Microsoft, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Google announced Monday they will create a public glossary standardizing the nicknames used for state-sponsored hacking groups and cybercriminals.
The initiative aims to reduce confusion caused by the proliferation of disparate naming conventions across cybersecurity firms, which have assigned everything from technical designations like “APT1” to colorful monikers like “Cozy Bear” and “Kryptonite Panda” to the same threat actors. The companies hope to bring additional industry partners and the U.S. government into the effort to streamline identification of digital espionage groups.
A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea automatically captures screenshots every five minutes and stores them in a hidden folder inaccessible to users, according to analysis by the BBC. Authorities can later review these images to monitor citizen activity on the device. The phone, obtained by Seoul-based media outlet Daily NK, resembles a Huawei or Honor device but runs state-approved software designed for surveillance and control. The device also automatically censors text, replacing “South Korea” with “puppet state” and Korean terms of endearment with “comrade.”
The internet is both excellent and horrible at spreading information and community. In one sense, it can provide access to so many people and perspectives that aren’t available in a person’s day-to-day life. At the same time, it can be ripe with misinformation and people who cause more harm than good.
Now, a new study from The Guardian is revealing just how intertwined these two things can be. An investigation found that 52 out of the top 100 videos tagged #mentalhealthtips contained at least some misinformation, according to a team of mental health professionals. These clips discussed conditions and experiences such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, trauma, neurodivergence and more.
“TikTok is spreading misinformation by suggesting that there are secret universal tips and truths that may actually make a viewer feel even worse, like a failure, when these tips don’t simply cure,” said Amber Johnston, a British Psychological Society-accredited psychologist, who reviewed videos about trauma for The Guardian.
The experts identified four major themes within the misleading and inaccurate information. The first, pathologizing normal emotions, came in videos that described everyday feelings, such as tiredness or feeling anxiety around changes, as clear indicators of specific mental health disorders. They seemed to imply that experiencing any symptoms of a mental health disorder meant the viewer must be living with it.
Then there was misuse of therapeutic language, whether through inaccurately describing a mental health disorder or using words like abuse, to explain certain actions, without context or nuance. The third category was reportedly the most common: unevidenced treatments and false claims. These clips include claims that a certain method can heal trauma in just one hour, that ingesting certain things causes depression and that manufactured supplements will ease anxiety.
The last theme identified was anecdotal evidence. Videos in this area included recommendations to get inpatient treatment solely based on the creators’ own experiences. Another showed someone in a hospital gown who implied that they were in a psychiatric unit for being too honest with their therapist.
Misinformation is a tremendous issue across social media platforms, with many companies doing little to nothing about it. Take Meta, for example, which removed its fact-checking program in the US this past April. Instead, it has opted for community notes that allow for crowdsourced responses to posts.
TikTok has made multiple claims over the years that it’s removing “problematic” content and inaccurate videos. In a statement shared with The Guardian, a TikTok spokesperson commended the app for being a place people can share and get support for their mental health experiences. “There are clear limitations to the methodology of this study, which opposes this free expression and suggests that people should not be allowed to share their own stories.”
The spokesperson added that TikTok works with the World Health Organization and the NHS in the UK to provide accurate information, further claiming that the app removes 98 percent of “harmful misinformation before it’s reported to us.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-ripe-with-mental-health-misinformation-new-study-reports-150359735.html?src=rss
The BBC and Disney chose not to share screeners ahead of “The Reality War” to preserve its numerous twists. There isn’t time to review it in the usual style, but I felt I’d be remiss not to cap off this run of reviews by talking about the finale. And it’s not as if I’ve nothing to say about what the hell happened on Saturday.
“It’s the end… but the moment has been ‘prepared for.’”
I refuse to believe that “The Reality War” was planned and written as the execution of this run of Doctor Who. I’m well aware the BBC, Bad Wolf and Ncuti Gatwa claimed the intention from the start was for him to bow out after two short seasons. I’m not buying it.
On one hand, the rumors of disharmony behind the scenes, last minute reshoots and Disney’s reported displeasure are hard to ignore. But there’s far better evidence, which is to just watch the damn episode and try to think about what happened for more than a heartbeat.
Everything after the Doctor’s triumphant return to UNIT HQ feels like it was hastily assembled and tacked on. In fact, there are times in which it feels like all of the main actors are reading from different scripts, and not interacting with one another.
Spot the join
Lara Cornell/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf
I’ve seen some people grousing about the simple way the Omega storyline was resolved, but I think it was always planned that way. Russell T. Davies’ has always ended the big dramatic plots of his finales early to make more room to show the aftermath for the characters.
Take last year’s “Empire of Death,” which dumps off Sutekh two thirds of the way in to spend the rest of the episode showing Ruby meeting her birth mother. For Davies, the big CGI space monsters are always the means through which he can spend moments with his characters.
And yet the character moments here are weird if not totally incoherent — the one highlight being the moment that Poppy disappears. The shot of the Doctor and Belinda absentmindedly handing her coat back and forth as it turns into an ever-smaller piece of cloth is sublime.
But when Ruby’s protestations are finally taken seriously, the Doctor’s decision to just hand Belinda a child comes totally out of left field. Not only does it not agree with anything that we’ve come to know about her over the last eight weeks, it’s also totally pretty outrageous.
Which is why it’s far more plausible that Davies, faced with no commission for a third season and with a lead actor looking to quit, just wrote a few pages of nonsense to justify the change.
“One day, I shall come back.”
Naturally, the rumors suggest the original ending would have seen Susan appear as a lead-in to the next season. Again, this isn’t so much a hint as something the last two years have been very clearly laying the foundations for. The Doctor openly discussed that he has a child living in London (in “The Devil’s Chord”) and the Susan Twist saga was designed to play up to that. Going to the trouble of hiring the 84-year-old Carole Ann Ford and putting her in brief cameos in the last two episodes — plus dropping references to that in “Lux” — was clearly part of the plan. Now, after the extensive, patient buildup of that storyline, it appears that we’ll not get the chance to see what Davies had intended.
Going back to the point about the BBC and Gatwa’s claim that this was always meant to be a two-season deal, it’s likely the show’s original ending will be swept under the rug. And given Ford’s age, it’s likely that we’ll never get the chance to give the actress the sendoff she really deserved in 1964.
“Davies has never been that sort of writer.”
A large amount of fan speculation this year was focused on the various structural and thematic coincidences. Each episode of this run could more or less map onto the previous one and went over similar ground. But, as far back as “Lux,” I said that Russell T. Davies wasn’t that sort of writer, building a mystery box that would resolve perfectly by its conclusion. His writing is a little more like a kid pulling toys out of a toybox and smashing them together at speed.
“The Reality War” is a great example of this approach, since while there were plenty of elements that came back, none of them were as vital to the plot’s conclusion as they could have been. Anita was a convenient way of getting the Doctor out of the cliffhanger, but did nothing else for the rest of the episode. Hell, it’s hard to take the suggestion seriously that she’d fallen in love with the Doctor but not realized he was, at least in this incarnation, more interested in men. Joy, too, from “Joy to the World” gets a mention but with little emotional attachment given the events of that episode. And on the subject of its treatment of women…
“I was this really brilliant woman”
James Pardon/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf
Doctor Who has spent much of its recent years trying to address its own blind spots around representation. This era has continued this tradition, broadening out the series’ supporting cast, especially the team known by fans as the “UNIT Family.” In “The Reality War,” every one of the Doctor’s allies, barring Colonel Ibrahim, is either a woman or non-binary. And yet, the sheer number of cast members means each one is almost aggressively underserved.
“The Reality War,” after all, is focused on unpacking a false reality called into existence by an ultra-conservative YouTuber who ignores and erases disabled and queer people. But the show’s treatment of these characters both during the action-packed finale, and afterward, is rough. When the team starts working together, the legion of people around the Doctor get little to nothing of note to actually do.
Anita is quite literally reduced to the role of a human doorstop (she holds the door to the Time Hotel open to counteract Conrad’s wish). Kate orders Shirley to fire the lasers. Susan (Triad) builds the zero room. Mel does quite literally nothing once she’s sneered at the Rani. And then there’s Rose.
Rose’s brief inclusion would have been extraordinarily poignant if she’d helped defeat Conrad once she’s been pulled out of oblivion. Instead, she’s just there so the Doctor can point out she was erased because Conrad hates (and/or ignores) nonbinary transfem people. And after that moment, Yasmin Finney essentially disappears from the episode once again, making her less a character and more a prop.
It gets worse with the treatment of Ruby and Belinda — the former marginalized and almost aggressively ignored by the characters to the point that I assumed their rejection of her claims was a sign the reality hadn’t actually been fixed. But the latter goes from not having a child, to having a fictional child in Conrad’s world, to forgetting she exists when Conrad’s wish is undone. When the timeline resets and she no longer has any memory of a child, the Doctor then opts to sacrifice his life in order to bring that child back into existence. I mean, what? Given Davies’ politics, and the (ostensibly) pro-abortion subtext of “Space Babies,” the Doctor suddenly re-writes the universe to force his companion — without her consent — into motherhood.
“It’s funny, but is it going to get them off their tractors?”
I’m a Brit, reviewing a uniquely British show for a predominantly American audience, and so try to view the series through that lens. Doctor Who has been a fixture in the US since the ‘70s and was a mainstay on PBS through the ‘80s and so it’s not an unknown property. The revival series may not have been an instant hit, but quickly built a respectable audience on BBC America. But while in the UK the series is a mainstream hit, its US demographic can be roughly broken down into genre nerds and anglophiles.
Consequently, there was a degree of nervousness about how the revitalized series would be received by the far broader audience on Disney+. Davies’ had spoken about the need for the series to recruit new fans, downplaying the series’ six-decades-long backstory. But despite that aim, it never felt that the series was making many concessions to its potential audience. Don’t forget, the Ncuti Gatwa series is playing out in the shadow of specific events from its 2021 series and the second and third of its three 2023 specials. And yet, rather than starting from a clean(-ish) slate, the series threw itself headlong into a multi-year story about its broken reality.
“In the ‘70s or ‘80s depending on the dating protocol…”
The Two Ranis / Two Ronnies gag was great, but did anyone over the age of 30 get it?
BBC Studios/Bad Wolf
And on that subject, I don’t think we really needed to see the Rani or Omega again, especially as Conrad was a compelling enough villain on his own. I’m the sort of Doctor Who fan who bleeds TARDIS Blue if you were to cut me (but don’t do that). But I’m also sufficiently interested in new experiences that I’d rather the show avoid relitigating and revisiting the same coterie of classic series villains.
Omega wasn’t a mainstay anyway, and his second appearance (in “Arc of Infinity”) was tedious enough that his absence wasn’t missed. Similarly, while the Rani offers a different spin on the homegrown foe trope, it’s hard not to just write her as a female Master. And, let’s be honest, as much as I’m trying not to invoke Steven Moffat here, Missy was so well done we didn’t need to go back to that well ever again.
Similarly, I can’t help but wonder how many folks who persisted with the series until this point bailed out. The late Craig Hinton coined the term “Fanwank” as a catch-all term for the sort of self-indulgent storytelling that exists to satisfy the author’s own obsessions. You know, fan fiction that makes Captain Kirk the father of Jean-Luc Picard or that Han Solo and Luke Skywalker were secretly friends in childhood. Having the Rani bi-generate to rebuild a new Gallifrey with Omega as its progenitor is the sort of self-indulgence most people grow out of.
Doctor Who isn’t Star Trek
James Pardon/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf
Several times this season, we’ve seen Doctor Who smash its face into the limits of its own storytelling. Its premise is far more elastic than many others, but there are themes it simply cannot meaningfully engage with. “Lux,” “Lucky Day” and “The Interstellar Song Contest” all gestured toward big real-world topics (structural racism, abuse and radicalization, genocide and reputation laundering) that are simply beyond the capacity of a science fantasy show about a quasi-immortal clown solving problems. And here we’re learning another big fact about Doctor Who: It’s not Star Trek.
The battle between UNIT and the big dinosaur skeletons was shot and edited as if we were watching the crew of the Enterprise. Now, I’m not watching Doctor Who for the gritty realism but there’s a moment when you can go through silly fun and into ridiculousness. And when the UNIT tower, consciously modeled on the Avengers’ Stark Tower, starts spinning around to shoot its lasers, you have to wonder how many people had to sign off on that image thinking it was okay.
Eating its own tail
Doctor Who’s critical and popular success has always waxed and waned, and that’s nothing to be worried about. There was, however, a sense during Chis Chibnall’s era that he wanted to recapture the glories of Davies’ era. After all, David Tennant’s initial tenure saw the show become the biggest thing on British TV with ratings often passing the 10 million mark. I suppose it comes as no surprise, then, that Davies would repay the compliment by giving Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor a cameo. It’s a shame that it’s as equally incoherent as the rest of the episode’s finale, but it does a far better job of addressing the #Thasmin plot — the implied romance between the Doctor and her companion Yaz – than Chibnall’s own era does.
Naturally, Davies was better able to capitalize upon this nostalgia, recruiting the stars of his own era — David Tennant and Catherine Tate — to come back for the 60th anniversary specials. That was a nice piece throwback to help get the series back on track ahead of its rejuvenation with Ncuti Gatwa at the helm. Obviously, while hiring one of the stars of the series’ most recent heyday for a short tenure for the anniversary was a nice treat, the series now needs to strike out on its own. Or, at least, that was the thinking until Ncuti Gatwa regenerated into Billie Piper.
Billie Piper
BBC
I was 20 when Doctor Who came back and was as sneery as the rest of the country when Billie Piper was announced as the show’s companion. Piper was a teenage singer — the youngest UK Number One act — and while not a one-hit wonder, her music career stalled. Aged 18, she married the 35-year-old radio DJ and TV presenter Chris Evans and became tabloid fodder. Naturally, the whole country had to eat crow when it turned out she wasn’t just a fantastic actor but a true powerhouse and star. Her return for “The Day of the Doctor,” as the psychic interface of Gallifreyan superweapon The Moment, was a joyous one. And while the leaks had revealed Piper would be replacing Gatwa, it was still nice to see her appear on screen.
Given Piper was not credited as “And introducing Billie Piper as the Doctor” it’s clear that her inclusion is another hedge. If nothing else, she can take the role for the revival series’ 20th anniversary and hopefully pull in more eyes to whoever replaces her. But as desperate as the move seems, I’d be happy to see her remain in the role for an extended period of time — she’s brilliant, clearly has plenty of affection for the show, and has enough star power to carry the series on her back. So, if Piper is back, let her be back for a long time and let her bask in all of the adoration she so rightly deserves.
“There are worlds out there…”
At the risk of armchair psychologizing, I suspect all Doctor Who fans of a certain age carry the wound of 1989 very deeply. The show had entered a creative renaissance thanks to the work of Andrew Cartmel that had invigorated long-serving producer John Nathan-Turner. Just as it had found its feet and started to produce era-defining work in a model that could have sustained it through the 1990s, the plug was pulled. There have been many (many!) post mortems as to the causes but James Cooray-Smith’s recent essay on the subject is probably the most concise. In short, a combination of executive snobbery, personal enmity (John Nathan-Turner was not well-liked by his bosses) and budgetary issues caused the show’s demise.
1989 to 2005 was beset by false dawns, the BBC’s self-sabotage and fans essentially taking ownership of the property. Virgin Publishing had the license to publish tie-in novels that evolved into the New Adventures line. In the gap, the need for new Doctor Who was filled by writers: some professional, some fans who would go on to become professionals with a monthly book series. And then, in 1999, a production company called Big Finish secured the rights to produce new audio adventures featuring classic Doctors. But aside from the abortive (and mostly awful) 1996 TV movie that served as a pilot for a US version of the show, Doctor Who was dead.
It wouldn’t be until the second series of the reboot, when David Tennant took the role and it became the biggest thing on TV, that the worry the show would go away again started to fade even as ratings and public enthusiasm declined with Steven Moffat at the helm. But those fears have returned in the last decade, especially given the lukewarm critical and audience reception to Jodie Whittaker’s tenure. And with Disney pulling back and the BBC’s own budget crisis, the risk to Doctor Who’s future — with no new series confirmed to be in the works — is grave.
On one hand, the BBC has said we may see the situation change in a year, but then it said that in 1989 as well. I’m going to hold off writing an obituary, however, because if Doctor Who is to go back on the shelf, it’s going to be taken very good care of. After all, many of the fans who kept the flame alive during the first wilderness years would go on to make the series proper. And I’m sure the next generation of fans are ready to cut their teeth on their own projects that’ll one day grow into whatever Doctor Who becomes in a decade or more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/12-thoughts-about-that-doctor-who-finale-150032038.html?src=rss
You’ve probably already been fooled by an AI video, whether you realize it or not. On May 20, Google released Veo 3, its latest AI video generation tool, showing it off with a video featuring an AI-generated seaman, and the results were either impressive or horrifying, depending on your point of view.
Yeah. We’re cooked. While this video does have a slightly surreal quality upon close inspection, it’s good enough to fool most casual viewers. The barrier preventing the average person from being taken in by a computer-generated video has been shattered. Veo 3’s videos are so good, you can’t easily tell they aren’t real, especially when you see them while casually scrolling a social media feed. People are already using Veo 3 for profit, politics, and propaganda. As Lifehacker’s Jake Peterson put it, “You are not prepared for this terrifying new wave of AI-generated videos.”
Veo 3 produces hyper-realistic videos with natural-looking lighting, physicality, sound effects, camera movement, and dialogue. Unlike traditional CGI, the new breed of AI doesn’t require a Hollywood budget or a team of animators—you just need to craft a prompt a few sentences long, and feed it to Veo 3. What gets output doesn’t display many of the telltale distortions that used to mark content as obviously created using AI.
Take a look at this entirely Veo 3-made video to get a sense of how convincing it can be:
Making these videos is extremely easy too—you don’t need to spend all day iterating prompts to get a good result. I went from “I don’t know how to do this” to creating the video below in about half an hour, and it was even made using the “free trial” version of Google’s AI tool:
Is there anything a devoted seeker of truth can do in the face of the upcoming onslaught of AI video slop? Maybe. A little. There are (a few) steps you can take to (maybe sometimes) spot a fake video. At least until Veo 4 makes it that much harder, or a competing AI’s video generation service releases a new model that’s even better.
A few tips for spotting fake AI videos (that might work, sometimes)
Look for the watermarks (both visible and invisible)
According to Google, a SynthID watermark is embedded in all content created with Google’s generative AI models. Unfortunately, you can’t see it, and you can’t easily detect it—at least not yet. The company says it’s testing a verification portal to “quickly and efficiently identify AI-generated content made with Google AI.” It’s not live yet. (Maybe they could have finished working on that before releasing Veo 3?) Anyway, hopefully soon anyone will be able to upload a piece of content and learn if it was made with any of Google’s AI tools.
Late last week, Google also rolled out a visible watermark on Veo 3 content, called DeepMind’s SynthID. Unfortunately (again), it won’t apply to “videos generated by Ultra members in Flow, our tool for AI filmmakers,” so anyone using the expensive, “professional” version of Veo 3 can still trick you.
Non-technical, common sense ways to spot an AI video
Here are a few more suggestions for spotting AI-generated video that don’t require the use of any tools more sophisticated that your own brain:
Slow down. Don’t immediately trust videos you see online, even if they’re from people or accounts you usually trust.
Cross-check. Has this clip been reported elsewhere? Who’s sharing it, and why?
Watch for tells. Even Veo 3 isn’t perfect yet. Look for odd physics, unnatural skin textures, strange mouth movements, or uncanny lighting.
Think critically. Always ask yourself, Who benefits from me believing this video is real? Consider whether it even makes sense. Think about who could’ve shot it, and why. Question whether the behavior of the video’s subjects tracks with how you know actual humans to behave.
The limitations of AI detection
Those are some concrete steps you can take, but I don’t actually think many people will take them when viewing videos on social media. Even in a perfect world, where we all had access to foolproof AI checkers that reliably identified bogus content, plenty of people would still believe AI gunk is real. Who would bother investigating every video that scrolled by on TikTok, and every photo that appeared on Facebook? That’s a lot of work, and I don’t think most people actually care whether what they’re seeing is real or not, as long as they like it.
I write about people being fooled by AI creations in this column fairly regularly, and it doesn’t seem to matter how convincing the fakes are. Even the sloppiest, obviously uncanny creations are good enough when the people viewing them want them to be real. And that’s the hardest thing about AI detection: We’re most vulnerable to fake content when it confirms our biases. Humans are the weak link in the chain.
While these videos are terrifying, there’s nothing new about fake news
While AI programs like Veo 3 make it easier to create fake videos, it’s not like creating effective disinformation was impossible before. CGI has been convincing people of unreal things for decades. Before that, you could just film a realistic version of whatever you’d like to see, minus digital effects. Before there were movies, people faked photographs, and before there were photographs, people lied in print. And people lie with their mouths all the time, sometimes while standing behind a podium carrying an official government seal. Deception, forgery, and fraud are as old as mankind. The only difference is that now we can do it a lot faster.
The best means of telling the fake from the real has always been by developing your personal bullshit detector, but that’s also the most difficult method to rely on. Submitting to confirmation bias is base human nature, and while it’s easy to say “be extra suspicious of things that seem true to you,” it’s not a skill that many of us (or maybe any of us) actually possess.
Maybe the people who are most wrong this week (and every week) are people like me, for assuming I’d be able to spot AI fakes when it really matters. Maybe it’s easy to spot and call out Facebook slop AI, but how can I ever know what I’m sure is true is actually true? I can’t. No one can. And that’s a philosophical conundrum that no amount of watermarks or detection tools can fix.
The highly anticipated Hell Is Us demo, a new sci-fi horror action-RPG from Rogue Factor, has launched on Steam, offering PC gamers a taste of its mysterious, war-torn world ahead of its September release. However, the visually stunning Unreal Engine 5-powered title has encountered a significant roadblock. Numerous players, particularly those
In the age of AI, all roads lead to the Taiwan based TSMC (directly or indirectly, as the case might be). As the leading multinational semiconductor manufacturer in the world, numerous big tech firms from AMD to NVIDIA (amongst others) are vying for allocation for its chips. Meanwhile, tariffs don’t appear to be stopping or even slowing the
This is a clip from a Monster Jam event featuring 10,000 die-cast 1/64th scale monster trucks being released down a launch ramp simultaneously. Now I’m not one to be nit-picky (just kidding that’s all I am) but it looks like there were several lines that got caught on the track and failed to launch. Still, the excitement of the announcers in the video would make you believe this stunt (they call it a stunt) is up there with the moon landing. Speaking of — we’ve got the first manned moon landing in over 50 years scheduled for mid-2027! “They’ll probably fake this one too.” But the graphics will be so much sicker this time.
Meta has signed a 20-year agreement with Constellation Energy that will allow it to purchase nuclear power supplied by the Clinton Clean Energy Center in southern Illinois. To help fuel its AI ambitions, Meta said in a statement that it is prioritizing 100 percent clean, renewable energy for its data centers and recognizes the “immense value of nuclear power in providing reliable, firm electricity.”
Rather than building a new nuclear plant, Meta says its deal with Constellation for its existing Clinton center will ensure the plant can remain in operation long-term, preserving over 1,000 local jobs. The deal, the first of its kind for Meta, commences in 2027, and will see Facebook’s parent company buy in full the approximately 1.1 gigawatts of emissions-free nuclear energy currently being generated at the site. Meta also committed to expanding the grid by an additional 30 megawatts. The exact financial details of the landmark agreement are not detailed in the statement.
Meta has been behind the curve on nuclear, with big tech rivals Google and Microsoft already buying up significant capacity. In December last year, Meta confirmed its ambition to add between one and gour gigawatts of nuclear energy capacity to its US data centers by the early 2030s, so the Constellation agreement is something of a headstart for Mark Zuckerberg’s company.
Meta did actually plan to build a nuclear-powered data center of its own, but was reportedly forced to scrap it when a rare bee species was discovered on the land it had earmarked for the project. According to the Financial Times, Zuckerberg told staff at the time that Meta would have had the first nuclear energy AI if the bee-related pivot hadn’t been necessary.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-signs-multi-decade-nuclear-energy-deal-to-power-its-ai-data-centers-144916645.html?src=rss
The Ninth Circuit has ruled that the 1967 Ford Mustang fastback nicknamed “Eleanor” in Gone in 60 Seconds is a film prop rather than a protectable character. The panel said the car fails all three Towle test prongs, so it cannot receive standalone copyright protection. sinij writes: The ruling states that the Mustang doesn’t pass tests that would qualify it as a character. In the past, studio aggressively went after builders for any Mustang that even remotely approximated Eleanor, making it a hassle to restomod classic Mustangs.
The Ninth Circuit has ruled that the 1967 Ford Mustang fastback nicknamed “Eleanor” in Gone in 60 Seconds is a film prop rather than a protectable character. The panel said the car fails all three Towle test prongs, so it cannot receive standalone copyright protection. sinij writes: The ruling states that the Mustang doesn’t pass tests that would qualify it as a character. In the past, studio aggressively went after builders for any Mustang that even remotely approximated Eleanor, making it a hassle to restomod classic Mustangs.
Eight years ago, just before the release of the Nintendo Switch, we provided an in-depth review of the hardware thanks to early production units provided by Nintendo. This year, Nintendo has opted not to provide such unrestricted early press access to the Switch 2 hardware, citing a “day-one update” to the system software and some launch games that would supposedly make pre-release evaluation more difficult.
As such, we won’t be able to provide our full thoughts on the Switch 2 until well after the system is in players’ hands. While that’s not an ideal situation for readers looking to make an early purchase decision, we’ll do our best to give you our hands-on impressions as soon as possible after launch day.
In lieu of review access, though, we were able to get some extended hands-on time with the final Switch 2 hardware at a daylong preview event held by Nintendo last week. This event provided our first look at the console’s system-level menu and settings, as well as features like GameChat (which was hard to fully evaluate in an extremely controlled environment).
One of the “godfathers” of artificial intelligence has attacked a multibillion-dollar race to develop the cutting-edge technology, saying the latest models are displaying dangerous characteristics such as lying to users.
Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian academic whose work has informed techniques used by top AI groups such as OpenAI and Google, said: “There’s unfortunately a very competitive race between the leading labs, which pushes them towards focusing on capability to make the AI more and more intelligent, but not necessarily put enough emphasis and investment on research on safety.”
The Turing Award winner issued his warning in an interview with the Financial Times, while launching a new non-profit called LawZero. He said the group would focus on building safer systems, vowing to “insulate our research from those commercial pressures.”
WWDC might technically be a developer conference, but the rest of us non-devs still tune in anyway. That’s because Apple isn’t just sharing updates that are relevant to software makers, but sweeping OS changes that anyone with an Apple device can appreciate.
WWDC 2025 is nearly here. With it, Apple will likely announce the latest updates to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, and more, and will probably drop some new details about Apple Intelligence. If you’re interested in keeping up with the latest Apple news, here’s how to watch.
How to watch WWDC 2025
Apple’s 2025 WWDC event kicks of June 9. While WWDC technically spans the entire week, most of us care about the first day. That’s when Apple gives its keynote address, which contains the vast majority of WWDC news you’re expecting to hear. As it happens, the rest of the week is actually made up of events and news for developers. Go figure.
Apple’s big kickoff starts at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) on Monday, June 9. While the event used to be in-person, Apple has stuck with prerecorded announcements since COVID. That works for delivering news and showcasing features without the worry that something goes wrong during a live demo, but it also means you need to take what’s being announced with a grain of salt. Last year, Apple announced a bunch of AI-powered Siri features that were supposedly going to launch with iOS 18, but it turned out that those features were in a prototype phase. (They still haven’t launched.) While you should expect most of the features for “iOS 26” to actually roll out with the new update, don’t be surprised if some don’t make the cut.
If you weren’t invited to Cupertino to watch the prerecorded event from the Steve Jobs theater, you can still check it out from the comfort of your home—or wherever you have an internet connection. Apple will be streaming from its website, as well as its official YouTube channel. That YouTube video is live now, if you want to queue it up ahead of the presentation:
Summer Game Fest week just got even busier. Sony is throwing its own party on Wednesday, June 5 at 5PM in the form of a State of Play. The stream will showcase “must-play” PS5 games from developers based around the world and you can watch it on on YouTube or Twitch. To make things even easier for you, you can watch it right here by clicking the big red button above when the time is right. (English subtitled and Japanese versions of the State of Play will be available too.)
The State of Play will run for over 40 minutes, so there should be a bunch of games included. Sony hasn’t given any hints as to what it will show off as yet, but it’ll surely be worth checking out the stream. We learned about some interesting projects in the last State of Play, such as the very tasty-sounding Soros from Returnal studio Housemarque. There’s always a chance that Sony will show up at Summer Game Fest Live on Friday, June 6, to reveal something else off.
With this State of Play, Sony is padding out a packed SGF schedule that includes what is routinely Xbox’s biggest showcase of the year on Sunday, June 8. And then there’s also the little matter of the Nintendo Switch 2’s arrival on June 5. It’s shaping up to be a fun, if very busy, week.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/how-to-watch-sonys-state-of-play-at-summer-game-fest-143012779.html?src=rss
Here’s an all-too-familiar scenario for me: I’m listening to music using my phone when, for some reason, my headphones connect to my sleeping MacBook. The music stops.
I bet you’ve run into some version of this problem—it’s frustratingly common, plus you’re reading an article about how to solve it. And here’s your solution: a free, open source application called Bluesnooze. This simple tool does one thing: It turns off your Bluetooth when your Mac goes to sleep, and turns it back on when your Mac wakes up. This stops your computer from taking over your headphones when you don’t want it to.
I’ve been testing it out for a few days and it works reliably. There are some downsides—using this program means that when your Mac does wake up, that you’ll need to wait a few seconds before you can use your Bluetooth devices, like a mouse, keyboard, or speakers. For me, this pause lasted only a few seconds—a brief enough interval that I barely noticed it—but it’s worth keeping in mind.
The bigger downside is that the app also breaks a few features that you might use regularly, including “Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac” and certain “Find My Mac” abilities. If you’re constantly annoyed by your MacBook cutting off audio, though, you might be able to live with these compromises.
Credit: Justin Pot
Bluesnooze runs from the menu bar and offers just one option: whether you want it to run automatically at login or not. If you don’t like clutter in your menu bar, you can also optionally disable the menu bar icon using a command found on the download page. This will free up space on your menu bar, but make it hard to know whether the application is running or not. For this reason, I also recommend you look into using an app to clean up your Mac’s menu bar instead of removing the icon altogether.
Bluesnooze isn’t a particularly complicated application, granted, but it solves a very specific problem. Check it out if you’ve been considering storing your MacBook in a Faraday cage to prevent it from stealing control of your AirPods when you don’t want it to.
MSI has officially unveiled the GeForce RTX 5060 8G INSPIRE ITX. This honestly cute little thing is a single-fan version of the base 5060 with 8GB of GDDR7, delivering robust enough gaming and content creation capabilities in a small form factor (SFF). This GPU isn’t about straight up performance obviously, but is designed for enthusiasts
Live-animal markets across Southeast Asia continue operating as natural laboratories for deadly pathogens despite warnings from public health experts about their role in disease transmission, according to new research published in Nature.
Scientists studying markets like Jakarta’s Jatinegara found that coronavirus detection rates in trafficked animals increase dramatically along supply chains, with rats sold at Vietnamese markets testing positive at rates ten times higher than those caught in fields. Pangolins confiscated in Vietnam showed a seven-fold increase in coronavirus infections compared to animals seized earlier in the smuggling process.
The research comes as political headwinds have severely reduced funding for pandemic preparedness, with the Trump administration terminating a $125-million disease monitoring program and cutting all USAID functions. Scientists report growing reluctance from government officials to authorize publication of pathogen discoveries, fearing stigma and trade restrictions, while wildlife traders increasingly avoid participating in studies that could reveal new health risks.
ASUS has a message for Windows 10 users and it’s similar to the one Microsoft has been shouting from a mountaintop for the past several months (and longer): Your days are numbered. Or more precisely (and less ominously), “your computer’s days of regular updates and supported are numbered.” So, go ahead and start shopping for a new PC, will
When tried out Mario Kart Worldat April’s Switch 2 premiere hands-on event, the short demos focused on more-or-less standard races in the game’s Grand Prix and Knockout modes. So when Nintendo invited us back for more time previewing the near-final version of the game before the Switch 2’s release, we decided to focus most of our time on the game’s mysterious (and previously teased) “Free Roam” mode.
We’re glad we did, because the mode feels like the hidden gem of Mario Kart World and maybe of the Switch 2 launch as a whole. Combining elements of games like Diddy Kong Racing, Forza Horizon, and even the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, Free Roam provides a unique mixture of racing challenges, exploration, and collectibles that should keep new Switch 2 owners busy for a while.
Switch hunt
Surprisingly, Free Roam mode isn’t actually listed as one of the main options when you launch a new game of Mario Kart World. Instead, a tiny note in the corner of the screen tells you to hit the plus button to get dropped into a completely untimed and free-wheeling version of the vast Mario Kart World map.
