Month: March 2018

Enlarge / "RadPiper is a robot developed by the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute for the Department of Energy," the university wrote. "The treaded robot moves within the pipes of uranium-enrichment facilities to determine areas where radiation levels may pose a hazard." (credit: Carnegie Mellon University)

A government facility in Piketon, Ohio produced enriched uranium between 1954 and 2001 for both energy and weapons-grade purposes. Several years ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) and a third-party contractor, Fluor-BWXT, began decommissioning the plant.

But now a new set of "hands" is being brought in to speed up the work. Well, not hands exactly, but a radiation sensor and a pair of flexible tracks. A small pipe-crawling robot named RadPiper will be unleashed in 15 of the 75 miles of pipes that were once used to make enriched uranium through a gaseous diffusion process.

According to a press release from Carnegie Mellon, each one-foot segment of pipe needs to have radiation measurements taken to rule out any potentially hazardous amounts of uranium-235 still left over in the pipes. If RadPiper discovers a hazardous section of pipe, it has to be removed and decontaminated. Clean sections of piping can remain in place and will be demolished with the rest of the building.

Enlarge / Signs for Cambridge Analytica in the lobby of the building in which the firm is based on March 21, 2018 in London. (credit: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

Cook County, Illinois, has joined the parade of lawsuits filed against Facebook in the wake of the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal—the county is believed to be the first public entity to sue the social media giant and its former London-based business partner.

The case, which was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County on Friday, March 23, lays out similar allegations to the six other cases currently pending in federal court. Cook County argues that Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and the SCL Group, its corporate parent, violated users' privacy en masse when they violated Illinois laws against fraud.

Just over a week ago, The New York Times and The Observer, a British newspaper, broke the story that the British data analytics contractor, which worked with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, retained private data from 50 million Facebook users despite claiming to have deleted it. Facebook executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg have called Cambridge Analytica's actions a "breach of trust."

Enlarge (credit: Massachusetts Fisheries)

Species don’t live in isolation; they live in very tangled, complicated, interconnected webs. So studying them in isolation has only limited utility, much like studying cells cultured in a sterile petri dish. These laboratory studies can yield suggestive and promising results, but these results are not always applicable to how the cells behave in the context of an organism, much less as part of a species in an ecosystem.

The increased carbon dioxide that humanity has been relentlessly pumping into the air since the onset of the Industrial Revolution is acidifying the oceans. Studies done to determine what this ocean acidification will do to fish have mostly assessed the direct effect of elevated CO₂ levels on the fishes’ growth and physiology, but they have not taken into account any effects ocean acidification might have on food webs as a whole.

Scandinavian marine biologists have tried to rectify this situation by studying the effects of ocean acidification in 10 mesocosms—fiberglass tanks seeded with rocks, sediment, plankton, and other microorganisms—they set up off the west coast of Sweden. Five were controls; the other five got elevated CO₂, set to mimic levels that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calculates could occur by the end of this century. Those estimates are about 760 matm (short for milli-atmospheres) pCO₂, compared to today’s 380 matm pCO₂). Being Scandinavian, these researchers examined the survival of... herring.

If you go to an auto show, you'll notice that German carmakers tend to have a lot of models in their lineups. Not so much Porsche, but Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and especially BMW have a dizzying array of cars to choose from. For those contemplating an Ultimate Driving Machine, you've got your 1 Series all the way through the 7 Series, the X models, the Z4, M models, and the i Series. The lineup looks straightforward at first glance, but it's really not. Want a coupe or convertible? 2-, 4-, or 6-series. [N.B. this includes those four-door "coupes" that still confuse me—Ed.] How about a sedan? 3-, 5-, or 7-series. SUV? X marks the SUV spot, unless it's an X4 or X6, which look more like a 3-series or 6-series GT. Hatchback? 3- or 6-series. And that's where I found myself last week, behind the wheel of an $84,000 hatchback.

The 640i xDrive Gran Turismo is new to BMW's lineup this year. Previously, BMW's high-end hatchback was a 5-series car, but the German automaker decided to move the model a bit upscale while continuing to use the 5-series platform. The GT is also the least-expensive 6-series car, starting at $69,700 for the base model. The model I drove was maxed out with the M Sport package, Driving Assistance Plus, Dynamic Handling Package, and Executive Package. Add in the destination charge and a couple of other bits, and the sticker price is $84,010. That's a big number for a body type that is not that popular in the US.

The mechanical bits on the 640i GT are compelling. Powering the car is a 3.0-liter inline-six engine, turbocharged to crank out 335hp (250kW) and 332lb-ft (450Nm) of torque. It's gas only for the US, with a diesel engine available in other markets. An eight-speed automatic transmission is paired with all-wheel drive. The Dynamic Handling package adds active roll stabilization, height-adjustable air springs that are new to the 640i, dynamic shock control, and rear-wheel steering. All of that combines for a zero-to-60 speed of 5.1 seconds, according to BMW.

Enlarge / This screen in the Messenger application offers to conveniently track all your calls and messages. But Facebook was already doing this surreptitiously on some Android devices until October 2017, exploiting the way an older Android API handled permissions. (credit: Facebook)

This past week, a New Zealand man was looking through the data Facebook had collected from him in an archive he had pulled down from the social networking site. While scanning the information Facebook had stored about his contacts, Dylan McKay discovered something distressing: Facebook also had about two years worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received.

Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file

Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum pic.twitter.com/CIRUguf4vD

— Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 21, 2018

This experience has been shared by a number of other Facebook users who spoke with Ars, as well as independently by us—my own Facebook data archive, I found, contained call-log data for a certain Android device I used in 2015 and 2016, along with SMS and MMS message metadata.

Enlarge / High boredom on the high seas. (credit: Rare)

Sea of Thieves leaves a bewildering first impression, a magnificent second one, and, so far, a disappointing lasting taste. The piratical goof-'em-up does almost nothing to explain itself, and much of the game’s joy is in discovering how to navigate and progress through its multiplayer pond. The problem is, once you learn the basics, you just as quickly find Sea of Thieves provides very little in the way of interesting goals and tasks to perform.

This goes beyond a lack of content to a more basic dearth of interactivity. The very first seconds of your buccaneer career are marred with strange, artificial limitations that continue to pockmark the rest of the game. In a game where progression is largely about unlocking cosmetics, for instance, you’re not allowed to customize your own character. Sea of Thieves simply boots up a load of randomly generated avatars which you can re-roll as many times as you like before making your final choice.

After loading a scallywag not quite to my liking, I was greeted by 20 seconds of on-screen text, the game’s limited excuse for a tutorial. That text explained how to access my inventory, where to pick up quests, and... that’s about it. Essentials like the finer points of sailing control and just how the quest system works are blank spaces that have to be filled in by the player (or the players, if you’re playing with friends or strangers, as you really should).

Open eyes, open ocean

After some solo bumbling on my boat, trying to figure out just how to make it go, I intuited that the sails were likely roped to whatever control mechanism Sea of Thieves provided. Sure enough: I traced those rope lines between mast and bulkhead to find the “controls.” From there, it was mostly smooth, entirely enjoyable sailing.