Month: November 2017

Enlarge (credit: Heather Bradley)

The Republican attorney general of Missouri has launched an investigation into Google's business practices. Josh Hawley wants to know how Google handles user data. And he plans to look into whether Google is using its dominance in the search business to harm companies in other markets where Google competes.

"There is strong reason to believe that Google has not been acting with the best interest of Missourians in mind," Hawley said in a Monday statement.

It's another sign of growing pressure Google is facing from the political right. Grassroots conservatives increasingly see Google as falling on the wrong side of the culture wars. So far that hasn't had a big impact in Washington policymaking. But with Hawley planning to run for the US Senate next year, we could see more Republican hostility toward Google—and perhaps other big technology companies—in the coming years.

Leguizamo and Hoskins wait to see if they'll be picked for the vocal cast.

Nearly 25 years after a live-action version of the Mario Bros. first graced the silver screen, the studio behind Despicable Me and Minions is close to a deal to bring an animated Mario movie to theaters, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Illumination Entertainment, a subsidiary of Comcast-owned NBC Universal, is close to a licensing deal for the film rights to the Mario games, according to "people with knowledge of the discussions" cited by the WSJ. Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto would likely serve as a producer on the film, according to the report. Talks have been ongoing for about a year, and the parties are currently finalizing just how involved Nintendo itself would be in the creative approval process for the movie, according to the paper.

The new report comes more than a year after Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima told the Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper that the company was in talks with a number of movie studios to bring more of its popular characters to the big screen (in addition to the long-running Pokemon anime film and TV franchise). Nintendo is currently working with Universal to bring branded attractions to the company's worldwide theme parks, so there's some basis for the relationship there.

(credit: Sam Machkovech)

The Amazon Music app has been around for years and has supported connecting to a number of external devices for music playback. But Google's Chromecast wasn't one of them until now. Amazon has quietly updated the Amazon Music app for Android to include Chromecast support, allowing Android users to shoot music from their device to a nearby Chromecast.

The feature was first spotted earlier this month by TechHive when it was mid-rollout. Not all Android users had the ability to connect Amazon Music to a Chromecast at that point, but now it appears the new feature is official. The Amazon Music app page in the Google Play Store includes this update under the What's New section: "Chromecast Support: You can now select music on your Android device and have the music play on your Chromecast enabled devices." The app was last updated November 13, 2017.

The Android app could already connect to other Bluetooth devices, but Chromecast support had not been enabled until now. Those Android users who primarily use a Chromecast for all their casting needs will now be able to easily play music from the Amazon Music mobile app through their TV/speaker setup.

Enlarge / The first vineyards probably weren't this orderly and certainly lacked the barn. (credit: New York State)

PIiny the Elder knew that truth comes out in it. Aeschylus called it the mirror of the mind. Robert Louis Stevenson said it was bottled poetry. Mark Twain compared the books of great geniuses to it. It is no wonder that wine—which perfectly complements food, inhibits inhibitions, and alters perceptions—has been inseparable from civilization from time immemorial. But when, exactly, "immemorial" started is still being investigated.

The absolute earliest confirmation of grape wine production, at about 7000 BCE, actually comes from China. But wine production started in the Near East. Canaanites brought it to Egypt by 3000 BCE, and from there it eventually swept through Europe. The earliest evidence of Neolithic Near Eastern wine had been from 5400-5000 BCE in the northwestern Zagros mountains of Iran. Now, new evidence pushes the start date about five hundred years back and a thousand kilometers north, to 6000-5800 BCE in the South Caucasus.

Back in the 1960s, a pottery sherd (not a typo—it’s the word archaeologists use for shards, for some reason) from a dig near Tbilisi tested positive for tartaric acid. That's the principal biomarker for wine, as it's not present in most fruits but is the most abundant acid in grapes. But in the 1960s it was standard practice to wash sherds in hydrochloric acid, and, anyway, this sherd was found on the surface, so who knows what it was exposed to in the environment. Point is, this was not the most reliable of artifacts.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | BSIP)

The Food and Drug Administration announced its approval Monday for the first digital medicine—a melding of a long-standing drug for schizophrenia—Abilify (aripiprazole tablets)—with an edible sensor that reports when it’s ingested. Together, they make Abilify MyCite.

Though the approval is a long time coming, the choice of an antipsychotic medicine for this advance is raising the eyebrows of some experts.

The digital ingestion tracking system works by embedding each Abilify tablet with a sensor “the size of a grain of sand,” according to the company behind it, Proteus Digital Health. The ingestible sensor is activated by gastric juices and sends a unique, identifying signal to a wearable patch. That patch automatically logs the date and time of the signal (as well as other basic health information) and can transmit that information via Bluetooth to a paired mobile device. The patient can sign consent forms to allow their doctors and up to four other people to receive the data. But, the app that works with the digital drug system allows patients to revoke access to data at any time.

Enlarge / The OnePlus 5. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

A Twitter user by the name "Elliot Alderson"‏ has discovered a root backdoor in OnePlus devices—one that has apparently been shipping for years. OnePlus has been shipping a Qualcomm engineering APK (an Android app file) in its devices, which with a few commands, can root a device.

The app—called "EngineerMode"—is partially exposed to users through a secret "*#808#" dialer command, and you can also launch the full app through an Android activity launcher or the command line. The app contains production-line tests for various phone components, a root checker, and lots of information readouts. The important part, though, is a "DiagEnabled" activity with a method called "escalatedUp." If this is set to "true," the app will allow root access over Android Debug Bridge, Android's command-line developer tools.

The method for gaining root is password protected, but the password lasted all of three hours once the method was discovered. With the help of David Weinstein and the Now Secure team, the group discovered the magic word is "angela," which is possibly another Mr. Robot reference, just like the "Elliot Alderson" handle. (We swear this is real and not a Mr. Robot AGR.)