Mac OS X Mavericks is also a *nix, and also vulnerable to the Bash bug. Sean Gallagher

UPDATE, 9/25: The Bash vulnerability, now dubbed by some as "Shellshock," has been reportedly found in use by an active exploit against Web servers. Additionally, the initial patch for the vulnerability was incomplete and still allows for attacks to succeed, according to a new CERT alert. See Ars' latest report for further details, our initial report is below.

A security vulnerability in the GNU Bourne Again Shell (Bash), the command-line shell used in many Linux and Unix operating systems, could leave systems running those operating systems open to exploitation by specially crafted attacks. “This issue is especially dangerous as there are many possible ways Bash can be called by an application,” a Red Hat security advisory warned.

The bug, discovered by Stephane Schazelas, is related to how Bash processes environmental variables passed by the operating system or by a program calling a Bash-based script. If Bash has been configured as the default system shell, it can be used by network–based attackers against servers and other Unix and Linux devices via Web requests, secure shell, telnet sessions, or other programs that use Bash to execute scripts.

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The DJI Phantom 2 on display at CES. Sean Gallagher

A German man has been sentenced to a year of probation in his home country, a one-year ban from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and a $1,600 fine after pleading guilty to illegally flying a drone (and crashing it into a lake) in the park in July 2014.

On Wednesday, local media reported that Andreas Meißner of Königswinter, Germany pleaded guilty to violating the ban on drones, filming without a permit, and leaving property unattended. Federal prosecutors dropped one charge—making a false report to a government employee—in exchange for the plea deal.

For months now, drone use in national parks has been something of a menace according to NPS authorities. In June 2014, the NPS banned drones in all parks following an initial ban in California’s Yosemite National Park. Other incidents going back to September 2013 have involved buzzing wild sheep in Utah, flying over nesting gulls in Alaska, and flying over visitors at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

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This here is Comcast territory—you best be on your way. City Year

Comcast has made many arguments in support of its proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC), but it keeps circling back to one: since the two cable companies don’t compete head-to-head in any city or town, there would be no harm in approving the deal.

But why don’t Comcast and TWC, the two largest cable companies in the US, compete against each other? And if the merger was denied, would they invade each other’s territory? Ars asked Comcast Executive VP David Cohen those questions today on a press call held to discuss Comcast’s latest filing with the FCC.

In short, Cohen said it’s too expensive to compete against other cable companies—even though Comcast is spending $45.2 billion to purchase Time Warner Cable. Comcast and TWC aren’t likely to start competing against each other even if they remain separate, Cohen explained:

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iOS 8.0.1 fixes a handful of bugs with the new update. Andrew Cunningham

Update: Some users are reporting that the update is disabling cell service and TouchID buttons on some phones. I can confirm that this happened on my AT&T iPhone 6, though a Verizon iPhone 5 still seems to be getting service just fine. For now we recommend holding off—do not download and install this update yet.

Update 2: Apple has pulled the 8.0.1 update. Affected iPhone 6 users are allegedly being told by Apple support to try restoring their phones with iTunes.

Update 3: On our iPhone 6, restoring through iTunes has re-installed iOS 8.0 and it appears to be working normally. This process erases your data from the phone, but it appears to be the best way to get back up and running as of this writing.

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HAT-P-11b is 4.7 times the size of Earth and has 25 Earth masses. Harvard Center for Astrophysics

After a difficult search, scientists have found definitive traces of water on a relatively small exoplanet for the first time. The exoplanet in question, HAT-P-11b, is the size of Neptune and has copious amounts of both water vapor and hydrogen in its atmosphere.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Kepler spacecraft, a team of scientists obtained spectrographic data as HAT-P-11b passed in front of its host star, allowing them to determine the planet’s atmospheric composition.

While other exoplanets with water have been discovered, these have mostly been gas giants larger than Jupiter. HAT-P-11b is the first significantly smaller planet with water to be discovered. The discovery paves the way for searches for water, perhaps even on smaller, more Earth-like planets.

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Lots of animals choose their mates based on exaggerated features—think of the enormous antlers of moose or the elaborate plumage of many bird species. The explanation for this is what's sometimes termed "honest signaling"—if an animal has the health and metabolic resources to devote to growing these sorts of sex-specific features, then they've probably got the genetic wherewithal to produce healthy offspring. As long as nobody cheats—makes something that just looks like it took a lot of effort—the system works well from an evolutionary perspective.

Do humans engage in honest signaling? Clearly, there are features we associate with one or the other sex, and researchers have looked in to whether they might act as signals, feeding in to evolutionary selection. For example, some research has suggested that feminine faces on females act as a signal for fertility, as they're associated with estrogen levels. A masculine appearance, which is linked to testosterone levels, has been suggested to reflect health and disease resistance. And various studies have shown that the opposite sex appreciates faces that are strongly masculine or feminine.

So, in a neat and tidy package, we have an evolutionary explanation for both our appearances and our preferences for them. Or so a lot of people have argued. But a new study in PNAS argues that this is all an artifact of who we're asking. Do some studies in pre-industrial societies, and you get a very different answer.

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Dave Toussaint

For the first time, black bears at Yosemite National Park are being outfitted with GPS devices that will provide rangers with the ability to track their movements in real time.

The National Park Service said Tuesday that the trackers will help protect bears and the public from encroaching danger. And during park programs, rangers will now discuss the bears' movements with visitors. Previously, bears at the California-based national park were being tracked via radio telemetry, but that technology only provided readings in what the park service called the "developed" areas of the 1,190-square-mile park.

"This project will expand the park's understanding of Yosemite's black bear population and help to keep bears wild and visitors safe," Yosemite superintendent Don Neubacher said in a statement.

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BlackBerry

BlackBerry's Passport phone caught our eye when it was announced this summer, mostly because of its odd screen and marketing pitch. It has some vague similarities to last year's BlackBerry Q10, but with a larger 4.5-inch square screen that's meant to show you more horizontal content at once. The self-described "IMAX of productivity" is being released today at a price of $599 unlocked ($249 on-contract).

The Passport is named for the thing it is shaped like—it's roughly the same size as a US or Canadian passport. The keyboard underneath its square screen isn't quite a full traditional BlackBerry keyboard. It has all the letters, the spacebar, and a couple of other keys, but for numbers or Shift or any others, you'll need to switch between physical and onscreen buttons. We enjoyed BlackBerry 10's software keyboard quite a bit when we reviewed the Z10 last year, but this hybrid seems potentially awkward.

Early reviews for the device have been mixed but generally negative. Most praise the phone's solid construction and the quality of the 1400×1400 display. The Wall Street Journal criticized its 13MP camera and its lack of apps (despite the addition of Amazon's app store to BlackBerry's own), saying that the position of the physical keyboard made the phone feel top-heavy and lopsided to type on. Engadget likewise complained about the lack of apps, while complimenting the keyboard's ability to act as a trackpad in landscape mode.

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Comcast Executive VP David Cohen. Comcast

Comcast today submitted a 324-page response to critics of its purchase of Time Warner Cable, telling the Federal Communications Commission that there is no reason for people to be concerned about the merger.

In an accompanying blog post, Comcast Executive VP David Cohen claimed that “virtually all” people who submitted comments to the FCC support the merger whether they know it or not.

“Virtually all commenters recognize and concede—either explicitly or through their silence—that the transaction will deliver substantial consumer welfare and public interest benefits to residential and business customers and in the advertising marketplace,” Cohen wrote.

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ISRO

Mars has become the destination of choice for ambitious space agencies and nations, and now India is among that group. After a successful maneuver, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has entered an orbit about 420 km above the surface of Mars (MOM is informally called Mangalyaan, which is Hindi for Mars vehicle). It will soon begin to photograph the planet’s surface and analyze the atmospheric composition.

(Disclosure: As a member of two previous missions to Mars, I understand the excitement and challenges of landing, or in the case of Mangalyaan, orbital insertion. Waiting for a signal telling the ground staff about the mission’s fate must have been a nerve-wracking time for staff of the Indian Space Research Organization [ISRO].)

Attraction of the red planet

Ever since the earliest telescopic observations in the 17th and 18th centuries, Mars has shown tantalizing hints of seasons, water, and active geological processes. Over the centuries, our understanding about Mars has changed as the resolution of telescopes and spacecraft cameras and spectrometers has greatly improved.

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BTC Keychain

Since the beginning of last year, angry customers have filed dozens of formal complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against two embattled Bitcoin miner manufacturers.

According to data Ars recently obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, 80 people complained about orders made at CoinTerra and HashFast between January 2013 and July 2014. These orders are collectively worth over $1.2 million spread between the two companies.

The complaints come from all over the globe, including Italy, Australia, India, Taiwan, Belgium, and mostly, the United States. The complaints are all very similar: they detail orders that were never fulfilled, refunds that were never issued, and/or e-mails that went unanswered.

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Never officially announced, Blizzard has been talking about an MMO project, codenamed "Project Titan," for the last seven years. The project has had problems, and the company said in 2013 that it was delayed until 2016 at the earliest.

Those problems appear to have proven fatal. The company told Polygon that it has been cancelled entirely. The problem? Even with as much MMO experience as Blizzard had, it struggled to make the game fun.

In the interview, Blizzard senior vice president of story and franchise development Chris Metzen also suggests that the company has changed the way it views itself. Smaller games such as Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm have enabled the company to step back from "colossal, summer blockbuster-type products."

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On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of US Army Private Chelsea Manning. The lawsuit asks for treatment for Manning's gender dysphoria, which she was diagnosed with in 2010 while she was stationed in Iraq.

Gender dysphoria refers to a condition in which a person's gender identity is different from that which they were assigned at birth. The condition is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, as well as the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association.

Manning was court-martialed last year for handing a cache of classified documents over to Wikileaks, which most famously resulted in the notorious “Collateral Murder” video. She was convicted in July 2013 of espionage, theft, and computer fraud, but she was acquitted of “aiding the enemy,” which was one of the most serious charges. Manning is currently serving 35 years in prison and resides at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

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Microsoft

Microsoft today announced the Wireless Display Adaptor, which will enable Windows and Android systems to wirelessly send their screens to any display with an HDMI input.

One of the new features that Windows 8.1 added, and that most people overlooked, was built-in Miracast support. With the right combination of wireless drivers and video drivers, Windows 8.1 machines can beam their screen over Wi-Fi to Miracast receivers, enabling wire-free, configuration-free connections between PCs and Miracast-enabled TVs and projectors. Windows Phone 8.1 also includes Miracast support; Android has supported the technology since version 4.2.

What has consistently been rare is Miracast hardware on the receiver end. Most TVs and projectors don't support it, so while hardware that supports Miracast broadcasting is becoming quite common (all Microsoft's Surface-branded tablets, except the first generation ARM Surface RT, Samsung smartphones with AllShare Cast or Samsung Link software, new Windows Phones), that hardware has had nowhere to broadcast to.

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An iPhone 6 Plus displaying a subtle bend after a weekend of use. MacRumors forum poster Hanzoh

Early buyers have now had a few days with their new iPhones, but some of them are running into a problem: in some cases the thin, flat phones are bending or warping slightly in users' pockets.

The earliest reports came from MacRumors, where forum posters reported bending in the iPhone 6 Plus after a weekend of use. Later, Geek.com writer Russell Holly posted photos of the smaller iPhone 6 exhibiting some of the same behavior. When placed on its (normally flat) front face, Holly's iPhone 6 rocks back and forth slightly on its face, a behavior we haven't noticed in any of our iPhone 6es or iPhone 6 Pluses. Based on the reports that we've read so far, it appears that some combination of body heat and pressure from the carrier's pocket is responsible for the warping.

We've reached out to Apple for a comment on the situation and will update this article if the company responds. It's worth noting that many phones, including the older iPhone 5 and 5S, have been known to bend occasionally—Cult of Mac has a nice roundup with plenty of examples. The question at this point is whether these reports of bending and warping iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units are isolated incidents or if, like the iPhone 4's antenna problems, the issue is endemic to the new design. We'll keep an eye on this one as more people begin receiving the phones and as we spend more time with them ourselves.

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The curators have spoken, but do they really help Steam shoppers sort intelligently through thousands of games?

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});Valve's online video game shop, Steam, once took flak for being too difficult to penetrate as a game creator. Unless you were a big-time publisher or were invited to sell games on Steam because of particular critical buzz, you weren't likely to snag a sales spot alongside the Fallouts and Civilizations of the PC gaming world.

These days, it's customers who've struggled to penetrate a rapidly expanding, indie-friendly Steam, as initiatives like Greenlight and Early Access have helped the storefront explode with content—including a staggering 1,300 new games in the past 9 months. To deal with this problem, rather than introduce a slow drip of search and filtering tools, Valve unveiled a massive "discovery" update to Steam on Tuesday. It's possibly the service's biggest visual update in years, and it combines ideas like third-party curation and more intense filters to push new content onto gamers.

The overhaul, by default, is an improvement, but we took the features for a spin with a bigger question: has Steam positioned itself as an all-in-one walled garden of computer game discovery?

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The Apple A8 die shot as mapped out by Chipworks. Chipworks

Now that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been released, the usual suspects have started to take them apart to get more information about the things Apple doesn't talk about. Last week, iFixit took the phones apart and identified many of the internal components and the battery capacities. Today, Chipworks picked up where it left off on Friday, taking up-close photos of the Apple A8 chip and trying to deduce what exactly is going on in there.

As was previously rumored, Chipworks has confirmed that the A8 is built on Taiwan Semiconductor's (TSMC) 20nm process rather than the 28nm Samsung process used for the A7. This is the first time one of Apple's chips has been produced by anyone other than Samsung—many of the previous reports also suggest that Apple has been looking for ways to reduce its reliance on one of its chief competitors, though a report from Re/code indicates that Apple may still be using Samsung to produce around 40 percent of the chips. Moving to a 20nm process has allowed Apple to cram roughly two billion transistors into a chip that is 13 percent smaller than the A7.

Chipworks confirms that Apple is still using a dual-core CPU, as we reported in our review yesterday. While Qualcomm, Samsung, and Nvidia have all built four, six, and even eight-core chips in an effort to boost performance, Apple has chosen to stick with fewer, more powerful cores instead. Chipworks (together with AnandTech) has also surmised that Apple is using a quad-core Imagination Technologies GX6450 to boost the A8's graphics scores by 50 percent relative to the A7. Previously, it was thought that Apple had moved to a six-core GX6550, but it looks like the quad-core version's GPU cores are bigger (and thus, more powerful) than expected.

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NBC

Martha Stewart, America’s home design and craft queen, took to late night television on Monday to gush about her latest obsession: drones.

On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Stewart proudly talked about how she now owns "three drones."

"These are not army drones! They're not dangerous!" she reassured Meyers.

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Adam Fagen

After successfully getting the Chicago Police Department to hand over records showing that it purchased cell site simulator devices, also known as IMSI catchers or stingrays, one local activist has now filed a second lawsuit in an attempt to better understand precisely how the stingrays are actually used.

The new lawsuit was filed on Tuesday by Freddy Martinez, a 27-year-old Chicagoan who works in the software industry.

Martinez’ earlier lawsuit resulted in three pages of invoices, dated 2009, showing that the department purchased an AmberJack upgrade (a model of stingray) and a StingRay II upgrade. While "StingRay" is a trademarked name and particular product of the Harris Corporation, it has entered the technical lexicon as a generic term, like Kleenex or Xerox.

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The enormous bright spot in the middle is the M60 galaxy; inset shows an expanded view of UCD1. The gorgeous spiral galaxy in the upper right? It's irrelevant to the story, but sure looks good. NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute/European Space Agency

The densest galaxy yet observed, as of its discovery last year, is a tiny object known as M60-UCD1. UCD1 is an extraordinary example of an ultra-compact dwarf (UCD), a class of galaxies that were only discovered recently. UCDs are tiny, dense, and somewhat difficult to define—are they really galaxies, or just large star clusters?

The distinction is not semantic but physical. If the UCDs are galaxies, it tells us a lot about their evolution and how they play into the wider evolution of the Universe. To answer this question, a team of scientists focused on UCD1, the brightest UCD. Like its fellow UCDs, UCD1 is more massive than predicted by its stars alone. But the source of this additional mass was not known.

Theoretical possibilities

One possibility was that UCDs form out of unusual distributions of material, one that could ultimately lead to its stars having slightly higher than average mass, thus explaining the excess. Another possibility was that the extra mass comes from supermassive black holes in the cores of these tightly packed dwarfs.

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