Enlarge / Untrusted sites get a minimal set of Windows Platform Services and no access to the rest of the system. (credit: Microsoft)

ATLANTA—Microsoft has announced that the next major update to Windows 10 will run its Edge browser in a lightweight virtual machine. Running the update in a virtual machine will make exploiting the browser and attacking the operating system or compromising user data more challenging.

Called Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge, the new capability builds on the virtual machine-based security that was first introduced last summer in Windows 10. Windows 10's Virtualization Based Security (VBS) uses small virtual machines and the Hyper-V hypervisor to isolate certain critical data and processes from the rest of the system. The most important of these is Credential Guard, which stores network credentials and password hashes in an isolated virtual machine. This isolation prevents the popular MimiKatz tool from harvesting those password hashes. In turn, it also prevents a hacker from breaking into one machine and then using stolen credentials to spread to other machines on the same network.

The Edge browser already creates a secure sandbox for its processes, a technique that tries to limit the damage that can be done when malicious code runs within the browser. The sandbox has limited access to the rest of the system and its data, so successful exploits need to break free from the sandbox's constraints. Often they do this by attacking the operating system itself, using operating system flaws to elevate their privileges.

It's time. After weeks of teasing us with talk of his Interplanetary Transport System and images of his new Raptor engine's test firing, SpaceX founder Elon Musk will finally deliver his much ballyhooed speech on Tuesday at 2:30pm ET (7:30pm UK), during the International Astronautical Congress.

Ars has already previewed the speech, which likely will lay out Musk's preferred architecture for Mars settlement, including spacecraft and a large rocket which will be powered by Raptor engines. For the speech to be a success, Musk must go beyond dazzling space hardware. He must prove to us that his plan is not science fiction, but something achievable. Humans have dreamt of going to Mars for decades—one of Wernher von Braun's first public appearances in the United States involved a presentation on Mars exploration to an El Paso Rotary Club. But we have heretofore lacked both the technology and the will to do so.

Musk undoubtedly has the technology, both in reality (such as the Raptor rocket engine or SuperDraco thrusters to land on Mars) and in concept (such as how to transport hundreds of people safely from Earth to Mars). But whether he can build a coalition of support in the government and private industry without undermining NASA's own Journey to Mars is a big question. Tuesday's speech is the start of that effort, and Ars will liveblog the proceedings with a feature-length analysis afterward.

Enlarge (credit: NSIDC/Ted Scambos)

When it comes to understanding the Earth's past climates, we have to understand what the global temperatures were. Instrument readings only go back to the 1800s, so researchers have had to rely on proxies—things we can measure, like tree ring width or oxygen isotopes, that reflect the weather conditions at the time. This has been used to track as far back as the end of the last glacial period.

Beyond that, records are sparse and local. Ice cores, for example, go back over 800,000 years, but these only capture polar conditions. Now, Stanford's Carolyn Snyder has put together the longest global climate record we have for recent times, extending back two million years from the present. The record captures a key transition in the glacial cycles that dominate recent climates.

Snyder also used this record to calculate the sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide, coming up with an eye-popping number that bodes very poorly for our future. Several other climate experts, however, suggest that the number Snyder calculated isn't especially relevant.

(credit: Eric Erbe, Christopher Pooley, USDA)

Bacteria are wizzes at developing resistance to our most powerful antibiotics. This unfortunate skill leads to millions of difficult-to-treat infections worldwide and growing fears that bacteria may one day become unstoppable. But these microbes’ evolutionary prowess can just as easily be their downfall, scientists reported last week in Nature Chemical Biology.

By gaming the evolutionary system, researchers have fooled drug-resistant Escherichia coli into tossing their resistance. Then, with a shot of the drug that the bacteria could previously withstand, the E. coli met their end. Though the study was just done in lab dishes, the authors, led by researchers at Harvard, are hopeful that the one-two punch could be useful in reversing drug resistance and restoring the effectiveness of life-saving antibiotics.

This strategy could “add valuable tools to our antimicrobial arsenal,” they conclude.

Want to make Snapchat great again? Donald Trump has given American users of the social media app that chance thanks to the service's first-ever nationwide "geofilter" ad campaign for a politician.

The ad rolled out to American Snapchat users today, just ahead of the 2016 presidential election's first major debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton (the debate starts tonight at 9pm EDT). The ad joins the usual geofilter available to Snapchat users, which usually list the name of a city or a nearby event as determined by GPS and time information.

As shown to the right (featuring me as its puzzled selfie star), the ad stamps a user's photo and video Snaps with a banner phrase reading "Donald J. Trump vs. Crooked Hillary," along with Trump's famed slogan and a note confirming that the candidate paid for the geofilter campaign.

Fall TV season is in full swing, but there's still time to figure out what's worth watching from the new crop of shows just underway. At Ars, we've painstakingly evaluated the new fall titles for possible geek-related awesomeness and found a baker's dozen for you to check out. Remember—we've only included new shows, not returning ones that are coming back for a second or twelfth season. But feel free to wax poetic about your love for everything from Homeland to The Walking Dead in the comments.

Drama

StartUp

This intriguing series combines Miami gangster action with the tale of a startup that has created GenCoin, a crypto currency that could save the developing world (or... just allow drug dealers to launder their money faster). Either way, this is probably the season's most unexpected tech thriller, streaming on Crackle with a fantastic cast that includes Martin Freeman, Otmara Marrero, and Adam Brody.

StartUp is a tech series in the vein of Mr. Robot, where hacking isn't just a get-rich-quick scheme for VCs in Silicon Valley—it's also about global politics. In StartUp, building a tech company is a chance for its founders to escape from poverty and to help millions of other people in the world have access to bank accounts via mobile. Unfortunately, their angel investors are drug dealers, and their roadblocks involve eluding FBI investigators. The series started streaming on Crackle on September 6.

Enlarge / Atlanta (credit: Microsoft)

ATLANTA—At its Ignite conference today, Microsoft's Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President for Cloud and Enterprise, explained that the company wants IT professionals to feel empowered and digitally transform the organizations. Accordingly, Microsoft is focusing on three areas to do this: security, intelligence, and the cloud.

The company announced a range of new security and data analytics features designed to make Windows, Office 365, and Azure run better. More importantly, they were designed, at least in part, to specifically make Windows 10 the safest, most secure place to work. Microsoft may be offering its software on more platforms than before, but while you don't have to use Windows, the company is suggesting you probably should.

The strongest example of this was the integration of Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDATP), which uses big data analysis to detect suspicious behavioral patterns that indicate a hacker or other security issue, and Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), which works to trap malicious URLs and attachments.

Enlarge / Plex on Amazon Drive. (credit: Plex)

Plex, a service for streaming video and other media from a home PC or NAS device, has teamed up with Amazon to help customers stream their content from the cloud.

Plex is a great tool for making movies, music, and photos available to just about any device, whether you're at home or traveling. But the home computer that holds your Plex content must be powered on and connected to the Internet in order for it to work. A power failure or Internet outage at home could thus leave a Plex user without any streaming content when they're traveling.

Plex Cloud, announced today, could solve that problem. "Plex Cloud eliminates the need to run your own local Plex Media Server and manage an always-on computer or NAS," the announcement said. "Let Amazon worry about nasty stuff like power failure, corruption, and data loss. It turns out they’re pretty good at that stuff!"