Fossilized lampreys from the Jurassic period have surprised a team of paleontologists by their size and well-preserved feeding structures, indicating the creepy fish were already predatory 160 million years ago.
Source: Gizmodo – Unprecedented Biting Strength in Jurassic Lampreys Points to Flesh-Eating Past
A woman’s newly adopted cat may have brought her an unwelcome gift: a bacterial germ that caused her months of diarrhea. In a new case report this month, doctors say that the woman’s bout of recurrent Clostridioides difficile could have been fueled by her cat, who also tested positive for the bacteria. Thankfully,…
Source: Gizmodo – Woman Gets New Cat—and Months of Diarrhea, in Possible Medical First
Just because Hugh Jackman is returning as Wolverine doesn’t mean he didn’t die already. From the day it was announced that Jackman was joining Ryan Reynolds in the upcoming third Deadpool movie, the stars were adamant that the events of Logan, James Mangold’s 2017 classic, happened. “Logan died in Logan,” Reynolds said
Source: Gizmodo – Shawn Levy Really Wants You to Know Logan Matters to Deadpool 3
Canada banned WeChat on government-issued phones on Monday, roughly two years after the Biden administration lifted American bans on the Chinese “everything” app. The Chief Information Officer of Canada says WeChat presents an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security, in a press release.
Source: Gizmodo – WeChat Deemed a Security Risk, Banned in Canada
Today may be Halloween, but there’s another big holiday this week: Godzilla Day, which marks the anniversary of Godzilla’s release on November 3, 1954. As is tradition, Toho International has an array of festivities planned, including some that require you to stomp no further than your own couch.
Source: Gizmodo – Godzilla Day Celebrations Are Coming to Streaming
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Tesla’s controversial driver assistance feature Autopilot has received another pass. On Tuesday a jury in California found that Autopilot was not to blame for a 2019 crash in Riverside County that killed the driver and left his wife and son severely injured. That marks the second time this year a jury has found that Autopilot was not responsible for a serious crash.
The case was filed by the two survivors of the Riverside crash and alleged that an Autopilot malfunction caused Micah Lee’s Tesla Model 3 to veer off a highway at 65 mph (105 km/h) before it struck a tree and burst into flames. Lee died in the crash, and his wife and then-8-year-old son were seriously injured; as a result the plaintiffs asked for $400 million plus punitive damages.
But Tesla denied Autopilot was defective and claimed that Lee had been drinking alcohol before the crash. Nine members of the jury agreed with Tesla after four days of deliberation.
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Source: Ars Technica – Tesla Autopilot not responsible for 2019 fatal crash, jury says
Apple could be forced to scale back its App Store fees for developers after one of the European Union’s antitrust watchdogs said its commissions violate the bloc’s rules. From a report: In the latest twist in a long-running clash between the Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets and the US tech giant, officials ruled that Apple’s commission on certain app subscriptions are an abuse of the company’s market power. In a confidential decision seen by Bloomberg, the Dutch regulator said Apple’s rules unfairly target companies that offer subscription services, such as Match Group’s dating app Tinder, which has to pay high commission rates on app sales, unlike ones that don’t have paid digital content.
Apple harms such companies “by charging them an additional and inexplicably higher fee,” according to the Dutch decision, which was sent in July. Apple had earlier offered to reduce app sale commission in the Netherlands from 30% to 27%, but the ACM’s confidential findings state this offer doesn’t go far enough. The decision could pave the wave for greater antitrust scrutiny across the 27-nation EU on the fairness of Apple’s fee structure for different apps. The European Commission in Brussels is already investigating how Apple restricts apps from informing users of cheaper subscriptions outside the app store.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Apple’s App Charges Violate EU Antitrust Law, Dutch Agency Says
A group of artists suing generative AI companies for allegedly using their copyrighted works are down, but not out, following a recent federal judge’s order. On Monday, the judge presiding over a case brought by three visual artists dismissed the majority of the claims levied against Stability AI, Midjourney, and art…
Source: Gizmodo – Artists Suing Stability AI Forced to Go Back to The Drawing Board on Copyright Claims
Atari has agreed to buy developer Digital Eclipse. The acquisition, which is expected to close in the coming days, will be worth up to $20 million based on the performance of Digital Eclipse over the next decade. Atari says that by bringing Digital Eclipse under its wing, it “will be able to further support its retro-focused growth strategy.”
Over the last several years, Digital Eclipse has become well-known for its expertise in remastering older titles and releasing them as collections. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King and the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection are among its more notable projects.
Digital Eclipse caught the attention of many last year with Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection. That well-regarded compilation pulled together dozens of games from across Atari’s 50-year history and placed them in context with the help of marketing and development documents, archival footage and new interviews with former Atari employees. Digital Eclipse built on the “interactive documentary” format with this year’s release of The Making of Karateka.
It plans to continue with this Gold Master Series preservation project under Atari’s umbrella. It will still have the ability to work with third-party developers and publishers, and there are several non-Atari projects in the works that it has yet to announce.
Atari seems to be on a mission to become a powerhouse in retro gaming and game preservation. It also bought Nightdive Studios, a developer that specializes in remasters, and AtariAge (a community and news site that focuses on Atari) this year. In addition, Atari has been snapping up many gaming franchises from the 1980s and 1990s.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/atari-is-buying-retro-game-specialist-digital-eclipse-195419696.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Atari is buying retro game specialist Digital Eclipse
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On Tuesday, The Guardian accused Microsoft of damaging its journalistic reputation by publishing an AI-generated poll beside one of its articles on the Microsoft Start website. The poll, created by an AI model on Microsoft’s news platform, speculated on the cause of a woman’s death, reportedly triggering reader anger and leading to reputational concerns for the news organization.
“This has to be the most pathetic, disgusting poll I’ve ever seen,” wrote one commenter on the story. The comment section has since been disabled.
The poll appeared beside a republished Guardian story about Lilie James, a 21-year-old water polo coach who was found dead with head injuries in Sydney. The AI-generated poll presented readers with three choices to speculate on the cause of James’ death: murder, accident, or suicide. Following negative reactions, the poll was removed, but critical comments remained visible for a time before their removal.
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Source: Ars Technica – Inserted AI-generated Microsoft poll about woman’s death rankles The Guardian
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The US Securities and Exchange Commission sued SolarWinds Corp. and Chief Information Security Officer Timothy Brown yesterday, alleging that they concealed security failures that led to a nearly two-yearlong cyberattack known as “Sunburst.” The attack, reportedly carried out by Russian hackers, inserted malicious code into SolarWinds network-management software used by thousands of customers, including US government agencies and private companies.
From the time of its initial public offering in October 2018 until January 2021, SolarWinds and Brown “defrauded SolarWinds’ investors and customers through misstatements, omissions, and schemes that concealed both the Company’s poor cybersecurity practices and its heightened—and increasing—cybersecurity risks,” the SEC lawsuit said. “SolarWinds’ public statements about its cybersecurity practices and risks painted a starkly different picture from internal discussions and assessments about the Company’s cybersecurity policy violations, vulnerabilities, and cyberattack.”
The SEC sued the company and Brown in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The SEC is seeking disgorgement of “ill-gotten gains,” civil monetary penalties, and a permanent ban on Brown from acting as an officer or director for any company that issues securities.
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Source: Ars Technica – SEC sues SolarWinds and CISO, says they ignored flaws that led to major hack
The best part about one company revolutionizing video-sharing on the internet is that it gets the say in how awful that experience can be. After beginning to roll out a healthy nudge to turn off ad blockers or subscribe to the platform’s ad-free Premium offering, YouTube is now forcing users’ hands.
Source: Gizmodo – YouTube’s Ad Blocker Crackdown Is Getting Harder to Dodge
Nokia sued Amazon in courts across three continents, alleging the e-commerce giant uses its technologies in streaming services and devices without authorization. From a report: The suits were filed in the US, Germany, India, the UK, and the European Unified Patent Court, Arvin Patel, Nokia’s Chief Licensing Officer said in a statement on the company’s website. Separately, a suit was also filed against HP in the US over video-related technologies, he said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Nokia Sues Amazon From US To India Over Streaming-Tech Patents
This past August, the Power Rangers series turned 30 years old. While not entirely on the level of popularity as some of its other superheroic peers, there’s no denying the semi-tokusatsu franchise is in the hearts of fans and a certain generation. And like all long-running franchises, there comes a point where…
Source: Gizmodo – The Power Rangers’ New Era Should Bring Them to Animation
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Android is slowly entering the RISC-V era. So far we’ve seen Google say it wants to give the up-and-coming CPU architecture “tier-1” support in Android, putting RISC-V on equal footing with Arm. Qualcomm has announced the first mass-market RISC-V Android chip, a still-untitled Snapdragon Wear chip for smartwatches. Now Google has announced a timeline for developer tools via the Google Open Source Blog. The last post is titled “Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready.”
Getting the Android OS and app ecosystem to support a new architecture is going to take an incredible amount of work from Google and developers, and these tools are laying the foundation for that work. First up, Google already has the “Cuttlefish” virtual device emulator running, including a gif of it booting up. This isn’t the official “Android Emulator”—which is targeted at app developers doing app development—Cuttlefish is a hardware emulator for Android OS development. It’s the same idea as the Android Emulator but for the bottom half of the tech stack—the kernel, framework, and hardware bits. Cuttlefish lets Google and other Android OS contributors work on a RISC-V Android build without messing with an individual RISC-V device. Google says it’s working well enough now that you can download and emulate a RISC-V device today, though the company warns that nothing is optimized yet.
The next step is getting the Android Emulator (for app developers) up and running, and Google says: “By 2024, the plan is to have emulators available publicly, with a full feature set to test applications for various device form factors!” The nice thing about Android is that most app code is written with no architecture in mind—it’s all just Java/Kotlin. So once the Android RunTime starts spitting out RISC-V code, a lot of app code should Just Work. That means most of the porting work will need to go into things written in the NDK, the native developer kit, like libraries and games. The emulator will still be great for testing, though.
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Source: Ars Technica – Google plans RISC-V Android tools in 2024, wants developers to “be ready”
Security reporter Brian Krebs: The top-level domain for the United States — .US — is home to thousands of newly-registered domains tied to a malicious link shortening service that facilitates malware and phishing scams, new research suggests. The findings come close on the heels of a report that identified .US domains as among the most prevalent in phishing attacks over the past year. Researchers at Infoblox say they’ve been tracking what appears to be a three-year-old link shortening service that is catering to phishers and malware purveyors. Infoblox found the domains involved are typically three to seven characters long, and hosted on bulletproof hosting providers that charge a premium to ignore any abuse or legal complaints. The short domains don’t host any content themselves, but are used to obfuscate the real address of landing pages that try to phish users or install malware.
Infoblox says it’s unclear how the phishing and malware landing pages tied to this service are being initially promoted, although they suspect it is mainly through scams targeting people on their phones via SMS. A new report says the company mapped the contours of this link shortening service thanks in part to pseudo-random patterns in the short domains, which all appear on the surface to be a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers. “This came to our attention because we have systems that detect registrations that use domain name generation algorithms,” said Renee Burton, head of threat intelligence at Infoblox. “We have not found any legitimate content served through their shorteners.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – [Dot]US Harbors Prolific Malicious Link Shortening Service
Therabody’s Theragun Mini 2.0 massage device is on sale at Target for $170. That’s $30 off the MSRP of $200 and matches a previous record-low for the massage gun, so this early Black Friday deal could be your best chance to snag a muscle-soothing percussive therapy gadget on the cheap.
To that end, the deal’s only accessible today and requires a Target Circle membership. Don’t worry. It’s free to sign up, and once you do you’ll get a coupon code you can clip directly on the product page.
This is the second-generation Theragun Mini, with three massage speeds that offer up to 2,400 percussions per minute. It also ships with a trio of attachments designed for different muscle groups and the Mini boasts a rechargeable battery that gets two hours of use per charge. This massage gun actually made our list of the best fitness devices for college students, but you don’t need your head in a text book to appreciate vibration-based pain relief.
Despite being a smaller and more budget-friendly version of Therabody’s other products, we found that the Mini works nearly as well as its larger counterparts when it comes to easing tight muscles. We appreciated its one-handed design, decreased noise level during use and powerful motor.
This is a battery-powered wireless massage gun that gets around two hours of use per charge. It also connects to a proprietary app via Bluetooth that helps you create custom routines to treat specific ailments. It’s also worth noting that the Mini is also around 30 percent lighter than the company’s other massage guns, which helps with that whole one-handed use aspect. Now you’ll never have to admit weakness by asking someone else to help with muscle tightness.
Target is actually selling a few Therabody products at steep discounts, all of which return to their normal prices once Halloween is over. Beyond the Mini in black or tan, you can snag the company’s eye mask massaging device for 15 percent off.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-theragun-mini-20-drops-to-a-record-low-price-in-early-target-black-friday-deal-183342874.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The Theragun Mini 2.0 drops to a record low price in early Target Black Friday deal
Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)
Windows 11’s next yearly update is here. Microsoft is rolling out the Windows 11 2023 Update, also known as Windows 11 23H2, to the general public starting today, the company announced in a blog post.
Microsoft Windows Servicing and Delivery VP John Cable describes the 23H2 update as “scoped,” “cumulative,” and “streamlined,” which are all different ways of saying that it doesn’t do a whole lot in and of itself other than rolling the version number over. Most of the big new features, including the Copilot AI assistant, actually began rolling out a month ago to Windows 11 22H2. It’s just that you’ll know that any PC running 23H2 has those features, whereas older versions of 22H2 may not.
Cable notes a couple of 23H2-specific additions, namely that the Chat app from earlier Windows 11 releases has been replaced by Microsoft Teams (free) (that was not our parenthetical; that’s what the company calls it), which is pinned to the taskbar by default just like Chat used to be. Built-in system apps get a new “system” label in the “All apps” view on the Start menu, and system apps are now managed separately from other apps in the Settings app under System > System Components.
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Source: Ars Technica – Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 23H2, a new baseline for the frequently updated OS
Before Marvel Comics became Marvel Comics, the company had a whole host of different iterations and identities over the Golden Age of comics—and did so much more comics material than just superheroes. And now, in gloriously remastered high definition, you can experience a chilling jolt of some of that era’s spookiest…
Source: Gizmodo – Experience a Slice of Retro Marvel Comics Horror, Before the Brain Gets You!
