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Smoking greatly increases the risk of lung cancer, but for other cancers, the causes are not clear and many patients wonder if they did something to bring the disease on themselves, or if they could have done something to prevent it. Now Denise Grady writes in the NYT that a new study shows that random mutations may account for two-thirds of the risk of getting many types of cancer, leaving the usual suspects — heredity and environmental factors — to account for only one-third. “For the average cancer patient, I think this is good news," says Dr. Tomasetti. “Knowing that over all, a lot of it is just bad luck, I think in a sense it’s comforting.” The researchers say the finding that so many cases of cancer occur from random genetic accidents means that it may not be possible to prevent them, and that there should be more of an emphasis on developing better tests to find cancers early enough to cure them. “Cancer leaves signals of its presence, so we just have to basically get smarter about how to find them."

A starting point for the research was an observation made more than 100 years ago but never really explained: Some tissues are far more cancer-prone than others. In the large intestine, for example, the lifetime cancer risk is 4.8 percent — 24 times higher than in the small intestine, where it is 0.2 percent. Some tissue types give rise to human cancers millions of times more often than other tissue types and although this has been recognized for more than a century, it has never been explained. The study found that lifetime risk of cancers of many different types is strongly correlated (0.81) with the total number of divisions of the normal self-renewing cells maintaining that tissue’s homeostasis. "This study shows that you can add to your risk of getting cancers by smoking or other poor lifestyle factors," says Dr. Vogelstein. "However, many forms of cancer are due largely to the bad luck of acquiring a mutation in a cancer driver gene regardless of lifestyle and heredity factors. The best way to eradicate these cancers will be through early detection, when they are still curable by surgery."

For most climbers, The Nose of El Capitan is such an outrageous challenge that climbing it is the crowning achievement of a climbing career. Now John Branch reports at the NYT that Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, are trying something that has never been done - scaling El Capitan's Dawn Wall in Yosemite National Park, as smooth as alabaster, as steep as the bedroom wall, and more than half a mile tall - without the benefit of ropes, other than to catch their falls. “If they get it completed, it will be the hardest completed rock climb in the world,” says Tom Evans. “This will be the climb of the first half of the 21st century.” After a week of slow, steady progress, and with good weather forecast for the next week, optimism is building that Caldwell and Jorgeson would complete a task they had worked toward — studying, training and failing on a couple of prior pushes — for several years with single-minded obsession. Evans says that only about 13 of El Capitan’s climbing routes had been free climbed, meaning that moving upward is done only with hands and feet. The Dawn Wall, so named because its southeast orientation catches the first light of morning, is far harder than any of the others. “What makes the Dawn Wall so special is that it’s almost not possible,” says Alex Honnold. “The hardest pitches on the Dawn Wall are harder than I’ve ever climbed.”

The rock climbing on this particular route is defined by grabbing edges of rock as thin and sharp as razor blades, and balancing across the most friction-dependent smears of blank, glacier-polished granite. But part of the difficulty of such a quest is the cumulative effect on the mind and body. Climbing for days in a row can rub fingers raw. Sleeping in slings amid the elements can be taxing, if not dangerous. Climbing mostly in the late afternoon and into the night, using headlamps and the lights of the roped-in camera crew recording the expedition, Caldwell and Jorgeson are moving steadily. Family members and friends are tracking the climb through text messages and social media and if things continue to go well, they will converge on El Capitan sometime in the coming days. “Best case is seven days,” Caldwell says of the finish. “Worst case is mid-February. Or not at all, I suppose.”

The cost of getting to orbit is exorbitant, because the rocket, with its multimillion-dollar engines, ends up as trash in the ocean after one launching, something Elon Musk likens to throwing away a 747 jet after a single transcontinental flight. That's why tomorrow morning at 620 am his company hopes to upend the economics of space travel in a daring plan by attempting to land the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket intact on a floating platform, 300 feet long and 170 feet wide in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX has attempted similar maneuvers on three earlier Falcon 9 flights, and on the second and third attempts, the rocket slowed to a hover before splashing into the water. “We’ve been able to soft-land the rocket booster in the ocean twice so far,” says Musk. “Unfortunately, it sort of sat there for several seconds, then tipped over and exploded. It’s quite difficult to reuse at that point.”

After the booster falls away and the second stage continues pushing the payload to orbit, its engines will reignite to turn it around and guide it to a spot about 200 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida. Musk puts the chances of success at 50 percent or less but over the dozen or so flights scheduled for this year, “I think it’s quite likely, 80 to 90 percent likely, that one of those flights will be able to land and refly.” SpaceX will offer its own launch webcast on the company's website beginning at 6 a.m. If SpaceX’s gamble succeeds, the company plans to reuse the rocket stage on a later flight. “Reusability is the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level."

Glenn Greenwald reports at The Intercept that the identity of the Sony hackers is still unknown even as numerous security experts loudly note how sparse and unconvincing the available evidence is against North Korea. But that didn't stop President Obama, announcing in his December 19 press conference that: “We can confirm that North Korea engaged in this attack," and vowing that "we will respond. . . . We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States.” Yet according to Greenwald, none of the expert skepticism has made its way into countless media accounts of the Sony hack. "Time and again, many journalists mindlessly regurgitated the U.S. Government’s accusation against North Korea without a shred of doubt, blindly assuming it to be true, and then discussing, often demanding, strong retaliation. Coverage of the episode was largely driven by the long-standing, central tenet of the establishment U.S. media: government assertions are to be treated as Truth."

Greenwald says that this kind of reflexive embrace of government claims is journalistically inexcusable in all cases, for reasons that should be self-evident. But in this case, it’s truly dangerous. "At this point - eleven years after the run-up to the Iraq War and 50 years after the Gulf of Tonkin fraud - any minimally sentient American knows full well that their government lies frequently. Any journalist understands full well that assuming government claims to be true, with no evidence, is the primary means by which U.S. media outlets become tools of government propaganda," concludes Greenwald adding that many journalists benefit in all sorts of ways by dutifully performing this role. "At this point, journalists who mindlessly repeat government claims like this are guilty of many things; ignorance of what they are doing is definitely not one of them."

Alina Simone writes in the NYT that her mother received a ransom note on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving..“Your files are encrypted,” it announced. “To get the key to decrypt files you have to pay 500 USD.” If she failed to pay within a week, the price would go up to $1,000. After that, her decryption key would be destroyed and any chance of accessing the 5,726 files on her PC — all of her data would be lost forever. "By the time my mom called to ask for my help, it was already Day 6 and the clock was ticking," writes Simone. "My father had already spent all week trying to convince her that losing six months of files wasn’t the end of the world (she had last backed up her computer in May). It was pointless to argue with her. She had thought through all of her options; she wanted to pay." Simone found that it appears to be technologically impossible for anyone to decrypt your files once CryptoWall 2.0 has locked them and so she eventually helped her mother through the process of making a cash deposit to the Bitcoin “wallet” provided by her ransomers and she was able to decrypt her files. “From what we can tell, they almost always honor what they say because they want word to get around that they’re trustworthy criminals who’ll give you your files back," says Chester Wisniewski.

The peddlers of ransomware are clearly businesspeople who have skillfully tested the market with prices as low as $100 and as high as $800,000, which the city of Detroit refused to pay. They are appropriating all the tools of e-commerce and their operations are part of “a very mature, well-oiled capitalist machine" says Wisniewski. “I think they like the idea they don’t have to pretend they’re not criminals. By using the fact that they’re criminals to scare you, it’s just a lot easier on them.”

Daniel Rivero writes that as part of an art show in Zurich an automated online shopping bot with a budget of $100 a week in Bitcoin, is programmed to go to one particular marketplace on the Deep Web and make one random purchase a week with the provided allowance. The art show, titled "The Darknet: From Memes to Onionland" is an attempt "to grasp this extremely controversial phenomenon of hacking the Deep Web with artistic contributions." There's only one problem - the bot committed a crime. The programmers came home one day to find a shipment of 10 ecstasy pills, followed by an apparently very legit falsified Hungarian passport– developments which have left some observers of the bot’s blog a little uneasy.

If this bot was shipping to the US who would be legally responsible for purchasing the goodies? The coders? Or the bot itself? Are these artists liable for what the bot bought? The answer is "maybe." In the United States, at least, criminal law is predominantly statutory. "We would have to look to the precise wording of the federal or local law and then apply it to the facts at hand," says Ryan Calo. "If, for instance, the law says a person may not knowingly purchase pirated merchandise or drugs, there is an argument that the artists did not violate the law. Whereas if the law says the person may not engage in this behavior recklessly, then the artists may well be found guilty, since they released the bot into an environment where they could be substantially certain some unlawful outcome would occur." For their part, coders Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo say that they are assuming full responsibility for the bot’s actions and for the illegal contraband, even though the gallery is ironically located next door to a police station. “We are the legal owner of the drugs – we are responsible for everything the bot does, as we executed the code,” says Smoljo. “But our lawyer and the Swiss constitution says art in the public interest is allowed to be free.”

The Guardian reports that the woman who was accidentally shot dead by her two-year-old son in an Idaho Walmart is described by those who knew her as a gun lover, a motivated academic and a successful nuclear research scientist who worked for Battelle’s Idaho National Laboratory and wrote several papers there including one on using glass ceramic to store nuclear waste (PDF). Rutledge was raised in northeast Idaho and always excelled at school, former high school classmate Kathleen Phelps said, recalling her as “extremely smart. … valedictorian of our class, very motivated and the smartest person I know. … Getting good grades was always very important to her.”

Veronica Rutledge and her husband loved everything about guns. They practiced at shooting ranges. They hunted. And both of them, relatives and friends say, had permits to carry concealed firearms. “They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case,” says Terry Rutledge, her husband’s father. “… I brought my son up around guns, and he has extensive experience shooting it. And Veronica had had hand gun classes; they’re both licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.” Many locals don't discern anything odd with a 29-year-old woman carrying a loaded gun into a Wal-Mart during the holiday season. “It’s pretty common around here,” says Stu Miller. “A lot of people carry loaded guns.” More than 85,000 people, 7 percent of Idaho's population, are licensed to carry concealed weapons (PDF), “In Idaho, we don’t have to worry about a lot of crime and things like that,” says Sheri Sandow. “And to see someone with a gun isn’t bizarre. [Veronica] wasn’t carrying a gun because she felt unsafe. She was carrying a gun because she was raised around guns. This was just a horrible accident.”

IMSI catchers, otherwise known as stingrays, are those surveillance tools that masquerade as cell towers and trick mobile phones into connecting, spewing private data in the process. Law-enforcement agencies have been using them for almost two decades, but there's never been a good way for individuals to detect them. Now Lily Hay Newman reports that SnoopSnitch scans for radio signals that indicate a transition to a stingray from a legitimate cell tower. "SnoopSnitch collects and analyzes mobile radio data to make you aware of your mobile network security and to warn you about threats like fake base stations (IMSI catchers), user tracking and over-the-air updates." say German security researchers Alex Senier, Karsten Nohl, and Tobias Engel, creators of the app which is available now only for Andriod. The app can't protect people's phones from connecting to stingrays in the first place, but it can at least let them know that there is surveillance happening in a given area. "There's no one set of information, taken by itself, that allows you to detect an IMSI catcher," says Nohl. "But we do stream analysis of everything that happens on your phone, and can come out with a warning if it crosses a certain threshold."

Stingrays have garnered attention since a 2011 Arizona court case in which one agent admitted in an affidavit that the tool collaterally swept up data on “innocent, non-target devices” (U.S. v. Rigmaiden). The government eventually conceded in this case that the “tracking operation was a Fourth Amendment search and seizure,” meaning it required a warrant. But given that the Justice Department has continued to claim that cellphone users have no reasonable expectation of privacy over their location data, it may take a Supreme Court judgement to settle the Stingray issue countrywide.

The Guardian reports that following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, Pope Francis plans to publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds. "A papal encyclical is rare," says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences who revealed the pope's plans when he delivered Cafod’s annual Pope Paul VI lecture. "It is among the highest levels of a pope’s authority. It will be 50 to 60 pages long; it’s a big deal." The encyclical will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners. Within Catholicism in recent times, an encyclical is generally used for significant issues, and is second in importance only to the highest ranking document now issued by popes, an Apostolic Constitution. “Just as humanity confronted revolutionary change in the 19th century at the time of industrialization, today we have changed the natural environment so much," says Sorondo. "If current trends continue, the century will witness unprecedented climate change and destruction of the ecosystem with tragic consequences.”

Francis’s environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate. “There will always be 5-10% of people who will take offence. They are very vocal and have political clout," says Dan Misleh, director of the Catholic climate covenant. "This encyclical will threaten some people and bring joy to others. The arguments are around economics and science rather than morality." Francis will also be opposed by the powerful US evangelical movement, says Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the conservative Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has declared the US environmental movement to be “un-biblical” and a false religion. “The pope should back off,” says Beisner. “The Catholic church is correct on the ethical principles but has been misled on the science. It follows that the policies the Vatican is promoting are incorrect. Our position reflects the views of millions of evangelical Christians in the US.”

It’s been shown that even small delays in response time on websites can result in sharp declines in user retention. Now Ori Livneh writes on the Wikimedia Blog that over the last six months the Wikimedia Foundation has deployed a new technology that speeds up MediaWiki, Wikipedia’s underlying PHP-based code using a just-in-time compiler. HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) , an open-source virtual machine designed for executing programs written in Hack and PHP, reduces the median page-saving time for editors from about 7.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds, and the mean page-saving time from about 6 to 3 seconds which with than 100 million edits in 2014, means saving a decade’s worth of latency every year.

PHP is a dynamic, interpreted language, so it has the inherent performance disadvantage all interpreter languages have when compared to compiled languages such as C. HHVM is able to extract high performance from PHP code by acting as a just-in-time (JIT) compiler, optimizing the compiled code while the program is already running. The basic assumption guiding HHVM’s JIT is that while PHP is a dynamically typed language, the types flowing through PHP programs aren’t very dynamic in practice. HHVM observes the types present at runtime and generates machine code optimized to operate on these types. HHVM still fulfills the role of a PHP runtime interpreter, serving requests immediately upon starting up, without pre-compiling code. But while running, HHVM analyzes the code in order to find opportunities for optimization. The first few times a piece of code is executed, HHVM doesn’t optimize at all; it executes it in the most naive way possible. But as it’s doing that, it keeps a count of the number of times it has been asked to execute various bits of code, and gradually it builds up a profile of the “hot” (frequently invoked and expensive to execute) code paths in a program. This way, it can be strategic about which code paths to study and optimize.

According to Livneh, in addition to the improved response time the CPU load on MediaWiki's app servers has dropped drastically, from about 50% to 10%. MediaWiki IT "has been able to slash their planned purchases for new MediaWiki application servers substantially, compared to what would have been necessary without HHVM."