On June 22, Kevin Patrick Mallory was brought before a US federal judge for his first hearing on charges that he sold highly classified documents to a Chinese intelligence agent. These documents, which are considered "National Defense Information," included at least one Top Secret document and three classified as Secret, were found on a phone Mallory had been provided by his Chinese contacts. Mallory, a 60-year-old former Central Intelligence Agency employee living in Leesburg, Va., had thought the documents were in messages that had been deleted automatically from the device. Mallory faces life in prison if convicted. Mallory, an independent consultant, had previously been an employee of "various government agencies" as well as several defense contractors. An Army veteran, Mallory worked at the State Department from 1987 to 1990. And according to the Washington Post, Mallory was also confirmed to have worked at the CIA, among other places. According to the FBI, Mallory was also … [Read more...]

OneWeb A company seeking to offer low-latency broadband from satellites yesterday received a key approval from the Federal Communications Commission. "Over a year ago, OneWeb was the first company to seek approval to enter the US market with a system of high-capacity satellites that orbit closer to Earth than any satellite has ever before," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said before yesterday's vote. "The goal of this non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) technology is to provide global, high-speed broadband service—and its use case is particularly compelling in remote and hard-to-serve areas." Today's satellite ISPs have average latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements, with satellites orbiting the Earth at about 35,400km. By contrast, OneWeb satellites would orbit at altitudes of about 1,200km. The company says its Internet access would have latencies of around 30ms, just a bit higher than typical cable systems. Speeds would be around 50Mbps. OneWeb is … [Read more...]

EnlargeAustin Community College In the US, a college education makes a huge difference for most people. It opens up lots of career opportunities, many of them at higher than average pay. The better economic opportunities it provides are associated with things like better health and a longer life expectancy. Unfortunately, the US population doesn't have equal access to college. Black people attend the most selective colleges in the US at one-fifth the rate of whites and Latinos at a third the rate of whites. There are a lot of systemic reasons for this gap—persistent poverty, poor access to good preparatory schools, discrimination, and more. A poor family moving to a wealthy neighborhood is enough to improve their children's college attendance rate. But a team of psychologists has now found there may be an easier way of boosting kids' chances of attending a good school. It's a simple exercise that can be done a few times over the year during middle school. Despite their … [Read more...]

Enlarge / This is what the exoskeleton looks like when it's worn on both legs. The magic, however, is in the control software.Kirby Witte, Katie Poggensee, Pieter Fiers, Patrick Franks and Steve Collins Exoskeletons are a common feature in the natural world. But in recent years, scientists have started experimenting with adding them to humans. Powered exoskeletons hold the prospect of helping people with mobility problems resume a normal life. And there's always the prospect of giving ourselves super-human strength, like Ripley in Aliens. Even without power, an exoskeleton can redistribute the energy from our normal motions more efficiently. But no two people are quite the same—they differ not only in physical proportions, but they often have different strides or styles of walking. So how do you match your exoskeleton to a user's peculiarities? The answer, according to a team at Carnegie Mellon University, is the combination of a genetic algorithm and a treadmill. After a … [Read more...]

This is the layout of the small town where Anna Beck found the toilet. The great hall is in black; it was rebuilt five times during the town's lifetime. Museum Southeast Denmark Digging into a medieval toilet isn't glamorous. Here, you can see the layers of soil burying the feces at the bottom. Scientists determined that the excrement was human because it contained flower pollen from honey, a food rarely given to animals. Anna S. … [Read more...]

Enlarge / Travis Kalanick, ex-CEO of Uber Technologies. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images Uber's recently fired CEO, Travis Kalanick, knew that his top self-driving car engineer had Google files in his possession in March 2016, according to newly filed court documents. The admission was made by Uber lawyers as part of a response to Waymo discovery demands. Uber lawyers served the response on June 8, and it was revealed in a public court motion (PDF) filed by Waymo lawyers late yesterday. Waymo sued Uber in February, claiming that the company had trade secrets brought in by Levandowski, an engineer who once worked at Google but quit abruptly in January 2016. Levandowski went on to found his own self-driving car startup, which was purchased by Uber for $680 million. Google has accused Levandowski, who is not a defendant in the case, of downloading more than 14,000 files that contained Google trade secrets and taking … [Read more...]

Enlarge / A Charter Spectrum vehicle.Charter Charter has agreed to pay $13 million to New York State after failing to complete broadband construction that was required as part of its purchase of Time Warner Cable. Charter can get $12 million of that back if it completes the buildout under a revised schedule. Charter was required to extend its network to 36,250 homes and businesses in the state within one year of the TWC merger being approved, but only completed the buildout to 15,164 of them by the May 18 deadline, state officials said in an announcement Tuesday. The NY Public Service Commission is taking public comments on the settlement before giving it final approval. The $13 million payment includes $1 million in grants for computer equipment and Internet access for low-income residents. The other $12 million is "a security to meet its network expansion commitment going forward," which Charter can recover upon completing the … [Read more...]

Enlarge / An F-35 Lightning II performs a maneuver Sept. 12, 2016 at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. After a temporary grounding, the F-35 has returned to the skies at the base, but with some restrictions on how pilots fly the aircraft.US Air Force The F-35A has been cleared to operate once again from Luke Air Force Base, the primary pilot-training facility for the Air Force's newest fighter aircraft. The F-35 had been grounded at Luke since June 9, after five incidents over a month in which pilots experienced the symptoms of hypoxia (oxygen deprivation). However, that return to flight, which began June 21, comes with some caveats: pilots have been instructed to "avoid the altitudes in which the hypoxia-like incidents occurred," according to press releases by the Air Force and the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO). The F-35 JPO convened a "formal action team" to investigate the incidents after the aircraft grounding to work with the Air Force to investigate the hypoxia … [Read more...]

EnlargeJorge Quinteros ‘Tis the season for heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere, as folks across Europe and parts of the US west have been reminded this week. In addition to providing weather to complain about—seemingly a necessary component of human communication—heatwaves can be straight up deadly. The 2010 Moscow heatwave (combined with thick air pollution from associated wildfires) caused thousands of deaths. The stress of extreme heat on the human body is real. While most of us don’t see those conditions too often, they do occur today. And that means that our warming climate will ensure they occur more often. But how often will that be? Evaluating this risk with precision isn’t easy, because global data on deaths attributable to heatwaves aren’t very good. But a group of researchers led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Camilo Mora gave it a shot, gathering together over 900 studies that covered 784 … [Read more...]

Enlarge / Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull Racing prepares for the 2017 Australian Grand Prix.Mark Thompson/Getty Images for Red Bull "Big Data" has been all the rage for the last few years. But the sport of Formula 1 racing caught that bug a long time ago, certainly in the days predating that buzzword. In the past, we've taken a look at how teams like Williams Martini Racing, Renault Sport Formula One, and Caterham F1 (RIP) have handled collecting and crunching their terabytes. Today, it's Red Bull Racing's turn. "But if you look at all the other data we use—video, audio, number crunching to run through various simulations—it's a huge multiplication factor on top of that," he told Ars. Cadieux wouldn't give us an exact number for that data volume over a race weekend, lest that information prove too useful to the team's rivals in the paddock, but company-wide the team manages 8PB of data. Cadieux reckoned that 95 percent of that was related to car design and car … [Read more...]

The second big trailer for Game of Thrones season 7 is here, and I'm starting to get pretty excited for the July 16 premiere. The cast and crew have promised that this penultimate season, only a measly 7 episodes, will move at a faster pace than previous ones. Plus, all the characters will eventually find themselves in the same place at some point near the end of the season. This trailer promises a lot of action, including long-awaited dragon breath weapon situations where Dany is riding into battle on the back of Drogon. Plus we get glimpses of the Hound (so he's not dead!), Jon Snow among the Wildlings, and the Night King playing some kind of mind game with Bran's warg powers. Arya is looking ultra-badass, as is Brienne (with cute li'l sidekick Pod, who has apparently learned to fight pretty well under her tutelage). Obviously a battle is brewing, with some of the Grayjoys allying with Cersei Lannister, while it appears that Jon Snow is attempting to ally with Dany (and a bunch of … [Read more...]

Enlarge / A Comcast service vehicle.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images An electric utility in Tennessee has accused Comcast of not paying its bills for three years. The utility says it will start removing Comcast wires from utility poles next week unless the cable company pays up. In a notice on its website, the electric co-op said: If Comcast does not pay the amounts owed to STEMC [Southwest Tennessee Electric Membership Corporation] by June 28, 2017, we will begin removing their attachments from our poles. We regret that some customers may lose their Comcast service. However, the full cost and maintenance of these utility poles are borne by all members of STEMC, and we cannot allow STEMC members to subsidize Comcast's services. We are hopeful that Comcast will make payment prior to the deadline and avoid the need to remove their cable attachments. Comcast promised to pay the "correct amount," but the industry giant says that STEMC tried to double its bill in 2015 and did not … [Read more...]

Enlarge / AT&T will own a bunch of new media properties if it is allowed to buy Time Warner.Aurich Lawson A group of Senate Democrats led by Al Franken (D-Minn.) today urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to block AT&T's proposed $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc. Their letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions predicts that "the combined company's unmatched control of popular content and the distribution of that content will lead to higher prices, fewer choices, and poorer quality services for Americans." The Democrats couched their language a bit, saying that the DOJ should block the merger if it "determine[s] that the substantial harms to competition and consumers arising from the transaction outweigh the purported benefits." But the senators made it clear that they believe the merger's potential harms will outweigh the benefits for consumers even if the government imposes conditions on the transaction. Time Warner is the owner of programmers … [Read more...]

Early in the season, Bilquis visits an archaeology museum to see ancient representations of herself. Starz In the late 1970s, Bilquis becomes a disco queen in Tehran--until the Shah's regime forces her to immigrate to America. Starz … [Read more...]

Unless you've been living in a cave for the last few years, you're aware that autonomous cars are now a thing. The technology is still in relative infancy, but most of the major OEMs, Tier 1 automotive suppliers, and many of the big tech companies—not to mention plenty of startups—have been telling us that we should expect self-driving vehicles to show up (in some geofenced areas) within the next five years. But as often happens, getting the technology in place is only one part of the puzzle. Society has to be ready for it, too. In the case of autonomous cars, both the general public and regulators are going to need to know its safe. And that was the precise reason that Audi brought Jack to Washington DC earlier this month. Jack's been doing some stellar work for Audi, but he's not an employee; he's an AI-controlled car. He was in town to show off his abilities to law makers in Congress, but during this time Ars also got experience his skills. Jack's one of several … [Read more...]

EnlargeGetty Images | KrulUA A proposed law in California would require Internet service providers to obtain customers' permission before they use, share, or sell the customers' Web browsing history. The California Broadband Internet Privacy Act, a bill introduced by Assemblymember Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park) on Monday, is very similar to an Obama-era privacy rule that was scheduled to take effect across the US until President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress eliminated it. If Chau's bill becomes law, ISPs in California would have to get subscribers' opt-in consent before using browsing history and other sensitive information in order to serve personalized advertisements. Consumers would have the right to revoke their consent at any time. “The idea that a person should have some say about how their Internet service provider can use, share or sell their personal information is not a controversial question for everyday consumers—it is … [Read more...]

Enlarge / This raceway pond is used for continuous growth of biofuel-producing microbes.RFE Renewable Fuel & Energy/Sandia National Lab There's an inherent tension in convincing organisms to produce fuel for us. To grow and thrive, the organism has to direct its energy into a variety of chemicals—proteins, fats, DNA, and more. But for biofuels, we're mostly interested in fats, which are long-chain hydrocarbons that already look a lot like our liquid fuels. Fat is easy to convert into biodiesel, for example. So how do we convince an organism to do what we want, rather than what it needs? There have been two approaches to this so far. One is to take an organism that we understand well and engage in genetic engineering to direct its metabolism toward fuel production. The second approach is to search for organisms that naturally produce lots of the chemicals we're interested in. Now, researchers at the company Synthetic Genomics have taken what you might consider a hybrid … [Read more...]

Enlarge / People sign up to become Uber drivers at a recruitment event in South Los Angeles. MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images Uber has announced it will make various changes to how its drivers get paid, including the addition of giving riders an option to tip their driver. Tipping is available as of today in Seattle, Minneapolis, and Houston, which are being rolled out as test markets so the company "can create the best tipping experience." Tipping will be available to all US drivers by the end of July. Drivers will also be paid extra for teen account trips, including $2 added to the base fare. The company calls the changes "major improvements that will make driving more flexible and less stressful, giving you [drivers] earnings and support you can depend on." The changes will be launched city-by-city over the course of the summer. Uber says it will update the changes, which it has dubbed "180 Days of Change," on this page. The program is authored by Rachel Holt and Aaron … [Read more...]

Enlarge / US Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry addresses employees for the first time at Energy Department headquarters in Washington, DC, March 3, 2017. Image courtesy Ken Shipp/US Department of Energy. (Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said that carbon dioxide emissions from human activities weren’t the primary driver of climate change. Instead, the former Texas governor responded that "most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in." It’s unclear how Perry envisions this “control knob” and how it works; a generous analysis of his answer would be that he misunderstood the question. Ocean waters absorb carbon dioxide and are changing, much like climate, because of it. And the oceans have short-term cycles that influence equally short-term temperature trends. But those cycles can't drive the ever-upwards trend in … [Read more...]

Enlarge / Scientists tracked cat genetics partly by studying the evolution of the "blotched tabby," pictured here in excruciatingly cute detail.Anne People who live with cats like to joke about how these small fuzzy creatures are still wild, basically training us rather than the other way around. Now a new genetic study of ancient cat DNA reveals that we are basically right. Cats were not domesticated in the same way dogs, cows, pigs, and goats were. They have lived among us, but it wasn't until very recently that we began to change them. Unlike dogs, whose bodies and temperaments have transformed radically during the roughly 30,000 years we've lived with them, domestic cats are almost identical to their wild counterparts—physically and genetically. House cats also show none of the typical signs of animal domestication, such as infantilization of facial features, decreased tooth size, and docility. Wildcats are neither social nor hierarchical, which also makes them hard to … [Read more...]