wired – Page 50 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Skeleton from one of the earliest Americans yields its genome

The burial mound in Montana where the skeleton was found. Texas A&M University The peopling of the Americas via the Bering Sea land bridge is one of the more confusing events in recent history. Some of the earliest signs of human occupancy are actually in Chile. After that, the first distinct toolmaking culture, the Clovis people, appeared in the interior of North America, and rapidly swept across the continent. There are also indications that a separate migration occurred down the Pacific coast, possibly associated with people who had distinctive skeletal features, while the Inuit seem to be relatively recent arrivals. The sudden appearance of the Clovis toolset has caused some people to suggest that the Clovis were a distinct migration by a passage between ice sheets directly into North America’s interior. Others have even suggested that they arrived from Europe, brought by people who crossed the ice through Greenland (an idea that’s favored by a certain Bigfoot researcher ). Now, researchers have completed the genome of an individual who was buried with Clovis tools in Montana 12,500 years ago. The results suggest that the migration into North America was more unified than some thought. Although Clovis tools are relatively common at many North American sites, they’re generally not associated with skeletal remains. And there have been no distinctive skeletal features that label remains as belonging to a distinctive Clovis ethnic group. All of which makes Montana’s Anzick site exceptional: it contains remains that were placed with Clovis tools, unambiguously tagging the skeleton as belonging to this group. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Slashdot’s new interface could kill what keeps Slashdot relevant

In the modern responsive Web Three Point Oh Internet, Slashdot stands like a thing frozen in time—it’s a coelacanth stuck incongruously in an aquarium full of more colorful fish. The technology news aggregator site has been around since 1997, making it positively ancient as websites are reckoned. More importantly, Slashdot’s long focus on open source technology news and topics has caused it to accrete a user base that tends to be extremely technical, extremely skilled, and extremely opinionated. That user base is itself the main reason why Slashdot continues to thrive, even as its throwback interface makes it look to untrained eyes like a dated relic. Though the site is frequently a source of deep and rich commentary on topics, the barrier for new users to engage in the site’s discussions is relatively high—certainly higher than, say, reddit (or even Ars). This doesn’t cause much concern to the average Slashdot user, but tech job listing site Dice.com (which bought Slashdot in September 2012, along with Sourceforge and a number of other digital properties) appears to have decided it’s time to drag Slashdot’s interface into the 21st century in order to make things comfortable for everyone—old and new users alike. And the Slashdot user base is not pleased. Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Slashdot’s new interface could kill what keeps Slashdot relevant

Mini-desktops are a rare bright spot in a shrinking PC industry, says Intel

Intel’s Haswell NUC sitting on top of Gigabyte’s larger (but more powerful) Brix. Intel sees mini-PCs as one of the rare PC markets where growth is possible. Andrew Cunningham The wider PC industry isn’t doing so well, and last week’s news that Sony would be selling off its VAIO business is just the latest indication. That doesn’t mean things are all bad—there’s still some growth to be found, and one area where it’s happening is in mini-desktops like Intel’s NUC or Asus’ upcoming Chromebox . Intel tells us that sales of truly tiny PCs (things near the size of the NUC, Gigabyte’s Brix Pro , or Lenovo’s M93p Tiny ) have gone from “almost zero in 2012” to over a million units in 2013. And yet, these mini desktops don’t always make sense. If you want something compact for your desk that saves you cable clutter, an all-in-one will frequently be a better option. If you want something more powerful, a more traditional micro ATX or even mini ITX PC can be purchased or built for less money, often with a greater amount of CPU and GPU power. We spoke with Lisa Graff , Vice President of Intel’s PC Client Group, to get a better idea of how these desktops are doing and who exactly is buying them. Business-friendly features in a tiny package Graff came in from the datacenter group last year to run Intel’s desktop business. “When I came in there were a number of areas in desktop that were growing, kind of bucking the trend of some of what we’re seeing in the PC business,” Graff told Ars. “And as we started to drill in, this was one of the areas—all-in-ones were clearly a growth area, but this mini-desktop, really, the growth has been incredibly strong.” Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Mini-desktops are a rare bright spot in a shrinking PC industry, says Intel

Biggest DDoS ever aimed at Cloudflare’s content delivery network

Ruthanne Reid A distributed denial-of-service attack targeting a client of the content delivery network Cloudflare reached new highs in malicious traffic today , striking at the company’s data centers in Europe and the US. According to a Twitter post by Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, the full volume of the attack exceeded 400 gigabits per second—making it the largest DDoS attack ever recorded. The attack used Network Time Protocol (NTP) reflection , the same technique used in recent attacks against gaming sites by a group called DERP Trolling. NTP is used to synchronize the time settings on computers across the Internet. The attack made fraudulent synchronization requests to NTP servers that caused them to send a flood of replies back at the targeted sites. Reflection attacks have been a mainstay of DDoS tools and botnets, but the use of NTP in such attacks is relatively new. Last year’s attack on Spamhaus , which previously set the record for the largest DDoS ever, used a Domain Name Service (DNS) protocol attack—a much more common approach that takes advantage of the Internet’s directory service, forging requests for DNS lookups from the intended target and sending them to scores of open DNS servers. The size of the traffic directed back at the target from these requests far exceeds the size of the requests sent to the DNS servers, which is why the technique is often called a DNS amplification attack. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Spectacular new Martian impact crater spotted from orbit

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Yesterday, the team that runs the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released the photo shown above. It’s a new impact crater on Mars, formed sometime early this decade. The crater at the center is about 30 meters in diameter, and the material ejected during its formation extends out as far as 15 kilometers. The impact was originally spotted by the MRO’s Context Camera , a wide-field imaging system that (wait for it) provides the context—an image of the surrounding terrain—for the high-resolution images taken by HiRISE. The time window on the impact, between July 2010 and May 2012, simply represents the time between two different Context Camera photos of the same location. Once the crater was spotted, it took until November of 2013 for another pass of the region, at which point HiRISE was able to image it. Higher-resolution photos, as well as a map of the crater’s location on Mars, are available from the HiRISE website. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Spectacular new Martian impact crater spotted from orbit

New Google Chrome feature warns users when browser has been hijacked

Google engineers have added a new feature to the Chrome browser that automatically warns users when browsing settings have been altered by malicious software. The new protection was unveiled in a blog post published Friday by Linus Upson, Google’s vice president of engineering. It is designed to augment a feature introduced in October that allows users to return Chrome settings to a factory-fresh state with the click of a single button. Malicious code frequently included with screensavers and other free software can surreptitiously make any number of changes to Chrome settings. Injecting ads into webpages and blocking the ability to revert settings to those previously chosen by the user are two of the more common ways unscrupulous developers tamper with browser options. The hijackings were among the top issue users reported in Chrome help forums when the reset button was introduced in October. Upson explained: Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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11 high school students expelled for keylogging teachers’ computers

Corona del Mar sits on an idyllic part of the Orange County coastline. Mark Weston A hacking scandal involving keyloggers and electronic grade-changing at a high school in Newport Beach, a well-to-do area of Southern California, has resulted in the expulsion of 11 students. The Orange County Register reported Wednesday that six of those students had already left the district, but five had been transferred to another local school. “The Board’s action imposes discipline upon these students for the maximum allowed by the Education Code for what occurred at Corona del Mar High School,” Laura Boss, the Newport Mesa Unified School District spokesperson wrote in a statement on Wednesday. US News and World Report ranked the high school in question as the 46 th best within California. Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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LibreOffice upgrade targets Windows integration and power users

Document Foundation LibreOffice 4.2 is now out, featuring improved integration with Windows and new features for power users and the enterprise. “LibreOffice 4.2 offers two Windows-specific improvements for business users: a simplified custom install dialog to avoid potential mistakes, and the ability to centrally manage and lock-down the configuration with Group Policy Objects via Active Directory,” the Document Foundation wrote in an announcement today . “All users benefit from better integration with Windows 7 and 8, with thumbnails of open documents now grouped by application and a list of recent documents, both showing on the task bar.” Windows users aren’t the only ones to benefit from the latest release of the open source office suite, which is also available on OS X and Linux. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Mass hack attack on Yahoo Mail accounts prompts password reset

Yahoo said it is resetting passwords for some of its e-mail users after discovering a coordinated effort to compromise accounts. Attackers behind the cracking campaign used usernames and passwords that were probably collected from a compromised database belonging to an unidentified third party, according to Jay Rossiter, Yahoo senior vice president of platforms and personalization products, who wrote an advisory published Thursday . A large percentage of people use the same password to protect multiple Internet accounts, a practice that allows attackers holding credentials taken from one site to compromise accounts on other sites. There’s no evidence the passwords used in the attack came from Yahoo Systems. “Our ongoing investigation shows that malicious computer software used the list of usernames and passwords to access Yahoo Mail accounts,” Rossiter wrote. “The information sought in the attack seems to be names and e-mail addresses from the affected accounts’ most recent sent e-mails.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Mass hack attack on Yahoo Mail accounts prompts password reset

AT&T plan to shut off Public Switched Telephone Network moves ahead at FCC

PhotoAtelier On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to take its first major step toward letting AT&T and other carriers replace the country’s traditional phone system with one that works entirely over Internet Protocol networks. AT&T has argued that the technology transition should be accompanied by deregulation that would strip the company of most of its monopoly-era obligations. AT&T likely won’t get everything it wants, though. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote in a blog post last November that he intends to “ensure the continuation of the Network Compact” with universal service for all Americans, consumer protections, public safety services, and competition.In other words, AT&T can’t stop maintaining the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) without a plan to preserve current service levels. This is not as simple as just making sure phone calls get through, although solving the rural call completion problem by itself is a challenge. It also means maintaining access to 911 services, fire alarms, fax machines, medical alert systems, anything that relies on the phone network. Not everything is to be decided this week. The FCC vote is on an AT&T petition to launch customer trials of new IP-based networks. While AT&T’s petition is expected to be granted, the FCC’s proposed order is written to ensure continuation of the four values (universal service, consumer protection, public safety, and competition) as Wheeler emphasized, an FCC official told Ars on condition that he not be named. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments