Month: July 2018

(credit: Marcus W / Flickr)

Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, as well as SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2, are due to move out of extended support over the next few years—SQL Server in July 2019 and Windows Server in January 2020. For organizations still using that software, this offers a few options: keep using the software and accept that it won't receive any more security updates, migrate to newer equivalents that are still supported, or pay Microsoft for a custom support contract to continue to receive security updates beyond the cutoff dates.

Today, Microsoft added a fourth option: migrate to Azure. Microsoft is extending the support window by three years (until July 2022 for SQL Server, January 2023 for Windows Server) for workloads hosted on Azure in the cloud. This extended support means that customers that make the switch to the cloud will receive another three years of security fixes. After those three years are up, customers will be back to the original set of choices: be insecure, upgrade, or pay for a custom support contract.

Microsoft isn't requiring customers to demonstrate that they have any kind of migration plan in place, and this support scheme incurs no additional costs beyond those already imposed by running software on Azure in the first place.

Enlarge / Replacing that memory gibberish with a carefully crafted memory card file lets you load arbitrary NES games through Animal Crossing. (credit: Nintendo)

Fans of the early-2000s era GameCube version of the original Animal Crossing likely remember the game including a handful of emulated NES titles that could be played by obtaining in-game items for your house. What players back then didn't know is that the NES emulator in Animal Crossing can also be used to play any generic NES ROM stored on a GameCube memory card.

Security researcher James Chambers discovered the previously unused and undocumented feature buried in the original Animal Crossing game code and detailed his methodology and findings in a technically oriented Medium post this week.

The key to opening Animal Crossing's NES emulator is the game's generic "NES console" item. Usually, this item simply tells players who try to use it that "I want to play my NES, but I don't have any software" (separate in-game items are used to play the NES ROMs that are included on the Animal Crossing disc).

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

The US Department of Justice will appeal the court ruling that allowed AT&T to purchase Time Warner Inc.

AT&T completed the merger after getting a favorable ruling from a judge at the US District Court for the District of Columbia last month. The Trump administration's Justice Department did not seek a stay of the ruling, so AT&T was able to take ownership of Time Warner. But the DOJ is appealing the judge's ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the DOJ said in a court filing today.

A court could theoretically force AT&T and Time Warner to reverse the merger. AT&T agreed to maintain some separation between and its old and new business units as part of a post-verdict agreement that let AT&T close the acquisition without facing a DOJ petition for a stay. That separation might make undoing the merger logistically easier if the DOJ wins its appeal.

(credit: Google)

Google’s Chrome browser is undergoing a major architectural change to enable a protection designed to blunt the threat of attacks related to the Spectre vulnerability in computer processors. If left unchecked by browsers or operating systems, such attacks may allow hackers to pluck passwords or other sensitive data out of computer memory when targets visit malicious sites.

Site isolation, as the mitigation is known, segregates code and data from each Internet domain into their own "renderer processes," which are individual browser tasks that aren't allowed to interact with each other. As a result, a page located at arstechnica.com that embeds ads from doubleclick.net will load content into two separate renderer processes, one for each domain. The protection, however, comes at a cost. It consumes an additional 10 to 13 percent of total memory. Some of the performance hit can be offset by smaller and shorter-lived renderer processes. Site isolation will also allow Chrome to re-enable more precise timers, which Google and most other browser makers disabled earlier this year to decrease chances of successful attacks.

Site isolation has been available in Chrome as an optional mitigation since early this year, but starting with version 67, it's being enabled by default for 99 percent of users. Google is leaving it off for the other 1 percent so engineers can monitor and improve performance. The protection is also being enabled in the Chrome desktop. For performance reasons, it isn't available in Chrome for Android for the time being.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is led by a deal on Samsung's 860 EVO solid state drive, the 2.5-inch SATA version of which is currently going for $100 through Newegg's eBay store. The SSD has typically sat around $120 as of late.

As you've likely heard before, a good SSD is usually a simple way to breathe new life into an aging PC. The SATA-based 860 EVO isn't as powerful as pricier NVMe drives, but should still bring a comfortable real-world performance boost to any PC saddled with an older HDD. Samsung has earned a reputation for reliability with the EVO line over the years, and its limited warranty covers five years or 300 terabytes written if anything goes wrong. Most importantly, this is a good deal in a market where price is key.

If you're not looking for a new SSD, we also have a ton of deals for Dell's "Black Friday in July" sale, discounts on Google Chromecast devices and PlayStation Plus memberships, and much more. Have a look for yourself below.