Month: November 2017

Enlarge / Nicolas Guéguen may have something to say about Audrey Hepburn's dress in Funny Face, but is his research on solid ground? Two fellow researchers question that. (credit: Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Psychologist Nicolas Guéguen publishes studies that create irresistible headlines. His research investigating the effects of wearing high heels made it into Time: "Science Proves It: Men Really Do Find High Heels Sexier." The Atlantic has cited his finding that men consider women wearing red to be more attractive. Even The New York Times has covered his work.

Guéguen's large body of research is the kind of social psychology that demonstrates, and likely fuels, the Mars vs. Venus model of gender interactions. But it seems that at least some of his conclusions are resting on shaky ground. Since 2015, a pair of scientists, James Heathers and Nick Brown, has been looking closely at the results in Guéguen's work. What they've found raises a litany of questions about statistical and ethical problems. In some cases, the data is too perfectly regular or full of oddities, making it difficult to understand how it could have been generated by the experiment described by Guéguen.

Heathers and Brown have contacted the French Psychological Society (SFP) with the details of their concerns. After nearly two years of receiving unsatisfactory responses from Guéguen, the SFP stepped away from the problem, saying that there was nothing more it could do.

Enlarge / A Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) photo of the ballistic missile test on August 29, 2017. North Korea has conducted another test. (credit: DPRK state media, via Getty Images)

South Korean and US officials have confirmed that North Korea has apparently conducted yet another ballistic missile test. The missile launched at just after 3 am Wednesday local time from the Pyongsong facility south of the capital in Pyongyang. It is the first North Korean test since an intermediate-range missile test in September.

In a statement to the press, a spokesperson for South Korea's Joint Chiefs of  Staff said, "North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile early this morning from Pyongsong, South Pyongan [Province], to the east direction. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff is analyzing more details of the missile with the US side."

A US Department of Defense spokesperson confirmed to Ars that there had been a suspected launch and that a statement would be released shortly.

Enlarge (credit: Firaxis Games)

A new expansion for Civilization VI, called Civilization VI: Rise and Fall, was announced today. The expansion looks to majorly shake up the flow of the game with era-long modifiers that will force you to shift your strategy for fear of losing your cities or ambition to seize others'. Its centerpiece feature is the addition of "Golden Ages," "Dark Ages," and "Heroic Ages"—macro events that apply each civilization's ever-shifting fortunes, achievements, and momentum to a struggle for territory and cultural influence, whether military force is involved or not.

The expansion will also add governors, a greatly expanded alliances system, cities that peacefully flip between civilizations, and an "Historic Moments" system that gives players special milestones that impact outcomes. Players can look forward to "emergency situations," which allow the civilizations at the bottom to pool their resources in order to gain benefits that help elevate them all closer to the top players. And, of course, expect new civilizations and leaders.

The Historic Moments, city flipping, and ages all play into one another. You might remember Golden Ages from past Civilization titles; typically, they were short-term boosts to your civilization's happiness or output that lasted for a few terms. This time, they last for an entire era (Ancient, Medieval, and so on), and they affect a resource called loyalty. With loyalty, you can flip other civilizations' cities without firing a shot—just like culture-flipping in, say, Civilization IV—or have yours flipped away from you.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has consistently argued that FCC regulation of net neutrality is "a solution in search of a problem."

Pai's claim is frequently countered with the actual history of Internet service providers blocking or throttling Internet traffic or applications. The most prominent example is Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing. Pai thus had to contend with these real-world examples in his new proposal to eliminate net neutrality rules.

Pai's solution has been to argue that these blocking and throttling incidents stopped after public pressure, that they haven't happened much since, and likely won't happen again. Of course, the most obvious reason that net neutrality violations have been rare since the Comcast/BitTorrent kerfuffle is that the FCC has enforced net neutrality rules since 2010 (aside from a year-long interlude without rules caused by a Verizon lawsuit).

Enlarge (credit: Waymo)

SAN FRANCISCO—US District Judge William Alsup has delayed an upcoming trial, Waymo v. Uber, in which Alphabet’s self-driving car division has accused Uber of massive data theft.

The postponement came as a former Uber security employee, Richard Jacobs, made startling accusations in court Tuesday about his former colleagues’ tactics of what he dubbed "overly aggressive and invasive" actions, including seeking code accidentally made available on GitHub and internal use of "ephemeral and encrypted" communications including through Wickr and "non-attributable machines."

The case began back in February, when Waymo sued Uber and accused one of its own former employees, Anthony Levandowski, of stealing 14,000 files shortly before he left Waymo and went on to found a company that was quickly acquired by Uber. The case will likely have a huge impact on the future of autonomous vehicles and who will emerge dominant in the field.