Month: July 2018

Enlarge / These probably aren't real. But they should be. (credit: @ThePracticalDev)

This week, we’re serializing another episode of the After On podcast here on Ars. Our guest is tech’s preeminent publisher—as well as one of its top prognosticators—Tim O’Reilly. We’ll run this interview in three installments. You can access today’s via our embedded audio player or by reading the accompanying transcript (both of which are below).

Outsiders are often surprised by how central the dowdy medium of books has been to the tech industry. But for decades, books were the only game in town for most people wanting to keep pace with the new programming languages and skill sets tied to their jobs. O’Reilly Media has published a huge share of our world’s top books for as long as I’ve been around—even as it led the charge with ebooks, digital training, and other disruptions to its ink-on-paper legacy.

But Tim’s real mojo comes from being the industry’s convener-in-chief. For starters, his company has welcomed all paying registrants to hundreds of major conferences. Other conference series have been invitational, including Foo Camp (which is impossible to describe); SciFoo (basically Foo Camp, but for scientists); EdFoo (think SciFoo, but for educators); and many others. "Foo" stands for “Friends of O’Reilly.” And should you ever learn that you are one, accept the invitation pronto—it will rank amongst the coolest and brainiest weekends of your decade.

Enlarge / These probably aren't real. But they should be. (credit: @ThePracticalDev)

This week, we’re serializing another episode of the After On podcast here on Ars. Our guest is tech’s preeminent publisher—as well as one of its top prognosticators—Tim O’Reilly. We’ll run this interview in three installments. You can access today’s via our embedded audio player or by reading the accompanying transcript (both of which are below).

Outsiders are often surprised by how central the dowdy medium of books has been to the tech industry. But for decades, books were the only game in town for most people wanting to keep pace with the new programming languages and skill sets tied to their jobs. O’Reilly Media has published a huge share of our world’s top books for as long as I’ve been around—even as it led the charge with ebooks, digital training, and other disruptions to its ink-on-paper legacy.

But Tim’s real mojo comes from being the industry’s convener-in-chief. For starters, his company has welcomed all paying registrants to hundreds of major conferences. Other conference series have been invitational, including Foo Camp (which is impossible to describe); SciFoo (basically Foo Camp, but for scientists); EdFoo (think SciFoo, but for educators); and many others. "Foo" stands for “Friends of O’Reilly.” And should you ever learn that you are one, accept the invitation pronto—it will rank amongst the coolest and brainiest weekends of your decade.

Enlarge / This copper band was interred with the cremated remains of at least seven people. (credit: American Museum of Natural History)

Cremated remains and a broken copper band in a 4,000-year-old settlement on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia suggest that trade networks in ancient North America linked people from the Great Lakes to the southeastern coast. And it wasn't just about exchanging goods; the far-flung connections created shared culture.

Widespread trade networks once linked communities in northeastern US with those around the Great Lakes and the Ohio River Valley and extended south to the Tennessee River Valley. Around 5,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies in eastern North America started to become more settled, and their populations started to grow. As these communities grew, they also developed long-distance social and economic connections with other communities.

In the archaeological record, we can only really see evidence for the exchange of goods, especially shells, beads, raw stone for working into tools, and copper. But those are probably just the tangible pieces of a more complex set of relationships that may have included political marriages to cement alliances and large ritual gatherings to bring people together and demonstrate wealth, power, and status.

Enlarge / This copper band was interred with the cremated remains of at least seven people. (credit: American Museum of Natural History)

Cremated remains and a broken copper band in a 4,000-year-old settlement on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia suggest that trade networks in ancient North America linked people from the Great Lakes to the southeastern coast. And it wasn't just about exchanging goods; the far-flung connections created shared culture.

Widespread trade networks once linked communities in northeastern US with those around the Great Lakes and the Ohio River Valley and extended south to the Tennessee River Valley. Around 5,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies in eastern North America started to become more settled, and their populations started to grow. As these communities grew, they also developed long-distance social and economic connections with other communities.

In the archaeological record, we can only really see evidence for the exchange of goods, especially shells, beads, raw stone for working into tools, and copper. But those are probably just the tangible pieces of a more complex set of relationships that may have included political marriages to cement alliances and large ritual gatherings to bring people together and demonstrate wealth, power, and status.

A scene from Abstractism, which allegedly hid a cryptocurrency miner behind an innocuous-looking Steam game.

Valve has removed simple 2D platformer Abstractism from its Steam platform after allegations that the app hid a secret cryptocurrency miner and used misleading item-trading tactics to attract players.

YouTuber SidAlpha highlighted earlier accusations of the game's illicit cryptomining functions in a video this weekend, laying out how the $1 Abstractism increased CPU and GPU usage well beyond the point that a simple 2D line-art game should require. In a forum response on Steam, developer Okalo Union chalked that resource usage up to the "post-processing effects rendering" required when running on high graphics settings, but that claim doesn't really pass the sniff test for a title with such simple visuals.

In addition, a suspiciously named "SteamService.exe" file in the Abstractism's directory reportedly set off many antimalware services for allowing "remote execution of commands," which would be necessary for communicating with a cryptocurrency platform (this shouldn't be confused with the legitimate SteamService.exe executable, which exists in a different folder). In a July 23 Steam update, developer Okalo Union claimed that this file was necessary to control the game's "Inventory Service," which provides randomized item drops, saying directly that the executables "are not Bitcoin miner (and are not Monero miner too, honestly)."

Enlarge / Anthony Levandowski, then VP of engineering at Uber, in 2016. Levandowski co-founded self-driving truck startup Otto and then led Uber's self-driving technology efforts before being fired in 2017. (credit: ANGELO MERENDINO/AFP/Getty Images)

Uber is shutting down its self-driving truck program, the company acknowledged on Monday. It's the latest example of Uber scaling back its self-driving technology efforts in the wake of a deadly Uber self-driving car crash in March.

Uber's self-driving truck program has been embroiled in controversy since Uber acquired the unit two years ago. The acquisition price was reportedly $680 million, though the actual cost may have been much less than that. Previously, it had been a startup called Otto, led by controversial ex-Waymo engineer Anthony Levandowski. Waymo sued Uber, arguing that Levandowski had taken Waymo trade secrets with him on the way out the door.

Uber wound up firing Levandowski in 2017 and settling the lawsuit with Waymo earlier this year, clearing the way for Uber to focus on developing the self-driving truck technology. In March, Uber began testing its self-driving trucks hauling real freight. The company developed an innovative hybrid model for self-driving truck deliveries, where a human driver would handle tricky urban driving at the beginning and end of the trip, while software could handle the relatively simple long-haul highway driving in between.

Enlarge / It's a lot of ice, but not enough to make an atmosphere. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Mars clearly had a warm and wet past, a time when streams, lakes, and even an ocean were present on its surface. Currently, however, most water on the planet appears to be locked in its icy poles, and the atmosphere is so thin that water would quickly evaporate even if temperatures were held at Earth-like levels. But could we go back to the future? Is there enough material on Mars to form a dense atmosphere filled with enough greenhouse gasses to keep things warm enough for liquid water?

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attracted a bit of attention when he suggested that we could get there simply by nuking Mars' poles, liberating the ice (both water and carbon dioxide ices) into the atmosphere. When asked about the prospects for the plan, a scientist said, "Whether it would really work, I don't think anyone has worked up the physics in enough detail to say it would." Now, a couple of planetary scientists have accepted the challenge of working up the physics, and they have bad news for Musk.

Greenhouse and pressure

The researchers, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards, focus on two significant questions. The first is whether we can put enough gasses back into the atmosphere to create an Earth-like air pressure so that people who need to do something on the surface don't need to wear bulky suits to isolate themselves from the environment. The second is whether we can warm the surface enough so that liquid water could persist on it.

(credit: Getty Images | jangeltun)

You already knew that home broadband competition is sorely lacking through much of the US, but a new report released today helps shed more light on Americans who have just one choice for high-speed Internet.

Comcast is the only choice for 30 million Americans when it comes to broadband speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, the report says. Charter Communications is the only choice for 38 million Americans. Combined, Comcast and Charter offer service in the majority of the US, with almost no overlap.

Yet many Americans are even worse off, living in areas where DSL is the best option. AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos still provide only sub-broadband speeds over copper wires throughout huge parts of their territories. The telcos have mostly avoided upgrading their copper networks to fiber—except in areas where they face competition from cable companies.