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Possibly under pressure from license holders, PayPal has suspended the account of VPN/SmartDNS provider UnoTelly, and other providers may be targeted soon.

While many users use VPN solutions for enhanced security, for example to protect themselves while using public Wi-Fi hotspots, one of the potential uses it to bypass geographic restrictions, something also known as geo-dodging. Hollywood and other license-holders have upped the pressure on content platforms such as Netflix to clamp-down on geo-dodging, and it seems they are also applying additional pressure on payment providers to end their association with VPN providers.

UnoTelly announced on its blog that PayPal has, with no prior warning, banned the provider from using PayPal as a payment provider.

"On February 3rd, 2016, PayPal has severed payment processing agreement unilaterally and without prior warning. PayPal indicated that UnoTelly is not allowed to provide services that enable open and unrestricted Internet access," posted UnoTelly on their blog.

Torrent news site TorrentFreak allegedly obtained the email that PayPay sent to UnoTelly, which cited copyright concerns as the reason for the ban.

"Under the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy, or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction," the email read.

PayPal's latest move is controversial because it has not been established that geo-dodging is considered copyright infringement, while some countries, including Australia, specifically allow it in order to protect competition and consumer rights. It is also controversial because there are many completely legitimate, non geo-dodging uses.

For now, UnoTelly advises its users to switch from PayPal to credit cay payments, but PayPay's actions against VPN providers could have larger repercussions, with other payment providers, including credit card providers, very likely to follow suit.

Would I like to cover Barfest? Why, of course! Even though it seems like some form of alcoholic devolution, considering I was very recently in Germany at Puke-Fest... Oh, sorry, I see—you mean BAHFest, aka the Festival of Bad ad Hoc Hypotheses. I consider myself a layperson when it comes to hard science so, in the best familial tradition, I bully my little sister—a massive nerd and PhD-holding research assistant at Birkbeck Babylab—to assist me in ascertaining how any data might be mishandled. By design, there’s bound to be some bad science here.

I've attended my fair share of Uncaged Monkeys shows, and love a good Carl Sagan quote, so I feel privileged to be attending the very first international BAHFest. It's billed as “a celebration of well-argued, and thoroughly researched, but completely incorrect scientific theory.” The festival is running over two days at Imperial College London, where my famous-not-famous particle physicist dad, Robert Orr, studied in the 1960s. I can’t help wondering if I was conceived in a lab nearby.

On the first evening, dubbed BAH! London Evolution, six brave speakers (assisted by inexplicably popular Hogwarts' escapee, and AV technician, Lloyd) present their awfully absorbing, and utterly loony theories to a live audience of hollering nerds, and a panel of three judges, some of whom might even have valid science credentials.

For a long time, archaeologists have suggested that modern humans wiped out Neanderthals because we had greater technological and cultural development, which allowed us to find and exploit resources more readily than Neanderthals did. It’s a plausible explanation, but it leaves us with pressing questions about the details of how this might have happened.

For a start, we know that Neanderthals had some culture, so exactly how much more would modern humans have needed to have in order to be more competitive? And modern humans entered Neanderthal territory in smaller numbers than the established Neanderthal population—could technology make up for what they lacked in numbers?

These questions highlight a major challenge with this model: there are other plausible explanations for the disappearance of Neanderthals. For example, they could have been wiped out by climate change or an epidemic.

When we last met CJ Wilson Racing, the team had just won the 2015 Street Tuner championship in the Continental Tires Sportscar Challenge. For 2016, this racing team led by the Major League Baseball star of the same name has stepped up to Grand Sport, the top class in the Continental series. And it's doing so with a brand-new race car—the Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport.

With the Cayman GT4, Porsche finally did something most of us have been waiting for; it built a track-focused Cayman. The company has always said that the 911 is the flagship, and until the GT4, it was fairly obvious that Weissach did not want to cannibalize sales of track-biased 911s by letting its mid-engined younger brother upstage things. But Porsche has a habit of making a stripped out version of models that have reached their end of life—The Cayman (and Boxster) are now part of the 718 family, and from here on out they will use turbocharged 4-cylinder engines. The naturally aspirated 6-cylinder Cayman GT4 is a prime example of the breed.

Those who've driven the road car have come away breathless and delighted, and if you want one be prepared to pay a big premium over msrp. A racing version showed up at November's LA Auto Show, complete with 911 GT3 front suspension and a PDK gearbox in place of the road car's conventional six speed manual. Even though the team is in its early days with the new car, Wilson seemed impressed. "It's amazing how capable this car was out of the box," he told Ars. "We slapped Continental tires on it, put it at the right ride height, changed some springs around and went out and whacked it on the track. We put up some good times. We have have two really good drivers but Porsche did everything they needed to do."

Dungeons & Dragons just celebrated its 42nd birthday—an auspicious number, to be sure—some 16 months after the release of its 5th edition. Since D&D’s latest release in August of 2014, many players and Dungeon Masters have rolled their polyhedrals in approval, and publisher Wizards of the Coast has grown its support for the world’s most popular role-playing game in ways you might not have expected.

No matter your edition or specific RPG of choice, today D&D continues to be the measuring stick by which other pen-and-paper games are judged, be it on sales, popularity, or even complexity. For many gamers over the course of the game's existence, D&D has been the entry point into role-playing which sparks a lifetime of storytelling and adventure.

So, with more than a year behind it, how does the newest edition of D&D hold up for newbies and hardcore fans alike?

I’m a stalker. Not a virtual stalker, a real life stalker. The good news is that Douglas Coupland—author of Microserfs and Generation X—doesn’t seem to mind.

Snatching my camera, Coupland reassures me in his smooth Canadian brogue that “electrons are free, one of these has to be OK,” before firing off 20 selfies, while I stand here in shock.

This may be somewhat at odds with the art that he's here to promote at the hot new Whitechapel Gallery exhibition, Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966), which has just opened to the public in London. Coupland's large mixed media pieces are black and white photos with Piet Mondrian-like coloured cubes, or black and white stripes stuck over them. Titled Deep Face, the images (see gallery below) represent a critique of Facebook’s face recognition software.

A South Carolina teenager has sued a Colorado television station over allegations the station broadcasted a picture of his erect penis taken from a cell phone video uploaded to YouTube.

The case, known as Holden v. KOAA, asks for $1 million in damages and accuses the station, its reporter, its parent companies (NBC and Comcast), and other defendants of violating federal child pornography laws, invasion of privacy and negligence, and other allegations.

According to the lawsuit, the teen was 14 years old and living in Colorado at the time of the incident. (The incident occurred two years ago, but Ars will not name the individual as he is still a minor.) The cell phone video had been taken of the teen and put online as a way to blackmail him. His father’s girlfriend, Heather Richardson, soon contacted the KOAA TV station to let them know about the situation. KOAA sent a local reporter, Matthew Prichard, to the family’s home in Pueblo, Colorado, where Prichard interviewed the boy and filmed the offending material. The suit claims that the boy’s father specifically told Prichard to keep his son’s name out of the report.