Month: October 2021

Enlarge / Coming in June 2022 to "theaters." (credit: Disney Pixar)

While nobody was necessarily asking for an origin story film about Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear, the combined powers of Disney and Pixar sure seem intent on making such a concept look as appealing and epic as possible. Seriously: if you think the concept sounds like a straight-to-VHS cash-in on paper, we strongly encourage that you watch Wednesday's dramatic reveal of Lightyear, coming "to theaters" (and no mention of Disney+ thus far) on June 17, 2022.

The film's debut 90-second trailer, embedded below, skips over the important context found in its "read more" crawl on YouTube, which suggests that the toy version of Buzz Lightyear, who was embraced by Toy Story's Andy as a toy, an animated series character, a video game star, and more, was based on someone else entirely. As Disney Pixar explains:

The sci-fi action-adventure presents the definitive origin story of Buzz Lightyear—the hero who inspired the toy—introducing the legendary Space Ranger who would win generations of fans.

However, this description doesn't clarify whether the more realistic-looking version of Lightyear in next year's film is as real in the Toy Story version of Earth as characters like Andy (and that this version of our planet is patrolled by "Space Ranger" astronauts) or if this is another fictional story inside that world, from which more cartoonish Buzz Lightyear versions eventually followed. While waiting for Al "Chicken Man" McWhiggin to return our emails on the question, we instead found a definitive answer at Entertainment Weekly, whose reporter Nick Romano interviewed film director Angus MacLane on the matter.

Enlarge / Feel free to repair this PS3 disc drive. (credit: Getty Images | sydmsix)

The librarian of Congress has provided a new exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that will let people repair optical drives on video game consoles. The new rule will also let users perform "diagnosis, maintenance, and repair" of other types of software-enabled devices marketed to consumers.

The US Copyright Office today announced the decision, which came from a set of recommendations by Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter. The office simultaneously released a final rule in which Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden adopted the recommendations.

"For the reasons discussed in the Register's Recommendation, the Register recommended expanding the existing exemption for diagnosis, maintenance, and repair of certain categories of devices to cover any software-enabled device that is primarily designed for use by consumers," the final rule said. "For video game consoles, the Register concluded that an exemption is warranted solely for the repair of optical drives."

Enlarge / Burkholderia pseudomallei grown on sheep blood agar for 24 hours. B. pseudomallei is a Gram-negative aerobic bacteria, and it's the causative agent of melioidosis. (credit: Getty | CDC/Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed that an aromatherapy gemstone spray sold at Walmart is linked to four mysterious bacterial infections in four different states. The infections left two dead, including a child.

On Friday, the CDC announced a break in the months-long mystery: A bottle of aromatherapy room spray in the home of a Georgia patient who died was contaminated with the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. The dangerous microbe is typically found in soil and water in tropical and subtropical climates, such as South Asia. When the bacterium is consumed or inhaled or enters a skin wound, it can cause a life-threatening but difficult-to-diagnose infection called melioidosis.

As soon as the CDC identified the contaminated spray, Walmart and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced a recall of the product, the Better Homes & Gardens Lavender & Chamomile Essential Oil Infused Aromatherapy Room Spray with Gemstones, which is manufactured in India. Walmart is offering customers a $20 gift card for the safe return of the dangerous spray bottles.

Enlarge / The site of the X-ray source in the Whirlpool Galaxy. (credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. DiStefano, et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/Grendler)

It's become clear that the Milky Way is full of planets. And the Milky Way is unremarkable compared to many other galaxies, which, in all likelihood, are also rich with planets.

But there's a big difference between "likely" and having evidence that planets exist outside of our galaxy. And the methods that have allowed us to spot planets in the Milky Way simply won't work at such huge distances. But this week, researchers announced that a method they'd proposed may have turned up the first indication of a planet in another galaxy. The data was sitting in the archives of a couple of X-ray telescopes.

Long-distance eclipse

Almost every planet we know about was identified by one of two methods: either by watching a planet's gravitational influence on the wavelengths of light produced by a star, or by watching the reduction in light as it passes between us and its host star. At the moment, we simply don't have hardware with the resolution needed for these methods to work well with other galaxies, which generally appear as collections of stars so dense that distinguishing one star from another is nearly impossible.