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Outlet glacier Hoffellsjökull as seen in Vatnajökulsþjóðgarður National Park in southeast Iceland. Due to climate change, Hoffellsjökull glacier has retreated a considerable distance and a deep glacial lake is rapidly developing in the depression left behind. (credit: Cheryl Strahl)

As record months piled up, it became clear a while ago that 2015 was going to be the hottest year on record. Now the final numbers are coming in—and like the official times from a race between me and Usain Bolt, they’re hardly a surprise.

Just as La Niñas hold down the global average temperature because of the cool ocean water rising to the surface in the eastern equatorial Pacific, El Niño conversely pushed the average temperature up. And 2015 saw a doozy of an El Niño that rivaled the monsters of 1997 and 1982. As the long-term trend of global warming continues, El Niño years are likely to be your record-setters.

By coloring individual months as El Niño (red) or La Niña (blue) conditions, you can see that El Niño years tend to rise above the warming trend. (credit: NOAA/NASA)

The US saw the second-warmest year on record for the Lower 48 (2012 is still tops), and the third wettest year as Oklahoma and Texas set records. California, however, had its 13th-driest year, with the promise of El Niño rains yet to deliver. The UK had its sixth-wettest year on record, but not quite as warm—15 years have been warmer.

Prosecutors say that Johnny Quenga had a laser mounted to an airsoft rifle like this. (credit: Eastern District of California)

A man who pleaded guilty last year to pointing an airsoft rifle-mounted laser at a Fresno, California Police Department helicopter was sentenced Tuesday to six months in prison and three years of supervised release.

Johnny Quenga’s saga began on March 5, 2015, when FPD helicopter pilot Ken Schneider was on routine patrol at 500 feet in the air. (Ars flew with Schneider as part of our 2014 feature on laser strikes.)

According to an FBI affidavit, both Schneider and Tactical Flight Officer Jeffrey Logue were struck several times by Quenga’s laser. Logue then used the on-board Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera to determine that the laser emanated from a particular intersection in the Pinedale neighborhood of Fresno. Logue radioed down to officers on the ground, who attempted to find the suspect.

A MIKEY-SAKKE message is sent from the initiator to responder. (credit: benthamsgaze.org)

A security scheme that Britain's spy agency is promoting for encrypting phone calls contains a backdoor that can be accessed by anyone in possession of a master key, according to an analysis published Tuesday by a security expert at University College in London.

The MIKEY-SAKKE protocol is a specification based on the Secure Chorus, an encryption standard for voice and video that was developed by the Communications Electronics Security Group, the information security arm of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters. British governmental officials have indicated that they plan to certify voice encryption products only if they implement MIKEY-SAKKE and Secure Chorus.

According to Steven J. Murdoch, a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Information Security Research Group of University College, MIKEY-SAKKE contains a backdoor that allows communications to be decrypted in bulk. It can be activated by anyone who has access to a master private key that's responsible for generating intermediate private keys. Because the master key is required to create new keys and to update existing ones, network providers must keep the master key permanently available.

A Surface Pro's power brick and cable.

Microsoft is recalling the power cords used by the Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, and Surface Pro 3 due to concerns that the cables can overheat when they are wound too tightly, twisted, or pinched. The company will be offering free replacement cables to affected owners with a process that will be disclosed on Friday 22nd.

The recall notice appears to cover all Surface Pro-family devices sold prior to July 15, 2015. The new Surface Pro 4 is apparently fine.

Someone looks worried...

Uncharted developer Naughty Dog has already said that the upcoming Uncharted 4: A Thief's End will be the last game in the series that the studio plans to work on directly. But there's still the possibility that franchise owner Sony will decide to continue the Uncharted series with a new developer at the helm (for an example of how something like that could happen, look no further than the late history of Naughty Dog's own Crash Bandicoot series).

Potential spoilers ahead...

In a new interview, though, series director Neil Druckmann suggests that Uncharted 4 will put a hard stop to the story of series protagonist Nathan Drake, one that would make it difficult for the series to continue under Sony.