Month: September 2017

Enlarge / High Sierra's default desktop wallpaper. (credit: Apple)

The golden master (GM) candidate of macOS High Sierra was released to developers today. The GM doesn't add any significant new features over the previous beta version, but it can be helpful for QAing Mac software updates for High Sierra before the public roll-out, as minimal changes are expected between this seed and September 25's public release.

In general, High Sierra is a significant update under the hood, but it's light on highly visible changes for general users. We're looking at quality-of-life stuff and foundations for future developments. That doesn't mean there's nothing for Mac app and game developers to dive into, though. Features of the final version of High Sierra include a new proprietary file system, HEVC video support, the Metal 2 graphics API, and myriad tweaks to various apps and services. It will be the first update to macOS since 10.12.6 on July 19.

The file system, called APFS, will be the new default file system in macOS. By default, it will convert any SSD Mac to which it is installed. APFS has numerous advantages over the current HFS+ file system, the original version of which was first introduced to the Mac in Mac OS 8.1 back in 1998. It offers improved encryption options and better SSD support. Ars has reported in detail about the snapshots feature, which now makes file system state saving far more space-efficient by only recording the changes, not copying an entire file.

Enlarge / Welp. (credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It wasn't just credit record data that someone made off with when they breached Equifax's website starting in May of this year. The attacker also managed to grab credit card data from transactions involving more than 200,000 credit cards, and some of those transactions dated back as far as November of 2016.

Brian Krebs reports that the credit bureau revealed all this credit card data was taken as the result of a single attack that took advantage of a months-old exploit of the Apache Foundation's Struts framework for Java-based Web applications. Visa and MasterCard both published confidential alerts to banks in their networks this week about the card exposure. Both explicitly blamed Equifax, and Visa linked to Equifax's press release on the breach. The transactions that may have been exposed took place in a period spanning November 10, 2016 to July 6, 2017, according to the Visa notification.

According to Equifax, the breach began in mid-May and was detected on July 29. "The attacker accessed a storage table that contained historical credit card transaction related information," an Equifax spokesperson told Krebs. The company did not respond to questions from Krebs about how the data was being stored.

Enlarge / Elaine is out. (credit: TBS)

A lot of universal truths and life lessons can be found in old episodes of Seinfeld. But in the episode The Contest, the famous ‘90s sitcom may have missed some subtle differences between men and women when it comes to being “master of your domain,” according to a large study on sexual preferences.

In the episode, the main characters make a wager to see who can hold out the longest without masturbating, i.e., remain “queen of the castle.” The characters struggle with temptations—Kramer glimpses a naked exhibitionist in the apartment across the street, while Elaine splits a cab with the handsome John F. Kennedy Jr. Both characters give in to their desires, abdicate their chaste rule, and drop out of the contest. In the end, Kramer lands in bed with the exhibitionist, while Elaine misses a connection with her dreamboat.

But, according to the new study, it might be more realistic if their fortunes were reversed.

Enlarge / Does Chris Hardwick need MORE nerd-industry cred? How much bigger can you get than your own preserved-head illustration from the series Futurama? (credit: Nerdist)

As we await Matt Groening's next fully fledged animated series and hope it lives up to whichever eras of Futurama or The Simpsons you worship, the nerds at Groening and Co. have given its fans a morsel: a brand-new Futurama episode.

But there's a catch. It's not animated.

Head to the Nerdist, either via YouTube (above) or your favorite podcast-feed aggregator, to listen to "Radiorama," the series' first (and possibly last) audio-only, radio-drama episode. The episode is introduced by comedian and Nerdist creator Chris Hardwick, who explains that he has been nagging Futurama co-creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen about a possible collaboration for roughly two years.

Enlarge (credit: Japanexperterna.se)

The Washington Supreme Court has upheld the conviction under state child porn laws of a 17-year-old boy who sent a picture of his own erect penis to a 22-year-old woman. The case illustrates a bizarre situation in which Eric Gray is both the perpetrator and the victim of the crime. Under state law, Gray could face up to 10 years in prison for the conviction.

On appeal, Gray's attorneys had argued that the language of the law was ambiguous—lawmakers did not anticipate a situation like this—and that the law was potentially in violation of the state and the federal constitutions. The court, in a 7-1 ruling, disagreed.

The majority opinion issued Thursday drew a distinction between this case and situations where teens are busted for consensually sexting one another—as Ars reported in 2015. (A Drexel University survey from 2014 found that, while the majority of teens sext with each other, an even higher percentage were unaware that engaging in such behavior could be prosecuted as child pornography.)

Enlarge / This guy would also like to sell you some stolen Equifax data. (credit: Lyda Hill Texas Collection / Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress)

Last week, someone attempted to execute a poorly conceived digital cash grab by setting up a "Dark Web" page on the Tor network, claiming responsibility for the data breach at credit reporting bureau Equifax. The page demanded a ransom of 600 bitcoin and threatened to publicly release all of the data if payment was not made by September 15. But a misconfiguration of the services used for the site allowed security researchers to identify its hosting service, and the scam was quickly shut down.

Now, a new Dark Web site has been set up by a group calling itself "Equihax," claiming to have data from the Equifax breach. But this time, the scammers went further in trying to bolster their claim, posting what they claimed were samples of stolen data and screenshots from what appears at first glance to be a Web console for an Equifax instance of IBM WebSphere. And, according to their .onion page, the scammers are offering individual bits of the Equifax data for sale—or to publish it all if the world pays "600 BTC or 8400 ETH," they say.

Daimler

On Thursday, Daimler announced that it would bring its line of short-haul electric trucks to the US. The United Parcel Service (UPS) will buy the first three trucks, and Daimler is also offering eight trucks to New York City-based non-profits, including the Wildlife Conservation Society, the New York Botanical Garden, Habitat for Humanity New York City, and Big Reuse Brooklyn.

The company highlighted that the trucks had reduced noise and emissions, which made them well-suited to making trips in urban areas.

Evald Hansen

At first, the scientific paper seemed like scientific confirmation of a long-cherished myth about Vikings. DNA and geochemistry experts re-examined the famous Swedish grave of a high-ranking Viking warrior and discovered that the person buried alongside swords, armor, and two sacrificial horses was genetically female. In a paper published in American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Uppsala University archaeologist Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson and her team announced that they had, at last, proven that there were warrior women among the Vikings.

The claim seemed to fit the evidence. Male Vikings were frequently buried with swords, and the sword was undoubtedly associated with the battle-scarred ideal of masculinity in Viking culture. If we assume that men buried with swords are warriors, then a woman buried with one was probably a warrior, too. Analysis of the stable isotopes in her tooth enamel suggested this woman had traveled widely, just like a warrior would have. On top of all that, Hedenstierna-Jonson and her colleagues pointed out the many references to women fighting in Old Norse poetry and myth. The bloodthirsty Valkyries are an all-female gang of magical creatures who come to every battle and decide who will fall. The recent paper in American Journal of Physical Anthropology was simply our first scientific evidence that there were real-life women fighting alongside the men.