Month: August 2017

NASA/Bill Ingalls

On Monday, Ars writers shared some thoughts about the total solar eclipse that spanned the United States with readers and took some backyard photographs of the event. But let's be honest, none of us are professional photographers, and didn't possess the right equipment to do the celestial event justice.

Fortunately, there's a space agency for that. Two, even. And on Monday NASA and the European Space Agency deployed their resources on the ground and in space to capture the eclipse, doing so in stunning fashion. This gallery highlights everything from the International Space Station transiting the Sun during the eclipse, to astronauts on board the station itself taking pictures of the event back on Earth.

Enlarge (credit: portal gda)

At least 500 apps collectively downloaded more than 100 million times from Google's official Play Market contained a secret backdoor that allowed developers to install a range of spyware at any time, researchers said Monday.

The apps contained a software development kit called Igexin, which makes it easier for apps to connect to ad networks and deliver ads that are targeted to the specific interests of end users. Once an app using a malicious version of Igexin was installed on a phone, the developer kit could update the app to include spyware at any time, with no warning. The most serious spyware installed on phones were packages that stole call histories, including the time a call was made, the number that placed the call, and whether the call went through. Other stolen data included GPS locations, lists of nearby Wi-Fi networks, and lists of installed apps.

In a blog post published Monday, researchers from mobile security company Lookout wrote:

Andrew Anglin (credit: Azzmador / YouTube)

A Jewish real estate agent's anti-harassment lawsuit against the owner of the racist Daily Stormer website hasn't progressed at all, despite being filed nearly four months ago.

The reason for the stall, the plaintiff's lawyers say, is that Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin simply can't be found. They've tried, but failed, to serve him papers at four different Ohio addresses.

Montana real estate agent Tanya Gersh sued Anglin in April, claiming he unleashed a "coordinated, repulsive, threatening campaign of anti-Semitic harassment" against Gersh, her husband, and her 12-year-old son. The "old fashioned Troll Storm" that Anglin asked his followers to unleash resulted in more than 700 threatening phone calls, voicemails, and e-mails.

Windows 10, Windows 7, and Ubuntu running in Parallels. (credit: Parallels)

Parallels and VMware both announced new versions of their virtualization products for Macs today, with performance improvements and optimizations for the upcoming releases of MacOS and Windows. VMware is also releasing a new version of Workstation, its desktop virtualization software for Windows and Linux PCs.

Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac will be available today. Although VMware Fusion 10 for Mac and Workstation 14 for Windows and Linux are being announced today, the VMware upgrades will be available for sale sometime in October.

Parallels stuck to its yearly paid upgrade schedule a year ago, while VMware released free updates to Fusion and Workstation. This year, both companies are asking customers to pay for upgrades.

Jen Thomas

Carles Pina i Estany is not what comes to mind when you picture your typical Polar explorer. A native of sunny Barcelona, he works as a Software Engineer at Mendeley—a London-based technology company owned by science publishers Elsevier. Before this year, he had never even slept aboard a ship. But when the invitation came for him to embark on a three-month expedition around the Antarctic, he jumped at the chance.

It all happened rather quickly. Pina i Estany’s partner, Jen Thomas, who had previously worked with the British Antarctic Survey, was working as Data Manager for a research trip led by the newly created Swiss Polar Institute. The SPI connects researchers active in polar or extreme environments, promotes public awareness of these environments, and facilitates access to research facilities in those extreme environments. Billionaire adventurer Frederik Paulsen sponsored the excursion—he even  went along for the ride. This was most definitely not your typical office tech support gig.