The Neolithic site Göbekli Tepe, located in Turkey, is one of the oldest known works of monumental architecture in the world. People used it continuously for about 1,600 years, starting about 11,500 years ago. German Archaeological Institute A pillar from Göbekli Tepe is covered in images of birds and scorpions. German Archaeological Institute … [Read more...]

Enlarge / The Supreme Court of California’s headquarters is also home to the 1st District in San Francisco.Coolcaesar denied efforts to overturn a county court’s decision not to intervene in an ongoing dispute between the public defender’s office and the administrative arm of the Alameda County Superior Court itself. The dispute is over the allegedly flawed court software. The public defender, Brendon Woods, has argued since December 2016 that a recent upgrade is inadequate for Alameda County and has resulted in many mistaken jailings. In March 2017, a local judge rejected Woods’ demands to fix the software, which is known as Odyssey Court Manager and made by Tyler Technologies. The 1st Appellate District, a state-level appeals court based in San Francisco, ruled that Woods lacked standing to bring the appeal “in his own right.” Even if there was standing, the plaintiffs did not establish that they would “suffer … [Read more...]

EnlargeTesla Understandably, the focus of a lot of our car coverage here at Ars has been on things like hybrid and electric powertrains, autonomous vehicles, and the rise of the connected car. But there are other interesting technology stories in the auto industry that are a little more hidden from the average driver. Take Gordon Murray's iStream idea, for example. From the same brain that created some of the world's best racing cars—and the almighty McLaren F1 road car—iStream is meant to be a low-impact way of building new vehicles, which will hopefully reach fruition with the reborn TVR brand. Then there's 3D printing, as demonstrated by companies like Local Motors and 3D Divergent. And then there's the way that modern IT solutions can—hopefully—make the auto industry more efficient and faster to respond to new design trends or challenges. A while back, we looked at Toyota's use of virtual production lines to streamline how the company builds trucks at … [Read more...]

EnlargeGetty Images | WIN-Initiative Charter Communications has filed a complaint against Verizon, saying the telco violated New York state's public service law and regulations by denying access to utility poles. Charter is required to extend its network in New York state to 145,000 homes and businesses by May 2020 under a condition imposed on its purchase of Time Warner Cable, and it was supposed to complete the first 36,250 locations by May of this year. Charter last week was fined by New York regulators for failing to complete the first wave of construction on time, but it largely blamed its failure on Verizon in a complaint filed on Saturday with the New York Public Service Commission. "In the face of Verizon’s intransigence, Charter has been unable to satisfy the milestones in the Buildout Condition," Charter said. Charter is the second-largest cable company in the US after Comcast. The dispute has to do with Charter's ability to … [Read more...]

Enlarge / CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook's 2016 "F8" conference.Facebook This article originally appeared on ProPublica on June 28, 2017. Hunt them, identify them, and kill them," declared U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican. "Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all." Higgins' plea for violent revenge went untouched by Facebook workers who scour the social network deleting offensive speech. But a May posting on Facebook by Boston poet and Black Lives Matter activist Didi Delgado drew a different response. "All white people are racist. Start from this reference point, or you've already failed," Delgado wrote. The post was removed and her Facebook account was disabled for seven days. A trove of internal documents reviewed by ProPublica sheds new light on the secret guidelines that Facebook's censors use to distinguish between hate speech and legitimate political expression. The documents reveal the rationale behind … [Read more...]

EnlargeGetty Images | designer491 A group of small Internet service providers yesterday urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to preserve the FCC's net neutrality rules and the related classification of ISPs as common carriers. "We have encountered no new additional barriers to investment or deployment as a result of the 2015 decision to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and have long supported network neutrality as a core principle for the deployment of networks for the American public to access the Internet," the ISPs said in a letter to Pai that was organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The current rules are necessary "to address the anticompetitive practices of the largest players in the market," but "the FCC’s current course threatens the viability of competitive entry and competitive viability," the companies wrote. "As direct competitors to the biggest cable and telephone … [Read more...]

Enlarge / What a Link kiosk might look like on the streets of London.BT Updated June 28, 2017: BT's new digital kiosks have finally started to roll out, with the first few units now dotted along Camden high street. The kiosks provide a bunch of free services: public Wi-Fi, USB charging, location services, and even free calls to UK landlines and mobile phones. The trade-off is that the backside of the kiosk is a giant digital billboard. BT plans to roll out 750 of these kiosks over the next few years, so prepare for some very well illuminated high streets. Enlarge / One of the InLinkUK kiosks in Camden.BT was originally planning to call the service LinkUK, but they've now launched under the clunky moniker InLinkUK—presumably for trademark reasons (Link is the network that connects together all of the UK's cash machines). BT is also claiming that the digital monolith offers Wi-Fi "speeds of up to 1Gbps," but unless they've decided to use 802.11ad WiGig, … [Read more...]

Enlarge / Steve Ballmer and my buddies Jason and Matt. Matt doesn't really have anything to do with this story, but he was in the picture with Jason so he gets to be in the intro image too.Aurich Lawson June 29, 2007 is hot. Texas hot. I’m hunched beneath an ugly orange awning that features the blue Death Star logo, getting what shade I can out of the thing as it flaps limply in a breeze hot and damp as dog's breath. Behind my back is the cool glass of a store window, on which you can still see the fading outline of recently removed “CINGULAR STORE” vinyl banners. It’s not quite 90F—that’s about 32C for you Celsius fans—but the 90 percent humidity robs the shade of almost all of its comfort. The world is a slowly baking convection oven and the glass I’m leaning on is the only nice thing in it. A friendly lady from the cosmetics store next door is making the rounds again with bottles of water from a wicker basket, along with coupons … [Read more...]

Enlarge / Sonequa Martin-Green plays protagonist Michael Burnham, first officer of the U.S.S. Shenzhou, on new CBS All Access series Star Trek: Discovery.CBS Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had a lot of strict rules for writers on his shows. Some, like the requirement that both female and male officers be called "sir," were thrown out a while ago (Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Kathryn Janeway, wanted to be called "ma'am"). Now, with forthcoming series Star Trek: Discovery, we're about to see one of Roddenberry’s most cherished rules bite the dust. When Roddenberry first framed his ideas for the Star Trek universe, he wanted to be sure that writers would emphasize the Utopian aspects of future life in the Federation. Some of that Utopianism was hardwired into the show's basic premise, in which money, war, and racial discrimination are things of the distant past. But Roddenberry wasn't satisfied with that—he wanted characters whose behavior was exemplary, too. So … [Read more...]

Matthew Keys, seen here in 2016, before he was ordered to prison.Cyrus Farivar On Monday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it was not persuaded by arguments made by Matthew Keys’ defense attorneys. In a hearing earlier this month, his lawyers said that while their client may have handed over a username and password that resulted in a brief defacement of one Los Angeles Times article, this did not constitute actual "damage" as described in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. As Ars reported earlier, Keys was accused of giving out a username and password for his former employer KTXL Fox 40's content management system (CMS) to members of Anonymous and instructing people there to "fuck some shit up." Ultimately, that December 2010 incident resulted in someone else using those credentials to alter a headline and sub-headline on a Los Angeles Times article. (Both Fox 40 and the Times are owned by the Tribune Media Company.) The changes lasted for 40 minutes before … [Read more...]

The RapidE was first shown as a concept in 2015. Aston Martin But now Aston Martin says it will build 115 of them, starting in 2019. Aston Martin Will it need … [Read more...]

EnlargeMike Mozart Comcast and Charter have reportedly started negotiating with Sprint, as the two biggest cable companies in the US explore the possibility of buying the wireless carrier or investing in its network. Comcast and Charter last month announced an agreement to cooperate in their plans to sell mobile phone service, an agreement that also forbids each company from making wireless acquisitions and investments without the other's consent for one year. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that "Sprint has entered into exclusive talks with Charter and as the cable companies explore a deal that could bolster their plans to offer wireless service, according to people familiar with the matter." There are a couple different arrangements being considered. In one, the cable companies would invest in "improving Sprint’s network in exchange for favorable terms to offer wireless service using the carrier’s network," possibly by … [Read more...]

EnlargeArizona Cardinals In 2013, Megan Welter had a really bad night. Welter, at that time a cheerleader for the Arizona Cardinals, got into a drunken fight with her boyfriend. It ended with her calling 911 and reporting him for domestic violence. Welter's boyfriend was a professional fighter, who "smashed [her] head into the tile" and put her in a "choke hold with his legs," she told the 911 dispatcher. When the police showed up, they found out that wasn't true. Welter's boyfriend, Ryan McMahon, showed video on his cell phone verifying that it was Welter who had attacked him. She was arrested and charged with assault. The arrest came just days after Welter and her team, the Cardinals, kicked off a PR blitz pushing a positive story about her to various television and print news outlets. Welter wasn't just a pretty face—she was an Iraq war veteran who led troops in a signal unit of the US Army. Local Arizona TV stations, Sports Illustrated, and … [Read more...]

Enlarge / Would you get your Internet from this van?Bobotech - Know Your Meme We've learned something from the investigation into whether Russia meddled in the US election that has nothing to do with politics. Humans are more vulnerable than ever to propaganda, and we have no clue what to do about it. A new report in The Washington Post reveals that the Obama administration and intelligence community knew about Russian attempts to disrupt the 2016 election months in advance. But they did virtually nothing, mostly because they didn't anticipate attacks from weaponized memes and propaganda bots. Post that the members of the intelligence community focused on more traditional digital threats like network penetration. They wanted to prevent e-mail leaks, and they also worried about Russian operatives messing with voting machines. "In many ways... we dealt with this as a cyberthreat and focused on protecting our infrastructure," he said. "Meanwhile, the Russians were playing this much … [Read more...]

EnlargeScott K. Johnson CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts—Some critics of the Paris Agreement on climate change probably think they could have done a better job with the agreement's details. Recently, a group of people taking a system dynamics course at MIT’s Sloan School of Management got the chance to take a whack at it. Ars dropped in on a mock climate negotiation exercise run by MIT’s John Sterman, University of North Carolina’s Andrew Jones, and University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Juliette Rooney-Varga—the first time they’ve done one of these since President Trump announced his intent to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement. The simulated negotiation was informed by a display at the front of the room that showed the impact of the participants' pledged emissions reductions on climate change. In this case, the scoreboard was the same simple climate model that was used to facilitate the international negotiations in Copenhagen … [Read more...]

Alan Stanton The Internet of Things' "security through obscurity" has been proven once again to not be terribly secure thanks to an angry and possibly inebriated ex-employee. Adam Flanagan, a former radio frequency engineer for a company that manufactures remote meter reading equipment for utilities, was convicted on June 15 in Philadelphia after pleading guilty to two counts of "unauthorized access to a protected computer and thereby recklessly causing damage." Flanagan admitted that after being fired by his employer, he used information about systems he had worked on to disable meter reading equipment at several water utilities. In at least one case, Flanagan also changed the default password to an obscenity. Flanagan's employer was not named in court documents. According to a plea agreement filing, Flanagan worked on a team that installed tower gateway base stations (TGBs)—communications hubs mounted on poles distributed across a utility's service area to communicate … [Read more...]

Enlarge / The FCC was asked to decide whether this ringless voicemail technology should be subject to anti-robocall rules.Stratics Networks A petition to exempt ringless voicemails from anti-robocall rules has been withdrawn after heavy opposition. In March, a marketing company called All About the Message petitioned the Federal Communications Commission for a ruling that would prevent anti-robocall rules from applying to ringless voicemails. But the company withdrew its petition without explanation in a letter to the FCC last week, even though the commission hadn't yet ruled on the matter. As the name suggests, a ringless voicemail is the delivery of a voice message to a voicemail box without ringing the recipient's phone. The now-withdrawn petition asked the FCC to declare that this type of message does not count as a "call" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which prohibits non-emergency calls made with auto-dialers, artificial voices, or … [Read more...]

Enlarge / Waymo is using a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans to develop its self-driving technology.Waymo Back in April, we reported on Waymo's plans to offer an autonomous ride-hailing service in Phoenix, Arizona. Spun off from Google's self-driving car project, Waymo is using a fleet of adapted Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans to perfect its self-driving technology. Today, the company announced it is entering into a deal with the rental car company Avis to service and store the vehicles. Autonomous ride-hailing services are being viewed by car and tech companies as a potential gold mine in a near future where car ownership is losing its luster. Instead of selling autonomous vehicles directly to the public—which will happen eventually—operating the fleets themselves means they can be commercially insured, solving (for the time being) one of the big unanswered questions about the evolving technology. But owning and operating a fleet of vehicles is easier to … [Read more...]

It's fair to say that I'd been looking forward to getting behind the wheel of the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio for some time. The brand's new flagship sedan is a $72,000, 505hp (377kW) rear-wheel drive statement of intent, a car that says to rivals at BMW and Mercedes and Cadillac that the Italians are back. It first caught our attention at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show, then again in Los Angeles. Last year, the Giulia Quadrifoglio teased us some more in New York 2016 and then once again this year when we awarded it Best New Luxury Car. But a build-up like that can be risky. Cars don't always meet our expectations, and there's little worse than the feeling when you fail to gel with a car you've been looking forward to driving. A man on a TV show once said something along the lines of "you can't consider yourself a true petrolhead until you've had an Alfa Romeo." At the time, I wasn't entirely sure what he was talking about. The Alfas that populated the roads during my early … [Read more...]

Cecilia Tan is the award-winning fiction author of over 20 books and a co-writer of GEEK ACTUALLY, a fiction serial celebrating fandom, female friendship and sexuality, and the power of online spaces to connect communities. Her new series, The Vanished Chronicles, will launch in 2018 from Tor Books. With Pride London in full swing until July 9 (and concurrently in many other cities around the country), we thought this piece would be rather topical. It's Pride month, but I have a slightly different story of coming out to tell you. This is the story of how I became a Slytherin. More precisely, it's about how I discovered I already was a Slytherin and how internalized Slytherphobia had me in denial until I found my people. Going to my first Harry Potter convention was very much like going to my first Pride parade. I loved Harry Potter from the moment I read the very first book, but I didn't fall headlong into the community of fandom until around 2005 when I started reading copious … [Read more...]