Month: January 2018

Enlarge (credit: Boring Company)

Over the last 15 years, Elon Musk's companies have had a big impact on the rocket, electric car, and battery markets. This weekend, Musk entered yet another new market: flamethrowers. Musk's Boring Company began selling branded novelty flamethrowers for $500 apiece.

"Obviously, a flamethrower is a super terrible idea," Musk tweeted on Saturday evening. "Definitely don't buy one."

By late Sunday evening, California time, customers had reserved 7,000 of the 20,000 units the company planned to produce.

Jimmy Iovine announces new Apple Music app. (credit: Megan Geuss)

The mechanical royalty rates from streaming—royalties paid out to songwriters and publishers, as distinct from those paid out to performers—will increase by nearly 44 percent over the next five years. This comes as a result of a ruling from the United States Copyright Royalty Board after hearings that were held from March through June of last year.

Currently, 10.5 percent of streaming services' monthly gross revenue is assigned to be paid to songwriters and publishers; the payouts are determined by the number of streams in that period. That will rise each year until it reaches 15.1 percent in 2022. This year, the rate will be 11.4 percent, it will be 13.3 percent in 2020, and so on.

Songwriters and publishers have long claimed they've gotten the short end of the stick with regards to streaming music royalties. One songwriter, Nashville-based Kevin Kadish, claimed in 2015 that he received only $5,679 from 178 million Pandora streams. In 2016, the National Music Publishers' Association settled a deal with Spotify to help music publishers and songwriters claim royalties, as the messiness of the current system has led to lawsuits and other negative outcomes.

Enlarge (credit: Martin Iturbide)

For the first time on record, ATMs located in the US are falling prey to jackpotting, an attack in which malicious hardware or software forces the machines to dispense huge amounts of cash to waiting thieves, KrebsOnSecurity reported over the weekend.

Jackpotting has been documented in other countries, but until recently it had never been reported in the US. Citing an unnamed person close to the matter and a confidential alert, reporter Brian Krebs reported on Saturday that the US Secret Service has received credible reports of front-loading ATMs made by Diebold Nixdorf being targeted by so-called cash-out crews. The thieves are carrying out the heists by first getting physical access to the machines and infecting them with malware known as "Ploutus.D."

"The targeted stand-alone ATMs are routinely located in pharmacies, big box retailers, and drive-thru ATMs," stated the confidential Secret Service alert sent to financial institutions and obtained by KrebsOnSecurity. "During previous attacks, fraudsters dressed as ATM technicians attached a laptop computer with a mirror image of the ATM's operating system, along with a mobile device, to the targeted ATM."

Enlarge / "Brah, sloweth thy roll!" From a manuscript by early medical writer Roger of Salerno (c.1200). (credit: Getty | Hulton Archive)

An ancient bacterium known for devastating and disfiguring its victims has turned to frantically ravaging its own genome to maintain its killer status, according to a new study.

Strains of Mycobacterium leprae—the main bacterium behind leprosy*—are hypermutating in an apparent effort to thwart modern therapies and become extensively drug resistant. Researchers made the alarming discovery in a survey of 154 M. leprae genomes collected from 25 countries. The survey, published recently in Nature Communications, offers a rare genetic glimpse of the ancient, yet cryptic, bacterium, which still manages to cause 200,000 new cases worldwide each year.

The international team of researchers, led by Stewart Cole of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, noted that the hypermutating state “likely favors the emergence of drug resistance.” But, there’s a catch. Because M. leprae already has a concise genome, it also “could be detrimental and ultimately lethal,” he and his team write. Basically, the revved-up mutation rate could haphazardly damage genes essential for survival.

Enlarge (credit: Quantas)

On Monday morning, a Quantas flight took off from Los Angeles International Airport burning 90-percent regular jet fuel and 10-percent mustard seed oil biofuel.

Though that may not seem like a lot, the biofuel is efficient enough that Quantas estimates a seven-percent reduction in emissions compared to a similar 15-hour flight using only traditional jet fuel.

That's important because aviation is a huge contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. Aircraft account for 12 percent of US transportation greenhouse gas emissions, and the International Civil Aviation Organization suggests carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted by aircraft account for two percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Most of those emissions occur as the airplane is taking off or landing.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Bonilla1879)

The US government should consider building and operating a national 5G mobile network in order to boost security, reduce reliance on Chinese equipment, and to ensure that the US retains a technological advantage over other countries, according to a leaked memo from the White House's National Security Council (NSC).

The memo and a related slide deck, published yesterday by Axios, suggests that the Trump administration is considering a surprising shift from privately operated networks to nationalized infrastructure. The presentation carries the title, "Secure 5G: The Eisenhower National Highway System for the Information Age."

Industry lobby groups and all five members of the Federal Communications Commission have already criticized the suggestion, saying that the US should continue to rely on private industry and that carriers are already building 5G networks.