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Tarter speaks after a screening of Contact, in 2014, at the Qualcomm Institute. (credit: Qualcomm Institute)

When Jill Tarter first began to look for aliens, she drew looks askance from her friends and colleagues. The perception was “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a subject like this?” she recalled in an interview with Ars. Tarter, now 72, would go on to rise above that perception, becoming a leading figure at the SETI Institute. And the astronomer played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact, which was largely based on Tarter, would further bolster her reputation.

She and her fellow searchers haven’t found E.T. yet, but they have become respected members of the scientific community. These days, when NASA plots future explorations of Mars or ice-covered moons in the outer solar system, they’re driven by the search for microbial life. And with the discovery of billions of planets in the Milky Way, no one snickers any more at the idea of sniffing atmospheres around other worlds for biosignatures.

The search for aliens has become respectable because it no longer is a philosophical or religious matter to ask if we are alone. During Tarter’s lifetime, scientists and engineers have developed the tools and technology to finally probe this question in a meaningful way.

(credit: Ethan Ligon)

BERKELEY, CALIF.—Days after a group of concerned professors raised alarm bells over a new network monitoring system installed at the University of California, Berkeley and the other nine campuses of the University of California system, a separate committee of system-wide faculty has now given its blessing. Some Berkeley faculty remain concerned that their academic freedom has been threatened by the new full packet capture system that sits on each campus network’s edge, however. They say that retaining such information could be used as a way to constrain legitimate discussion or research on controversial topics.

Last summer, the University of California Office of the President ordered that a Fidelis XPS system be installed at all 10 campuses at a total estimated cost of at least a few million dollars. The Fidelis hardware and software is designed to "detect attacks" and analyze "every single packet that traverses the network."

The move came in response to a July 2015 attack against the University of California Los Angeles Health System, which resulted in 4.5 million records being stolen. Following that attack, University of California President Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, moved quickly to bring more digital monitoring onto the campuses, which stretch from Berkeley to San Diego. The UC Regents, the governing board of the entire UC system, now face 17 separate lawsuits as a result of the breach at UCLA. Similar network monitoring hardware has also been installed at other universities nationwide.

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My friends, I might have found the greatest custom PC ever conceived or constructed: the Lego Gaming Computer.

No, this isn't a computer designed specifically for the myriad Lego-themed games that have flooded the market over the last 10 years—though it certainly could do that with aplomb. The Lego Gaming Computer is a top-spec, completely-built-from-scratch X-shaped gaming rig that's made entirely out of Lego bricks.

Because ATX PCs aren't meant to be X-shaped, the mastermind behind the build—a guy called Mike Schropp—had to come up with some ingenious solutions, such as a custom-made GPU heatsink and a transverse-mounted motherboard that separated the GPU's airflow path from the other components.

(credit: PayPal)

PayPal has stopped accepting payments for Canadian outfit UnoTelly—a provider of VPN and SmartDNS services—because these might be used to facilitate copyright infringement.

UnoTelly said in an update on its website that Paypal had "severed payment processing agreement unilaterally and without prior warning." It added: "Paypal indicated that UnoTelly is not allowed to provide services that enable open and unrestricted Internet access."

Ars sought comment from PayPal on this story, however, it had not immediately got back to us at time of publication. We'll update this story, if the online payments giant does get in touch.