Month: September 2017

Enlarge / Monkey. (credit: Blurb)

We brought word last month that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was in the works of dropping its federal lawsuit that sought to win the right for animals to own property. That case involved the intellectual property rights of an Indonesian macaque monkey named Naruto who took pictures of himself in the wild with a nature photographer's camera.

PETA officially dropped the Naruto case on Monday. We can all rest assured that, at least for now, the threat of animals becoming our overlords via their accumulation of new rights has dissipated.

For the unfamiliar, PETA sued nature photographer David Slater and accused him of copyright infringement for including the Naruto selfies in a book called Wildlife Personalities. The publisher, Blurb, was also sued for infringement. A San Francisco federal judge dismissed the case, saying animals cannot own property.

Enlarge / Patty Jenkins and Gal Godot on the Wonder Woman set. (credit: Warner Bros.)

Wonder Woman has become one of the biggest superhero movies in history, earning $410 million in the US and another $405 million abroad. Its star, Gal Gadot, inspired major fan meltdowns at Comic-Con. And yet Warner Bros. waited months before figuring out who would direct the sequel. Now they've finally cut a deal with Patty Jenkins, who wrote and directed the first film. Jenkins will be getting $8 million, a bit of a raise from the $1 million she got last time.

This has been a roller coaster ride for Jenkins, who rocketed from the beloved indie director of Monster to one of Hollywood's most sought-after blockbuster makers. She's even aroused the ire (or perhaps envy?) of director James Cameron (Terminator, Avatar), who scolded her publicly for creating "an objectified icon" out of the hero from Themyscira. He said Wonder Woman is "just male Hollywood doing the same old thing... it's a step backwards." Jenkins seemed a little mystified at being called "male Hollywood." She replied on Twitter that "there is no right and wrong kind of powerful woman" and that women can judge for themselves what kind icons they prefer.

Obviously Warner Bros. wants Jenkins to keep doing whatever it was that brought in almost a billion dollars. Variety reports that she's already working on a script with DC film universe head Geoff Johns. Her contract reportedly involved her writing, directing, and producing the sequel, as well as "a substantial backend of box office grosses." Godot is returning to star, and the movie is slated for release December 13, 2019.

Enlarge (credit: UGA College of Ag & Environment)

Wyoming lawmakers adopted legislation in 2015 making it illegal to gather data on open lands for the purpose of reporting harmful farming practices, environmental degradation, or other ills. That includes performing water quality tests or taking photographs. Fearing constitutional concerns, the state legislature amended the law last year to say virtually the same thing but with a caveat: it's illegal to do such gathering if the observer does it from private property or had to cross private property first before entering public lands to do their investigation.

And a federal judge bought it and said there was nothing unconstitutional about the ag-gag law because, you know, trespassing is an illegal act.

Conservation and animal rights groups took the decision to a federal appeals court. Days ago, the appeals court put that lower court's decision on life support. The 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the ordinance stifles speech, particularly speech necessary for public discourse about environmental and animal safety regulations.

Enlarge / Pete Seeger and his daughter Tinya at a festival in Beacon, New York, in 2013. (credit: Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns)

A federal judge ruled (PDF) on Friday that the most famous verse of the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" is not copyrighted.

The ruling is a decisive, but still incomplete win for the two plaintiffs. One of those plaintiffs is a charity group called the "We Shall Overcome Foundation" that's making a movie about the song, and the other is Butler Films LLC, a company that paid $15,000 to license just several seconds of the song for the movie "Lee Daniels' The Butler."

Plaintiff's attorney Randall Newman hopes the two organizations will represent a class-action case comprised of people who were charged royalties for using the song.

Enlarge / Coast Guard and Air Force personnel remove supplies and gear from an Air Force HC-130 aircraft in Opalocka, Florida, on September 9. They risk their lives to save yours. (credit: US Coast Guard)

I've spent the better part of the last month forecasting and writing about hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and between my work for Ars and a Houston-based forecasting site, I have probably written about 40,000 words on weather. So I have thought a lot about these storms. I have read a lot about them. And I despair for some of my fellow humans.

Hurricanes are rightly called natural disasters. Essentially, they are the planet's way of transferring heat from the tropics toward the polar regions of the planet. Unfortunately, human nature (and the behavior of some humans in particular) makes these disasters worse.

During a hurricane, residents in the projected path of the storm feel incredibly vulnerable. And why not? A supermassive, unpredictable tropical system is coming to take their home and their lives. Potential hurricane victims are hungry for information. (Where is the storm going?) They have questions. (Should I evacuate?) Unfortunately, although there are few certainties at these times, bad actors are ready to fill the vacuum with dumb ideas and actions.

Enlarge / Though Nintendo has taken the NES Classic Edition off store shelves, it will soon be wiling to sell you this follow-up. (credit: Nintendo)

With early pre-orders for the Super NES Classic Edition selling out at record speed and fears of limited supplies already driving up eBay prices for the upcoming plug-and-play system, Nintendo might have a repeat of the retail fiasco surrounding the hard-to-find NES Classic Edition. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé tried to downplay such concerns this week, though, when he told the Financial Times that the company has "dramatically increased" production of the Super NES Classic to try to satisfy demand.

It isn't clear from the context what baseline is being used for the "dramatic increase" in question. Fils-Aimé could simply be comparing Super NES Classic production to that of the NES Classic; the company had already promised it would "produce significantly more units of Super NES Classic Edition than we did of NES Classic Edition." Even so, the new language of a "dramatic increase" over the 2.3 million production run for the NES Classic would be welcome news to those hoping to get their hands on the new hardware.

If that's the case, why were initial pre-orders so hard to come by? Fils-Aimé passes the buck here, telling FT that the instant sellouts were due to unspecified retailer issues "outside our control" rather than any overarching supply issues. "I would strongly urge you not to over-bid on an SNES Classic on any of the auction sites," Fils-Aimé told the paper. "You shouldn't [have to] pay more than $79.99."

Enlarge / An employee demonstrates fingerprint security software on a smartphone at the MasterCard Inc. stand at the Mobile World Congress in this arranged photograph in Barcelona, Spain, on Wednesday, February 24, 2016. (credit: Bloomberg / Getty Images News)

According to security experts who have reviewed early developer versions of the forthcoming iOS 11, law enforcement will soon have a harder time conducting digital forensic searches of iPhones and iPads. This move is possibly to enhance Fifth Amendment protections of Apple's users and perhaps frustrate searches at the US border.

The changes were first reported last week by Elcomsoft, a Russian software company. These changes are coming in conjunction with another privacy-minded feature that will disable Touch ID by pressing the power button five times.

Prior to this latest version of the firmware, in order for an iOS device to be "trusted" by a computer that it was physically connected to, that device had to be unlocked first via Touch ID or passcode. Next, the device would prompt the user: "Trust This Computer?" Only then could the entire device’s data could be extracted and imaged. Under iOS 11, this sequence has changed to also specifically require the passcode on the device after the "Trust This Computer?" prompt.

First Volvo did it. Then Jaguar Land Rover did it. On Monday, Volkswagen Group signed up. On the eve of the Frankfurt Auto Show, VW Group chairman Matthias Müller committed his company to electrifying its entire lineup by 2030. "The transformation in our industry is unstoppable. And we will lead that transformation," he said.

Like Volvo and Jaguar Land Rover, VW Group is pledging to have an electric version of each of its new models available; it is not promising that it will build only electric and hybrid vehicles. But the 12 brands under the VW Group umbrella collectively sell many more cars than either Sweden's Volvo or Britain's Jag, so we are still talking about an awful lot of EVs.

80 new EVs?

In fact, Müller says there will be 80 new electric vehicles by 2030, plus 30 plug-in hybrids and 50 battery EVs. Expect to see an EV in every segment—electric supercars from Lamborghini and EV superminis from Seat—as well as EVs for sale in every one of VW Group's markets around the world.