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Enlarge (credit: Michael Theis)

A hacker has released computer source code that allows relatively unsophisticated people to wage the kinds of extraordinarily large assaults that recently knocked security news site KrebsOnSecurity offline and set new records for so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks.

KrebsOnSecurity's Brian Krebs reported on Saturday that the source code for "Mirai," a network of Internet-connected cameras and other "Internet of things" devices, was published on Friday. Dale Drew, the chief security officer at Internet backbone provider Level 3 Communications, told Ars that Mirai is one of two competing IoT botnet families that have recently menaced the Internet with record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks—including the one that targeted Krebs with 620 gigabits per second of network traffic, and another that hit French webhost OVH and reportedly peaked at more than 1 terabit per second

Until now, the botnets created with the newer and technically more sophisticated Mirai have been greatly outnumbered by those based on its rival Bashlight, with about 233,000 infected devices versus 963,000 respectively. Friday's release could allow the smaller and more disciplined Mirai, which Russian antivirus provider Dr. Web briefly profiled last week, to go mainstream—and, in the process, infect hundreds of millions more devices, escalatong the compromise of cameras and other Internet-connected devices into a full-blown epidemic that could push record DDoSes to ever-higher volumes. In an e-mail to Ars, Drew wrote:

Enlarge / Ed Harris is the Man in Black, a gamer who has discovered a hidden game within the immersive game of the wild west theme park Westworld.

Westworld is unlike anything you’ve seen before on television, and I don’t mean that in the sense of visual effects. The series takes two familiar sci-fi tropes—out-of-control robots and immersive gameworlds gone wrong—and builds a complex, plausible futuristic scenario around them. As a result, we get a rich, disturbing, intense story about how the evolution of storytelling is bound up with the birth of artificial life.

The new HBO series, debuting Oct. 2, is about an enormous wild west amusement park populated by robots indistinguishable from real people. Human "guests" can do whatever they want with the robot "hosts." Though it's not clear how far in the future the series is set, we do know that the park has been in operation for at least 30 years, during which time the robots have evolved from simple machines with small repertoires of phrases, into fully-interactive creatures who can learn, adapt, and even dream. Westworld, which looks like Monument Valley, is so big that even experienced players have never found its edges. The park's creator, Ford (Anthony Hopkins), is a roboticist with a serious Messiah complex who has secret plans for the park. Ford works closely with lead programmer Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), who also seems to have some off-the-books plans for the robots--he's been secretly analyzing the code running beautiful, kindly robot Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) during creepy late-night hacking sessions.

As the series opens, Ford has just released a software update that nobody realized was coming. The update is called "reverie," and it gives the robots new set of gestures that make them appear to be staring off into space and dreaming. Thought it adds to the robots' realism, it also has some unexplained side-effects that cause the robots to crash. So Bernard and his team, along with an ops crew led by Theresa (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and security chief Ashley (Luke Hemsworth), have to come in and clean up the mess. Of course it's not going to be easy, because Ford's update was a lot more than it seems. And it appears to be spreading like an intellectual virus from robot to robot.

Enlarge / VirnetX is litigating the road to riches in a patent lawsuit against Apple. (credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

An East Texas jury concluded late Friday that Apple must pay a patent troll $302.4 million in damages for infringing two patents connected to Apple's FaceTime communication application.

The verdict is the third in the long-running case in which two earlier verdicts were overturned—one on appeal and the other by the Tyler, Texas federal judge presiding over the 6-year-long litigation.

The latest outcome is certain to renew the same legal arguments that were made in the earlier cases: Apple, for one, has maintained all along that the evidence doesn't support infringement. VirnetX, as it did in the past and is now doing, is seeking more damages for what it says is "willful" infringement on Apple's part. What's more, in the previous litigation, the Nevada patent-holding company had asked the judge to shutter the Apple service at issue. Apple has maintained that such a demand was made "So that it can be used to extract a massive licensing fee."

The last episode of Decrypted, our Mr. Robot podcast, for S2. (video link)

Warning: This piece contains spoilers for the recent season finale of Mr. Robot as well as the show's entire second season.

Continuing the trend of S2 at large, Mr. Robot's recent season finale may have provided more questions than answers for the series moving forward. However, this latest episode did include one extremely satisfying pay-off: the calculating Joanna Wellick finally revealed her long game.

Wellick's season-spanning arc full of security henchmen, younger DJs, and odd encounters with Elliot finally made sense after her latest encounter with E-Corp CTO Scott Knowles. If you recall, Wellick's husband (Tyrell) killed Knowles' wife (Sharon) towards the end of S1 before disappearing after the 5/9 hacks. And to clear her husband of all charges, Wellick essentially identified the DJ from that night, seduced him over several months, confronted Knowles and coaxed him into attacking her, and then used her bruises as leverage with the DJ to request that he testify to the cops about seeing Knowles fleeing the crime scene.

AUSTIN, Texas—Shocking, I know. But at a hardcore film nerd event like Fantastic Fest—Austin's, if not the US's, premier genre film festival—documentary subjects run the gamut. This year's slate includes big names like Morgan Spurlock (Rats) and Werner Herzog (Salt and Fire, the director's return to South America 35 years after Fitzcarraldo solidified his stature). Other documentaries touched on everything from material wealth at all costs (Fraud) to Stanley Kubrick's chauffeur-turned-personal assistant (S is for Stanley).

Local film critic (and Internet radio legend) Matt Shiverdecker told me that the beauty of Fantastic Fest is that one viewer's least favorite film is inevitably someone else's perfect-10. So at a movie-obsessed festival in a movie-obsessed town (seriously, have you tried a Drafthouse yet?), the two docs that stood out most were, well, movie-obsessed. 24x36 and Original Copy nominally share a singular focus—film posters—but seeing the two docs in tandem highlights the festival's diverse programming. Here, stories suited for the History Channel can immediately follow one more apt for the Sundance-owned IFC.

Clear some wall space

When Canadian poster collector-turned-director Kevin Burke embarked on his shooting trip to Austin, border patrol stopped him. (After all, here's this dude traveling with an unusual amount of film equipment.) Burke stayed calmed and explained his intent—production work for his documentary 24x36, a "movie about movie posters."

Enlarge / LeVar Burton, who played Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, is voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. (credit: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images News)

Over 100 prominent members of the Star Trek cast and crew have written an open letter against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The letter, which was posted to Facebook on Thursday, trumpets:

Star Trek has always offered a positive vision of the future, a vision of hope and optimism, and most importantly, a vision of inclusion, where people of all races are accorded equal respect and dignity, where individual beliefs and lifestyles are respected so long as they pose no threat to others. We cannot turn our backs on what is happening in the upcoming election. Never has there been a presidential candidate who stands in such complete opposition to the ideals of the Star Trek universe as Donald Trump. His election would take this country backward, perhaps disastrously. We need to elect a president who will move this country forward into the kind of future we all dream of: where personal differences are understood and accepted, where science overrules superstition, where people work together instead of against each other.

The letter goes on to say that voting Green or Libertarian, because the two major candidates are “equally flawed” is “illogical and inaccurate.”

Enlarge / A hobbyist's taken-apart N64 console. (credit: Chris Isherwood)

Consoles like the Super Nintendo and even the Sony PlayStation were out of my reach when they first landed in 1991 and 1995, respectively, largely because of my youth and lack of free cash at both times. I'm sure I wasn't the only kid to look wistfully at consoles like those through department store windows and on the pages of Best Buy and Target Sunday circulars. "The Super Nintendo is here!" they shouted. Cold comfort for any kid whose parents made it very clear that they already had a "Nintendo."

Only one year after the PlayStation, the Nintendo 64 launched in 1996 and became the first console I could afford to buy with my own cash. This week marks exactly 20 years since that system's launch in the United States, and it's a milestone I'll never forget. My initial encounter with the N64 isn't etched in memory just because it coincided with the release of one of the greatest 3D platformers of all time or because it was the first system to ship with four-player modes as a default. For me, it marked the beginning of the rest of my life.

Say "graphics" seven times fast

Before any of my other odd jobs as a teenager (such as soda jerk and record store clerk), I got a job reviewing video games. I hadn't even become an editor of my school newspaper when the Dallas Morning News agreed to pay me $25 an article to review brand-new games (and syndicated those reviews nationally).