people. The screening would apply to visa applicants "who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities," according to a notice in the Federal Register by the State Department.

In all, applicants that the government deems suspicious would be required to disclose (PDF) their previous passport numbers, five years of social media handles, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses. The plan also calls for US-bound travelers to supply 15 years of biographical data.