Month: August 2016

(credit: NASA)

Saturn's exotic moon Titan, with its thick atmosphere and large, methane lakes, continues to beguile planetary scientists. Now, using data collected by an altimeter aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found liquid methane flowing through deep gorges on the moon's surface.

Unlike Earth and its water cycle, Titan's hydrologic cycle is based on methane, the main component of natural gas. It exists as a liquid on the very cold surface of Titan, with an average temperature of about -180 degrees Celsius. Scientists have previously discovered a number of hydrocarbon seas—or mare—on Titan. However, by analyzing additional data from various Cassini flybys over the last decade, they are now finding other features of Titan's complex hydrologic cycle.

In a paper published in Geophysical Review Letters, an assessment of altimeter echoes has identified steep canyons carved into the icy surface of Titan as deep as 570 meters, with a reflection at their bottoms that indicates they are filled with liquid hydrocarbons. Studying the 400km-long Vid Flumina river that flows into Titan’s second-largest sea, Ligeia Mare, scientists identified eight ice-lined canyons branching off of this Nile River-like feature.

Yesterday, two people expected that they'd be able to see each other when they met up, against all odds, in No Man's Sky's massive, virtual galaxy of 18 quintillion planets. But in spite of confirming that they were in each others’ line of sight (by communicating outside of the game), neither player could see the other. They were alone, even though they were both standing next to each other on the exact same planet orbiting the exact same star. In No Man’s Sky, you’re always alone.

These two players had good reason to expect their interstellar meetup would work—Hello Games Managing Director Sean Murray has promised that kind of limited multiplayer interaction numerous times in the last two-and-a-half years. (Follow-up tweets from Murray early this morning confirm he never expected this to happen so quickly and suggest that server overload might be to blame for the missed multiplayer connection).

At the same time, if you're actually trying to find another person in the vast, uncaring cosmos of No Man's Sky, you've probably misaligned your expectations for what the game is actually supposed to be about. That's partly the fault of Hello Games, but it's also partly the fault of a player- and press-driven hype machine that quickly spiraled out of the developer's control.

The fifth episode of Ars Technica Live is coming up tonight, August 17, in Oakland, California, at Longitude! Join Ars Technica editors Cyrus Farivar and Annalee Newitz, with guest Leslie Miley, for a conversation about Silicon Valley's problems with diversity. In 2015, Miley was the only black engineer at Twitter in a leadership position, and he wrote a widely circulated article about his experiences. Now a director of engineering at Slack, Miley has continued to be an advocate for diversity in tech. Miley formerly worked in leadership roles at Apple and Google and serves as an adviser to several startups founded by women and minorities. He is an investor in a fund dedicated to diverse entrepreneurs.

Filmed before a live audience at Oakland tiki bar Longitude, each episode of Ars Technica Live is a speculative, informal conversation between Ars Technica hosts and an invited guest. The audience, drawn from Ars Technica’s readers, is also invited to join the conversation and ask questions. These aren’t soundbyte setups; they are deep cuts from the frontiers of research and creativity.

Doors are at 7pm, and the live filming is from 7:30 to 8:20-ish pm (be sure to get there early if you want a seat). You can stick around afterward for informal discussion at the bar, along with delicious tiki drinks and snacks. Can't make it out to Oakland? Never fear! Episodes will be posted to Ars Technica the week after the live events.

(credit: Cao et al.)

Computer scientists have discovered a serious Internet vulnerability that allows attackers to terminate connections between virtually any two parties and, if the connections aren't encrypted, inject malicious code or content into the parties' communications.

The vulnerability resides in the design and implementation of RFC 5961, a relatively new Internet standard that's intended to prevent certain classes of hacking attacks. In fact, the protocol is designed in a way that it can easily open Internet users to so-called blind off-path attacks, in which hackers anywhere on the Internet can detect when any two parties are communicating over an active transmission control protocol connection. Attackers can go on to exploit the flaw to shut down the connection, inject malicious code or content into unencrypted data streams, and possibly degrade privacy guarantees provided by the Tor anonymity network.

At the 25th Usenix Security Symposium on Wednesday, researchers with the University of California at Riverside and the US Army Research Laboratory will demonstrate a proof-of-concept exploit that allows them to inject content into an otherwise legitimate USA Today page that asks viewers to enter their e-mail and passwords. The malicious, off-site JavaScript code attack is possible because the vulnerable USA Today pages aren't encrypted. Even if they were protected, attackers could still terminate the connection. Similar attacks work against a variety of other unidentified sites and services, as long as they have long-lived connections that give hackers enough time—roughly 60 seconds—to carry out the attack.

(credit: Google Maps)

Ever since James and Theresa Arnold moved into their rented 623-acre farm in Butler County, Kansas, in March 2011, they have seen “countless” law enforcement officials and individuals turning up at their farm day and night looking for links to alleged theft and other supposed crime. All of these people are arriving because of a rounding error on a GPS location, which wrongly points people to their farm.

In their lawsuit filed against MaxMind, the IP mapping firm, the Arnolds allege:

The following events appeared to originate at the residence and brought trespassers and/or law enforcement to the plaintiffs’ home at all hours of the night and day: stolen cars, fraud related to tax returns and bitcoin, stolen credit cards, suicide calls, private investigators, stolen social media accounts, fund raising events, and numerous other events.

James Arnold has even been “reported as holding girls at the residence for the purpose of making pornographic films.”

(credit: FCC)

The Federal Communications Commission has lost in an attempt to preempt state laws that restrict the growth of municipal broadband networks.

The FCC in February 2015 voted to block laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that prevent municipal broadband providers from expanding outside their territories. The FCC, led by Chairman Tom Wheeler, claimed it could preempt the laws because Congress authorizes the commission to promote telecom competition by removing barriers to investment.

But this was a risky legal argument, as the FCC has no specific authority to overturn state laws. Officials in both states appealed the FCC decision, and today a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of the states (full text).