Cuba will build its first new Roman Catholic place of worship since the Marxist revolution of 1959.

The launch of the QNAP TS-x51 series was covered in great detail. QNAP took the lead over other NAS manufacturers in opting for the 22 nm Atom SoCs. While we were expecting the first Silvermont-based NAS units to use either Avoton or Rangeley, QNAP surprised us by opting for Bay Trail-D with the Celeron J1800. The advantage was that the Celeron J1800 included the Quick Sync engine, which enabled some nifty multimedia features targeting home consumers.

Fast forward a few weeks, and we have QNAP's play targeting business users using the same platform. The difference in the hardware relates to the choice of the Bay Trail-D part. Instead of the Celeron J1800 (which was a 2C/2T part), we have the Celeron J1900 (a 4C/4T part). While the 2-bay version comes with 2x GbE ports, the others come with 4x GbE ports. All the innovative features from the TS-x51 series (hardware transcoding and Virtualization Station, mainly) are present in the x53-Pro series too. Due to the availability of more resources, it is possible to run two VMs concurrently in the x53 Pro (compared to one in the x51). Since we have already touched upon the two main features in our x51 launch piece, we will not discuss them in detail here.

QNAP has bundled all the business-oriented features of the x53 Pro under the QvPC umbrella. QNAP projects using the x53 Pro NAS as a business PC in addition to fulfilling the tasks of a SMB networked storage device. The display is driven through the HDMI port and the interface is through the HD Station package (Hybrid Desk). Three 'views' are made available:

• QVM Desk: Users have a window into any of the VMs running on the unit.
• Defense Desk: Users can access the Surveillance Station UI for monitoring the IP cameras being recorded on the NAS
• Local Display Desk: Users have access to the X-Windows session on the NAS, enabling access to apps such as XBMC, Chrome, YouTube, Spotify etc. - all of which are specific apps for the NAS. Obviously, the NAS can be administered from within this UI also

The HD Station package also supports touchscreen monitors. Since Virtualization Station is supposed to soon support Android VMs, this is going to be a nifty feature.

Another SMB-targeted feature in QTS 4.1 is  IT Management Station, based on Mandriva Pulse. It enables management of IT resources and applications for the whole business in a simplified manner. Tasks include inventory management, remote control, cloning, deployments and backup / restore.

The x53 Pro series (like the x51 series) also supports the UX-500P / UX-800P expansion towers. Using these, consumers can add 5 or 8 bays to their existing NAS by connecting via an USB 3.0 port. The various models in the x53 Pro series, along with their specifications, are provided below.

Interestingly, QNAP has two SS- models which support only 2.5" drives. It looks like the market for NAS units which support only 2.5" drives is slowly taking off. Earlier this year, we saw the introduction of Synology's DS414slim sporting a Marvell ARMADA 370 SoC. However, these are based on Bay Trail Celerons, and definitely much more powerful. With SSDs becoming cheaper by the day, all-flash arrays will soon be within the reach of even SMBs. Units such as the SS-453 Pro and SS-853 Pro are well-suited to tap into that market.

There are fears the talks in Cairo, aimed at securing a long-lasting ceasefire in Gaza, could break down completely.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said he is ready to consider allowing humanitarian assistance into the rebel-held area of eastern Ukraine.

A nine-year-old boy from Florida has been speaking about the moment he fought off a nine-foot-long alligator with his bare hands.

A rendering of ISEE-3. NASA

A vintage NASA satellite will fly past our moon Sunday before embarking on a unique citizen science mission.

The International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) will have the closest view of the moon at 11:16am PDT. Members of the rebooted mission partnered with Google to create a website where they will host a video hangout beginning at 10:30am PDT.

The website, which launched on Friday, will play a greater role in the future as a source to view data from the ISEE-3 as it orbits the sun.

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A Greenpeace ship impounded by Russia has returned to the Netherlands almost a year after it was stormed by Russian security forces.

How football can help improve the life expectancy of socially disadvantaged groups.

Turkey's first direct presidential election is set for Sunday.

Jon Richards, SETI Institute

The SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array survived a massive Northern California wildfire this week that briefly disrupted its search for life in space.

"Yes, we are up and running again," said the observatory's senior software engineer, Jon Richards, in a Saturday e-mail to Ars.

Power was disrupted Tuesday and the facility's 42 antennas got too hot and had to be powered down to cool off before resuming operation Friday. The observatory almost went up in smoke after the Eiler fire jumped a highway days ago and came within a mile of the antennas.

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An anonymous author who claims to be the hacker who penetrated controversial UK-based Gamma Group International and aired 40 gigabytes of its dirty laundry has published a how-to guide for other hacktivists.

"I'm not writing this to brag about what an 31337 h4x0r I am and what m4d sk1llz it took to 0wn Gamma," wrote the author, who rightly cautions that the unauthorized access of other people's networks is illegal. "I'm writing this to demystify hacking, to show how simple it is, and to hopefully inform and inspire you to go out and hack shit. If you have no experience with programming or hacking, some of the text below might look like a foreign language. Check the resources section at the end to help you get started."

The do-it-yourself guide explains how hackers can map entryways into a target's network, scan for vulnerable services and exploit any that are found. It also lists some of the most common methods hackers use to keep their IP addresses and other digital fingerprints off their attacks. Among other things, the how-to suggests installing Whonix inside a hidden encrypted volume created by TrueCrypt and carrying out all operations from there. It also counsels against using Tor and instead using hacked servers. Again, this is illegal.

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Sean Gallagher

LAS VEGAS—Phil Zimmermann, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy public-key encryption, has some experience when it comes to the politics of crypto. During the “crypto wars” of the 1990s, Zimmermann fought to convince the US government to stop classifying PGP as a “munition” and shut down the Clipper Chip program—an effort to create a government-mandated encryption processor that would have given the NSA a back door into all encrypted electronic communication. Now Zimmermann and the company he co-founded are working to convince telecommunications companies—mostly overseas—that it’s time to end their nearly century-long cozy relationship with governments.

Zimmermann compared telephone companies’ thinking with the long-held belief that tomatoes were toxic until it was demonstrated they weren’t. “For a long time, for a hundred years, phone companies around the world have created a culture around themselves that is very cooperative with governments in invading people’s privacy. And these phone companies tend to think that there’s no other way—that they can’t break from this culture, that the tomatoes are poisonous," he said.

A call for crypto

Back in 2005, Zimmermann, Alan Johnston, and Jon Callas began work on an encryption protocol for voice over IP (VoIP) phone calls, dubbed ZRTP, as part of his Zfone project. In 2011, ZRTP became an Internet Engineering Task Force RFC, and it has been published as open source under a BSD license. It’s also the basis of the voice service for Silent Circle, the end-to-end encrypted voice service Zimmermann co-founded with former Navy SEAL Mark Janke. Silent Circle, which Ars tested on the Blackphone in June, is a ZRTP-based voice and ephemeral messaging service that generates session-specific keys between users to encrypt from end to end. The call is tunneled over a Transport Layer Security-encrypted connection through Silent Circle’s servers in Canada and Switzerland. ZRTP and the Silent Circle calls don’t rely on PGP or any other public key infrastructure, so there’s no keys to hand over under a FISA order or law enforcement warrant.

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YouTube

New York authorities have subpoenaed Twitter to unmask who's behind a parody account that tweeted responsibility for last month's Brooklyn Bridge caper.

The New York Police Department awoke July 22 with egg on its face when two giant American flags atop two locked 276-foot towers were stolen from one of the Big Apple's most heavily guarded landmarks and were replaced with bleached-out Old Glories.

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Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared the outbreak of Ebola "a national emergency" and approved more than $11m (£6.5m) in funding to help contain it.

Spry Fox

When the game designers at Spry Fox named their latest puzzle game after Robert Frost’s most famous poem, we didn’t expect much depth or inspiration from the source material. Frankly, Frost’s The Road Not Taken, while sweet and lyrical, hides little under the surface to work with, particularly from a gaming perspective. Pick between one of two roads? Even text adventures gave players the choice of north, south, east, or west.

Thankfully, the game’s title is misleading, at least at first blush. Road Not Taken’s hand-drawn world and puzzly play rarely boil down to obvious, binary choices. The game revolves around a really refreshing spin on the well-trodden “match three” puzzle genre (which is to be expected from the designers who pulled off a similar, stellar feat in 2010’s Triple Town).

But there’s a point to the game’s name. As players get a feel for RNT’s pace—with randomly generated puzzles, a constant flow of new things to interact with, and heavily ramping difficulty—they slowly come to grips with the game’s very difficult core. Not in terms of how hard or clever the game is, mind you, but the fact that this is a puzzle game about death, disappointment, and family. Spry Fox treats that somber quality with elegance and simplicity, meaning the game is a wonder to play, but rarely do puzzle games (Tetris, Candy Crush) include death as a major feature. RNT stands out because of how it embraces that design choice, a fact that really makes all the difference.

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Violence continues in Gaza after the end of a three-day ceasefire.

Up with a balloon, down with an aerobrake. NASA's Martian robots have used the planet's thin atmosphere to their advantage while landing, slowing down through a combination of aerobraking and parachutes. But the space agency hopes to put larger hardware on the red planet's surface—eventually followed by manned exploration. Those missions will require correspondingly larger braking hardware.

As part of its technology development program, NASA's testing a system called the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator. Rather than a solid shield, the LDSD has a rim of inflatable material that greatly enhances its braking capabilities when fully deployed. In addition, the system includes a large parachute that's able to be deployed at supersonic speeds.

In June, NASA launched what you could call a "falling saucer." Carried aloft by a balloon, then rocketed further into the stratosphere, the payload tested the deployment of both the inflatable heat shield and the parachute during the ensuing free-fall.

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The mayor of Nagasaki has urged the Japanese government to heed mounting public concern over its decision to give the military greater freedom to act.

The US carry out airstrikes in an attempt to stem the advance of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and help the Yazidi people.

Shutterstock

Ever since the Apollo 11 headed to the Moon in late 1969, astronauts have complained of sleep deprivation. Now a study has shed light on the extent of the sleep deprivation and fatigue suffered by those who travel into space.

In accordance with official NASA flight schedules, astronauts are ordered to get 8.5 hours of sleep every night. But after tracking the sleep patterns of 85 crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and space shuttles, researchers have discovered that astronauts on shuttle missions sleep for under six hours per night on average and just over six on ISS missions.

Crew members on modern space missions sleep in quiet, darkened chambers, and three quarters of astronauts take sedatives—yet the problem still prevails. It was not only that astronauts failed to get the required amount of sleep, however. In the three-month pre-flight training period, sleep was also found to be significantly disturbed. During this time crew began to build up a long-term sleep deficiency, averaging less than 6.5 hours while in training.

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