Month: October 2017

Enlarge / San Diego Comic-Con. (credit: Kevin Dooley)

A federal appeals court is declaring a gag order that was imposed on the backers of a Comic-Con convention to be an unconstitutional infringement of speech. A San Diego federal judge had prohibited the organizers of Salt Lake Comic Con from taking to social media like Twitter, Facebook, and even the event's website to discuss being sued for allegedly infringing the "Comic-Con" trademark.

"Petitioners assert that the court-ordered prior restraints on their speech violate the First Amendment. We agree," the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

The gag order was issued as part of an ongoing trademark lawsuit brought by the producers of the San Diego Comic-Con. They sued a competing "Comic-Con" convention for using the unhyphenated form of their trademarked term "Comic-Con" without paying licensing fees. The case raises questions about the legitimacy of the trademark—in particular whether the trademark has become too generic and, hence, a victim to its own pop-culture popularity.

Enlarge / A more readily accepted burger construction method. (credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

While much of the Internet spent the weekend wondering which Trump associate was about to be indicted or freaking out about various sports ball home runs, there was another fervor brewing—albeit one far smaller in scope. It all kicked off when Thomas Baekdal alerted the world to the rather odd construction of Google's cheeseburger emoji:

I think we need to have a discussion about how Google's burger emoji is placing the cheese underneath the burger, while Apple puts it on top pic.twitter.com/PgXmCkY3Yc

— Thomas Baekdal (@baekdal) October 28, 2017

Apple—which is in the process of rolling out new unicode 10-compliant emoji—opts for a relatively photorealistic style, putting the lettuce underneath the patty but the tomato and cheese above. By contrast, Google keeps the vegetable garnishes up top where they ought to be, but the company puts the cheese underneath the patty.

Shortly afterward, others began to note a wide variation in burger construction across different emoji implementations. WhatsApp is alone in including ketchup. HTC's design team went for a double patty approach with some visual separation courtesy of what we must assume is rather wilted lettuce. Mozilla's approach is the most bare-bones, backyard cookout style, with nothing to adorn its burger save for a slice of cheese and some sesame seeds on the bun.

Enlarge / Peter Madsen, inventor and submarine and space enthusiast, after his rescue from the waters off Copenhagen. It appears he sank his sub to destroy evidence of the murder of his passenger. (credit: BAX LINDHARDT/AFP/Getty Images)

The case involving the alleged murder of a Swedish reporter by Peter Madsen—engineer, inventor, and the man behind one of two Danish efforts to create a sub-orbital rocket to put a person into space—has taken yet another twist. About the only fact that Madsen had previously admitted to was that Kim Wall, who was writing a feature story about Madsen's mission to put himself into space, had died on the evening of August 10 aboard UC3 Nautilus—the submersible craft he designed, built, and maintained with crowdsourced funding and the assistance of members of Copenhagen Suborbitals (another group of space enthusiasts).

When Madsen was rescued from his sinking sub on August 11, he said that he had dropped Wall off ashore the night she disappeared. Then he claimed she died in an accident when he dropped a hatch on her head. But now Madsen has once again changed his description of the events after the discovery of a saw blade believed to have been used in the decapitation and dismemberment and forensic evidence that shows Wall had not suffered from a blow to the head.

Madsen gave his latest account of Wall's death in an October 14 interview with police. He has voluntarily agreed to stay in police custody; his pre-trial detention had been set to end on October 31. The change in Madsen's account came as police confronted him with the latest forensic evidence, including traces of Wall's blood on his clothing. On October 4, Wall's head and legs were discovered floating in a bag; police found a saw in the bag as well.

Enlarge / Roger Stone in his office in Oakland Park, Florida. (credit: Andrew Innerarity/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, has been suspended from Twitter following a rant against two CNN reporters.

It is one of the highest-profile account suspensions since Twitter has said it will take stronger action against bullying and threats of violence on its service.

Stone's account was taken offline on Saturday night following a series of profane attack tweets he put out on Friday focused on CNN reporters Don Lemon and Jake Tapper.

(credit: Heathrow Airports Limited,)

An unemployed London man discovered a USB flash storage device lying on the street as he was headed to the library to check the Internet for job listings. When he got to the library, he plugged it in and found it was filled with security details for London's Heathrow International Airport—including security measures and travel details for Queen Elizabeth II. The man turned over the drive to a reporter at the Sunday Mirror.

On the flash drive were 76 folders of files, including security documents and maps of the airport. The maps included the location of every closed circuit television (CCTV) camera at the airport; routes and security protection measures for the Queen, Cabinet ministers and visiting foreign dignitaries; and maps of the airport's tunnels and escape shafts for the Heathrow Express train station.

Other documents included a timetable for anti-terrorism patrols at the airport, a documentation of the ultrasound system used by Heathrow security to check perimeter fences and runways for breaches, and details of the types of identification required to gain access to secure areas—including those used by covert security personnel. There were also photos of the security facilities used by the Queen.

Enlarge / The Falcon 9 rocket and Koreasat-5A have gone vertical on Pad 39A in Florida. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX has launched, on average, about 1.5 times per month during this year. From that perspective, the company's 16th launch of 2017 may not seem all that spectacular. After all, sending something like the Koreasat-5A commercial communications satellite to a geostationary transfer orbit is becoming old hat for the new space company.

However, Monday's launch attempt is significant because it would double SpaceX's total number of launches for any given year, which was eight. Moreover, it is yet another commercial launch for SpaceX, which before 2017 had launched mostly government missions for NASA and NOAA. But this year, 11 of 16 SpaceX launches have been for private companies or foreign governments.

The launch window for Monday's attempt from Kennedy Space Center opens at 3:34pm ET and will remain open until 5:58pm ET. The webcast below should begin about 15 minutes before the launch window opens. After delivering the satellite into orbit, the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage will attempt a landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship at just under 9 minutes after launch. The satellite will be deployed about 36 minutes after liftoff.