Friday Amazon released the season finale for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. But Amazon’s 8-episode first season “might have been best known for its extravagant price tag,” jokes the Los Angeles Times. It ultimately cost $700 million — making it the most expensive TV show ever — and they note one viewer’s assessment that “Visually, it’s great. All the money in production shows…” (The Times’ critic called it “visibly expensive.”)

But can you quantify whether the show is good, great, or something out of Mordor? The Times cites reports that more than 100 million Amazon Prime viewers watched some part of the show (with the premier attracting 25 million viewers on its first day — a new record for the streaming service). Yet they also add that “It’s no surprise that a long-gestating TV show based on the mythology behind a beloved fantasy series has garnered mixed reviews from audiences. (In the main, critics have been more positive, according to review aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic).”

And CNN is a little less charitable:
After initial reviews admired the scope and visual grandeur, though, more critical voices have drifted into the naysaying column, pointing out — as the Daily Telegraph’s Duncan Lay put it — that the series “managed to be both pretentious and boring.” Forbes’ Erik Kain sounded a similar note, writing that after the opening chapters, “The Rings of Power” has demonstrated “how quickly a badly written TV series can wear out its welcome once the shimmer fades.”

But there’s also this from Business Insider:
Creators J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay promise that if viewers were disappointed with season one’s story because they expected more Sauron, then they’ll dig the second season, which started filming earlier this month. “There may well be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season one!,'” McKay told The Hollywood Reporter. “In season two, we’re giving it to them.”

Indeed, this season accomplished “the hard work of setting up who all those characters are,” Amazon Studios head told Variety — possibly hinting again at that surprise reveal of Sauron in the season finale.

And according to The Hollywood Reporter, the show’s creators have high hopes for its impact on Season Two:

“There’s something that Milton does in Paradise Lost that we talked about a lot. Where he makes Satan a really compelling character… Season one opens with: Who is Galadriel? Where did she come from? What did she suffer? Why is she driven?” says Payne. “We’re doing the same thing with Sauron in season two. We’ll fill in all the missing pieces.”

“Sauron can now just be Sauron,” McKay adds. “Like Tony Soprano or Walter White. He’s evil, but complexly evil. We felt like if we did that in season one, he’d overshadow everything else. So the first season is like Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight is the next movie, with Sauron maneuvering out in the open.”

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Source: Slashdot – Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Prequel Ends Season One. What Did You Think?

“Hackers are on a roll in 2022, stealing over $3 billion in cryptocurrency,” writes Slashdot reader quonset (citing figures from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis). “And the year isn’t over yet.

“For comparison, in 2021, only $2.1 billion in crypto currency was stolen during the entire year.”

CBS News reports:
A big chunk of that $3 billion, around $718 million, was taken this month in 11 different hacks, Chainalysis said in a series of tweets posted Wednesday. ctober is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity, with more than half the month still to go,” the company tweeted.

In past years, hackers focused their efforts on attacking crypto exchanges, but those companies have since strengthened their security, Chainalysis said. These days, cybercriminals are targeting “cross-chain bridges,” which allow investors to transfer digital assets and data among different blockchains…. Cross-chain bridges remain a major target for hackers, with three bridges breached this month and nearly $600 million stolen, accounting for 82% of losses this month and 64% of losses all year,” Chainalysis said….

All told, Chainalysis said there have been 125 hacks so far this year.

“Cryptocurrency is not federally regulated or FDIC insured like a bank account,” the article concludes, “which means if an account gets hacked, the government will not work to restore a customer’s funds.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Billion In Cryptocurrency Stolen This Year. So Far.

“Public officials in Washington for years have sparred along partisan lines over whether social media platforms take down too much or too little hate speech and misinformation,” reports the Washington Post’s politics/tech newsletter, The Technology 202.

“A council launching this week aims to sidestep those disputes by proposing reforms that tackle issues of bipartisan concern, including children’s safety and national security.”
The newly minted Council for Responsible Social Media, set up by the nonpartisan nonprofit Issue One, features a wide-ranging and influential lineup of former U.S. lawmakers and federal officials, advocates, scholars, industry leaders and whistleblowers… “This is not a think tank. This is an action tank,” former Democratic House majority leader Dick Gephardt told The Technology 202. “We want to see results….”

“The core goal of the commission is to really show that there are bipartisan paths forward … that involve having companies have to actually talk about what is their role in society,” Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said in an interview. Haugen said the council can move the debate around social media accountability forward by focusing on areas of “common ground,” like concerns around algorithmic amplification, transparency and platform design choices. Haugen said proposals the council might explore include giving users, particularly children, the option to “reset algorithms” so they do not keep wandering down the same risky “rabbit holes.” By focusing on systemic issues, she said, the group might be able to help build support for ideas that sidestep thorny speech debates. The council may also rally around legislation that already has bipartisan support, such as recent Senate bills on kids’ online safety and platform transparency, Haugen said….

The council is also poised to shine a brighter spotlight on how U.S. companies may be playing into the hands of foreign adversaries — scrutiny that has largely focused on TikTok, owned by Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance…. Haugen said one concept the group may explore is requiring “consistent reporting” by companies about how much they are investing to counter foreign influence operations.

The Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (introduced in 2021) “would require social media firms to comply with researcher data requests for external audits,” reports the Guardian. “Under the proposed law, failure to do so could result in loss of legal protections for content hosted on their platform.”

“There are a number of large opportunities today that were not on the table a year ago in terms of moving forward in a bipartisan way,” Haugen told the Guardian. “They just need a push over the finish line.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – New ‘Council for Responsible Social Media’ Seeks Bipartisan Reforms

“Apple workers in Oklahoma City have voted to form the second-ever labor union at one of the company’s US stores,” reports CNN, “in the latest sign that organizing efforts are gaining traction inside and outside the tech and retail industries.”

In a preliminary tally by the National Labor Relations Board on Friday evening, 56 workers, or 64% of those casting ballots at the Penn Square Mall Apple store, voted to be represented the Communication Workers of America, and 32 voted against it. Turnout was strong, with 88 of a potential 95 workers participating in the vote.

The union victory comes four months after Apple store workers in Towson, Maryland, made history by voting to form Apple’s first US unionized location…. Workers at both locations have said they’re looking to unionize in an effort to have more of a say in how their stores are run. Some also said they were inspired by union pushes this year at Amazon and Starbucks.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the late night vote count Friday….

Between January and July of this year there were 826 union elections, up 45% from the number held in the same period of 2021, according to a CNN analysis of data from the NLRB. And the 70% success rate by unions in those votes is far better than the 42% success rate in the first seven months of 2021.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Workers at a Second Apple Store Just Voted to Unionize

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Sweden’s incoming government will ask state-run utility Vattenfall AB to add nuclear power stations as the economy becomes increasingly electrified. “New reactors will be built in Sweden,” Ebba Busch, whose Christian Democrat party belongs to an alliance that won the most seats in last month’s general election, said at a news conference Friday. The right-wing bloc is slated to become the Nordic nation’s government in a parliamentary vote next week. Swedes have debated nuclear energy for decades, but the source has garnered popular support recently amid the ongoing global crunch.

The Nordic nation currently has six reactors, operated mainly by Vattenfall. Atomic energy, hydro power and wind turbines meet virtually all of Sweden’s electricity demand. New reactors could be built at the Ringhals facility on the west coast, said Jakob Magnussen, global head of credit research at Danske Bank A/S. But success is far from certain, given recent examples of new reactors in Finland, France and the UK running massively over budgets and construction schedules. For Vattenfall, “it will mean a considerable boost to capex with a very long payback time,” Magnussen said. The Swedes’ love-hate relationship with the technology began with the first commercial reactor in 1972. But mounting grassroots opposition in subsequent years culminated in a 1980 referendum that ordered lawmakers to dismantle reactors. Polls ahead of last month’s election showed that 60% of the population wanted new reactors to complement the drive to expand clean energy. While there is plenty of power when the wind blows, the current crisis has exposed the shortage of stable power, particularly in the south.

Vattenfall decommissioned two units at its Ringhals plant in 2019 and 2020. There were fierce debates through the election campaign as the Moderates accused the government of intervening in the utility’s decision. The government maintained it was a commercial decision by Vattenfall. The company has been preparing for a nuclear revival for some time. The first additions could be a new breed of small modular reactors, known as SMRs, which are about a quarter in size compared with the current units. In June, just after the government warned that Sweden was facing an acute power crisis, Vattenfall said it would start an 18-month study into the technology. The first could come online in the early 2030s, the firm said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Sweden’s Incoming Cabinet Says New Reactors Will Be Built