Month: August 2017

Ben Edlund and Griffin Newman discuss their new Tick series with a slightly cracked-out reporter. (video link)

Like its titular superhero, The Tick just won’t die. Ben Edlund began drawing the character back when he worked at a comic book store in the mid-1980s, mostly to make fun of superhero comics. And then The Tick became a comic book. And an animated TV series. And a short-lived live-action series. Now, a new live-action series is about to start streaming on Amazon for a 10-episode season of pure insanity.

If you’ve already seen the pilot episode of The Tick, that’s no surprise—it has been out for almost a year and a half on Amazon. It was part of Amazon Studio's pilot program, where the company determines which pilots will go to series based on popularity. The Tick’s loyal fanbase made it a shoo-in, and it got picked up for a first season with a pretty hefty budget. At San Diego Comic-con this year, Amazon went all-out promoting this latest iteration. Outside the convention center was an enormous "experience" where fans could see sets from the series after watching episode 2 for the first time during a packed panel.

Enlarge (credit: University of Queensland)

The Department of Homeland Security's Industrial Control System Computer Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) has issued an alert warning of four vulnerabilities in multiple medical molecular imaging systems from Siemens. All of these systems have publicly available exploits that could allow an attacker to execute code remotely—potentially damaging or compromising the safety of the systems. "An attacker with a low skill would be able to exploit these vulnerabilities," ICS-CERT warned.

Siemens identified the vulnerabilities in a customer alert on July 26, warning that the vulnerabilities were highly critical—giving them a rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10 using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. The systems affected include Siemens CT, PET, and SPECT scanners and medical imaging workflow systems based on Windows 7.

One of the vulnerabilities is in the built-in Window Web server running on the systems. "An unauthenticated remote attacker could execute arbitrary code by sending specially crafted HTTP requests to the Microsoft Web server (port 80/tcp and port 443/tcp) of affected devices," Siemens warned in its alert. The bug in the Web server software allows code injection onto the devices.

Virgin Orbit

When most people think of a rocket launch, they think big. The Space Shuttle, Falcon 9, and Atlas V all stand well over 50 meters tall, and any of those would tower above the Statue of Liberty. They were made to lift heavy things, weighing anywhere from 10 tons to considerably larger, into orbit around Earth. But in recent years there has been a lot of noise in the small rocket industry, promising cheap, expendable boosters capable of carrying a few hundred kilograms into space.

As always in the aerospace industry, some of these efforts were overhyped or had wildly optimistic timelines. For example, the industry suffered a notable failure late last year when Firefly Space Systems declared bankruptcy. However, a number of other companies have made tangible progress this year, making it clear that this generation of small satellite launch vehicles is closing in on their first commercial flights.

Enlarge / In 2013, atomic plant Vogtle was a 2-unit nuclear power plant located in Burke County, near Waynesboro, Georgia, in USA. Each unit has a Westinghouse pressurized water reactor (PWR), with a General Electric turbine and electric generator, producing approximately 2,400 MW of electricity. The cost overruns incurred in making Westinghouse's AP 1000 reactors led to the Toshiba subsidiary's bankruptcy. (Photo by Pallava Bagla/Corbis via Getty Images) (credit: Pallava Bagla / Getty Images)

The Summer nuclear reactor expansion in South Carolina and the Vogtle nuclear plant expansion in Georgia may never come to fruition after the plants’ original contractor, Westinghouse, filed for bankruptcy in March.

Last week, power company Santee Cooper and energy company SCANA Corp announced that they would walk away (PDF) from the Summer plant. They made the announcement after calculating that the plant could cost an additional $11.4 billion to finish, which would bring the final bill to more than $25 billion.

Santee Cooper owns 45 percent of the Summer plant and SCANA owns 55 percent. Westinghouse parent company Toshiba offered the two companies $2.2 billion toward the completion of the plant, but the two companies found that sum insufficient to continue construction.