sciencehabit writes with news about how the hair mites you carry can be used to determine your ancestry. "Right now, deep in your hair follicles and sweat glands, tiny mites are feeding on dead skin cells, mating, and laying eggs. The microscopic arthropods, known as Demodex folliculorum, live on virtually all mammals—especially their faces—and cause no harm under most circumstances. Now, a new study shows that people of different ancestry carry different subgroups of the bugs, and that the mites' distribution throughout the global population may even reflect how our species has migrated and evolved over the course of history."

New submitter hydrodog writes: A Texas plumber traded in his truck, which ended up in ISIS videos showing his logo and phone number. Now he is getting hundreds of harassing phone calls for 'supporting ISIS' and is suing the dealership for not taking off his information before selling it. He is seeking more than $1 million in damages. According to Mashable: "According to the complaint, filed last week, a salesman at the dealership, Edgar Vasquez, told Oberholtzer 'not to worry about the decal,' saying that peeling it off would 'blemish the vehicle paint.' 'At no time did Vasquez or any other agent, servant, or employee of the Defendant tell Plaintiff that Defendant would leave the decals on the truck, which would be transferred in some fashion to international jihadists conducting warfare upon innocents in Syria,' reads the complaint.

mrspoonsi writes: On Monday morning, Eric Jackson, manager of hedge fund SpringOwl, sent a brutal 99-page presentation to Yahoo's board, outlining his case for why the company should drop Marissa Mayer as CEO and find new management. Jackson points out that Yahoo has burned through $3 billion on M&A in the past three years since Mayer took the reins, which contributes to $10 billion in what Jackson calls Yahoo's misallocated capital. The value of all of those startups Yahoo has acquired, Jackson says, is worth nothing at Yahoo's current stock price. Jackson also points out that Yahoo has a history of buying up startups run by former Google APM members. While at Google, Mayer started the company's elite associate product-manager program. Of the 49 acquisitions Yahoo has made under Mayer's leadership, six were startups founded by ex-Googlers. The total cost of these six acquisitions is $319 million, according to Jackson's slide deck. Yahoo bought Polyvore in July for $230 million. Polyvore, a social commerce site that lets users make artistic collages of clothes and accessories...But Jackson does not mince words when it comes to Yahoo's decision to spend shareholder money acquiring Polyvore and companies like it. "It's not acceptable to pay $230M for zombie companies run by former APM members," he says, pointing out that Polyvore had raised $22 million in VC funding, was 8 years old, and had gone through multiple pivots. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a goner until Yahoo bought it.

sandbagger writes: Purchasers of the Philips Hue 'smart' ambient lighting system are finding out that the new firmware pushed out by the manufacturer has cut off access to previously-supported lightbulbs. Philips contends that this move will help their customers. A statement from the company reads in part: "While the Philips Hue system is based on open technologies we are not able to ensure all products from other brands are tested and fully interoperable with all of our software updates. For guaranteed compatibility you need to use Philips Hue or certified Friends of Hue products."

itwbennett writes: Shari Steele, a 20-year veteran of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has been hired as executive director of the Tor Project, the widely used anonymity tool that frequently comes up in debates over encryption and privacy. Steele, who started at EFF as a staff attorney, then legal director and eventually executive director, comes on board at a time when Tor has been embroiled in controversy. In November, the organization accused the FBI of paying Carnegie Mellon University $1 million for information on security issues that later facilitated arrests related to online drug markets.

An anonymous reader writes: A month after temporarily blocking social media sites including Facebook and WhatsApp, the Bangladeshi government has now taken steps to take down online chat software Skype and social networking service Twitter. The decision came after a supreme court ruling which sentenced two opposition leaders to death, having found them guilty of crimes committed in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. The ruling rejected petitions to review the war criminals' death sentences. It divided the country, with many strongly protesting the decision. The social media ban is seen as a way to control any attempt at mass mobilization among dissidents.

colinneagle sends word that a developer has claimed to have achieved a jailbreak of the PlayStation 4. Networkworld reports: "If you have a PS4 and want to run homebrew content, then you might be happy to know developer CTurt claimed, "PS4 is now officially jailbroken." Over the weekend, CTurt took to Twitter to make the announcement. He did not use a jail vulnerability, he explained in a tweet. Instead, he used a FreeBSD kernel exploit.

Besides posting "an open source PlayStation 4 SDK" on GitHub, CTurt analyzed PS4's security twice and explained PS4 hacking. CTurt updated the open source PS4 SDK yesterday; he previously explained that Sony's proprietary Orbis OS is based on FREEBSD. In the past he released the PS4-playground, which included PS4 tools and experiments using the Webkit exploit for PS4 firmware version 1.76. To put that in context, Sony released version 3.0 in September. However, CTurt claimed the hack could be made to work on newer firmware versions.

Other PS4 hackers are reportedly also working on a kernel exploit, yet as Wololo pointed out, it is unlikely there might be more than proof-of-concept videos as the developers continue to tweak the exploit. Otherwise, Sony will do as it has in the past and release a new firmware version. In October 2014, developers nas and Proxima studied the PSVita Webkit exploit, applied it to the PS4, and then released the PS4 proof-of-concept. Shortly thereafter. Sony pushed out new firmware as a patch."

An anonymous reader writes: Joomla just issued a emergency security patch after Sucuri observed a large number of attacks on Joomla sites using malicious user-agent strings. Attackers were adding malicious code to custom-made user-agent strings, which were not sanitized and stored in the database. These allowed attackers to trigger remote code on the site and grant them a backdoor into targeted websites. Even if Joomla doesn't care about older versions, the bug was so critical that it issued security patches even for EOL versions going back to 1.5.x.

An anonymous reader writes: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating ISP speed and service claims. He's asked consumers to help by testing their broadband speeds and reporting the findings. "New Yorkers should get the Internet speeds they pay for. Too many of us may be paying for one thing, and getting another," Schneiderman said. "By conducting these tests, consumers can uncover whether they are receiving the Internet speeds they have paid for."

szczys writes: Leaded Gas did a great job of keeping engines from knocking thanks to tetra-ethyl lead. Unfortunately the fumes from the chemical are highly poisonous. R-12 is a refrigerant that revolutionized the cold storage of vaccines. It turned out to be the first of the chlorofluorocarbons which are well known (and now banned) for damaging the environment. Both are the creations of one inventor: Thomas Migley, Jr. Two deadly inventions seem like more than enough for one person, but his story ends with a third. Stricken with Polio, he invented a system to help him get in and out of bed on his own. A tragic accident ended his life when he was caught and strangled by the system he created.

An anonymous reader writes: Humanoid robots in space are attractive because their emulation of the human form makes them capable of a huge range of tasks. But remotely controlling such bots is a very different challenge from the math-based methods used to make probe course corrections or plot rover routes. NASA has collaborated with Sony using PlayStation VR to explore methods for controlling humanoid robots in space, and created a virtual reality simulation designed to train operators to compensate for the data delay caused by the vast distances involved in space communication.

An anonymous reader writes: Peter Diamandis announced today the launch of a new Xprize competition. $7 million is available for teams who are capable of pushing the boundaries of ocean exploration. "Our oceans cover two-thirds of our planet's surface and are a crucial global source of food, energy, economic security, and even the air we breathe, yet 95 percent of the deep sea remains a mystery to us," Diamandis said. The competition goals are as follows: "In each round, teams will complete a series of tasks, including making a bathymetric map (a map of the sea floor), producing high-resolution images of a specific object, and identifying archeological, biological or geological features. Teams also must show resiliency and durability by proving they can operate their technologies, deployed from the shore or air, at a depth of up to 4,000 meters."

sciencehabit writes: Astronomers have discovered about 2000 planets around other stars, but they have few hard facts about what they are like, such as the contents of their atmospheres. Now, a team of astronomers using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have gathered enough data (abstract) to compare 10 large exoplanets, finding a range of atmosphere types, and to propose a solution to an early mystery of exoplanet atmospheres: why some don't seem to have enough water. Study lead David Sing said, "I’m really excited to finally 'see' this wide group of planets together, as this is the first time we’ve had sufficient wavelength coverage to compare multiple features from one planet to another. We found the planetary atmospheres to be much more diverse than we expected, and this significantly progresses our understanding of what makes up these planets and how they were created."

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has finally unveiled its new drone registration rules. Starting on 21 December, all newly-purchased drones between 250 grams (.55 lbs) and 25 kg (~55 lbs) must be registered before their first flight. Owners of drones purchased before that time must register by 19 February 2016. The FAA will charge $5 to register the drones, though the first month of registrations will be free. "Make no mistake: unmanned aircraft enthusiast are aviators, and with that title comes a great deal of responsibility," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. "Registration gives us an opportunity to work with these users to operate their unmanned aircraft safely. I'm excited to welcome these new aviators into the culture of safety and responsibility that defines American innovation." There is also an age requirement: kids under the age of 13 will not be allowed to register a drone by themselves. In related news, Bard college has compiled a report on drone safety with respect to encounters with manned aircraft.

An anonymous reader writes: On Saturday, world leaders completed an ambitious international agreement to address climate change. But when the officials received the first copy of what was supposed to be the final draft, a one-word mistake threatened to derail their progress. Part of the agreement involved language that encouraged wealthy nations to provide monetary aid to poorer nations in order to help transition to more sustainable systems. But the draft used the word "shall," which would have made it a legally-binding requirement. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pushed back on the change, noting that previous versions of the document had used the word "should" instead. Officials tried to quickly figure out whether the swap had been made intentionally. Ultimately, they classified it as a typo, and hurriedly prepared a corrected version of the document, which was adopted without incident.

itwbennett writes: A weekend data breach at the European Space Agency (ESA) by hackers calling themselves "Anonymous" has resulted in the release of 8,107 names, email addresses, and passwords of ESA supporters and researchers. "The leaked data highlights a troubling problem with regard to passwords used on the compromised domains," writes CSO's Steve Ragan. "Of the 8,107 passwords exposed, 39 percent (3,191) of them were just three characters long (e.g. 'esa', '469', '136', etc.)."

An anonymous reader writes: According to documents obtained by The Telegraph, Google considers the UK a key market for development of its self-driving car program. In one of the five meetings the documents describe, Sarah Hunter, head of Google's experimental SDV division, commented that the company is "very positive about the non-regulatory approach being taken in the UK [which] places the UK in a good position and could be seen as an example of best practice." Google has also escaped excessive regulation in the area of drone development by pursuing Project WinG in the easier regulatory climes of Australia.

An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has sent out unexpected warning notices to a number of users, informing them that their account might have been targeted by state-sponsored hackers. This is the first time Twitter is known to have sent out such notifications, and they're also recommending Tor and other privacy-oriented measures to these users. Among known recipients of the message are Coldhak, a Winnipeg-based nonprofit; Coldhak director Colin Childs; privacy and security researcher Runa Sandvik; activists and cryptoparty organizer Cassie Traun; security researcher Noris Fabio; Tech writer and programmer David Robinson; and banker and mathematics student Jens Kubieziel (also the author of a book about anonymity on the Internet).

theodp writes: To commemorate the 200th birthday of Ada Lovelace, Google's CS Education in Media Program partnered with YouTube Kids on Happy Birthday Ada! for Computer Science Education Week. For those seeking (much!) more information on The Enchantress of Numbers, Stephen Wolfram has penned a pretty epic blog post, Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace. "Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago today," Wolfram begins. "To some she is a great hero in the history of computing; to others an overestimated minor figure. I've been curious for a long time what the real story is. And in preparation for her bicentennial, I decided to try to solve what for me has always been the 'mystery of Ada'." If you're not up for the full 12,000+ word read, skip to "The Final Story" for the TL;DR summary.

mdsolar writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: The citizens of Woodland, N.C. have spoken loud and clear: They don't want none of them highfalutin solar panels in their good town. They scare off the kids. "All the young people are going to move out," warned Bobby Mann, a local resident concerned about the future of his burg. Worse, Mann said, the solar panels would suck up all the energy from the Sun. Another resident -- a retired science teacher, no less -- expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would block photosynthesis, and prevent nearby plants from growing. Jane Mann then went on to add that there seemed to have been a lot of cancer deaths in the area, and that no one could tell her solar panels didn't cause cancer. "I want information," Mann said. "Enough is enough."

Reuters reports that 15 to 20 vandals dressed in black this weekend defaced Facebook's Hamburg offices, spray-painting "Facebook dislike" on a wall, and causing some minor property damage. From the story: "A Facebook spokesman said nobody was injured in the incident. He said he could not immediately comment on the possible motive for the act of vandalism. The European head of Facebook is under investigation in Germany over the social network's alleged failure to remove racist hate speech. The investigation was announced last month as German politicians and celebrities voiced concern about the rise of anti-foreigner comments in German on Facebook and other social media as the country struggles to cope with a refugee influx. (The Guardian has a nearly identical story, but a better photo.)

An anonymous reader writes: Wednesday Google hosted a special edition of their annual "Demo Day" event featuring 11 early-stage startup companies founded by women from eight different countries. More than 450 women from 40 different counties applied for a spot, and the winner of the competition was Bridgit, a fast-growing Canadian company which provides a mobile communications platform for construction teams. Online voters also awarded the "Game Changer" title to KiChing, a startup that's actively addressing Mexico's unique e-commerce challenges. But all of the startups at Wednesday's event were already actively raising series-A funding, and "We aim to help connect them to mentors, access to capital, and shine a spotlight on their efforts," said Mary Grove, the director of Google for Entrepreneurs, addressing the Demo Day audience in San Francisco.