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(credit: Moyan Brenn)

The Windows 10 November update (version 1511, build 10586) included a handful of new security features to provide protection against some security issues that have kept on popping up in Windows for a number of years. Google yesterday added source code support for these features to the Chrome browser, making Windows 10 the best version of Windows to use with Google's browser.

Over the last few years, Windows has had a number of flaws that relate to its font handling. The TrueType and PostScript fonts that Windows supports are complex things, and for historic reasons, much of the code used to handle these fonts runs in Windows' kernel mode. This makes it attractive to attackers: if a bug exists in this font-handling code, it can be used to obtain kernel-level privileges.

Compounding this, the code is also quite exposed: a Word document, for example, can contain its own embedded fonts, and opening the document means that those embedded fonts will be loaded into the kernel. If the fonts are malicious, constructed to exploit bugs in the font-handling code, this can compromise your system simply by opening a document.

Europe wasn't a very hospitable place fifteen millennia ago. The westernmost landmass of the Eurasian continent had endured a long ice age, with glaciers stretching across northern Europe and into the region we now call Germany. But suddenly, about 14,500 years ago, things started to warm up quickly. The glaciers melted so fast around the globe that they caused sea levels to rise 52 feet in just 500 years. Meanwhile, the environment was in chaos, with wildlife trying vainly to adjust to the rapid fluctuations in temperature. Humans weren't immune to the changes, either.

A new, comprehensive analysis of ancient European DNA published today in Current Biology magazine by an international group of researchers reveals that this period also witnessed a dramatic shift in the human populations of Europe. Bloodlines of hunter-gatherers that had flourished for thousands of years disappeared, replaced with a new group of hunter-gatherers of unknown origin.

Researchers discovered this catastrophic population meltdown by sequencing the mitochondrial DNA of 35 people who lived throughout Europe between 35 and 7 thousand years ago. Mitochondrial DNA is a tiny amount of genetic material that's inherited virtually unchanged via the maternal line, and thus it serves as a good proxy for relatedness over time. Two people from the same maternal stock share almost the same mitochondrial DNA, even if separated by thousands of years, because this kind of DNA evolves very slowly.

Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing, smirked his way through Thursday's Congressional hearing. (credit: CSPAN)

WASHINGTON—After Turing Pharmaceutical raised the price of the decades-old, life-saving drug, Daraprim, from $13.50 a pill to $750 last fall—leaving some patients with $16,000 co-pays—Turing executives handed out six-figure bonuses, spent thousands of dollars on a lavish yacht party, and paid a public relations firm to help them shine their tarnished reputation.

The revelations came amid a Thursday hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which focused on such high-profile cases of drug price-hikes that the committee argues are helping to fuel the soaring costs of healthcare. The committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), aimed to understand why some drugs’ prices have skyrocketed and figure out how to stop it.

One of the key witnesses they called to testify was Martin Shkreli, Turing’s majority shareholder and former CEO, who was largely responsible for Daraprim’s price hike. Shkreli stepped down as CEO in December, shortly after being indicted on fraud charges for allegedly running a Ponzi-like scheme with two former hedge funds and swindling another former pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, out of millions of dollars. In light of his impending criminal trial, Shkreli said prior to the hearing that he would not answer questions from the lawmakers and would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. He kept to his word.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has sold between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of Microsoft stock, according to an Associated Press report out today. It's the largest single stock sale by anyone on the court in more than a decade.

The large stock sale is news in part because the high court agreed a few weeks ago to take a case involving alleged defects in Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. Assuming that Roberts sold all his Microsoft stock, that means he won't have to withdraw from the case.

The last time Microsoft had a case in front of the Supreme Court was 2011, in which the software giant made a last-ditch attempt to fend off a patent claim brought by i4i, a small Canadian firm. Microsoft asked the court to reconsider the standard of proof used to invalidate patents, but the justices sided with i4i in an 8-0 vote, cementing the firm's $290 million payday. Roberts recused himself from that case.

Fig. 1: PS4's record-setting holiday quarter shipments easily outpaced estimates for Xbox One shipments over the same time.

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The last time we checked in on the sales battle between the big name video game consoles, Microsoft had seen its annual sales increase, but not fast enough to catch up to the still-surging PS4. The same trend was apparent in 2015's all-important holiday quarter, which saw Sony continuing to extend its sales lead over the competition.

In recent earnings reports for the fourth calendar quarter last year (October through December), Sony announced shipments of 8.4 million PS4 units to retailers (Fig. 1), a record for the system and a 2 million unit improvement from the 2014 holiday quarter (more on the difference between shipments and "sell-through" below). Nintendo, however, announced 1.87 million shipments of Wii U hardware. That marks the system's second straight year of slight decreases in holiday performance, which came despite the availability of well-regarded 2015 releases like Splatoon and Super Mario Maker.

(credit: Hernán Piñera)

Europe's highest court is considering whether every hyperlink in a Web page should be checked for potentially linking to material that infringes copyright, before it can be used. Such a legal requirement would place an unreasonable burden on anyone who uses hyperlinks, thereby destroying the Web we know and love.

The current GS Media case examining hyperlinks builds on an earlier ruling by the European Union's Court of Justice (CJEU) in 2014. In that case, known as Svensson, the court decided that netizens didn't need a licence from the copyright holder to link to an article that had already been posted on the Internet, where previous permission had been granted by the copyright owner.

Although that was good news for the online world, it left open a related question: what would the situation be if the material that was linked to had not been posted with the copyright owner's permission? Would it still be legal under EU law to link to that pirated copy? Those are the issues that the latest CJEU case seeks to resolve for the whole of the 28-member-state bloc, and its 500 million citizens.

Protesters and attendants at an Aliso Canyon community meeting. (credit: Cal OES)

In late January, an elderly woman with lung cancer died in the community of Porter Ranch just north of Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter, her family sued Southern California Gas Company (PDF) for wrongful death in connection with a massive natural gas leak that started in the area in late October.

The woman, Zelda Rothman, was diagnosed in spring 2015, several months before the leak started. While the family isn’t asserting that Rothman’s lung cancer was caused by the gas leak, they claim that the leak hastened her death.

Rothman lived less than three miles from the leak, the complaint states, attributing her alleged undoing to her proximity. “Continuously leaking gas exacerbated Ms. Rothman’s condition and disrupted her already fragile health. The gas replaced precious oxygen in the air that she breathed, causing her to suffer from difficult and labored breathing.” Eventually, Rothman had to be placed on an oxygen tank 24 hours a day. The gas also allegedly caused “intense headaches and migraines, among other symptoms.”

Do not be trying to get aerial shots of Peyton Manning. Thanks, the FAA. (credit: Kevin Baird)

Hey, all you newly minted unmanned air vehicle enthusiasts out there (and especially those of you in the San Francisco Bay area)! The Know Before You Fly campaign has an important message for you: don't bring (or fly) your drone to Super Bowl 50. The campaign—a joint effort of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—is urging drone and model aircraft owners to respect the temporary flight restrictions (TFR) covering everywhere in a 32-mile radius around Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on February 7.

The FAA usually places restrictions on the airspace around any major event with attendance of 30,000 people or more, including sporting events and concerts. But because of its high-security profile, the Super Bowl is getting a much larger no-fly zone than usual. The Super Bowl TFR, which lasts from 2:00pm Pacific Time until midnight, covers almost all of the Bay Area, including all of San Francisco and Oakland to the north and Santa Cruz and most of the northern Monterey Bay coast to the south.

Super Bowl Sunday's flight restriction zone (the two red concentric circles) are a no-fly zone for drones or model aircraft of any kind.

The Know Before You Fly campaign, which operates the website for registering new drones under the FAA's recently announced regulations, is part of a broader effort by the FAA and its industry and nonprofit partners to reduce the risk of drones interfering with commercial and government aircraft or injuring people on the ground. The FAA has also launched a mobile app, called B4UFLY, to allow drone operators to check for TFRs where they are, based on geolocation data. Hint: if you live in a major urban area, you are probably in a restricted flight area, since any hospital or other facility with a helicopter pad qualifies as an "airport" for FAA purposes. The app is in Apple's iOS App Store, and an Android version is in testing now through the Google Play Store (though Ars was unable to access the test version).