Month: March 2018

Enlarge / When you have an eGPU connected and working, it appears in "About This Mac." (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple has released the 10.13.4 update for macOS. This update adds external graphics card (eGPU) support for most recent Macs, implements Apple's new approach to privacy that we already saw in iOS 11.3, and adds Business Chat in the United States.

Business Chat allows users to seek customer support and perform transactions with participating businesses using the Messages app. You can chat live with a representative, book appointments right inside Messages, and also pay for products and services with Apple Pay in the course of your conversation. The feature also launched on iOS.

Apart from eGPU support, the only other major feature is Apple's new approach to privacy issues. As in iOS 11.3, Apple has added a special image that appears each time its software or services access what Apple deems to be personal data. This image is accompanied by a short summary of what information Apple is using and how, and you can click a link to see a much more detailed explanation.

Enlarge / Roughly 14 million people per year may have to hand over their social-media "identifiers" before entering the United States, should the Trump administration get its way. (credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Want to visit the United States in a non-immigrant capacity? Should the State Department get its way, your application to enter the country may soon hinge on coughing up five years of your online history.

The Trump administration's proposal, published at the Federal Register on Friday, would expand this request, which is currently required to apply for an immigrant visa. Friday's proposal could be enacted after a 60-day public-comment period pending passage by the Office of Management and Budget. Alternatively, the State Department could modify the proposal and start another comment period. But should this current iteration go into effect, an estimated 14 million non-immigrant visa applicants per year would be asked to list any "identifiers" used on a variety of popular social media sites. Those applicants will additionally be required to disclose identifiers they have used during that timespan on sites that aren't on the State Department's default list.

The proposal also expands the State Department's requests from applicants. These individuals would also be asked to supply past phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, and records of international travel.

Enlarge (credit: Lee Woodgate)

A Russian man accused of hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring made his first appearance in federal court on Friday.

In a brief hearing before a federal magistrate judge in San Francisco, Yevgeniy Nikulin pleaded not guilty to illegally accessing computers belonging to those companies in 2012.

Nikulin was arrested on October 5, 2016, but he was only very recently extradited from the Czech Republic to the United States. In the Czech Republic, Nikulin's attorneys and the Russian government attempted to get him sent back home to face significantly lesser criminal charges dating back to 2009.

ZTE

ZTE put its new Tempo Go smartphone up for sale on Thursday, making it the first phone with Google's Android Go configuration to be available for purchase in the US.

The phone is now available for $79.99 on ZTE's website. The listing was first spotted by Android Police.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | jangeltun)

Democratic senators yesterday asked Ajit Pai to abandon a proposal that the senators say would take subsidized broadband plans away from "millions of Americans."

The Federal Communications Commission chairman's plan for the Lifeline subsidy program would force most users of the program to find new providers. But such users could have trouble finding replacement plans or similar prices because Pai's proposal would prevent all telecom resellers from offering Lifeline-subsidized service.

"Your proposal impacts over 70 percent of current Lifeline-recipient households by eliminating their wireless providers from the program, leaving less affordable and fewer Lifeline options, while making it more difficult for the companies trying to serve Lifeline customers," Senate Democrats wrote in the letter to Pai yesterday. "Instead of cutting the program, we should ensure Lifeline reaches more Americans in need of access to communication services."

Enlarge / SpaceX cut its webcast from space at T+ 9:00 on Friday, and went back to Michael Hammersley in Hawthorne, due to "NOAA restrictions." (credit: SpaceX)

On Friday morning, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket into space and later deployed 10 Iridium communications satellites into low-Earth orbit as planned. But unexpectedly for most watching, the company's webcast was precluded from showing the mission in its entirety.

At T+ 9:00 minutes, just two seconds before the rocket's second-stage engine cut off from firing, the video from space ended. The launch commentator, SpaceX engineer Michael Hammersley, explained earlier in the broadcast that "[d]ue to some restrictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, SpaceX will be intentionally ending live video coverage of the 2nd stage just prior to engine shutdown."

Asked about this on Friday morning, a NOAA spokesman was not aware of the situation. "I can only think it's an error," Chris Vaccaro told Ars. "I would double check with them (SpaceX)." NOAA has promised more information will be forthcoming.

Enlarge / In the US, biologists are keeping watch for the amphibian-killing fungus. (credit: USGS)

Epidemics proceed with different dynamics. Sometimes they spike rapidly and disappear gradually; sometimes they ramp up slowly; sometimes they have multiple waves. What they all do at some point is end, usually with neither the pathogen nor the host going extinct. But we don’t usually understand how or why.

Chytridiomycosis is an epidemic that has been killing amphibians the world over for at least a decade. It is caused by a fungal pathogen called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), and it can cause limb deformities and skin abnormalities. Since amphibians absorb water and electrolytes through their skin rather than their mouths, such abnormalities can be fatal. But now we have some evidence that, as with past epidemics, Bd isn't a one-way ticket to extinction.

Between 2004 and 2007, Bd decimated frog populations in Panama. About five years later, however, frog populations rebounded. Bd was still around, although it was not nearly as prevalent. Scientists collected frog and fungus samples from the start of the outbreak, in 2004, and after the recovery, in 2013, in order to figure out what factors went into making this particular epidemic subside. They hypothesized that either (a) the later Bd samples would be less pathogenic to the frogs; (b) the later frog samples would be more resistant to Bd; or (c) both.