Month: April 2021

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Andriy Onufriyenko)

The US Department of Defense puzzled Internet experts by apparently transferring control of tens of millions of dormant IP addresses to an obscure Florida company just before President Donald Trump left the White House, but the Pentagon has finally offered a partial explanation for why it happened. The Defense Department says it still owns the addresses but that it is using a third-party company in a "pilot" project to conduct security research.

"Minutes before Trump left office, millions of the Pentagon's dormant IP addresses sprang to life" was the title of a Washington Post article on Saturday. Literally three minutes before Joe Biden became president, a company called Global Resource Systems LLC "discreetly announced to the world's computer networks a startling development: It now was managing a huge unused swath of the Internet that, for several decades, had been owned by the US military," the Post said.

The number of Pentagon-owned IP addresses announced by the company rose to 56 million by late January and 175 million by April, making it the world's largest announcer of IP addresses in the IPv4 global routing table.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Andriy Onufriyenko)

The US Department of Defense puzzled Internet experts by apparently transferring control of tens of millions of dormant IP addresses to an obscure Florida company just before President Donald Trump left the White House, but the Pentagon has finally offered a partial explanation for why it happened. The Defense Department says it still owns the addresses but that it is using a third-party company in a "pilot" project to conduct security research.

"Minutes before Trump left office, millions of the Pentagon's dormant IP addresses sprang to life" was the title of a Washington Post article on Saturday. Literally three minutes before Joe Biden became president, a company called Global Resource Systems LLC "discreetly announced to the world's computer networks a startling development: It now was managing a huge unused swath of the Internet that, for several decades, had been owned by the US military," the Post said.

The number of Pentagon-owned IP addresses announced by the company rose to 56 million by late January and 175 million by April, making it the world's largest announcer of IP addresses in the IPv4 global routing table.

Enlarge / Poor charging infrastructure is a big reason that some Californians decided not to get another electric vehicle. (credit: Cavan Images/Getty Images)

By now, we know a lot of ways to get people to buy electric vehicles. In Europe and China, it's simple: mandate them. Policymakers aren't nearly that brave here in the US, so instead we've been relying on subsidies for early adopters and the fact that a test drive is often enough to convince someone to switch to a plug-in.

Much less is known about why someone might buy an EV but then decide to go back to fossil fuel for their next vehicle. The very idea is probably enough to stimulate some outrage among the Ars audience, but according to a new study in Nature Energy, not only does such a thing happen, but it has happened at a rate of about 20 percent among early adopters in California, the largest market in the US for plug-in vehicles.

Scott Hardman and Gil Tal at University of California, Davis decided to examine the rate and reasons that Californians abandoned their electric cars, something the researchers say has not been examined until now. With the help of the Californian Air Resources Board, Hardman and Tal surveyed Californians who bought either plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs) or battery EVs (BEVs) between 2012 and 2018, contacting more than 14,000 households. In total, 4,167 households completed the survey, but only 1,842 respondents had made a decision about whether or not to keep that plug-in.

Enlarge / Poor charging infrastructure is a big reason that some Californians decided not to get another electric vehicle. (credit: Cavan Images/Getty Images)

By now, we know a lot of ways to get people to buy electric vehicles. In Europe and China, it's simple: mandate them. Policymakers aren't nearly that brave here in the US, so instead we've been relying on subsidies for early adopters and the fact that a test drive is often enough to convince someone to switch to a plug-in.

Much less is known about why someone might buy an EV but then decide to go back to fossil fuel for their next vehicle. The very idea is probably enough to stimulate some outrage among the Ars audience, but according to a new study in Nature Energy, not only does such a thing happen, but it has happened at a rate of about 20 percent among early adopters in California, the largest market in the US for plug-in vehicles.

Scott Hardman and Gil Tal at University of California, Davis decided to examine the rate and reasons that Californians abandoned their electric cars, something the researchers say has not been examined until now. With the help of the Californian Air Resources Board, Hardman and Tal surveyed Californians who bought either plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs) or battery EVs (BEVs) between 2012 and 2018, contacting more than 14,000 households. In total, 4,167 households completed the survey, but only 1,842 respondents had made a decision about whether or not to keep that plug-in.

Enlarge / MacBook Air laptops, new and old. (credit: Lee Hutchinson)

After an extended beta-testing period, Apple launched updates for all of its operating systems today, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

In general, the updates are focused on supporting the various new products Apple announced last week, as well as implementing App Tracking Transparency, fixing bugs, and adding new features and tweaks to existing software like Safari, Music, and Reminders.

We'll discuss iOS and iPadOS (as usual, arguably the biggest updates) in another article. For now, here's what you can expect to see in today's tvOS, watchOS, and macOS updates.

Enlarge / MacBook Air laptops, new and old. (credit: Lee Hutchinson)

After an extended beta-testing period, Apple launched updates for all of its operating systems today, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

In general, the updates are focused on supporting the various new products Apple announced last week, as well as implementing App Tracking Transparency, fixing bugs, and adding new features and tweaks to existing software like Safari, Music, and Reminders.

We'll discuss iOS and iPadOS (as usual, arguably the biggest updates) in another article. For now, here's what you can expect to see in today's tvOS, watchOS, and macOS updates.

Enlarge (credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It took Facebook less than two days to shut down the original “Stop the Steal” group but two months for it to realize that the group and its offspring had spawned a “harmful movement” that thrived on the platform and would ultimately lead to violence.

The news comes from a Facebook internal report analyzing the company’s response to the events leading up to and culminating in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Reporters at BuzzFeed News obtained the report, titled “Stop the Steal and Patriot Party: The Growth and Mitigation of an Adversarial Harmful Movement” and published the document today after Facebook reportedly began restricting employees’ access to it.

The social media company was apparently unprepared for the idea that people would use their own accounts to spread misinformation and calls for violence and other antidemocratic behavior. Among the conclusions, Facebook acknowledged that while it had prepared tools to combat “inauthentic behavior,” which might include provocations from a fake account run by Russian intelligence operatives, for example, the company was woefully unprepared to confront “coordinated authentic harm.” (Emphasis Facebook’s.)