Month: October 2021

Enlarge / Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) speaks as Facebook head of global safety, Antigone Davis, testifies before a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection focusing on Facebook, Instagram, and mental health harms on September 30, 2021. (credit: Patrick Semansky / POOL / AFP)

Senators spent three hours yesterday grilling Facebook’s head of global safety, Antigone Davis, as she attempted to defend the company’s approach to handling the mental wellbeing of children who use its services.

“Facebook has taken Big Tobacco’s playbook,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. “It has hidden its own research on addiction and the toxic effects of its products, it has attempted to deceive the public and us in Congress about what it knows, and it has weaponized childhood vulnerabilities against children themselves.”

The hearings come on the heels of a Wall Street Journal investigation that revealed that Facebook has been sitting on a cache of research that shows just how harmful its products can be for children under the age of 18. The whistleblower documents, which also have been turned over to Congress, offer “deep insight into Facebook’s relentless campaign to recruit and exploit young users,” Blumenthal said.

Enlarge (credit: Jordan Nix)

American luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group (NMG) has just disclosed a major data breach impacting approximately 4.6 million customers. The breach occurred sometime in May 2020 after "an unauthorized party" obtained the personal information of some Neiman Marcus customers from their online accounts. Neiman Marcus is working with law enforcement agencies and has selected cybersecurity company Mandiant to assist with the investigation.

Credit card and gift card numbers exposed

Yesterday, Neiman Marcus disclosed that its 2020 data breach impacted about 4.6 million customers with Neiman Marcus online accounts. The personal information of these customers was potentially compromised during the incident. The bits of information include:

• Names, addresses, contact information
• usernames and passwords of Neiman Marcus online accounts
• Payment card numbers and expiration dates (although no CVV numbers)
• Neiman Marcus virtual gift card numbers (without PINs)
• Security questions of Neiman Marcus online accounts

For the millions of customers being notified about the incident, "approximately 3.1 million payment and virtual gift cards were affected, more than 85% of which are expired or invalid," said the company in a statement released Thursday. No active Neiman Marcus-branded credit cards were impacted. As of now, there's also no indication that online customer accounts at Bergdorf Goodman or Horchow were impacted.

Enlarge / Under the stars with the Ariane 6 launch base at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. (credit: ESA)

Welcome to Edition 4.18 of the Rocket Report! As usual, it has been a busy week in the world of lift, and as it draws to a close so does the month of September. With three months left in the year, will we see any more orbital rocket debuts in 2021?

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

The FAA clears Virgin Galactic to resume flights. On Wednesday, the FAA said it has closed its investigation into the July 11 launch of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo vehicle. "The investigation found the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo vehicle deviated from its assigned airspace on its descent from space," the FAA stated. "The FAA also found Virgin Galactic failed to communicate the deviation to the FAA as required. Virgin Galactic was not allowed to conduct flight operations as the investigation was ongoing. The FAA required Virgin Galactic to implement changes on how it communicates to the FAA during flight operations to keep the public safe. Virgin Galactic has made the required changes and can return to flight operations."

Enlarge / Protesters call for action on climate change in Kyiv, capital of Ukraine. (credit: Barcroft Media / Getty Images)

After Joe Biden won the US presidential election, he pledged that the country would cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030. And the US is hardly alone in this ambition. According to new research by Climate Analytics—part of the Climate Action Tracker consortium—131 countries are either discussing, have announced, or are implementing net-zero targets. The paper notes that, if fully implemented, these would cut 72 percent of global emissions.

The extent to which national climate goals can help realize the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5º C is an open question. But according to Matthew Gidden, one of the recent paper’s authors, these climate goals are having (and could indeed continue to have) a marked impact on the climate of the future.

“The clear message from my point of view is that the window has not closed,” he told Ars. “However, it needs significant and real action, especially by the developed countries of the world and the largest emitters in the world, to really make movement.”