Month: May 2020

Enlarge (credit: RyanJLane / Getty Images)

The FBI says that the men behind the disgraced GirlsDoPorn website were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to harass and intimidate 22 women who sued them for fraud and coercion. A judge awarded those women $13 million in January. Now one of the men, Matthew Wolfe, is in custody and facing criminal charges. Authorities believe another defendant, ringleader Michael Pratt, has fled the country.

Wolfe is asking to be let out on bail. On Thursday, Motherboard published an FBI document arguing against his motion. It details just how far the men were willing to go to retaliate against the women.

The FBI arrested Wolfe in October and searched the offices of GirlsDoPorn the next day. The April 22 document, which came to light this week, describes the result of that search.

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook's F8 summit in 2018. (credit: JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Users of numerous popular iPhone apps such as Spotify, Venmo, Tinder, TikTok, DoorDash, and Pinterest experienced persistent app crashes as a result of a bug in Facebook's SDK this week. The crash reports began coming in around 6:30pm Eastern yesterday, but the issue has since been resolved.

Not long after the problem emerged, it was revealed to have been caused by a server-side change by Facebook. "A new release of Facebook included a change that triggered crashes for some users in some apps using the Facebook iOS SDK. We identified the issue quickly and resolved it. We apologize for any inconvenience," a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge.

The Facebook SDK is included in apps by developers for a number of reasons, from offering single sign-on using users' Facebook accounts to enabling sophisticated metrics for Facebook ads. The apps were attempting to communicate with Facebook's servers and crashing as a result. The crashes happened even if users were not logged into Facebook, did not have any apps made by Facebook installed, or were not using any Facebook-related features in the affected apps.

Enlarge / Signage stands outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S, on Saturday, March 14, 2020. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

Public health experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have leaked their recommendations on how to safely reopen businesses amid the COVID-19 pandemic—after officials in the Trump administration rejected the guidance and allegedly told CDC officials their plan would "never see the light of day."

The 17-page document (PDF found here) was initially set to be published last Friday but was nixed. Instead, it was released to the Associated Press by a CDC official who was not authorized to release it.

The guidance lays out detailed, phased recommendations for how to safely reopen child care programs, schools, day camps, faith communities, businesses with vulnerable workers, restaurants, bars, and mass transit. Though some of the general points laid out already appear on federal websites—such as an emphasis on hand hygiene—the document uniquely offers tailored recommendations for each type of business.

Enlarge / The surface of Ryugu as Hayabusa2 made its approach. (credit: JAXA/U. Tokyo/Kochi U./Rikkyo U./Nagoya U./Chiba Inst. Tech./Meiji U./U. Aizu/AIST)

The following series of events is not fiction: fly a probe to an asteroid, bounce off that asteroid while grabbing a piece of it, and fling that sample back to Earth. This series of activities is exactly what JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission is in the middle of doing. (And by the way, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is working on the exact same thing, just on a timeline a year behind Hayabusa2.)

Hayabusa2 grabbed its first sample from the surface of a near-Earth asteroid named Ryugu in February 2019. (A second sample was collected in July after it blasted a small crater to expose sub-surface material.) A new study published by the team this week details what the probe saw at the sampling site—including remarkable video of the touchdown itself.

We have touchdown

As the probe touched Ryugu’s surface, it fired a small projectile into it, catching some of the debris in an open “sampling horn” before bouncing away and re-establishing its orbit. These samples will return to the Earth later this year, but for now, the scientists are establishing what we know about the areas they came from.

Enlarge / In 2020, the stands will be completely empty for the IndyCar race at Texas Motor Speedway. (credit: Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

On Thursday, IndyCar announced that its real-world 2020 racing season will begin on June 6 at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas. But if you want to watch the action, you'll have to do so on TV—spectators will not be allowed at the track. The sport is following NASCAR's lead, which announced last week that it, too, would resume the action in spectator-less fashion later this month.

"We're excited and ready to kick off the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season at Texas Motor Speedway. We've worked closely with Eddie Gossage, the entire TMS team, and public health officials on a plan of action that will ensure the safety of our event participants alongside an exciting return to competition for our drivers, teams, and viewers tuning in from around the world," said IndyCar President Jay Frye in a press release.

The series says it will limit the number of people each team can bring to the track and that everyone will be screened for symptoms before being allowed in. PPE will be provided and must be worn, and there will be social-distancing rules enforced as well. As it's planned to be a one-day event, the race will now only run for 200 laps rather than the 248 laps that would be run had the race taken place normally.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a deal on Roku's Streaming Stick+, which is down to $39 at various retailers. That's $10 off its typical going rate. The 4K- and HDR-ready streamer briefly fell to $29 during Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, but this is tied for the lowest price we've seen from reputable retailers outside of that.

If you can't deal with the clunky interfaces that often come built into new smart TVs, the Streaming Stick+ is a good all-around option for streaming video up to 4K HDR. While we've given its chief competitor, Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K, a slight nod in the past, both streamers are worthwhile; the best choice is typically whichever is cheaper.

To compare: the Fire TV Stick 4K's main advantages are its support for more advanced HDR formats like Dolby Vision—the Streaming Stick+ only supports standard HDR10—and more robust voice search aided by the Alexa digital assistant. (It also has a Twitch app, which Roku doesn't.) Roku's OS can make certain apps look more dated from a design standpoint, but it's more neutral in recommending content—Amazon tends to push its own content first and foremost—and it doesn't inundate you with as many ads. The main appeal is that its UI is just simpler to navigate, with a focus on apps instead of shows, all laid out in a clean grid. It's a bit boring, but it's customizable and uncomplicated.

(credit: Comcast)

Three US senators today urged Comcast to open all of its Wi-Fi hotspots to children who lack Internet access at home during the pandemic. A letter from Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) says that Comcast recently refused a request to do so because it would cause congestion for subscribers. But the senators argue that "Comcast's excuse simply does not add up."

Comcast has been praised by advocates for its pandemic response, which includes two free months of home-Internet service for new low-income subscribers, temporary suspension of its data cap, and making many of its hotspots free to the general public. But while Comcast opened up 1.5 million hotspots located at businesses and other public areas, there's another category of Comcast Wi-Fi hotspots that still require a Comcast login and subscription. Those are the hotspots that are enabled by default on Xfinity routers used by home-Internet subscribers.

Since 2013, Xfinity gateways have broadcasted a separate network that other Comcast subscribers can log in to with a Comcast username and password. Unless you've disabled the functionality, anyone within range of your Comcast router can get Internet access if they have a Comcast subscription or have paid for a temporary Wi-Fi pass.