U.S. banking agencies provided more insight into their plans for regulating cryptocurrencies on Tuesday, issuing a to-do list of their priorities for next year and announcing a new policy that would require banks to seek permission before offering digital currency products. From a report: The Federal Reserve and other banking agencies released an agenda outlining areas of focus, including how they plan to weigh custody, crypto-backed loans and the possibility of capital standards, according to a joint statement. Separately, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said that banks must get an additional sign-off from the regulator before engaging with digital coins. “Throughout 2022, the agencies plan to provide greater clarity on whether certain activities related to crypto-assets conducted by banking organizations are legally permissible,” the Fed, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance said in the statement.
Those who are using a Samsung Galaxy S21 might have just updated to Android 12 last week, and in very rare form, even the US carrier variants of the smartphone received the new Android OS update on that same day as international counterparts. This update came with a drawback unfortunately, however, as the version went live with a bug lurking
I am too dumb to figure out “analytics” but I suspect “what wine pairs with turkey?” is an oft-Googled search term this time of year. Pinot and Beaujolais are popular options but they are, in my highly valued opinion, not the best bottles to bring to a Thanksgiving or other seasonally festive dinner. That distinction…
New research affirms the added risk that pregnant people and their families face from covid-19. Data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that pregnant people infected with covid-19 are more likely to have a stillbirth; this link appears to have become stronger after the emergence…
Server admins and security-heads take note: there’s a new Windows zero-day that’s like leaving the key in the lock. It just requires access to any standard user account, and provides administrative privileges with the execution of a single application. There’s pretty much no defense against it as it stands, so keep anyone you don’t trust implicitly
Apple has delayed the release of a feature that will eventually allow you to store your ID in the company’s Wallet app. In an update to the official iOS 15 website that was spotted by MacRumors, Apple says that functionality will now arrive sometime in early 2022. The company previously planned to launch in late 2021.
Apple first announced the feature at WWDC 2021. At the time, the company said the tool would allow you to add your driver’s license or state ID card to Apple Wallet just like you would a credit or debit card. Among the first locations that will support the feature will be select Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at some US airports.
At those locations, you’ll have the option to use your iPhone or Apple Watch to present your ID to the TSA. You’ll do so by tapping your device on an identity reader, and you won’t need to hand over your iPhone or Apple Watch to a TSA employee.
In September, Apple announced eight states would support the feature at launch, starting with Arizona and Georgia, and Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah to follow. Beyond TSA checkpoints, Apple said retailers and venues would add support later.
Outside of early 2022, Apple has not shared a specific release date for the feature. What’s clear is that it won’t arrive with iOS 15.2. That update is currently in beta testing and does not include support for storing digital IDs.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife finally premiered last Friday, raking in more than $44 million over its first weekend—far more than critics and its studio, Sony, had predicted. That doesn’t mean the movie’s better than critics are saying, of course, but that’s not why I’ve brought you here today. We need to talk about a…
The next season of Fall Guys starts on November 30th and the beans are getting into the party spirit. Developer Mediatonic took inspiration from festivals, carnivals and the circus for season six. New obstacles include a water balloon cannon, vacuum tubes, a circular version of the infamous seesaw and a platform that flips vertically after a certain length of time. What’s more, there are trapezes that players can swing from.
There are more crossover costumes on the way in season six. Between December 1st and 5th, you can complete challenges to earn a Sackboy skin — the adorable PlayStation mascot is a perfect fit for Fall Guys. In addition, the Fame Pass, which players level up during the season, includes two rad costumes depicting Jin Sakai from Ghost of Tsushima.
here comes the sackboy ~ hello sackboy ~ welcome…
There he is, he is here ✨
Earn exclusive threads and complete new challenges in Sackboy’s Challenge from 1-5 December! 🧵 pic.twitter.com/04QAIdSomt
Meanwhile, cross-progression is coming to the battle royale platformer in season six, building on the cross-play feature that arrived in May. So you’ll be able to access all of your costumes and other cosmetics across PlayStation and Steam. In addition, PC players will be able to select custom usernames again instead of whatever moniker Fall Guys generated for them.
As such, you’ll soon need an Epic Games account to play Fall Guys. Epic bought Mediatonic earlier this year, and Rocket League and Fortnite use the Epic account system for cross-progression too.
You’ll need to select a primary Fall Guys account, which is the first one that you link to an Epic account. Although you won’t lose costumes, nameplates and so on from either platform, you’ll only retain your season progress, crowns, shards and kudos from your primary account. So, it’s probably best to spend your crowns and kudos on your secondary account before the new season starts.
Mediatonic also notes that if players have different costumes and DLC content across both platforms, they should contact the support team after linking to their Epic Games account. The team will transfer over those items, so you won’t lose them. In addition, all players will receive a bonus of 10 crowns.
During the season six showcase, Mediatonic didn’t mention when the Nintendo Switch and Xbox versions of Fall Guys will be released, even though they’re still supposed to arrive by the end of the year. However, the developer did provide a peek at an upcoming round that features invisible beans.
Tile, which dominated the Bluetooth tracker market for years, is reportedly being acquired by family location-sharing service Life360 in a deal valued at $205 million.
We currently have more broadcast and cable networks and streaming services that any one person or household or possibly small village could possibly watch, and all of them are desperate for content. That means that shows come and go faster than they used to, but it also means there’s more hope than ever that your…
In this article, we will learn how to encrypt block devices in Linux using LUKS. LUKS is the Linux encryption layer that can be used to encrypt the entire root partition, a logical volume, or a specific partition.
Enlarge/ Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc., arrives at federal court in San Jose, California, on Monday, Nov. 22, 2021. Holmes targeted ultra-wealthy families as early backers of Theranos to avoid the potential pressure from larger investment firms to go public, according to an investor at the DeVos family office who kicked in $100 million for the blood-testing startup. (credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
Elizabeth Holmes would like the jury to know that scientists, at Theranos and at other companies, led her astray.
One of those scientists was Ian Gibbons, who led Theranos’ scientific research efforts. In 2008, he sent her a presentation about the company’s latest technology, saying that the “performance design goals have been demonstrated,” that the “results have been excellent,” and that the company’s technology was in “clinical evaluation at several sites.”
Holmes told the court that she felt that meant the company was meeting its “design goals,” though she didn’t define what those goals were.
While China’s sweeping new data privacy laws have left tech companies confused about how to comply, they also put the U.S. even further behind in the global race to set digital standards. From a report: China enacted its Personal Information Privacy Law earlier this month, following Europe as the second major international player to have its own sweeping data privacy regulations. The law, regarded as China’s version of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, is a set of rules for how businesses can collect, use, process, share and transfer personal information. Another Chinese data regulation, the Data Security Law, went into effect Sept. 1. The laws aim to protect Chinese citizens from the private sector, while the Chinese government still has easy access to personal data.
In May, influential U.S. business groups sent comments, viewed by Axios, to the National Peopleâ(TM)s Congress protesting that the draft lawâ(TM)s vague language, monetary penalties and criminal liabilities were harsh. They also said it would hurt innovation by being overly prescriptive and burdensome. The U.S. still does not have a federal data privacy law, and China’s move could allow it to set future global norms on its terms. Meanwhile, tech companies doing business in China will have to navigate the vague new rules, and that could be expensive.
Enlarge/ A screenshot from jrrtoken.com. All similarities to LOTR were purely coincidental, apparently.
The estate of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, has successfully vanquished a cryptocurrency that styled itself as “The One Token That Rules Them All.”
The JRR Token cryptocurrency launched in August, with a website that featured rings, hobbit holes, and a wizard with an uncanny resemblance to Gandalf.
But the Tolkien estate, which handles the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings fantasy novels, quickly stepped in to lodge a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the global forum for intellectual property policy.
Cowboy Bebop was like nothing else when it premiered twenty years ago. It was a neo-Western set in space; a noir thriller alongside the spectacle of martial arts action and John Woo-esque shootouts; an existential vision of a broken future where characters were forced to live with their shattered pasts. And on top of all of that, it was propelled by an iconic soundtrack that easily danced between genres. We didn’t have much time in the Bebop-verse — just 26 episodes and a movie — so every second felt like a miracle. How could a live-action Netflix adaptation live up to that?
Simply put, it doesn’t. While the original show was a love letter to cinema and pop culture, crafted by a creative dream team (director Shinichiro Watanabe, writer Keiko Nobumoto and composer Yoko Kanno), Netflix’s remix is mainly in love with Cowboy Bebop. It wants to remind us of the anime, so much so that it replicates many iconic sequences shot-for-shot, but it doesn’t latch onto what made it so special. It hums the melody, but has no soul. It’s a hollow tune that’s common to nostalgia-focused reboots, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and it almost always holds them back.
By almost every measure, I should hate Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop with a passion. But, it’s a testament to the talented actors involved that I don’t. John Cho wouldn’t be my first choice to play the impossibly cool Spike Spiegel (that would be Sung Kang, Fast and Furious’s swagger king Han), but he makes a serious effort to replicate his charm. Mustafa Shakir easily carries Jet Black’s irascible yet lovable nature. And Daniella Pineda’s Faye Valentine is an absolute scene stealer.
But this talented group is failed by a confounding production, which often looks worse than a cheap Doctor Who episode. Some sets appear to be made out of cardboard and spray paint, nothing conveys the lived-in aesthetic the anime captured so well. There are flashes of visual brilliance, to be clear, but that mainly comes from digital effects that often replicate shots from the original series. At times, Bebop wants to replicate the live-action cartoon aesthetic from the Wachowski’s under-rated Speed Racer. Then, at other times, it will just have a bright neon “PORN” sign in the background, as if that’s enough to convey the seediness of a neighborhood.
Geoffrey Short/Netflix
So where did everything start going wrong? As with most nostalgia reboots, it usually comes down to the writing. Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop was developed by Christopher Yost (Thor: Ragnarok, Star Wars Rebels) and includes genre talents like Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost, Charmed). Their combined credits gave me hope that the show would be something more than a copycat of the anime, but instead it’s a confusing mishmash of nostalgia worship and superfluous story additions.
Instead of being a mysterious cutthroat assassin, the villain Vicious comes across as a dull Eurotrash gangster. Instead of a haunting past based on the consequences of being overbearingly protective, Jet gets an estranged daughter and a ticked-off ex-wife. And perhaps most damningly, Spike’s love interest Julia loses her mystique, and instead becomes another pretty damsel in distress. We’ve seen all of these storylines before, so instead of feeling like “a new genre unto itself,” the bold proclamation the anime made in the middle of every episode, it all just feels like “been there, done that.”
That’s the same vibe I got while watching Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It starts out as an intriguing portrait of a struggling family, but eventually becomes bogged down by replicating almost every plot beat from the first Ghostbusters. It’s still a fun and enjoyable film, but it’s reverence for the past clearly prevented it from doing anything truly new. Watching that movie and Cowboy Bebop over the weekend made me genuinely worried about the future of pop culture. Are we just doomed to repeat the past, over and over again, to appease the fans?
Now, here’s the thing: Despite all of the ways Cowboy Bebop fundamentally misunderstands its source material, it still ends up being a decently enjoyable sci-fi romp. And if you don’t know what you’re missing, it’s easy to overlook the flaws as you soak in the talent of the cast, the strange yet familiar future filled with terraformed moons and planets, and the catchy Yoko Kanno tunes.
My one faint hope is that viewers who enjoy the live-action series will also check out the anime, which is also available on Netflix. I’m all for new viewers finding ways into existing properties. I just wish that didn’t involve watering down classics to make them more palatable.
Harmonix is arguably best known for its iconic Rock Band franchise, which let us live out our dreams of standing on stage and dazzling enthusiastic crowds with our guitar riffs, drum beats, and awesome vocals (or getting booed). The studio’s resume has some other notable titles, including Dance Central and more recently Fuser. Whatever it
Astronomers announced this week the discovery of the fastest-rotating white dwarf star on record, with a spin rate of once every 25 seconds. The star is about the size of Earth but, by the team’s measurements, contains least 200,000 times more mass, making the dense little object a spinning freak of nature.
