Month: July 2024

Enlarge / NASA’s Perseverance rover discovered “leopard spots” on a reddish rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” in Mars’ Jezero Crater in July 2024. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

NASA's Perseverance rover has found a very intriguing rock on the surface of Mars.

An arrowhead-shaped rock observed by the rover has chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. To be absolutely clear, this is not irrefutable evidence of past life on Mars, when the red planet was more amenable to water-based life billions of years ago. But discovering these colored spots on this rock is darn intriguing and has Mars scientists bubbling with excitement.

"These spots are a big surprise," said David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, in a NASA news release. "On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface."

Enlarge (credit: sasha85ru | Getty Imates)

In 2012, an industry-wide coalition of hardware and software makers adopted Secure Boot to protect against a long-looming security threat. The threat was the specter of malware that could infect the BIOS, the firmware that loaded the operating system each time a computer booted up. From there, it could remain immune to detection and removal and could load even before the OS and security apps did.

The threat of such BIOS-dwelling malware was largely theoretical and fueled in large part by the creation of ICLord Bioskit by a Chinese researcher in 2007. ICLord was a rootkit, a class of malware that gains and maintains stealthy root access by subverting key protections built into the operating system. The proof of concept demonstrated that such BIOS rootkits weren't only feasible; they were also powerful. In 2011, the threat became a reality with the discovery of Mebromi, the first-known BIOS rootkit to be used in the wild.

Keenly aware of Mebromi and its potential for a devastating new class of attack, the Secure Boot architects hashed out a complex new way to shore up security in the pre-boot environment. Built into UEFI—the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface that would become the successor to BIOS—Secure Boot used public-key cryptography to block the loading of any code that wasn’t signed with a pre-approved digital signature. To this day, key players in security—among them Microsoft and the US National Security Agency—regard Secure Boot as an important, if not essential, foundation of trust in securing devices in some of the most critical environments, including in industrial control and enterprise networks.

Enlarge / The VW ID.4 has a new drive motor and infotainment system for model-year 2024. It's not the sportiest EV you can buy, but it remains one of our favorites to drive. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Volkswagen didn't wait the traditional four model years before giving its ID.4 electric crossover something of a spiff-up. The tweaks to the model-year 2024 ID.4 are mostly under the skin or inside the cabin—like the recent refresh of the Polestar 2, this update was more about making the ID.4 an easier EV to live with, with more range and more power.

Volkswagen was one of the first automakers to react to Tesla finally making the electric vehicle viable. After the company-wide bet on diesel went up in a cloud of nitrogen oxides and black smoke, VW threw itself headlong into electrification as a way to meet ever-stricter carbon emissions regulations. Already an industry pioneer for the use of highly flexible vehicle architectures that let it build vehicles in a wide range of sizes and shapes with a common set of components and tools, it applied that approach to a line of electric vehicles, all branded under the Intelligent Design, or ID, name.

VW is a global automaker, but automobile tastes are often not global. For Europe, VW designed the ID.3, an electric hatchback that Americans who want forbidden fruit keep asking for, but which generated less than enthusiastic reviews from the people who actually got to buy them. Other models are optimized for China. But for America, with its adoration of the SUV and crossover, VW designed the ID.4.

During our second Ars Live event earlier this month, screenwriter/producer Ed Solomon (Bill & Ted franchise) joined physicists Sean Carroll (Johns Hopkins University) and Jim Kakalios (University of Minnesota) and Ars Senior Reporter Jennifer Ouellette for a rousing discussion on the science and logic of time-travel movies. The discussion was inspired by last fall's Ars Guide to Time Travel in the Movies, written with the objective of helping us all make better, more informed decisions when it comes to choosing our time-travel movie fare—and having a bit of fun while doing so. You'll find the entire discussion in the video above, complete with a transcript.

Not all time-travel movies are created equal. Some make for fantastic entertainment, but the time travel makes no scientific or logical sense, while others might err in the opposite direction, sacrificing good storytelling in the interest of technical accuracy. The best strike a good balance between those two extremes.

We started off by letting Carroll recap his fundamental rules for time travel in the movies: (1) You can't go back earlier than whenever the time machine you're using was built; (2) it's easy to travel to the future, and special and general relativity give us ways to get to the future faster; (3) it may or may not be possible to travel to the past BUT.... (4) if you do, you can't change the past. Whatever happened, happened.

During our second Ars Live event earlier this month, screenwriter/producer Ed Solomon (Bill & Ted franchise) joined physicists Sean Carroll (Johns Hopkins University) and Jim Kakalios (University of Minnesota) and Ars Senior Reporter Jennifer Ouellette for a rousing discussion on the science and logic of time-travel movies. The discussion was inspired by last fall's Ars Guide to Time Travel in the Movies, written with the objective of helping us all make better, more informed decisions when it comes to choosing our time-travel movie fare—and having a bit of fun while doing so. You'll find the entire discussion in the video above, complete with a transcript.

Not all time-travel movies are created equal. Some make for fantastic entertainment, but the time travel makes no scientific or logical sense, while others might err in the opposite direction, sacrificing good storytelling in the interest of technical accuracy. The best strike a good balance between those two extremes.

We started off by letting Carroll recap his fundamental rules for time travel in the movies: (1) You can't go back earlier than whenever the time machine you're using was built; (2) it's easy to travel to the future, and special and general relativity give us ways to get to the future faster; (3) it may or may not be possible to travel to the past BUT.... (4) if you do, you can't change the past. Whatever happened, happened.

Enlarge / FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel testifies during a House hearing on March 31, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch )

A US appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional, finding Universal Service fees on phone bills to be a "misbegotten tax." If not overturned, the ruling would upend the $8 billion-a-year system that is used to expand telecom networks and make access more affordable through programs such as Lifeline discounts and deployment grants for Internet service providers.

But the FCC program could survive in the end as the case appears ripe for Supreme Court review, with yesterday's ruling creating a circuit split. The ruling against the FCC was issued by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which is generally considered one of the most conservative appeals courts.

The FCC previously prevailed in the 6th and 11th circuit appeals courts, which both rejected claims that the Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional. All three cases against the FCC were filed by Consumers' Research, a nonprofit that fights "woke corporations," and a mobile virtual network operator called Cause Based Commerce, which offers wireless service to "values-based consumers who want alternatives to the many companies and providers that support causes and positions contrary to their beliefs."

Enlarge / FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel testifies during a House hearing on March 31, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch )

A US appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional, finding Universal Service fees on phone bills to be a "misbegotten tax." If not overturned, the ruling would upend the $8 billion-a-year system that is used to expand telecom networks and make access more affordable through programs such as Lifeline discounts and deployment grants for Internet service providers.

But the FCC program could survive in the end as the case appears ripe for Supreme Court review, with yesterday's ruling creating a circuit split. The ruling against the FCC was issued by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which is generally considered one of the most conservative appeals courts.

The FCC previously prevailed in the 6th and 11th circuit appeals courts, which both rejected claims that the Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional. All three cases against the FCC were filed by Consumers' Research, a nonprofit that fights "woke corporations," and a mobile virtual network operator called Cause Based Commerce, which offers wireless service to "values-based consumers who want alternatives to the many companies and providers that support causes and positions contrary to their beliefs."