Month: July 2017

Chris Owens/IndyCar

America's fastest racing series is going with an all-new look from next year. Earlier this week, IndyCar revealed the new 2018-spec cars to the world at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then let series veterans Juan Pablo Montoya and Oriol Servia loose for the 2018 machine's first test session. The pair—powered by Chevrolet and Honda engines respectively—were immediately up to speed in the box-fresh race cars, which will use the same aero kit for next season regardless of the engine supplier. It's the fourth new look for IndyCar's Dallara-built DW12 since it was introduced in 2012 and the first aesthetic to ditch the un-Indylike airbox behind the driver's head for a much more appropriate roll-hoop.

The DW12 is a much better car than the one it replaced, and it has given IndyCar some fantastic racing over the past few years. But I'm among the few who considered it good-looking; most IndyCar fans hate the sight of it. The series attempted to add some visual diversity in 2015 by allowing Honda and Chevrolet to develop aero kits—unique front and rear wings for the teams using each OEM's engines. But the experiment was not a fantastic success.

Enlarge (credit: Cheon Fong Liew)

LAS VEGAS—It's not often that a security researcher devises an attack that can unleash a self-replicating attack that, with no user interaction, threatens 1 billion smartphones. But that's just what Nitay Artenstein of Exodus Intelligence did in a feat that affected both iOS and Android devices.

At the Black Hat security conference, Artenstein demonstrated proof-of-concept attack code that exploited a vulnerability in Wi-Fi chips manufactured by Broadcom. It fills the airwaves with probes that request connections to nearby computing devices. When the specially devised requests reach a device using the BCM43xx family of Wi-Fi chipsets, the attack rewrites the firmware that controls the chip. The compromised chip then sends the same malicious packets to other vulnerable devices, setting off a potential chain reaction. Until early July and last week—when Google and Apple issued patches respectively—an estimated 1 billion devices were vulnerable to the attack. Artenstein has dubbed the worm Broadpwn.

Although the flaw is now closed, the hack has important lessons as engineers continue their quest to secure mobile phones and other computing devices. Security protections such as address space layout randomization and data execution prevention have now become standard parts of the operating systems and apps. As a result, attackers have to work hard to exploit buffer overflows and other types of software vulnerabilities. That extra work largely makes self-replicating worms impossible. Artenstein's exploit, however, suggests that such worms are by no means impossible.

Enlarge / "Thirteen, Houston—you are go for fun."

HOUSTON—“Ah, Thirteen, Houston,” I said into the mic as the alarms blared and the screens on the wall showed an image of a badly damaged Apollo spacecraft floating slowly away into the void.

“Go ahead, Houston,” came the scratchy voice from the doomed command module.

“Ah, Thirteen, we’ve got some bad news and some good news,” I drawled, playing up my East Texas accent and trying to imitate the pure laconic coolness that I’d been hearing in tapes of air-to-space communication all my life.

Enlarge / OkCupid put blinders on a longtime site feature on Friday. (credit: OkCupid)

On Friday, online dating service OkCupid introduced its biggest change since its 2009 paid "A-List" add-on package. Starting today, the site's users no longer see a major data point that has been standard for nearly a decade: the "visitors" tab.

"What's the value of a visitor?" the company wrote in an e-mail to users. "Short answer: zero." However, that valuation is shaken up by a follow-up sentence, and it may explain why the Match.com-owned company made the change. "A person who visits your profile and chooses not to follow up with a 'like' or a message probably (read: definitely) isn't worth your time."

To understand this "visitor" tab's potential value, here's a brief explainer. OkCupid works differently than GPS-fueled dating apps like Tinder, since it's a product of an older dating-service generation. Its users can sort through potential matches with a variety of metrics, particularly a "match percentage" determined by the site's questionnaires. The service's reliance on questions, data, and match metrics (broken down into categories like sex, ethics, and religion) differentiated the service from its '00s peers (and gives it less of a "hook-up" reputation than the photo- and location-focused Tinder).

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The latest Star Wars story is already here, and it's free on YouTube. It's a series of shorts called Forces of Destiny, and each one delivers action, humor, and a genuinely heartfelt moment of heroism. The best part about the series, authored by Marvel alum Jennifer Muro, is that it fills in backstory on characters that you always wondered about. And yes, it's canon.

Forces of Destiny is a 16-episode series, and the first eight were released this month. Eight more will come in October. The series is episodic, jumping around in time from Episodes 1 through 7 of the films. We see a lot of Rey (Daisy Ridley) and BB-8, though we also stop in to see Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) kicking butt, Leia doing spycraft, and Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) being her usual chaotic good rogue. All the actors from the movies and TV series voice their characters, except Leia (RIP Carrie Fisher), who is voiced by Shelby Young.

Enlarge / Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman (credit: Randy Stewart)

Shares of high-tech real estate brokerage Redfin surged on their first day of trading Friday. Initially offered for $15 per share, the company's stock had soared above $20 by early afternoon, valuing the company at more than $1.5 billion.

Founded in 2004, Redfin pioneered the concept of putting real estate listings on an interactive map alongside rivals Trulia and Zillow. But Redfin chose a different, more ambitious business model than its competitors. Zillow and Trulia make money by referring customers to independent real estate brokers. Redfin, in contrast, aimed to disrupt the real estate business by becoming a real estate brokerage itself.

"Real estate is by far the most screwed up industry in America," Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said in a 2007 interview on 60 Minutes. "We feel like things that Amazon or eBay or Yahoo have done for other industries, we can do for the real estate industry."